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ute now vests in the Commission would be transferred to the Federal Security Administrator.

You now will witness the final anomaly of the Federal Security Administrator appointing a subordinate board of appeals to review decisions made in his name. The board of appeals thus will be reviewing the acts of the head of the Agency. Is this the kind of administrative confusion and contradiction the Congress invited? The head of the Agency would be big enough to decide cases and even appoint a board of appeals, but not big enough to avoid being overridden by his own creature-his own board of appeals. Where else in all this vast Government has there ever even been proposed such a piece of hocus-pocus as this?

While we are trying to be fair in weighing these reorganization plans, we also must be alert to amateur lawmaking which is thus being permitted in the executive branch of the Government. This Plan No. 2 is an excellent example of what happens when we try to wear the left shoe on the right foot.

If you will refer to a copy of House Document No. 595 which is the message on Reorganization Plan No. 2, you will find at the outset a great deal of flag-waving and "corny" truisms which, for some unannounced reason, were omitted from Plans Nos. 1 and 3. We are told, for illustration, that "the fundamental strength of a nation lies within its people." That is the opening sentence the Bureau of the Budget set before the President for his signature. All the platitudes of all the ages appear to have been scraped together for use in gaining assent to this reorganization plan.

Another quote is

The most basic and at the same time the most difficult task of any country is the conservation and development of its human resources.

That is the kind of statement nobody cares to dispute. Having gotten agreement and seeming confidence on those and other trite observations, the recitation moves along into this type announcement:

By abolishing the Commission, the plan eliminates a small agency and lightens the burden on the President.

There will never be an agency of Government which has done a better job than the United States Employees Compensation Commission to lighten that famous "burden on the President." This Commission is never heard from except when time comes to submit its annual report. It never gets in anybody's hair. It does not specialize in hiring any persons of questionable American-line leanings. It tends to its assigned business and keeps too well occupied to mix in with anything in which it is not concerned.

But is is often true, even in the case of an individual, that those who work the hardest and with a minimum of noise reap the reward of failure to politic in the right places with the right persons.

As a matter of fact, I believe this committee will find if it will call for the White House calling lists as far back as 1916 when this Commission was created, that there have been only six times when any members of this Commission ever called to see the President or were invited except at social functions. So, it can hardly be said that this Commission has soaked up any of the official time of the President whose "burden" the Bureau of the Budget has decided it has to lighten.

The Bureau says too many persons see the President or, as officials, have to see him and that so much of his time is absorbed by such visits. Any governmental agency whose head or heads have talked to the President no more frequently than once every 5 years can hardly be said to constitute a "burden on the President," which so far as this Commission is concerned is nonexistent.

The Bureau of the Budget, over the signature of the President, tells you that "The Federal Security Administrator as the head of the Federal Agency with the greatest experience in insurance is in the best position to guide and further the progress of the Commission." The Bureau of the Budget, the fiscal control agency for the entire Federal Government, herewith betrays an amazing, even an alarming ignorance of the functions of the respective agencies. The reason is simply that the United States Employees Compensation Commission is not engaged in administration of an insurance program.

The Commission is engaged in the exercise of quasi-judicial functions and administration of specialized statutory functions wholly unrelated to any functions of the Security Agency and the experience of that Agency in the same field does not qualify it to guide or further the functions of the Commission.

When I say this, Mr. Chairman, I am speaking as one who is asking that there be no destructive devices permitted to be applied to the act of Congress which relates to Government employees-the Compensation Act. The beneficiaries of that act are entirely satisfied with the manner in which your law is being applied to the facts in each compensation case. You have not heard any complaints from any of them.

In this connection, I recall what has been happening in the Social Security Board which has applied predatory and bureaucratic cannibalistic techniques toward the civil-service retirement system. In the retirement system are assets of several billion dollars built up with the deductions from employees' earnings in the Federal Government. The Social Security Board has been making frantic efforts to grab control of the civil-service retirement fund which is entirely sound financially and which is being administered to the entire satisfaction of the Government employee for whom it was created.

