Evening star., 1932-05-03
CONFERENCE HOPE
OF ECONOMY BILL
Present BeWildering LegisIa-
tive Process Is Declared
Inevitable.
BY DAVID LAWRENCE.

Economy plans of the House Com
mittee having gone awry, there IS only
one place where the budget is going to
be cut, and that is in conference.
What the country has been witness
ing in the last few weeks Is an exhibit
tion of the difficulties of legislation in
the mass on questions that become dis
tinctly local when they are submitted
to a vote.
Just as a tariff bill goes laboriously
through the House and Senate, being
subjected to all kinds Of local pressure,
so the economy bill has been torn to
shreds by a galaxy of roll calls and
votes that prove the pressure from back
home, especially from the organized
groups, is just as powerful in keeping
items intact as it is often in getting new
appropriations inserted.
Whether using the gag rule or any
other parliamentary procedure, the
House of Representatives is not able to
develop the national interest" on econ
omies or taxes The sales tax was
beaten by local groups applying pres
sure to Congress.
Horizontal Slashes.
The Senate is not much better off
except that in the Upper House ten
dency has developed to make horizontal
slashes in appropriation bills, which, in
a sense treats all interests alike and
makes 1t difficult for any group to re-
sist as readily, though the opposition to
cuts even there has only begun and will
grow more and more intense as the
bills approach the Conference Com
mittees.
Had the original Hoover plan Of a
joint committee of both Houses and the
executive departments been adopted,
Congress at least would have been able
to place the responsibility for the cuts
on that committee and public opinion
might have had chance to rally be-
hind a Well-defined plan of budget cut
ting
But Congress would not listen to the
idea and adopted its own procedure.
The House Economy Committee is a
creature of the House of Representa-
tives. To overthrow such committee
is not catastrophe in the life of the
average member of the House After
an why IS a committee of the House.
he asks, any wiser than the collective
judgement of the whole House?
Presidential Appeal.
But with a joint committee repre-
senting every branch of the Govern
ment, public opinion would have a
chance to crystalline concretely on a
particular program and the President
would have the opportunity to appeal
to the country for support. Indeed, he
would have chance to mobilize the
leaderless groups that crave expression
and that are demanding economy in
the abstract without knowing exactly
how to get it concretely.
Before the end of the present session
the task of cutting the budget will have
to be delegated to some responsible COM
mittee, and the plan of co-operation be-
tween the executive and legislative
branches would seem to be the only one
left. This means bringing the Budget
Bureau, with its vast knowledge Of every
detail OF Government operation, into a
non-political conference and a serious
effort to make economies.
When the final vote is taken. 1t could
be a question of all the economies or
none, which would make difficult anv
amendments. The weakness in the
House procedure is the readiness to per-
NIT amendments. Passage by the Sen
ate of an omnibus bill however, would
have a salutary effect on the House
and force the issue into conference.
All these steps may be bewildering
to the outsider. They are inevitable in
the legislative process, and out of all
the apparent confusion will come a
definite balancing of the burget within
the next four or five weeks.
(Copyright, 1927