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Presidency and Legislation: Planning the President's Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Richard E. Neustadt
Richard E. Neustadt
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

Early in 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower presented to the Congress—and the country and his party—some 65 proposals for new legislation, over and above appropriations. This presentation was a massive affair. First came six weeks of well-publicized preliminaries: cabinet deliberations, congressional briefings, press conferences, and a fireside chat. Then, in three annual messages to Congress—a State of the Union Address, a Budget Message, and an Economic Report—the President set forth his bundle of proposals, elaborating certain aspects, outlining the rest. Along with these came seven supplementing special messages, each filling in details on some particular: Taft-Hartley, farm price supports, social security, health, housing, atomic energy, foreign aid, and trade. And following the messages Administration-approved bills, conveyors of the ultimate details, were introduced in Congress.

Throughout, one theme was emphasized: here was a comprehensive and coordinated inventory of the nation's current legislative needs, reflecting the President's own judgments, choices, and priorities in every major area of Federal action; in short, his “legislative program,” an entity distinctive and defined, its coverage and its omissions, both, delimiting his stand across the board. And—quite explicitly—this stand was being taken, this program volunteered, in order to give Congress an agenda, Republicans a platform, and voters a yardstick for 1954.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 49 , Issue 4 , December 1955 , pp. 980 - 1021
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1955

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References

1 The exact number of these Eisenhower proposals was computed differently by different observers depending on varying definitions of what constitutes a separate item. Thus Peter Edson cited the figure 110 (Washington Daily News, July 14, 1954), while Cabell Phillips wrote of “over 200” (New York Times, May 30, 1954), and Congressional Quarterly reported a total of 214, reached partly by counting separately each point in the Administration's agriculture recommendations.

The writer prefers to count separately only those proposals, or groups of related proposals, which would normally be enacted and/or considered in separate bills. Exceptions are made where—as in the case of public housing, for example—the conventions of publicity and politics very sharply differentiate items incorporated in the same bill. It is on this basis that internal Executive Office status reports on the President's program are now compiled and have been in the past. Note that the total of 65, cited above, excludes not only appropriation requests, as is the general custom, but also international treaties and conventions subject to Senate ratification and those few agency proposals not called for in a presidential message but cleared in bill draft form by Budget as “in accord with the President's program” (which under, present practice means specifically approved by the White House for addition to his program list). Both of these latter categories are included in Executive Office status reports which now circulate on the Hill and therefore may have been the basis for some press compilations.

2 Key, V. O., “Legislative Control,” in Marx, F. Morstein, Elements of Public Administration (New York, 1946), p. 351Google Scholar. Lest semantic difficulties arise, note that the term presidential “program” as used throughout this paper connotes the comprehensiveness, specificity, and defined boundaries characteristic of contemporary annual presentations in the legislative sphere. This is the current connotation of the term within the government (and quite generally in press reports). As such, this is a term of art, to be distinguished from the looser usage long employed by scholars, journalists—and Presidents themselves—to cover legislative issues with which particular Presidents somehow became identified, pro or con. In the latter sense, of course, there have been presidential “programs” since Washington's time, notably under the “strong” Presidents.

3 Note that the Eisenhower program presentation of early 1955 to the first session of the 84th Congress followed the pattern of 1954, despite the change in party control of Congress. During January and February, 1955, three annual and nine special messages, all interlocking, conveyed a defined, comprehensive, relatively integrated legislative program from President to Congress, buttressed in most instances by specific Administration bills. The message on Formosa, January 25, was, of course, a thing apart.

4 State of the Union Message, Jan. 7, 1953. This principle was followed also in the 1953 Economic Report and Budget Message (conveying the fiscal 1954 budget), which Truman submitted to Congress just before leaving office. With minor exceptions, these two messages carried no recommendations for new legislation.

5 Address of Feb. 2, 1953.

6 No less than 14 such surveys, undertaken with either executive or congressional authorization, were listed as matters of direct presidential concern and sponsorship in a special appendix to the authoritative Executive Office report on the status of “presidential measures at the close of the first session of the 83rd Congress.” Bureau of the Budget, Office of Legislative Reference, “Legislative Status of Recommendations of the President, 83rd Congress, 1st Session (excluding Appropriation Requests),” Final Report, Aug. 8, 1953.

7 A comment made to the writer in the spring of 1954 during one of a number of interviews with members of the White House and Budget Bureau staffs, and with certain agency and congressional officials and Washington reporters. These interviews were conducted in March and May, 1953 and in April and December, 1954. The information presented in this section is drawn principally from those sources. Judgments and interpretations are, of course, the writer's own.

