tion date for the authority to transmit reoganization plans under the

act.

As early as 1949, President Truman asked Congress for a permanent grant of authority to transmit reorganization plans. As President Truman indicated in a message to the Congress in 1949

The improving of the Government is a continuing and never ending process. Government is a dynamic institution. Its administrative structure cannot be static. As new programs are established and old programs change in character and scope to meet the needs of the Nation, the organization of the executive branch must be adjusted to its changing tasks.

Every subsequent President has asked Congress to extend the reorganization authority.

The First Hoover Commission on the Organization of the Executive Branch also recognized the need for permanent reorganization authority, stating that

the power of the President to prepare and transmit plans of reorganization to the Congress should not be restricted by limitations and exemptions.

Since 1949, scientific and technological progress have accelerated the pace of change. New problems have arisen and President Tru

man's observations are even more relevant now. The Government needs organizational flexibility to cope with problems which may require new organizational solutions, and reorganization authority will help to achieve those solutions. However, unless legislation such as H.R. 4623 is enacted, the President and the Congress, after the end of May of this year, will not be able to utilize the reorganization plan procedure which has proved its effectiveness in achieving timely improvements in the organization of the executive branch.

Over 30 years of experience with some sort of Presidential reorganization authority indicates that it is required on a continuing and permanent basis. The need for this authority will continue to be great. It is one of the essential means of insuring that the executive branch of the Government can be organized to discharge effectively and efficiently its responsibilities.

As President Johnson stated in his letter to the Speaker of the House of Representatives:

The people expect and deserve a Government that is lean and fit, organized to take up new challenges and able to surmount them. Reorganization can mean a streamlined leadership, ready to do more in less time for the best interests of all the people.

Reorganization authority is not a whim or a fancy. It is the modern approach to the hard, sticky problems of the present and the future. Government has a responsibility to its citizens to administer their business with dispatch, enthusiasm, and effectiveness.

The Congress itself recognizes these ideals, and has many times approved the ideas and hopes of this request.

The Reorganization Act authorizes a simplified procedure for improving the structure and management of the executive branch. Under this procedure, a reorganization plan providing for the reorganization of executive agencies and transmitted to the Congress by the President takes effect after 60 days of continuous session of Congress (as defined in the act) unless either House of Congress passes a resolution of disapproval during the 60-day period. This procedure enables the

President, as the responsible head of the executive branch, to initiate improvements in executive organization, and it reserves to the Congress effective powers of review and disapproval.

The Reorganization Act of 1949, as amended, contains two titles. Title I sets forth the responsibility of the President for preparing the reorganization plans, states certain requirements and limitations controlling the contents of the plans, and provides the procedure for their taking effect. Title II consists entirely of the special rules of the Congress governing the expeditious handling of reorganization plans by the Congress.

Section 2(a) of the act states the six purposes of the reorganization procedure:

(1) To promote the better execution of the laws, the more effective management of the executive branch of the Government and of its agencies and functions, and the expeditious administration of the public business;

(2) To reduce expenditures and promote economy, to the fullest extent consistent with the efficient operation of the Government; (3) To increase the efficiency of the operations of the Government to the fullest extent practicable;

(4) To group, coordinate, and consolidate agencies and functions of the Government, as nearly as may be, according to major purposes;

(5) To reduce the number of agencies by consolidating those having similar functions under a single head, and to abolish such agencies or functions thereof as may not be necessary for the efficient conduct of the Government; and

(6) To eliminate overlapping and duplication of effort. The desirability of these objectives is obvious. Subsection (b) of section 2 states:

(b) The Congress declares that the public interest demands the carrying out of the purposes specified in subsection (a) and that such purposes may be accomplished in great measure by proceeding under the provisions of this Act, and can be accomplished more speedily thereby than by the enactment of specific legislation.

I emphasize that this is a finding of the Congress, as expressed in the act itself, that reorganization can be accomplished more speedily through the reorganization plan procedure than through the enactment of specific legislation.

