Mr. BONNER. The reason I asked that is, Mr. Chairman, we have a bill pending before us that we hold the authority. We know that we have the authority to create an executive department of the Government. The question is whether we want to delegate that authority under this Reorganization Act, and that is the reason that I asked the question.

Mr. WARREN. I, of course, had no advance notice that I was to attend this meeting. I understand that the President wishes to create a department of public welfare. Please understand that I am not speaking for the President.

Mr. BONNER. That bill is pending before the committee.

Mr. WARREN. Back in 1937 and 1938 I opposed that in my individual capacity as a Member of Congress, and in handling the bill on the floor. However, I think it is already a department now in everything but name, and I would see no objection to making it a new department of the Government, especially since in the last few years we have lost one of the departments.

Mr. BURNSIDE. It is good administration to have a fan-shape of administration; is it not?

Mr. WARREN. Yes. I do not think you can put down a blueprint and set this and that within the Government within a certain confine. Mr. BURNSIDE. You have 54 agencies right here under the set-up. Is not the plan of the President then to consolidate a number of these agencies in the Department of Public Welfare so they can report back?

Mr. WARREN. Well, I take it that if a department were created-and I do not know; this is just a surmise on my part-health, and so forth, would all be grouped under that department. It is in fact now the same as a department except that it is called an agency.

Back when I very strongly opposed it it was just beginning, but Congress has shown since then that they wanted to add much more to it, by creating many more functions. I cannot see any objection to making it a department.

Mr. BURNSIDE. For instance, we have 54 agencies that are reporting back directly to the President. Would not this be a method of consolidating those agencies so that there would be only a few? I think that in good administration 18 would be about as many as should report back to the Executive.

Mr. WARREN. Of course, all those agencies that you speak of are listed in the Congressional Directory as independent agencies of the Government and do not deal with welfare. We have entirely too many different agencies. There is no reason for some of them.

Mr. BURNSIDE. This would be a method of consolidating those agencies in one department?

Mr. WARREN. That is, those dealing with the purposes for which the department was set up.

Mr. BONNER. Are there any further suggestions or observations that you might make on the bill as drawn, Mr. Comptroller?

Mr. WARREN. I do not think so, Mr. Bonner. I may say I do not know whether all the members of the committee know this, but the Comptroller General is required by law to service and assist when called upon by six committees of the House; the two Expenditures Committees, two Appropriations Committees, and the Ways and

Means and Finance Committees. We feel particularly close to this committee because under the Legislative Reorganization Act all the reports of the Comptroller General are required to be sent here on various subjects of Government.

Mr. Ellis, who is quite an authority on this whole subject, will be at the service of the committee, Mr. Chairman, if you so desire him. The CHAIRMAN. We do so desire him and express that now in public. Mr. WARREN. And if anything occurs to us from time to time, I will certainly communicate it to you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Mr. BONNER. Are there any further suggestions that we might consider?

Mr. WARREN. I do not think of any right now.

Mr. PFEIFFER. Mr. Warren, as a new Member of Congress, I have been tremendously impressed by your testimony here this morning. I am particularly impressed by the fact that in your statement and in your conversation you have stated you believe this reorganization is going to effect economy.

Do you have any idea of the degree of economy this reorganization might effect?

Mr. WARREN. No; I have not, Mr. Pfeiffer. You might hear somebody go out and say, "This is going to save $100,000,000 and this is going to save $250,000,000." That is nothing but surmise and conjecture. I think it will make for better administration, and that we ought to save.

If you know of a certain bureau that you are going to absolutely abolish, with all its functions, and you look and see that Congress has been appropriating $25,000,000 a year for that, then you know that you will save that much money. When you abolish it and its functions you know then that you will save $25,000,000. Most of the rest of it is just conjecture.

Mr. PFEIFFER. Is it not true, though, that if you have 65 agencies gathering statistics, each of those agencies supposedly is now headed by someone, or some persons, and if you were to consolidate that, would not that effect a saving?

Mr. WARREN. Certainly it ought to.

Mr. PFEIFFER. It ought to.