8 It is important to understand that in terms both of backgrounds and of ideologies, the aides whom Eisenhower brought into the White House—and has retained—were a rather heterogeneous group. On the legislative policy and liaison side, they included mainly: Adams, the Assistant to the President, an Eisenhower-before-Chicago man, former governor of New Hampshire and one-term Republican congressman; Shanley, the original special counsel, a New Jersey lawyer and former Stassen campaign manager; Rabb, the present Cabinet Secretary, for years ex-Senator Lodge's legislative aide; Hauge, the “economic” Administrative Assistant, a Harvard-trained economist and McGraw-Hill editor; Persons, the chief congressional liaison officer, an army careerist and long-time head of Army's legislative liaison (highly regarded as such, by the congressional oligarchs of both parties with whom it had been his job to smooth Army's path); and Persons' three original assistants—Morgan, a Washington lawyer, former Taft consultant, and longtime member of the House Office of Legislative Counsel; Harlow, former staff member of the House Armed Services Committee; and Gruenther, the General's brother, Senator Wherry's former secretary. For purposes of the 1954 legislative program, there should be added to this list the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, Arthur M. Burns, Columbia economist at the time of his initial appointment to the Eisenhower entourage; also Robert Cutler, then Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Chairman of the NSC Planning Board, a Boston banker and one-time CIA representative on the Planning Board's precursor, the Truman-era Senior Staff; finally, I. Jack Martin, Senator Taft's former assistant, who joined the Persons group after Taft's death.

9 Budget Circular A-11, “Instructions for the Preparation and Submission of Annual Budget Estimates,” June 30, 1953, Sec. 86. This section also called for an indication of the “nature and status” of legislative items under discussion but not yet in firm program stage and for a report on all provisions of law “of interest to the agency” scheduled for expiration in the coming year. Note that this section has remained a feature of the Budget's calls for estimates in 1954 and 1955.

10 An earlier article has noted the importance of Dodge's personal role in carrying the Budget Bureau's legislative staff work through the 1953 transition from the old to the new regime. Here is another demonstration of the point. Given the White House attitudes outlined above, Dodge might well have chosen to let cabinet officers discover for themselves and make what they chose of legislative programs inherited from their predecessors. Instead he chose to impress legislative clearance regulations generally, and legislative programs in particular, upon the new department heads at this first advantageous opportunity. See Neustadt, Richard E., “Presidency and Legislation: The Growth of Central Clearance,” this Review, Vol. 48, pp. 641–71, at pp. 655–56 (Sept., 1954)Google Scholar.

11 Reportedly the first draft of these letters was written largely by the President himself, at his volition, as a personal adaptation and improvement in his terms of the prior procedure on which he had been briefed by Budget. The mechanism of formal letters and their referencing of budget and legislative programs seem to have been direct outgrowths of that briefing. On the other hand, the call for a “thorough rethinking” appears to reflect Eisenhower's personal views on a paramount duty of his Administration, a duty stated in most unbureaucratic language in the opening paragraph (not quoted above). That opening language designedly lent a personal flavor to the whole proceeding, a flavor emphasized by subsequent presidential references in cabinet meetings. Note that non-cabinet agencies were approached in a briefer, much less personal vein, receiving requests over Sherman Adams' signature, dated July 31, 1953, for any “ideas appropriate for the State of the Union message.”

12 General Persons had originally been appointed Special Assistant to the President for legislative liaison rather than Adams' general deputy, a change in designation (and to some extent in role) which took effect after the close of the first session of the 83rd Congress. Early in 1955 Shanley left the post of Special Counsel to become Appointments Secretary and was succeeded by Gerald Morgan, one of Persons' original assistants.

13 Participants were drawn mostly from among the staff members listed in note 8, above. Hauge and Burns, for example, attended all sessions involving matters of “economic” significance, which included virtually everything in the social welfare field.

14 See Neustadt, op. cit., pp. 666–67.

15 Agency legislative programs, message suggestions, and lists of expiring legislation, supplemented by Jones' informed guess-work, provided the field from which items were selected for this list. See “Checklist of Major Proposals for the 93rd Congress, 2nd Session,” Bureau of the Budget, Office of Legislative Reference, Nov. 1, 1953.

