June 3, 1971
Page 17801
DISAPPROVAL OF REORGANIZATION PLAN NO. 1 OF 1971
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. Pursuant to the previous order, the Chair lays before the Senate Senate Resolution 108, disapproving Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1971.
The Senate resumed the consideration of the resolution.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, one of the most hopeful developments to take place in the troubled decade of the sixties was the growth of programs through which Americans volunteered their time and efforts to serve the needs of their fellow man. Starting with the Peace Corps in 1961 – through the creation of SCORE, ACE, VISTA, Foster Grandparents, Teacher Corps, and RSVP – the volunteer spirit of Americans rose to new challenges and to new heights. Young and old, skilled and unskilled, these dynamic Americans made significant and historic breakthroughs in the field of voluntarism and set an example which has been emulated by other nations in both the developed and developing world. Rather than agreeing to serve for 2 or 3 hours a week, they agreed to serve for up to 2 or 3 years. Rather than staying in the comfortable, secure surroundings of their own hometown, they uprooted themselves and settled into the culture of poverty – whether that was in a lonely corner of Appalachia or a desolate place in the altiplano of Bolivia or Peru.
It is important, Mr. President, that we respect, not only these individuals for what they have done, but also the programs through which they have made their accomplishments. The volunteer spirit is a fragile, private initiative. It requires autonomy and independence, and a setting in which each volunteer is treated as an individual. Programs such as the Peace Corps and VISTA have proved they can provide this setting. One of the fastest ways to dampen the spirit of voluntarism in this country would be to overorganize the programs we have created for volunteers. I am convinced that the Nixon administration's proposal – Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1971 – that would force all the volunteer initiatives developed during the 1960's into one unfocused super agency would have precisely that effect.
The reorganization plan will blunt the special appeals which these programs have for volunteers.
There is a definite merit in allowing them to remain independent and compete for recruits among the American people. The competition helps prospective volunteers to become interested in a specific program and to decide where they would like to serve. Under the administration's proposal, each of these programs would cease to function as we have known them. In their place will be substituted the gray, bland face of a Government super agency – specializing in volunteers. I do not think that such an approach will truly attract volunteers.
Studies conducted by the Peace Corps in the early days bear out this conclusion. The Peace Corps made many attempts to discover what makes a volunteer tick. The most consistent conclusion which emerged from these studies was that the setting into which a volunteer entered was extremely important. The psychology of a volunteer is such that the organization with which he becomes associated must be completely unbureaucratic. For this reason, a bureaucratic reorganization such as the one proposed could be the deathknell of the very exciting volunteer initiatives begun by previous administrations.
I am opposed to the reorganization plan for the following four reasons:
First. The reorganization plan is really not a plan at all.
Second. The reorganization plan will decrease – not increase – the effectiveness of present volunteer programs.
Third. The reorganization plan substitutes bureaucratic reshuffling for dynamic new initiatives.
Fourth. The reorganization plan is not complete.
First. Reorganization Plan No. 1 is not really a plan at all.
Reorganization Plan No. 1 of 1971 was not a carefully conceived proposal at the time it was submitted to Congress. As such, it violates the spirit and principle of the reorganization authority under which it has been presented. This authority is a special kind of authority. It enables the President to propose reorganization plans which go into effect unless either body of the Congress acts decisively. This creates an important burden on the part of the Executive to submit plants which are necessary and carefully thought through.
Events subsequent to the transmittal of the plan have disclosed that at the time of its submission it was not a finished plan at all. In fact, it was little more than an empty vessel which subsequently required elaboration and justification.
The full story of the confusion which reigned, and still reigns, within the administration on this matter is contained in a thorough and objective article in the National Journal by James Heard.
A careful reading of the article will show that the proposal of the administration can hardly be called a plan at all. When it was first announcedby President Nixon on January 4 in Lincoln, Nebr., there was no consensus within the administration as to what the plan would contain. A task force was formed of Peace Corps and VISTA staff to develop a definite idea of how Action would be organized and which agencies would be included. There then followed months of discussion which resulted in fundamental disagreement. No reconciliation of these differences was ever made.