You are familiar, of course, with the fact that certain exemptions have been made under the 1945 act and there are a number, of course. There are two in particular. May I say, Mr. Chairman, that no one representing any of these agencies has seen fit to contact me, and I am not carrying the torch, so to speak, for any agency, but just as your Office is a creature of Congress, would you not say in your opinion that the United States Tariff Commission is equally so?

Now, on page 726 of the Congressional Directory there is this language, which I will quote:

As originally created the Tariff Commission was designed to fill the long-felt need for an independent organization to supply factual information to the President, the Congress

and so forth. I will skip down and read further:

The principal activities of the Tariff Commission at present are preparation of special reports on postwar foreign trade problems requested by the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives and the Finance Committee of the Senate.

Now, under this proposed legislation this exemption would be removed. Do you, in your opinion, think that is a good thing? Mr. WARREN. Well, in the first place, in no way is it comparable to the General Accounting Office.

Mr. PFEIFFER. I understand.

Mr. WARREN. Everything is created by the Congress. The General Accounting Office was created in the legislative branch of the Government, and it is so listed in the very directory that you are reading from. We are not in the same category, or listing, as the Tariff Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and all those.

You will note that we are listed under "Congress" and we were specifically declared to be an agent of Congress.

Mr. PFEIFFER. It was not my intention to make any comparison. Mr. WARREN. But the Tariff Commission is just one of those socalled quasi-legislative some call them quasi-judicial-agencies. I do not know which is right. They are the so-called regulatory bodies and are supposed to function in the public interest.

Now, if you are going to delegate authority you are going to have to trust someone, and I have no idea on earth that the President would ever send a reorganization plan down here abolishing the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Tariff Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, or any of those quasi-legislative or public service agencies. Still, I do not think that they ought to be exempt.

Mr. PFEIFFER. Why exempt them?
Mr. WARREN. That is true.

I think that you would necessarily

just run into that much more trouble.

Mr. PFEIFFER. The Corps of Engineers of the United States Army was heretofore exempted.

Mr. WARREN. I know a great deal about that.

Mr. PFEIFFER. The civil functions of that corps are well known to all of us, even to me as a new Member. What would prevent the President from sending a reorganization plan to the Congress transferring the civil functions of the Corps of Engineers to the Department of the Interior, as a matter of fact, and coupled with that some worthwhile reorganization in the same bill?

It is not true under this legislation, or proposed legislation, that we would have to turn it down in toto and could not accept the parts we like and reject the parts we did not like?

Mr. WARREN. In the first place, remember there may be 50, 75, or 100 plans sent down here. It is not all going to be in one plan.

Mr. PFEIFFER. It may be, as it relates to the Corps of Engineers. Mr. WARREN. Again, trying to be modest, I think that I know more about the Corps of Engineers than anybody else.

We all have our pets in Congress. You gentlemen all have them and you cannot help it in a way.

The Corps of Engineers was one of my pets. So is the Coast Guard. I was very closely connected with both of those. I think the Corps of Engineers today is the finest thing of its kind on earth, and personally I am eternally and forever opposed to turning over to the civilian engineers of the country the duties now imposed by law upon the Corps of Engineers. But it goes to show you that once you start those exemptions what will happen. When I saw that exemptions

were going to be put in there and we could not keep them out, I, myself, wrote the exemption for the Corps of Engineers and the Coast Guard because I introduced the bill. I do not advocate that they be exempt in this bill and I just have no idea in the world that they will ever be touched. If they were, Congress would rise up in its might against such a thing.

Mr. PFEIFFER. I would just like to make one thing clear, and this is just all supposition—if a reorganization plan were submitted to the Congress for the Department of Defense that had some worthwhile recommendations in it but included in the same legislation the transfer of the Corps of Engineers, the Congress could do one of two things: They could keep silent or turn it down in toto, not in part. Is that so, Mr. Ellis?

Mr. ELLIS. Yes.