16 Note that the Cabinet Secretary's present duties of agenda preparation, decision minuting, and follow-up first took contemporary form as an outgrowth of these presentations.

17 For the Eisenhower and McCarthy comments, respectively, see New York Times, Dec. 3, Dec. 17, and Nov. 25, 1953.

18 Another comment worth quotation came from a one-time Truman aide with long experience in matters legislative: “That conference with the leaders seems to have been a good show. Perhaps ‘we’ should have tried something like it. I wonder, though, if anyone could have gotten the comparable Democrats to sit still in the White House for three days.”

19 Regarding the 1955 program, Eisenhower met with the prospective minority (Republican) leadership December 13, 1954 and with the prospective majority (Democratic) leaders the next day. These meetings, relatively pro forma in character, followed by six weeks the mid-term elections of 1954.

20 Harlow, a former House Military Affairs Committee aide, has functioned more recently as an additional Persons assistant on the legislative liaison side; his speech drafting and editorial duties, temporarily assumed in 1953, are now (1955) performed mainly by Eisenhower's biographer, Kevin McCann, another Administrative Assistant to the President and successor, in effect, to Emmett Hughes, of Life Magazine, who functioned in that capacity during the first six months of 1953.

21 See State of the Union Address, January 7, 1954; Budget Message, January 21; Economic Report, January 28; also the special messages carved out of the early State of the Union compendium: Taft-Hartley and farm, January 11; social security, January 14; health, January 18; housing, January 25. Two other special messages, drafted somewhat later, completed the initial program presentation: atomic energy, February 17; foreign economic policy, March 30, this last including the substance of the Randall Committee's recommendations on tariff legislation, as well as the Administration's proposals for further foreign aid.

22 Note one principal exception: Eisenhower's proposals for general tax reductions were not made the subject of a consolidated bill draft cleared by Budget and introduced in Congress prior to and as a basis for committee consideration. Instead, Treasury presented draft language, piecemeal, to the House Ways and Means Committee as a “technical drafting service” in elaboration of the President's proposals preparatory to the framing of a committee bill. This is the usual course with tax reductions as a matter of traditional committee preference (not so tax increases, where an Administration bill, as such, is usually very welcome at the start).

23 See especially the official White House communiques and participants' statements to the White House press corps during and after the three-day meeting with the Republican congressional leaders. New York Times, Dec. 18, 19, 20, 1953.

24 The Economic Bill of Rights was set forth in the State of the Union Message, January 11, 1944, as a matter not of specifics but of general postwar objectives to which Roosevelt pledged himself and his regime and, as the year wore on, his party. These objectives figured prominently in FDR's fourth-term campaign, with Truman as his running mate.

25 A glance at any Economic Report of the President since 1946—Eisenhower's as well as Truman's—will show that the Act's mandate regarding “employment, production and purchasing power” has drawn from Roosevelt's successors recommendations (of varying scope) for economic and social legislation in every area encompassed by his “economic rights.”

26 Indeed, most of the major Truman proposals had been foreshadowed by F.D.R. during the 1944 campaign, especially in his Chicago address, October 28, 1944. And Roosevelt's Special Counsel has recorded that the Truman messages on social security, education, and health grew out of preparatory work commissioned by F.D.R. before his Yalta trip. Rosenman, Samuel I., Working with Roosevelt (New York, 1952), pp. 514–15Google Scholar. Whether Roosevelt would have followed his own commission in so faithful a fashion remains unknown.

27 For further observations on the content of Truman's post-V-J Day program and on the personal and political motivations behind it, see Neustadt, Richard E., “Congress and the Fair Deal: A Legislative Balance Sheet,” Public Policy, Vol. 5 (Cambridge, Mass., 1954), pp. 349–81, at pp. 355–60Google Scholar.

28 Truman's annual message went to Congress January 25, 1946. It combined the State of the Union and Budget Messages into a single document which included gross national product analysis, discussion of the economic outlook, and a sweeping program of “economic” legislation. The Employment Act, which became law March 2, was still under consideration in Congress and it was hoped by some of the President's advisors that the example of a single, consolidated message would head off prescription of a separate Economic Report. That hope was vain and the consolidated message disadvantageous on several counts, its bulk precluding, among other things, a face-to-face report to Congress on the State of the Union. The experiment was not repeated. Since 1946 three separate messages have gone annually to Congress.

