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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
Under our Constitution, the national administration is an agent of the people acting through the Congress and the President. The legislature determines policies, establishes or authorizes the creation of administrative agencies, appropriates funds for their work, and attempts to control their operations by directions and limitations before and checks after the administration acts. But the establishment of controls at once effective and not unduly restrictive has become increasingly difficult as the business of government, legislative as well as administrative, has expanded and become more technical. Consultation with and advice to administrative agencies by citizens and their organizations are important, but they supplement rather than supplant legislative control, which remains the principal means for supervising the administration. The standard works on public administration discuss methods of control, but do not deal in detail with this relation between legislatures and particular agencies. The present analysis of congressional control of the Work Projects Administration has been undertaken in the belief that “case studies” may be useful for verification, modification, or contradiction of general propositions about legislative control of administration.
1 This is the first of what is planned as a series of such studies. It is based mainly on hearings, reports, debates, and statutes for the first ten work-relief appropriations made by Congress since 1935. On federal relief policies, see Macmahon, A. W., Millett, J. D., and Ogden, G., The Administration of Federal Work Relief (1941)Google Scholar; an article in Journal of Politics, Vol. 2, pp. 321–335 (Aug., 1940); and a forthcoming volume by Paul Webbink.
2 Administrators resort to various procedures in construing statutes. Where court litigation is involved, an administrator, of course, is bound by the decision; so, too, for practical purposes, with opinions of the Comptroller-General. Otherwise, the administrative officer is left to his own devices; but he is not entirely unguided, for there are expressions of legislative intention in the hearings, in committee reports, and in debates. Also, he may secure advice from counsel of his own agency or from the Department of Justice. A senator complains that “in order to hold down the departments you have to tie them both hands and feet, and draw an amendment containing limitations out of which they cannot wiggle.”
3 “When amendments are offered on the floor … it is difficult to determine definitely how far-reaching and sweeping their effect may be…. Should we not sit down with the people who have to administer relief and find out something about the problems involved, go into it in a logical and orderly way?”, 84 Cong. Rec. 333, 335.
4 How detailed should reports be? The 1938 law required the report to be made on “projects.” The result was a document of dimensions 16″×24″×6′. No wonder Congress reverted promptly to the earlier requirement of information merely by “classes of projects.”
5 79 Cong. Rec. 907. The “bob-tail” House hearings covered 48 pages, the Senate's 190 pages. “What a committee! Abdicating all questioning as to expenditure of $4,000,000,000 and then subjecting all other officials to the very minutiae of their expenditures” down to lead pencils! Ibid. 928.
6 Special Senate Committee to Investigate Unemployment and Relief, S. Res. 36, 75th Cong., 1st Sess.; three volumes of hearings, 1938 and 1939, and two reports, Sen. Rep. No. 1625, 75th Cong., 3d Sess., and Sen. Rep. No. 2, 76th Cong., 1st Sess.
7 Special Committee to Investigate Senatorial Campaign Expenditures and Use of Governmental Funds in 1938, S. Res. 283, 290, 75th Cong., 3d Sess.; Sen. Rep. No. 1, two parts, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. See also Nomination of Harry L. Hopkins to be Secretary of Commerce, Hearings before the Senate Committee on Commerce, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. (1939).
8 “We are voting them money. We stick our heads in the noose, and then beg for our lives…. They propose to use the money which we appropriate for the purpose of eliminating us…. We will meet them at Philippi….” 83 Cong. Rec. 7704.
9 84 Cong. Rec. 4886–7. Representative Wigglesworth complained that Colonel Harrington did not exhibit “a spirit of contrition.” According to Representative Engel, a New York W.P.A. administrator, “in order to show his contempt for the investigators and apparently for the committee, sent each of the two investigators a little silver ball with a little silver screw, indicating he thought they were screwballs…. When the committee got through … no more … screwballs were being sent.” Ibid. 7228.
10 House Report No. 2187, 76th Cong., 3d Sess., p. 4. For an earlier summary of the hearings, published in four volumes, 1939 and 1940, see House Rep. No. 833, 76th Cong., 1st Sess. For debate on H. Res. 130, 75th Cong., 3d Sess., “directing the Committee on Appropriations of the House to conduct an investigation and study of the Works Progress Administration [as it was then called] as a basis for legislation,” see 84 Cong. Rec. 3368–3375. The committee's report noted that it “still has funds available and is still authorized to pursue its investigation until the close of the present Congress. As occasion arises, it will exercise that authority.” The New York Times reported on April 3, 1940, that some members of the committee had threatened to reopen the investigation if relief estimates exceeded the January budget figure.
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