Because I believe that much of this Reorganization Plan No. 2, so far as it relates to Government employee benefits is concerned, was written in the Social Security Board, it is not too early to express concern at what will happen to the retirement fund if you fail to disapprove this latest maneuvering in Plan No. 2.

Two months ago, the Government employees council of the American Federation of Labor presented its case before the House Ways and Means Committee for retention of the civil-service retirement system, entirely separate from a marginal or submarginal welfare insurance system, charity, or dole as operated by the Social Security Board.

I believe the council sufficiently impressed that committee with the deep earnestness of its plea that, as you can note from the printed proceedings, one member of that committee after another gave clear assurance that the assets of that fund would not be allowed to get into the hands of the Social Security Board. In fact, Representative Forand, of Rhode Island, at the conclusion of the hearings outlined the composite view of the committee, giving full assurance that confisca

tion of the retirement system would not be permitted. On that note we rested our case.

But now we seem to find the Social Security Board making an end run to ram its program through in reverse and by taking charge of the compensation machinery set up for Federal employees in the sweet name of reorganization. An inoffensive commission tending to its own affairs, efficiently and economically, is marked for obliteration because the Social Security Board and the Bureau of the Budget say it is engaged in administering an "insurance program."

I have information that before long you will receive further reorganization orders "streamlining" the Federal public power projects into the Interior Department. And that one of these orders if adopted eventually will be the knockout blow to all public hydropower activities, not only of the Federal Government but also of power project authorities within States. Further, that the St. Lawrence waterways would literally go down the drain as something to be forgotten for all time to come, all as the result of a seemingly innocuous reorganization order designed only to "streamline" power projects.

And while the Federal employee directly is not concerned with power policies, he is interested in what is causing the reorganization orders which affect him directly, such as the one to abolish the Civil Service Commission, in line with the Brownlow-Gulick-Merriam reorganization outline which the Congress rejected in 1938.

And though you did disapprove the Brownlow plan at that time, much of it is coming back to the surface. In 1938, the reorganizers partitioned the Department of Labor by saying they had decided what the "rights" of labor were and what were its "needs." When the reorganizers of that day got through, it was found that the "rights" of labor were so few that the Department of Labor was almost entirely stripped of everything except the Women's Bureau and the Children's Bureau.

It was decided that labor had no "right" to a job but that labor had a "need" for a job. So labor's "need" for a job was shifted to Social Security Board, along with the old-age and survivors insurance and other such enterprises. The same theme appears to have obtained during the recent war when it was decided to give the Federal Security Administrator the added job to control manpower, so Mr. McNutt was both Chairman of the Manpower Commission and Administrator of the Federal Security Agency.

If you ask the Bureau of the Budget why interested parties were completely ignored when it accepted and approved these reorganization orders for the President's signature, you are told that the President ordered the Bureau to refuse to discuss the matter. The Bureau says this is on the grounds that anyone who wants to present its side of the story so as not to take up the time of busy lawmakers is of a "special interest group" and therefore must not be tolerated..

Some of the very flaws I am pointing out now might have been avoided if the Bureau of the Budget had not wanted to be secretive and to practice that "passion for anonymity." They are not the supermen, except they do not admit it.

Creation of a sugar Department of Public Welfare can become a fine opening for any Cabinet officer who is assigned to head up such

88368-46--14

The Bureau says too many persons see the President or, as officials, have to see him and that so much of his time is absorbed by such visits. Any governmental agency whose head or heads have talked to the President no more frequently than once every 5 years can hardly be said to constitute a "burden on the President," which so far as this Commission is concerned is nonexistent.

The Bureau of the Budget, over the signature of the President, tells you that "The Federal Security Administrator as the head of the Federal Agency with the greatest experience in insurance is in the best position to guide and further the progress of the Commission." The Bureau of the Budget, the fiscal control agency for the entire Federal Government, herewith betrays an amazing, even an alarming ignorance of the functions of the respective agencies. The reason is simply that the United States Employees Compensation Commission is not engaged in administration of an insurance program.

The Commission is engaged in the exercise of quasi-judicial functions and administration of specialized statutory functions wholly unrelated to any functions of the Security Agency and the experience of that Agency in the same field does not qualify it to guide or further the functions of the Commission.

