The Waterbury Democrat. [volume] (Waterbury, Conn.) 1917-1946, 1943-06-15


new office, particularly as it relates
to his ambition to funnel Congre-
gresSional investigation through one
Senate and one House committee,
and to stop er-departmental rows
before they get started fills long
felt Washington want. Carried to the
extreme, this new method of mo
bilizing" the war effort might be
considered a move towards muzzling
the department heads by not letting
them make faces at each other, or
an effort to suppress the constitu-
tional right of Congressman to get
up on their hind legs and complain
about the war effort, except before
the chosen committees.
1t might also lead to a suppression
or a reduction of some of the more
dramatic news that comes out of the
capital. In the eyes of some people,
nothing is happening in Washing
| ton unless Harlod Ickes or Bill JEFF
ferS or John l.. Lewis is calling
| somebody a nasty name, unless the
| Truman Committee is exposing some
scandal, or unless the Army is try
ing to wreck the War Production
Board or vice versa.
PICKERING NOT NEWS
But pickering and controversy do
not make the constructive news that
! should come out of Washington, and
sudden and permanent ending OF
all such bloWotfs under the Byrnes
plan should be welcome, Just so long
as it is not used to cover up admin
istration mistakes, what the Con-
gressmen call bureaucratic bungling,
and the policy decisions that need
full public discussion and airing.
A complete blackout of news on
some of the controversial issues now
raging in Washington would be a
relief, but only If the issues we're
settled-not if they were simply
buried alive.
Consider also the duplication of
effort in the various Congressional
Investigations on phases of the
civilian war effort.
The Senate Committee on Agri-
culture had been investigating OPA
| price roll-backs and subsidies for
two weeks, when the matter was
taken up by the Senate Committee
on Banking and Currency Most of
the witnesses are the same. Con-
currently, the House Small Business
Committee raked the Office of Price
/ Administration policies over the
Goals of it's hot seat, while House
subcommittee on agriculture went
after OPA's grade labelling program
and Senate Small Business Com
mittee looked into the poultry supply
and distribution situation.
TOO MUCH CONFUSION
OPA is today the hot subject of
these five Investigations, but before
OPA became the center of all this
attention it was smoothing else
manpoWer, or war production or
small business in general, or gaso-
line, or rubber, or steel, or alumni
mum.
These things are admittedly all
| important and maybe they deserve
all the attention and abuse showered
down upon them. Director ByrneS
realizes the completely of them all
and the difficult in trying to get in
vestigations of all the war problems
centered in one committee of the
Senate and one committee of the
House. Congressional Investigations
are, in general, healthy things. They
/ correct many abuses. But in dupli-
eating each other, they tend often
to pile confusion on top of confus-
ion and that is not the obvious way
to shovel away pile of confusion
which filters up any front yard.
AS a step towards increasing the
efficiency of not only the war effort,
but of Congress itself, the proposals
which Director Byrnes has made
constitute notable step towards
the removal of much Washington
confusion.
The neatest trick which Mr..
Byrnes proposes, however, is to go
ere step beyond this, have abuses
and departmental conflicts called to
his attention and corrected before
they reach the stage of being so
overripe that they require Con-
gressional investigation before they
can be corrected.