Accordingly, section 2 not only sets forth the objectives to be sought by the Reorganization Act but points out that they can be accomplished, and accomplished more speedily under the reorganization plan procedure.

The Reorganization Act specifically authorizes the undertaking of five basic types of reorganizations by reorganization plan. Those are: (1) Transfer,

(2) Consolidation,

(3) Coordination, or

(4) Abolition of the whole or any part of any agency or of the functions of any agency, and

(5) The authorization of any officer to delegate any of his functions.

"Agency" is defined to mean "any executive department, commission, council, independent establishment, Government corporation, board, bureau, division, service, office, officer, authority, administration, or other establishment, in the executive branch of the Government," and any and all parts of the Government of the District of Columbia except the courts.

The Reorganization Act has become a well-accepted and proven tool for helping to keep the executive branch well organized to meet its current needs and for attacking the problems of ineffectiveness, inefficiency, or uneconomical operations of Government. It affords a useful, expeditious, and successful procedure by which the President may present, and the Congress may review, proposals for the reorganization of agencies and activities of the executive branch of the Government. The cooperative executive-legislative approach authorized in the Reorganization Act was adopted after long experience had demonstrated that improvements in organization were difficult to achieve when the sole way of correcting defects was to rely upon the passage of specific legislation.

Improvements were long delayed and often overdue when a reorganization contained in a bill had to pursue its course through the legislative machinery and compete for attention with urgent substantive legislation.

The Reorganization Act permits an alternative, or supplemental, way of approaching this problem, and it does so by clearly placing the responsibility for initiating improvements upon the President. In addition, it is an approach which provides ample safeguards for the rights of anyone who wishes to be heard for or against any particular proposed change.

The provisions of the present Reorganization Act have been developed over the past 33 years. The first statute was undoubtedly experimental. Successive and successful improvements have been made since then. Presidential initiation of organizational improvements subject to congressional review was authorized by the Economy Act of 1932.

Under that act, the President could provide for certain reorganizations of executive agencies by Executive orders which had to lie before the Congress for 60 days, subject to disapproval by a simple majority of either House of the Congress.

In the Economy Act of 1933, changes were made to strengthen the procedure. It provided that Presidential orders making reorganizations would automatically take effect after lying before the Congress for 60 days. The Congress could prevent such an order from taking effect only by enacting specific legislation.

The reorganization provisions of the Economy Act of 1933 remained in effect until March 19, 1935, during which time 8 principal and over 15 subsidiary orders took effect and none was disapproved.

This cooperative executive-legislative approach to reorganization was revived with the enactment of the Reorganization Act of 1939. That act authorized reorganization plans as we know them today.

Reorganization plans, prepared by the President, were transmitted to the Congress and became effective after 60 days unless disapproved by a concurrent resolution passed by both Houses of the Congress.

Five major reorganization plans were transmitted in 1939 and 1940 and all took effect.

During World War II, emergency powers were vested in the President to make wartime reorganizations by Executive order without congressional review. But after the war, the Congress enacted the Reorganization Act of 1945, closely patterned after, and continuing the procedure of, the Reorganization Act of 1939. During the almost 212 years that the 1945 act was in effect, seven reorganization plans were transmitted to the Congress; four became effective, and three were disapproved.

The concurrent resolution procedure authorized by the 1939 and 1945 acts proved highly effective in those important prewar and postwar years. Those acts, however, contained a major defect; namely, they provided for the outright exemption of certain specified agencies and functions and the requirement for the special handling of others, thus preventing the application of the act equally to all parts of the executive branch.

Upon the recommendations of the President and the First Hoover Commission to make the reorganization plan procedure comprehensive in its scope, the Reorganization Act of 1949 contained no such exemptions or limitations. This was a major improvement in reorganization legislation. Coupled with that improvement was a change in the disapproval procedure.