When I say this, Mr. Chairman, I am speaking as one who is asking that there be no destructive devices permitted to be applied to the act of Congress which relates to Government employees-the Compensation Act. The beneficiaries of that act are entirely satisfied with the manner in which your law is being applied to the facts in each compensation case. You have not heard any complaints from any of them.

In this connection, I recall what has been happening in the Social Security Board which has applied predatory and bureaucratic cannibalistic techniques toward the civil-service retirement system. In the retirement system are assets of several billion dollars built up with the deductions from employees' earnings in the Federal Government. The Social Security Board has been making frantic efforts to grab control of the civil-service retirement fund which is entirely sound financially and which is being administered to the entire satisfaction of the Government employee for whom it was created.

Because I believe that much of this Reorganization Plan No. 2, so far as it relates to Government employee benefits is concerned, was written in the Social Security Board, it is not too early to express concern at what will happen to the retirement fund if you fail to disapprove this latest maneuvering in Plan No. 2.

Two months ago, the Government employees council of the American Federation of Labor presented its case before the House Ways and Means Committee for retention of the civil-service retirement system, entirely separate from a marginal or submarginal welfare insurance system, charity, or dole as operated by the Social Security Board.

I believe the council sufficiently impressed that committee with the deep earnestness of its plea that, as you can note from the printed proceedings, one member of that committee after another gave clear assurance that the assets of that fund would not be allowed to get into the hands of the Social Security Board. In fact, Representative Forand, of Rhode Island, at the conclusion of the hearings outlined the composite view of the committee, giving full assurance that confisca

tion of the retirement system would not be permitted. On that note we rested our case.

But now we seem to find the Social Security Board making an end run to ram its program through in reverse and by taking charge of the compensation machinery set up for Federal employees in the sweet name of reorganization. An inoffensive commission tending to its own affairs, efficiently and economically, is marked for obliteration because the Social Security Board and the Bureau of the Budget say it is engaged in administering an "insurance program."

I have information that before long you will receive further reorganization orders "streamlining" the Federal public power projects into the Interior Department. And that one of these orders if adopted eventually will be the knockout blow to all public hydropower activities, not only of the Federal Government but also of power project authorities within States. Further, that the St. Lawrence waterways would literally go down the drain as something to be forgotten for all time to come, all as the result of a seemingly innocuous reorganization order designed only to "streamline" power projects.

And while the Federal employee directly is not concerned with power policies, he is interested in what is causing the reorganization orders which affect him directly, such as the one to abolish the Civil Service Commission, in line with the Brownlow-Gulick-Merriam reorganization outline which the Congress rejected in 1938.

And though you did disapprove the Brownlow plan at that time, much of it is coming back to the surface. In 1938, the reorganizers partitioned the Department of Labor by saying they had decided what the "rights" of labor were and what were its "needs." When the reorganizers of that day got through, it was found that the "rights" of labor were so few that the Department of Labor was almost entirely stripped of everything except the Women's Bureau and the Children's Bureau.

It was decided that labor had no "right" to a job but that labor had a "need" for a job. So labor's "need" for a job was shifted to Social Security Board, along with the old-age and survivors insurance and other such enterprises. The same theme appears to have obtained during the recent war when it was decided to give the Federal Security Administrator the added job to control manpower, so Mr. McNutt was both Chairman of the Manpower Commission and Administrator of the Federal Security Agency.

If you ask the Bureau of the Budget why interested parties were completely ignored when it accepted and approved these reorganization orders for the President's signature, you are told that the President ordered the Bureau to refuse to discuss the matter. The Bureau says this is on the grounds that anyone who wants to present its side of the story so as not to take up the time of busy lawmakers is of a "special interest group" and therefore must not be tolerated..

Some of the very flaws I am pointing out now might have been avoided if the Bureau of the Budget had not wanted to be secretive and to practice that "passion for anonymity." They are not the supermen, except they do not admit it.

Creation of a sugar Department of Public Welfare can become a fine opening for any Cabinet officer who is assigned to head up such

88368-46--14

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