29 Binkley, Wilfred E., President and Congress (New York, 1947), p. 278Google Scholar.

30 Especially was this the case with that year's pressing issues of inflation, tax reduction, and labor relations. See Address on the State of the Union, Jan. 9, 1947; Economic Report, Jan. 11; and Budget Message, Jan. 14.

31 State of the Union Address, Jan. 9, 1948; Budget Message, Jan. 11; Economic Report, Jan. 14.

32 E.g., civil rights, Feb. 2, 1948; rent control and housing, Feb. 27; reciprocal trade, March 1; European recovery and national defense, March 17; Alaska development, April 24; agriculture, May 14; social security, May 24.

33 For discussion see Neustadt, op. cit., in Public Policy, Vol. 5, pp. 349–81, at pp. 366–81Google Scholar.

34 A relationship on all major speeches which dated back to Albany. For illuminating details see Rosenman, op. cit., especially Ch. 1.

35 For illustrations, ibid., pp. 262–65; 510–12.

36 Clifford, a St. Louis attorney before the war, was appointed Counsel in July, 1946 after a year's duty in the White House as assistant Naval Aide. Smith's successor, James E. Webb, previously a Sperry Gyroscope official and wartime Marine specialist, was appointed Budget Director that same month, after a short stint as an executive assistant to the Under Secretary of the Treasury. The original members of the Council of Economic Advisers, Nourse, Keyserling, and Clark, were not appointed until August, 1946, six months after passage of the Employment Act; of the three, only Keyserling had had previous government experience. The new Assistant to the President, Steelman, on the other hand, was a government official of long standing, who had served as OWMR's last Director, assuming his new White House post upon that agency's termination in the aftermath of the November, 1946 election, and keeping with him, for a time, a remnant of his former staff.

37 Quoted passages in this and similar presidential requests annually through 1954 are from texts or notes in the writer's files.

38 This is not to suggest, of course, that Executive Office staffs lacked working-level channels to the agencies or informal advice on agency interest and intentions. Quite the contrary. The purpose of the quoted language in the letter of September 26, 1947 was not to obtain data otherwise inaccessible to staff, but rather to put agency heads responsibly on record pro or con departmental ideas more probably than not already known or sensed by presidential aides, while at the same time giving the latter a formal—even constitutional—rationale for their own attempts at follow-up, coordination, and review.

39 For a discussion of that expansion and the motivations behind it see Neustadt, op. cit., this Review (Sept. 1954), pp. 659–63.

40 As a matter of sheer improvisation, Legislative Reference established a number of ad hoc staff “working teams,” drawn from other Budget divisions and to some extent from CEA, to comment on the adequacy and utility of departmental recommendations and to point up major issues of substance or finance raised by, or omitted from, agency submissions. See Budget Bureau inter-office memorandum from Elmer B. Staats, then chief of the Division of Legislative Reference, to Messrs. D. C. Stone, J. W. Jones, Martin, and Rice, Nov. 17, 1947. In two weeks' time there were prepared some 20 staff critiques combining agency responses into subject-matter fields. Considering the time and circumstances, these were reasonably thorough jobs of summarization and analysis, generally of higher quality, certainly much more specific, than the original agency documents. As such they served in lieu of most originals as working papers for the drafting staffs on all three annual messages. Note that in this 1947 experiment CEA's participation in the Legislative Reference “working teams” was marginal. General inclusion of CEA specialists came as a refinement the following year. For this subsequent elaboration of the procedure see Budget Bureau inter-office memorandum from Elmer B. Staats to Messrs. Stauffacher, Martin, J. W. Jones, and Gross (CEA), Dec. 6, 1948.

41 “Checklist of Recommendations for Presidential Messages in January, 1948,” Bureau of the Budget, Division of Legislative Reference, Dec. 3, 1947 (duplicated).

42 Note that in this 1947 sequence message drafting, itself, became the central focus for policy decision as regards the legislative program, with detailed elaboration of particular policies a later, subsidiary undertaking. This more or less inverts the sequence and focus of Eisenhower's program-making during 1953. Of course, that is to compare Truman's third programming effort with Eisenhower's first. In 1947, while a checklisting of possible proposals had negative, coordinative uses, the White House was by no means faced with first-time issues new or strange or unexplored politically. Moreover, in domestic spheres the 1948 program, unlike the 1954, was not constructed with an eye to maximizing short-run congressional response.

