In my work I have the luxury — sometimes the necessity — of digging into Congress’s past. How did things work before? What were people thinking? Is any of this relevant today?
So when reading through comments on the introduction of Congress reform legislation from the Congressional Record in the 1960s, I ran across a mention of a “Management Study of the U.S. Congress” by Arthur D. Little, Inc. in 1965. Naturally, I wanted to read it.
The Member of Congress who mentioned the study in the Record had heroically included Congressional Record citations to the many other times he had spoken or testified on his legislation in Congress. He added to the Record studies on the topic from around the world and statements from statesmen worldwide. He’s my hero for putting so much of this into the Record and making it findable. But, alas, I couldn’t find the management study.
So I tweeted, as one does, and a very thoughtful person performed some research incantations and wrote to me privately that the study was ultimately published as “Congress Needs Help” by Philip Donham and Robert Fahey. I went online and bought apparently the last copy for $8. It’s a hardback, edged with the fancy jagged paper. What a find!
So, dear reader, I started reading… and it’s like they were talking right to us – and right about us.
From the introduction, by journalist David Brinkley:
In the Beginning, they said that Congress would make the laws and the President would execute them. That is still the idea and it is still a good one, but after all these years it has turned out that the Presidents are better able to do their job than the Congresses are able to do theirs, and so it has turned out the Presidents try, often successfully, to do both.
Ouch! Also: accurate. Brinkley introduces the year-long study of Congress by management consultants that we could have written today:
Each committee has a staff but none is large, few are expert and some are incompetent; and in the daily guerilla warfare with the Executive branch, they lose to the vastly superior numbers and equipment on the other side. Congress, therefore, has no good way to get full and accurate information about the agencies it theoretically supervises. It is not unusual for a superbly equipped and staffed agency of perhaps thirty thousand people to be watched over by a harassed, overworked group of Congressional committeemen with an ill-equipped staff of five or ten.
Nowadays, there are women in Congress, so some of his language is a little musty. And agencies employ many more than thirty-thousand people. Committees have, what, thirty to sixty staff? But the truth of it — the truth of it! — is still true.
Brinkley brings out the big guns:
For the price of one heavy bomber, Congress could equip and staff itself to gather its own full and objective information about the agencies of government and it could examine witnesses and look at the columns of appropriation figures in full knowledge of what it was doing. It has no such knowledge now.
Well, the B-2 Stealth Bomber, according to CNN, costs about $2 billion per plane. The entire Legislative branch appropriation is about $6.7 billion, and most of the increases over the decades have gone to the Capitol Police and the Architect, not to lawmaking. So yes, an increase in funding to the Legislative branch equivalent to the cost of a bomber would still make a huge impact (no pun intended).
If you’re a fan of the movie Groundhog Day — and who isn’t? — take a look at the top line recommendations in the appendix. We could have written it today. In fact, many of the recommendations of the House Select Committee on the Modernization of Congress are similar to those contained in this book published almost sixty years ago.
I. Congress is burdened by an increasing workload that impedes its effectiveness.
II. Congress lacks the organization, staff support and analytical procedures to carry out its fiscal and program-review function effectively.
III. Time that could be saved without significant political cost or effect is wasted on non-policy business.
IV. Congress does not adequately inform the nation of its own performance and accomplishments.
V. Congress needs to schedule its work better.
We are making progress. We are! Our friend J.D. Rackey has been tracking implementation of the House Modernization Committee’s recommendations and many items are being checked off the list. Also, while overlooked by commentators, Leg Branch Appropriators and the Congressional oversight committees have been steadily working away on these issues. But there is still so much more to do.
This is a good reminder to modern day reformers to build the record with what we’re doing today, so that tomorrow’s reformers can understand what we tried to do, and why, and where they can pick up the baton.
