Effort toward Efficiency

Like the weather, the ponderous machinery of the U.S. Congress is a subject for lots of talk and little action. The last time that anyone did anything about it was in 1945, when the late Senator Robert M. LaFollette Jr. Progressive from Wisconsin, and Representative Mike Monroney, Oklahoma Democrat, headed a committee that investigated congressional procedures. Out of that investigation came a legislative reorganization act that, among other things, cut the number of standing congressional committees from 81 to 34, and required Capitol Hill lobbyists to register.

Last fall, 20 years later, Monroney, now a Senator, decided that congressional procedures again needed streamlining. Said he: "Our population has grown from 140 million to nearly 190 million; our gross national product from $218 billion to $623 billion; space and atomic-energy issues have now overshadowed the issues such as which towns get new post offices, and world trade and world credit have replaced the old RFC problems. Our machinery to carry the mammoth load of old and new items needs updating, overhauling, modernizing and revising." And last week, Monroney and Indiana's Democratic Representative Ray J. Madden, as co-chairmen of a twelve-man Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress, began hearings to try to do just that. They found no lack of free advice.

Root of Evil. Pennsylvania's Democratic Senator Joseph S. Clark had no less than 27 separate proposals up his sleeve, including two that dealt with one of Clark's pet peeves: the seniority system of selecting committee chairmen. Clark suggested that henceforth chairmen be elected by secret ballot taken among each committee's majority party members, further urged that a mandatory retirement age of 70 be imposed on all chairmen. Wisconsin's Democratic Senator William Proxmire, mindful of the fact that nine of the Senate's 16 standing committees are chaired by Southerners, wanted to see no more than half of all chairmanships held by Senators from a single geographical region. Arizona's Democratic Representative Morris Udall thought that majority party caucuses at the beginning of each Congress should elect committee chairmen from among the three senior majority party members on each committee. Udall plainly felt that the seniority system was the root of all congressional evil. Said he: "Like an old man with a bad tooth, Congress has one basic illness, and all the other impairments and weaknesses are related to it."

There were other suggestions as well. Wisconsin's Proxmire recommended that the Senate and House appropriations committees hire private business-efficiency firms to review the President's budget requests and evaluate the effectiveness of Government agencies. Okla homa's Democratic Representative Ed Edmondson wanted more use of electronic equipment, including closed-circuit television of sessions of both houses to members' offices, and electronic voting. New York's Democratic Representative Benjamin Rosenthal, who recently had an efficiency expert study his own office staff's procedure, thought every Congressman should have access to such help. Rosenthal also suggested a central personnel pool for shorthanded Congressmen, a digest of news and editorial comment for Congressmen, regular annual summer vacations.

Any More Ideas? Wisconsin's Democratic Representative Henry Reuss suggested that Congress establish an office of administrative counsel, which would represent constituents in their battles with administrative agencies. "The time has come to consider very seriously the Americanization of this ombudsmen-device," Reuss said.

The Monroney-Madden committee will hear two more weeks of testimony from Congressmen, later listen to political scientists, businessmen, labor leaders, and anyone else who has ideas about how to streamline Congress. The committee has until the end of next January to report its recommendations.

* Ombudsmen are officers, in Scandinavian countries and New Zealand, to whom a citizen with a grievance against the government can turn for intercession and relief.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.