After Peace Corps and VISTA officials were unable to agree on even the basic organizational and functional questions, the White House turned the matter over to the Office of Management and Budget and asked it to come up with a plan. The OMB plan is basically a listing of the programs to be affected by the merger along with an organization chart. The OMB plan which the White House submitted to Congress does not answer the questions of whether these programs will retain their separate identities and names, how they would relate to one another, and where the efficiencies or savings will be. Administration testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Executive reorganization has clarified very little.
Second. The reorganization will decrease – not increase – the effectiveness of present volunteer programs.
I do not understand how a super agency with more layers of bureaucracy – with a more elaborate network of offices, divisions, reporting procedures, authorities, and clearances – is going to streamline anything. On the contrary, our experience with bureaucracy is that increased size brings increased inefficiency and inertia.
In the case of Action, the effects of this general tendency will be further complicated by the fact that the programs proposed for inclusion in the super agency are very different. For the most part, these programs appeal to totally different constituencies of potential volunteers. SCORE is not even a Government-run program. It is a private, nonprofit organization of retired businessmen.
The Teacher Corps is not so much a volunteer agency as a teaching training ground designed to develop a new breed of teachers bent on reforming educational systems. The Foster Grandparents program was designed as a means of supplementing the incomes of the elderly poor. Even Peace Corps and VISTA differ enormously from each other. VISTA and Peace Corps volunteers deal with totally different environments which create different training and administrative needs.
The hasty and superficial grouping of several programs – each with its own unique purpose, design, history, and constituency – is unwise in the light of the guidelines established by the President's Advisory Council on Executive Organizations – the Ash Council. The Ash Council's key principle for efficient Government reorganization is that agencies be grouped according to function.
This principle was forcefully stated in regard to the proposed transfer of the Teacher Corps to Action by Education Commissioner, Sidney P. Marland, Jr., in a letter to Elliot Richardson, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare:
Teachers Corps is a vital and a most appropriate component of the Office of Education. I would be severely handicapped without it as a fundamental component of this office.
Although all of the volunteer programs will be damaged in the bureaucratic shuffle proposed by the reorganization plan, this is especially true of the two major components of the new agency, VISTA and the Peace Corps. It is worthwhile to describe in more detail the practical consequences of this plan for these two volunteer agencies.
VISTA
There are legitimate reasons for supporters of the VISTA program to fear that the transfer of VISTA from OEO to Action might lead to further dismantling of OEO and to diverting the main thrust of the VISTA program from full time to part-time service. Last year, the administration was seriously considering abolishing VISTA. The galley proofs of OEO's fiscal 1972 budget, dated December 30, 1970, provided no money for VISTA. The top VISTA official on the original Action task force advocated discarding the full time volunteer approach and concentrating on local part-time volunteer programs.
This concern is so real that over 60 national organizations, headed by the League of Women Voters, have organized a committee to keep VISTA within OEO and to extend further OEO's authority over the program. To remove VISTA from OEO would deprive the poverty program of its major source of manpower for serving the needs of the poor.
VISTA can be far more effective within the agency responsible for the overall attack on poverty. Over 65 percent of the present sponsors of VISTA programs are "community action" programs. Many more are operating with funds provided under the Economic Opportunity Act. Within the Office of Economic Opportunity, VISTA can share experiences, program ideas, advice, and information on poverty problems. Their emphasis should remain, not on "volunteering" but on serving the problems of the poor.
PEACE CORPS
The Peace Corps stands to lose the most as a result of the reorganization plan. The Peace Corps, in its brief 10-year history, has become one of the most widely respected institutions ever
launched by the U.S. Government. In fact, in a poll conducted this year, more Americans approved of the Peace Corps than of the United Nations or the International Red Cross. The Peace Corps' reputation is international as well. It is now the largest language training institution in the world – the greatest international supplier of technical skills in pollution control and urban planning in the world. The reorganization plan would take this prestigious and influential international agency which has earned its stripes and make it a division – a small box in the organization chart – of an agency which has no past record, a questionable beginning, and a dubious future.
Much of the Peace Corps' early success can be traced to its tough-mindedness and fierce independence in the face of any threat to its autonomy. An attempt was made and rebuffed in the early days to make the Peace Corps a part of the Agency for International Development. Today, very few of us would think that this was a good idea. No compelling reason has been offered by the administration to change the very wise policy of independence the Peace Corps has followed during the past 10 years, and I think that it would be a mistake to begin tampering with success now.
