Part 67 (2/2)

Debate the question: RESOLVED, that our Const.i.tution should be amended to provide for a ”responsible cabinet government” as in England.

ORGANIZATION OF CONGRESS

The presiding officer of the Senate is the Vice-President of the United States, while that of the House of Representatives is a SPEAKER elected by the House. The Vice-President has no vote in the Senate except in case of a tie, when he may cast the deciding vote. The Speaker, on the other hand, has all the rights of any other member and has large powers by virtue of his position. He is always elected by a strictly party vote, and therefore represents the majority party in the House.

THE COMMITTEE SYSTEM

As in the state legislatures, and for the same reason, most of the work of legislation in Congress is done by standing committees, of which there are about sixty in the House and about seventy-five in the Senate. As in the state legislatures, these committees are chosen on party lines, the chairmen and the majority of the members always being of the majority party. The procedure by which legislation is carried on in Congress is very much the same as that in the state legislatures, and has the same advantages and disadvantages. There is even greater necessity for the committee organization and for rules because of the vastly greater number of bills introduced. In a recent Congress more than 33,000 bills were introduced in the House of Representatives alone. Whereas in the state legislatures some of the rules of procedure are fixed by the state const.i.tutions, the rules of Congress are determined entirely by each house for itself. The committee on rules in each house, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and the chairmen of the committees in both houses, may run things as they see fit.

That this is done there is plenty of evidence, such as the following words of a member of Congress:

You send important questions to a committee, you put into the hands of a few men the power to bring in bills, and then they are brought in with an ironclad rule, and rammed down the throats of members; and then those measures are sent out as being the deliberate judgment of the Congress of the United States when no deliberate judgment has been expressed by any man.

DIFFUSED LEADERs.h.i.+P IN CONGRESS

It is this procedure in Congress that causes leaders.h.i.+p to become diffused, hidden, and often to pa.s.s outside of the government altogether into the hands of ”bosses” and special ”interests.”

There can be no well-conceived PLAN worked out by responsible leaders and approved by Congress as a whole. There may be ”plans,”

worked out by leaders in Congress, but they are likely to be plans designed to serve party ends rather than to promote a well- thought-out program of national development. Thousands of bills of the greatest variety are introduced by individual members and handled by different committees acting independently of one another and often at cross purposes.

RELATION BETWEEN EXECUTIVE AND LEGISTLATIVE BRANCHES

The legislative and executive branches of government are each extremely jealous of any encroachment upon its powers by the other. It is not always easy to decide just where the dividing line lies between the powers properly exercised by each. It is maintained on the one hand that Congress is encroaching on the rightful domain of the executive; and at least it is true that while it denies the President responsible leaders.h.i.+p in determining the policies of the government, it has failed to subst.i.tute any other responsible leaders.h.i.+p, and has even made leaders.h.i.+p obscure. On the other hand, it is maintained that the executive encroaches upon the powers of Congress. While this chapter was being written a member of the House of Representatives made a speech in which he said:

This bill presents a fine specimen of bureaucratic legislation.

[Footnote: ”Bureaucratic legislation” here means lawmaking by bureaus in the executive branch of the government.] If the Congress ever intends, as it surely does, to regain the powers granted it by the fathers, of which it is now temporarily deprived by bureaucratic encroachment, now is the time to start upon such a campaign by defeating by a decisive majority the bill now offered for your consideration ... Every time you weaken Congress by the establishment of a bureau in which the authority of Congress is lessened, you lay one more stone in the erection of the temple of autocracy ... These bureaus are not only legislating by administrative processes but are usurping the power and prerogatives of the people's courts ...

THE DUTY OF CONGRESS TO WATCH THE EXECUTIVE

It is the business of the people's representatives in the law- making branch of government not merely to make laws, but also to watch and control the executive. The great English philosopher, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), thus stated the purpose of the English House of Commons:

To watch and control the government; [Footnote: ”Government” here refers to the executive branch.] to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full explanation and justification of all of them which any one considers questionable; to censure them if found condemnable; to be at once the nation's committee on grievances; an arena in which not only the opinion of the nation, but that of every section of it, and as far as possible, of every eminent individual that it contains, can produce itself in full sight and challenge full discussion.

As we have seen, the English House of Commons has a way to control executive leaders.h.i.+p without destroying it. Even if we desired to do so, we could not adopt the English plan without changing our Const.i.tution. But there are ways in which the same result could in a measure be accomplished without such change. One of these is by a well-organized BUDGET SYSTEM.

RESPONSIBILITY FOR APPROPRIATIONS

The methods of making appropriations for the purposes of our national government have been as unbusinesslike as in the states.

Charges of extravagance and inefficiency have been made freely, the blame being placed sometimes upon Congress and sometimes upon the executive departments. Both are at fault; and the difficulty is that it is almost impossible to fix the responsibility anywhere.

DUPLICATION AND CONFUSION IN THE EXECUTIVE BRANCH

Although the national government, unlike the states, has a single- headed executive, the executive departments are composed of a mult.i.tude of bureaus and other subdivisions that are not well organized in their relations to one another. There is overlapping, duplication, and even conflict of work. The director of finance of the War Department said that in the recent war,

The War Department entered this war without any fixed or carefully digested and prepared financial system. There were at the beginning of the war five ... bureaus each independent of the others, each making its own contracts, doing its own purchasing, doing its own accounting, with as many different methods as there were bureaus. As a result they were competing with each other in a market where the supplies in many cases for which they were competing were restricted in amount ... There was no central authority to prune, revise, or compare estimates submitted and to coordinate expenditures, and that naturally resulted in overlappings and duplications, and some of them of a large amount.

[Footnote: Testimony before Budget Committee, quoted by Will Payne, ”Your Budget,” Sat.u.r.day Evening Post, Jan. 3, 1920, p. 32.]

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