The Reorganization Act of 1949 provided for congressional disapproval of a plan by the adoption of a resolution by a majority of the authorized membership of either House of the Congress. This was the so-called one-House, constitutional-majority disapproval arrangement. When the President's authority to transmit reorganization plans under the act was extended in 1957, this provision was deleted. Since that time a simple majority of either House has been able to disapprove a reorganization plan. In 1964, Congress provided that no reorganization under the act shall have the effect of

*** creating any new executive department, or abolishing or transferring an executive department or all the functions thereof, or consolidating any two or more executive departments or all the functions thereof;

The period during which reorganization plans could be transmitted to the Congress under the Reorganization Act of 1949 was originally scheduled to expire March 31, 1953, but it has been extended five times and, as I mentioned earlier, now expires on June 1, 1965.

Great strides have been made since the Reorganization Act of 1939 became law on June 20, 1949; 68 reorganization plans have been transmitted to the Congress, and 49 have become effective.

Taking the broadest view, since the first Reorganization Act of 1939 became law, virtually the entire structure of the executive branch has been reshaped by changes made under the cooperative Presidentialcongressional approach embodied in the Reorganization Acts Evony agency in the Executive Office of the President has had its organization affected by actions under the Reorganization Acts.

Every executive department has benefited from organizational adjustments made by reorganization plans; likewise, the Civil Service Commission, the Housing and Home Finance Agency, and many of the other major independent agencies have been reorganized. Viewed

thus, the reorganization plan is a vital instrument for keeping o governmental house in order. One group, President Truman's Advisory Committee on Management, said in 1952:

We therefore think there is good reason to regard the invention and acceptance of this tool for reorganization as the greatest single enabling step toward management improvement in the Federal Government in this generation (Report to the President, December 1952, p. 6).

The Reorganization Act of 1949 was enacted following the strong recommendation of the First Hoover Commission that the President be given authority to prepare and transmit plans of reorganization to the Congress. The Commission stated:

This authority is necessary if the machinery of Government is to be made adaptable to the ever-changing requirements of administration, and if efficiency is to become a continuing rather than a sporadic concern of the Federal Government.

The very first recommendation of the Second Hoover Commission on December 31, 1954, was as follows:

As a result of unanimous vote at its meeting held on November 15, 1954, the Commission recommends to the Congress that the authority of the President to file reorganization plans, which expires on April 1, 1955, be exten ed (p. 22. Progress Report).

Thus, each of the two Hoover Commissions has urged hate re organization plan authority be continued as a means for attaining better Government organization.

Extensions of the reorganization authority have consistently been reported favorably by this committee. In its report on the 1961 extension, the committee's report stated:

Under the rules of the House, this committee is given the responsibility of evaluating the effects of laws enacted to reorganize the executive branch of the Government and studying the operation of Government activities at all levels with a view to determining its economy and efficiency. With this responsibility always in mind the committee favorably reported the Reorganization Act of 1949 and recommended its successive extensions. It believes the act has proved a useful tool in the past and should be continued. With the modification made in 1957 requiring only a simple majority of either House to pass a disapproval resolution, the powers of neither executive nor legislative branches seem to to be greatly out of balance.

I might say with a further amendment of the la ex en io which prohibits the creation of executive departments under the reorganization plan procedure, it seems that almost all of the controversial elements in the reorganization plan procedure have now been eliminated. The President, as Chief Executive, is responsible for the efficient management of the executive branch. As the tasks of Government become steadily more exacting, and as the range of Government's activities becomes more complex in response to the needs of our times, the importance of sound organization and management assumes critical proportions.

Economy, efficiency, and clear lines of Executive responsibility are central to the faithful execution of the laws. The authority to transmit plans under the Reorganization Act is an essential tool to aid the President in meeting his responsibilities.

Reorganization is a continuing necessity to insure optimum organizational arrangements for changing programs and circumstances. For