43 In July, 1948, the call for estimates for fiscal 1950 requested, for the first time, some report on departmental legislative plans. The agencies were asked to include with their budget estimates, due September 15, a brief statement “calling attention to any recommendations for proposed legislation … which should be taken account of in preparing the Budget Message … or in arriving at budget totals. … ” Information of this sort had long been wanted by the Budget for purposes of estimates review; in 1946, verbal requests at budget hearings had brought relatively few results; in 1947, agency responses to the presidential call had arrived relatively late. But nobody expected either cabinet officers or their career subordinates to go on record candidly in mid-September, 1948. This innovation in the Budget call was scarcely designed to gain much information; nor did it do so in fact. Rather, it was an expedient, a pre-election gambit, designed to give Budget a precedent for possible application in a new regime.

44 The agencies were simply asked to name “… the subjects which you would propose for inclusion in the State of the Union Message and the Economic Report … together with a brief explanation of each….”

45 In 1948 Truman asked for “a report on the proposed legislative program of your department [which] should show (1) the subject-matter of all legislation which you desire to propose … [to Congress] …, (2) the state of readiness of legislative drafts and supporting material, (3) references to the bills and … reports in the 80th Congress concerning the subjects covered … with a brief appraisal of the adequacy of these bills, (4) your views on the timing of introduction and … consideration, and (5) the names of other departments and agencies … interested in the same subjects.”

Necessarily, the time for response to this request was very limited. The President's letter asked that message suggestions be sent directly to the White House by November 29, 1948; legislative programs were to be sent him by that date “through” the Bureau of the Budget, with the proviso that supplemental listings would be accepted up to December 15; as regards that time-extension, the letter voiced an expectation that each agency program “will be fully developed by that date,” a scarcely enforceable directive to make “all” mean “all.”

46 In 1948, reversing 1947's procedure, Legislative Reference had produced a “preliminary” checklist for the message drafters (based on campaign materials and staff anticipations) two weeks before the agency programs arrived. Elaborate working teams were drawn from Budget and CEA to review those submissions on arrival. But by that time such a review process was bound to involve more activity than result.

47 The well-known Budget-Forrestal dispute over the fiscal 1950 military budget was, of course, a very vital background factor in the legislative program conflicts of this period. As a practical matter, only with that argument settled in Webb's favor were there funds for Fair Dealers and budgeteers to quarrel about. By the same token, universal training legislation then assumed a higher relative priority for the President than most of his supporters, in and out of Congress, were ever willing to concede it at either end of the Avenue—a circumstance since echoed in the reserve training controversy during the congressional session of 1955. Indeed, the broader conflict over military force levels since Eisenhower's accession is reminiscent in many ways of those of 1948 and 1949.

48 To the 1948 language there were added requests for cost estimates and a listing of laws due to expire. Bureau of the Budget, Instructions for the Preparation and Submission of Annual Budget Estimates, June 30, 1949, Sec. 86. The purpose of the expiration list is obvious, its need made sharp by the fast-rising congressional practice of authorizing long-term programs on a short-run, review-and-extend basis. Lest this request receive less than just due from the agencies, the Budget Director followed his formal call with an explanatory memorandum for department heads. “The request,” he wrote, “is intended to give the Budget Bureau and the President as much information as possible about your plans … for the next legislative session in time to be considered in the early stages of budget review.” With this in hand it would “… be possible to inform you, when we discuss your budget allowance, of the President's views on the relationship between items in your legislative program and the total budget outlook at that time.” These programs, coming to the Budget in September, might be—in part—outdated by events before Congress assembled. Therefore, “… we anticipate that the agencies will be asked to present final legislative programs late in the year, in conjunction with suggestions for the annual messages.” However, since preliminary programs were to provide better opportunity “… for proper integration of legislative proposals with the President's budget recommendations,” agencies were urged that they “… should not hold back, for later presentation, any items which can possibly be foreseen at this time.” Bureau of the Budget, Bulletin No. 50–5, Aug. 31, 1949.

49 The presidential letter foreshadowed by the 1949 call for estimates followed in short order. Dated Sept. 26, 1949, the President's request for message suggestions paralleled the language used in 1948. On the legislative side, the agencies were asked to transmit through the Budget, by November 1, a “final” program which would “… restate and bring up to date the preliminary legislative program submitted … in accordance with the Call for Estimates.” This was to include “all” agency desires for the coming session, as regards bills pending or to be proposed, with indications of departmental urgency and “views on the timing of congressional consideration.” If a bill or proposal in December's program had not appeared in September's precursor, there was to be a statement of “… the circumstances which led to its addition”; this last a fine flourish, scarcely enforceable.