Mr. HOLIFIELD. Mr. Warren, in case such a thing should happen as our colleague has just suggested, that would affect the economy of the United States so adversely that it would be the duty of the Congress at the time, undoubtedly, to turn down that particular part of the reorganization plan in toto and give its reasons therefor. Subsequent to that, if the rest of the recommendations in that particular part of the plan were desirable, the President could resubmit them without delay and would give us a chance to fulfill the good part of the plan, the part that the Congress thought was good.

Mr. WARREN. That is correct.

The CHAIRMAN. Furthermore, this committee itself could initiate legislation embodying that part of the plan which was good, could we not, Mr. Warren?

Mr. WARREN. That is correct.

Mr. HARDY. Mr. Warren, I am sorry that I missed most of your testimony and I am at a bit of disadvantage, but I take it from what I have heard that you feel there should be no exemption whatever in this bill.

Mr. WARREN. Yes; I do.

Mr. HARDY. Do you see any difference in a provision for consolidating agencies as a matter of getting related agencies together for the purpose of achieving efficiency and economy on the one hand as opposed to consolidation as a matter of policy?

I am thinking in terms of what has just been said here about the Army engineers, the question as to whether they could be most effective in the Army or in the Department of the Interior or somewhere else. That is more a policy proposition than getting related matters together; is it not?

Mr. WARREN. Yes. That, of course, would be a policy matter. If you put the Corps of Engineers in the Interior Department it would mean the abolition of them, more or less, I think, as a Corps of Engineers. You are taking them away from the Army where, of course, they belong. I am one who thinks their civil functions should remain where they are now. There may be considerable dispute and argument about that, but I believe in them so strongly that I think the civil functions of the Corps of Engineers should remain just where they are now. That is my opinion.

Mr. HARDY. The point that I am trying to make is not directed toward the Corps of Engineers but toward the proposition that we have two distinct phases of reorganization.

Mr. WARREN. That is correct.

Mr. HARDY. One is to get related departments together where they can accomplish greater efficiency and economy, and the other is to satisfy somebody's whim, perhaps.

Mr. WARREN. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. Would we not have an analogous situation with respect to the Marine Corps?

Mr. WARREN. Yes; that could be done, of course, I do not think it ever will be done. That is just my opinion. I doubt if you think it will be done.

Mr. HARDY. During the hearings on the unification bill, the Air Force wanted to take over the Navy air arm.

Mr. WARREN. Yes.

Mr. HARDY. And it is entirely conceivable there might be such a plan submitted if the Secretary of the Air Force should have more influence with the President than the Secretary of the Navy.

I am just wondering if the policy propositions should not be separated in our thinking from the pure economic considerations.

Mr. WARREN. I see what you mean there, but I think that it would be very difficult for the President, or his advisers, to separate them. I do not see exactly how you could separate the two. I do not have a satisfactory answer to that.

Mr. HARDY. Well, in connection with the Navy's air arm, for instance, do you not think it would be rather obvious that to transfer it to the Air Force would not be purely a matter of efficiency and economy?

Mr. WARREN. Of course, I could not answer that. All I can say is if this committee wishes my opinion on any plan sent down here they will certainly get it from me, whatever it may be worth.

I will say that the Marine Corps belongs right under the Navy where it has always been, and that is where it ought to stay. That is just my personal opinion.

Mr. LOVRE. Mr. Warren, I feel confident that I will always agree with the objectives that you have enunciated in support of this plan. There is one question that I would like to ask you, not in your official capacity as Comptroller, but as a former member of the House and as a former member of this committee. I ask this question with all due respect to those who have raised the question of constitutionality.

Is it one of the functions of a committee such as this to pass upon the constitutionality of a bill, or is it the function of this committee to adopt policies and objectives which we want for the best interests of the people of the United States?

Mr. WARREN. Well, there is this to be said: If there was something so glaringly unconstitutional that everyone admitted it was apparent, I think of course that question should enter here.

Mr. HARDY. In that connection, I think that all of us have sworn to uphold the Constitution. I think that is a matter for each individual to decide. If you consider it a violation of the Constitution, you are violating your oath if you favor it.

Mr. WARREN. I agree with that.

Mr. LOVRE. There is another question that I would like to ask Mr. Warren.