Third. My third reason for opposing this plan is that it substitutes a bureaucratic reshuffling for dynamic new initiatives in promoting volunteerism.
In order to attract more volunteers, we need more than a reorganization of present programs. We need new ideas on what contributions volunteers can make to the important problems of our society, new challenges which will prove that "people will do for nothing what they never would have done for money." The proposed reorganization plan does not offer anything new or significant. An additional $20 million is being requested for experimenting with new forms of Federal support to local volunteer activities but this does not amount to a Federal program of national dimensions. If the combined budgets of these organizations for fiscal year 1971 and 1972 are compared, the total for 1972, including the $20 million add-on, is only $4 million above fiscal year 1971. When the costs of making the merger are calculated, the combined volunteer programs will suffer a net financial loss rather than a gain from the reorganization.
One person who did create exciting new ways to stimulate volunteerism in this country was the Honorable Sargent Shriver, the first Director of the Peace Corps and OEO. We do well to ponder his advice against substituting the appearance of progress for the reality:
No one has failed to volunteer for the Peace Corps, VISTA, Foster Grandparents, the Teacher Corps, or any other governmental program because of bad government organization. Not one additional person will volunteer in the future because of government bureaucratic reorganization.
Probably nothing is of less interest to potential volunteers than the bureaucratic arrangements made by public administration experts in Washington. Volunteers will never rally around an organization chart.
The basic fault, therefore, with the total Nixon Administration program so far as volunteers is concerned, lies in the fact that the leadership of the Administration concentrates on the appearance of change, rather than the substance.
Americans who volunteer do so because they are interested in helping to solve a problem. Nearly always that problem is a human problem, because volunteers are people who want to work with and for other people. Thus, the Peace Corps came into existence because the compassion of millions of Americans was aroused by deprivation and poverty in the developing world, and their enthusiasm and idealism were stimulated by the energy and hopes of newly independent peoples.
Originally, they responded to a call for help issued by President Kennedy, even though he never uttered a word about the governmental structure, not even the name of the organization of which the volunteers would become the most essential part.
Mr. Shriver suggests that a program is required to create new opportunities for volunteers throughout the country and new forms of recognizing their contribution. It is the kind of proposal which the Congress should be considering, rather than a reorganization plan.
Fourth. The reorganization plan is not complete.
The administration is using questionable legislative practice by withholding information from Congress on the required legislative authority for Action. And Congress has yet to receive the proposed legislation which would include the Teacher Corps. It would be unwise to lump together these volunteer groups in a single agency before we see what the new agency intends to do. All parts of the reorganization should happen at once. To shift the other agencies now would prejudice any congressional action on the authorizing legislation for Action.
The best experts to consult on the issue are the volunteers themselves. It is certainly a sad indictment of the administration's plan that not one person who had ever volunteered for any of the programs in question appeared to testify in its behalf. Representatives of five associations of active volunteers testified against it. The bureaucrats have failed to take into consideration a most important factor in making this proposal. A volunteer program is unlike any other Government program. It depends, not on money or on organizational structure, but on the good will of the volunteers who give freely of themselves. It is their program, not the Government's. And it is the volunteers who should help determine the final purpose and shape of the Government organizations formed to serve them.
Perhaps the most discouraging fact to emerge from this administration's initiative to stimulate volunteerism in this country is that it has lost contact with the volunteers themselves. Neither the poor, not the young, nor the elderly, nor any volunteers were consulted when this plan was being formulated. It remains a plan written by bureaucrats for bureaucrats, a plan that will snuff out the real life and appeal of some of the most exciting ventures ever launched by the volunteer spirit in America.
Mr. McINTYRE. Mr. President, I favor the principle of government reorganization. I have supported each reorganization plan proposed to the Congress by President Nixon. There have been several during his term of office. I have supported the score of reorganization plans which have come to the Congress during the years I served here under Presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson.
I believe that Government just as every organization must be updated from time to time. The basic principle of the Government may be inviolate but the structure necessary to carry out the principle must be changed and restructed periodically to meet new needs, to deal with a changing nation, to take advantage of new and better ideas of how to deal with the problems we face.
I face each reorganization proposal on its own merits. I try to judge the effect it will have on the orderly, smooth, and efficient functioning of the Federal Government.