50 The eventual “new” features of Truman's 1950 program included official endorsement of the so-called “Brannan Plan,” which the Secretary of Agriculture had presented to congressional committees the preceding spring, along with aids to small business, assistance for middle-income housing, and general revision of the internal revenue code. On these, there were arguments, of course, but relatively quietly resolved “within the family.”

51 It had been planned before Korea to eliminate eventually the duplicative factor in requests for “preliminary” and for “final” programs. After Korea, though, no easy opportunity was found to do so, nor a compelling need; the dual system continued, for lack of time or energy to change it. The Budget Bureau's call for estimates in 1950, 1951—and 1952—reiterated the terms of Section 86 in 1949's call for preliminary legislative programs, with some elaboration of reporting requirements. The language was identical with that used under Eisenhower in 1953. (See above.) Bureau of the Budget, Instructions for the Preparation and Submission of Annual Budget Estimates (June 30, 1950; June 30, 1951; June 30, 1952), Sec. 86. Presidential calls for final legislative programs patterned on Truman's request of 1949, with some new terminology to take account of the emergency, went forward in the form of letters from the President on October 4, 1950, asking for submissions December 1 (after the mid-term election), and on October 5, 1951, again with a December 1 date for replies. There was no presidential call in 1952 regarding agency proposals for the 83rd Congress.

52 Charles S. Murphy, who succeeded Clifford early in 1950, carried on the combination of speech-and-message drafting with legislative policy duties which characterized the Counsel's post in Truman's time (and F.D.R.'s).

53 An observation dating from the early part of the first session of the 80th Congress, as then reported to the writer by Taft's auditor.

54 A remark made at an executive session of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in April, 1953, as reported to the writer by a committee member present. In question were the new Administration's views on form and character of legislation to extend the foreign aid program.

55 Other items which reached the point of passage include the tax reduction measures of 1947 and 1948, the first tidelands bill in 1947, and the natural gas and basing point bills of 1949. Of course, there have been infinite numbers of amendments to, adjustments in—and sheer denials of—Administration proposals, over the years, as matters of distinct congressional initiative, oppositional to presidential purposes or claimed intent. But these are in a different category. The fact that Presidents are now so largely raisers of the issues does not signify that they are safe from penalties for having done so; quite the contrary, both in and out of Congress.

56 These liaison aides also engage in special forays on particular legislative and personality problems. Rarely if ever before has White House staff coverage of congressional moods, wishes, activities, and foot-dragging spread so wide, so consistently. Of course this enterprise has yet to stand the “acid test” of repetition in a new regime. Roosevelt, in his later years, and Truman were distinctly cool to organized, continuing staff effort of this sort.

57 The Budget Bureau, originally created in the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, was formally transferred to the newly-established Executive Office of the President by congressionally-approved reorganization plan in 1939. The Council of Economic Advisers, established under the Employment Act of 1946, was revised by reorganization plan in 1953 to the extent of vesting administrative powers and advisory responsibilities in the chairman rather than the membership. Some changes in CEA's external relationships were accomplished less formally at the same time. The National Security Resources Board, created by the National Security Act of 1947, was altered by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 which transferred all administrative and advisory powers from the ex-officio departmental members to the presidentially-appointed chairman. In December, 1950, NSRB's post-Korean coordinating powers were transferred by executive order to the Office of Defense Mobilization, established for the purpose by the President. In 1953, remaining NSRB functions went to ODM by reorganization plan. The National Security Council was also established by the National Security Act of 1947. Its heightened activity after 1949 followed a significant legal change, reduction of the Pentagon's statutory membership from four to one (and statutory addition of the Vice-President) by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949. Since then, there have been various non-statutory elaborations of working membership and methods.

58 Averell Harriman functioned for somewhat more than a year as a Special Assistant to the President, with considerable staff of his own, before receiving institutional status and statutory workload as Director for Mutual Security under the Mutual Security Act of 1951. Harold Stassen and Nelson Rockefeller were appointed Special Assistants to the President in 1955, the former to work in the reduction-of-armaments field, the latter in an undefinable area of foreign relations. Both have recruited sizeable staffs of their own.

59 Dillon Anderson, a Special Assistant to the President, now heads the Planning Board of NSC. Joseph M. Dodge, the former Budget Director, heads the CFEP, also as a Special Assistant; Nelson Rockefeller is a member of the OCB; its chairman, though, is the Undersecretary of State, for obvious reasons of relationship.

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