Community Civics and Rural Life Part 67

It sometimes happens, however, that the cabinet introduces a measure which, after discussion, a majority of the House of Commons rejects. This means that on this question the cabinet no longer represents the majority in the House. Then one of two things happens. EITHER THE CABINET RESIGNS in a body to make way for a new cabinet that does represent the majority; OR THE PRIME MINISTER ASKS FOR A GENERAL ELECTION FOR MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. If at this election a majority is again returned that is opposed to the cabinet, it means that the cabinet no longer leads the people, and it resigns. If a majority is returned in support of the cabinet, it means that the old House was no longer representative of the people, and the old cabinet retains its leaders.h.i.+p.

This system gives the English people MORE DIRECT CONTROL over their government than we have in our country; it is very much like the method of RECALL that is used in some of our states. At the same time, it a.s.sures a real executive leaders.h.i.+p WITHIN THE GOVERNMENT, a leaders.h.i.+p that is both responsive and responsible to the people.

GROWTH OF IRRESPONSIBLE LEADERs.h.i.+P

Not only does our Const.i.tution fail to provide clearly for responsible leaders.h.i.+p within the government, but our system of "checks and balances," our party system of government, and the organization and rules of Congress, all taken together, have tended to confuse our leaders.h.i.+p, and to impose upon us an irresponsible leaders.h.i.+p, OUTSIDE of the government as outlined by the Const.i.tution. To understand this it will first be necessary to examine the organization of Congress.

THE CONGRESS

Congress, like the state legislatures, consists of two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate; this being another instance of "checks and balances."

The creation of two chambers in the Congress made possible a satisfactory settlement of a dispute in the Const.i.tutional Convention with regard to the basis of representation. The larger states wanted representation proportional to their population, while the smaller states, insisted upon EQUAL representation for all the states. It was settled that there should be equal representation in the Senate, and proportional representation in the House of Representatives. This is one of a series of compromises that had to be made between the two parties in the convention. In fact, the Const.i.tution is a series of compromises from beginning to end. Only thirty-nine of the fifty-five delegates in the convention signed the Const.i.tution, and it is probable that no one even of the thirty-nine was wholly pleased with it.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

The number of representatives in the first Congress from each state was fixed in the Const.i.tution, and provision made for a census in 1790 and every ten years thereafter, on the basis of which a reapportionment should be made. At present there are 435 members of the House, one for about every 212,000 of the population. They are elected by direct vote of the people, one from each of the CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICTS into which each state is divided, and for a term of two years.

THE SENATE

There are two senators from each state. The Const.i.tution provided that they were to be elected by the state legislatures, another evidence of distrust of the people. In 1913, the seventeenth amendment to the Const.i.tution was enacted, providing for the election of senators by popular vote, showing the growing spirit of democracy and the distrust of the state legislatures. Senators are elected for six years, but the term of only one third of them expires at the same time, so that at least two thirds of the Senate have always had at least two years' experience. No citizen may become a senator until he is thirty years of age, while one may become a member of the lower house at twenty-five.

EXCLUSIVE POWERS OF EACH HOUSE

The House of Representatives has one important power not possessed by the Senate: it alone can originate bills for raising revenue.

This is because the representatives were supposed to be more directly representative of the people than the senators. However, the Senate may amend such bills, and often succeeds in forcing the House to accept such radical amendments as practically to destroy the advantage possessed by the latter in its power to originate the bills.

In addition to its lawmaking powers, the Senate was intended to be an advisory council to the President. Only with its "advice and consent" may the President make appointments and treaties.

Investigate and report on the following:

The compromises of the Const.i.tution.

The census of 1920.

The number of congressional districts in your state, and the number of the one you live in.

The names of your representative and senators.

The qualifications for election to the House of Representatives and to the Senate (Art. I, secs. 2 and 3). Compare with the qualifications for election to the two houses of your legislature.

The characteristics of the Senate that make it more conservative than the House of Representatives. The meaning of "conservatism."

Why the Senate should be more conservative than the House.

The "long" and "short" sessions of Congress.

How vacancies in Congress are filled between elections.

Legislation in which the representative from your district has been especially interested during the last session of Congress.

In England a member of the House of Commons is not required to be a resident of the district which he represents. Arguments for and against this plan.

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.]