Unfortunately, Congress does not have the privilege of making changes in reorganization plans presented by the President. We must vote them down or stand by and let them go into effect. We cannot offer amendments to make them better meet the needs of the Government and people as we see these needs.
Reorganization Plan No. 1, which is currently before the Senate has much to recommend it. It is an attempt to better coordinate the vast effort of the volunteer programs of the Government. I have supported these programs such as VISTA, the Peace Corps, SCORE, ACE, and the many others. I believe they have accomplished much. They have made excellent use of the abilities of vast numbers of Americans who are willing to give fully or partially of their time at little cost to the country to aid in many areas of national need.
However, I find some difficulties with details of the proposed reorganization plan. Specifically, I am concerned about the transfer to the proposed new agency of the Service Corps of Retired Executives – SCORE – and the Active Corps of Executives – ACE – which are most vital to the proper function and success of the Small Business Administration. The Administrator of the Small Business Administration made some assurances to the Subcommittee on Small Business, which I chair, that the work of SCORE and ACE would not be impaired.
I have heard, Mr. President, from many SCORE and ACE volunteers that they do not necessarily share the Administrator's feeling about the future of these valuable programs under the new plan.
They believe that these programs may lose their identity and their ties with SBA. I fear that many of those who have contributed so much of their time and effort may lose their enthusiasm if SCORE and ACE become lost in the welter of bureaucracy.
The same thing may occur with other programs of volunteers. I am afraid these programs may also suffer.
We are not dealing here with people who depend upon the Federal Government for their livelihood. They are volunteering their time or receiving minimum coverage of expenses. Part of their remuneration comes from their association with a clearly defined group which is attached to one of the vibrant organizations of the Government. If this association is blurred, their interest will be lessened.
For these reasons, Mr. President, I feel called upon to vote for the resolution to disapprove Reorganization Plan No. 1.
SUPPORT FOR PRESENT ORGANIZATION OF VISTA AND PEACE CORPS
Mr. SYMINGTON. Mr. President, before the Senate is the resolution of disapproval for the President's proposed Reorganization Plan No. 1, introduced to the Congress on March 24.
Under this proposed reorganization plan, a new agency would be established within the executive branch to be known as Action. This agency would be given substance by bringing together the several volunteer programs presently housed in their program-directing agencies.
Such transfer of volunteer programs seems counterproductive to what appears to be the administration's underlying basis for reorganization of the executive departments, namely to "group, coordinate and consolidate agencies and functions of the Government, as nearly as may be, according to major purposes."
Action's stated purpose is the amalgamation of volunteer organizations based on their shared commitment to "volunteerism." In no way do I mean to denigrate the high and noble motivations behind the participation of our young as well as older Americans in such effective programs as VISTA, Foster Grandparents, Retired Senior Volunteer Program – RSVP – the Active Corps of Executives – ACE – or the Peace Corps. Yet "volunteerism" serves only as a means for marshalling our human resources in effort to resolve the problems of the poor and disadvantaged, both at home and abroad.
It is this concern for the physically and financially disadvantaged that must remain central to any volunteer efforts. This "major purpose" of these volunteer organizations would be better accomplished by continued close association with their program-directing agencies.
For these reasons I will vote for the resolution disapproving the President's Reorganization Plan No. 1.
I agree with the sponsor of this resolution – Senator WILLIAMS – that "we do not need a program focusing on the concerns of volunteers; rather we need programs which continue to stress the plight of the poor and disadvantaged. This most abused segment of our citizenry deserves no less. And through the Peace Corps this same compassion is shared abroad.
For the underprivileged, for America and for humanity, we must strengthen our commitment. Weakened departments or programs cannot answer the needs of the disadvantaged. With determination to resolve our "paradox of poverty," let our actions speak louder than our words.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The hour of 11 o'clock having arrived, the Senate will now proceed to vote on Senate Resolution 108.
On this question the yeas and nays have been ordered and the clerk will call the roll.
Mr. CURTIS. Mr. President, a parliamentary inquiry.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Nebraska will state it.
Mr. CURTIS. Is my understanding correct that a vote of "nay" will be in support of the Reorganization Plan?
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator is correct.
Mr. CURTIS. I thank the Chair.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The result was announced – yeas 29, nays 54, as follows:
[ROLL CALL VOTE TALLY OMITTED]
So Senate Resolution 108 was rejected.