Letter to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Branch, on Pending Reorganization Legislation.
Dear Senator:
I have read with considerable interest your letter of July tenth with respect to S. 1134. As for the provisions of the bill dealing with the organization of the Executive Office of the President, I agree thoroughly with your Committee that the measure is not consistent with the recommendation of the Hoover Commission that the President "should be given complete freedom to adjust the internal relationships of the President's Office" and that he "should not be prevented by statute from reorganizing the President's Office." My experience convinces me of the wisdom of this recommendation and the soundness of the Committee's judgment in applying it.
I also agree with your view that the adoption of a standard nomenclature for the various types of organizational units of the executive branch can best be left to administrative action.
In your letter you referred to the reorganization plans rejected by the last Congress relating to the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the National Labor Relations Board and the Department of Agriculture, and implied that revised plans might be presented to carry out the recommendations of the Hoover Commission on those agencies. Since the plans rejected by the 81st Congress were substantially identical with other plans which became effective for most of the other executive departments and regulatory commissions, I should be much interested in any suggestions you may be able to offer on the modifications, consistent with the recommendations of the Hoover Commission, which are needed to obtain acceptance of these remaining plans by the present Congress.
In dealing with the pending bill relating to the Department of Agriculture, I hope that your Committee will succeed in developing a bill which will carry out for that Department the basic recommendations of the Hoover Commission on departmental organization and management already applied to the other civil departments by the plans and legislation of the last two years.
Sincerely yours,
HARRY S. TRUMAN
[Honorable John L. McClellan, Chairman, Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, The United States Senate, Washington 25, D.C.]
Note: S. 1134, a bill to establish principles and policies to govern generally the management of the executive branch of the Government in accordance with recommendations of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, was introduced in the Senate on March 15, 1951, by Senator McClellan and 13 other Senators, and was referred to the Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Departments, chaired by Senator McClellan. It was not reported by the Committee.
In his letter of July 10 to the President, Chairman McClellan stated that the Committee contemplated no further action on the bill, since many of the recommendations had been accomplished by reorganization plans, and that remaining provisions could be implemented in the same way. The letter further suggested that new plans to be submitted for the Interstate Commerce Commission, Federal Communications Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and Department of Agriculture take into consideration points of objection to earlier plans which had been rejected by the 81st Congress.
Other provisions of the bill, dealing with organizational changes in the Executive Office of the President, were described by Chairman McClellan as essentially a presidential rather than a legislative matter. The Committee therefore merely called to the President's attention Hoover Commission recommendations for the creation of an Office of Personnel, an Office of Staff Secretary, and the substitution of a single Economic Adviser to the President in lieu of the existing three-member Council of Economic Advisers.
The pending bill relating to the Department of Agriculture, to which the President referred in the last paragraph of his letter, was S. 1149, "A bill to reorganize the Department of Agriculture in accordance with the recommendations of the Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government."
Harry S Truman, Letter to the Chairman, Senate Committee on Expenditures in the Executive Branch, on Pending Reorganization Legislation. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230506