Mr. BIDDLE. Monthly accounting?

Mr. TULLOSS. And that quarterly accounting shall be rendered within 20 days, as I recall, after the close of the period.

Mr. BIDDLE. And as Senator Schwartz suggested, the system is in order to ascertain whether the disbursements of these different departments have been made in accordance with the Federal statutes that may be applicable primarily is it not?

Mr. TULLOSS. Those accounts are rendered in detail with vouchers and schedules, showing the facts and referring often to the law under which the disbursements are made, or the collections are made.

The vouchers or schedules are supported by various documents, previously determined to be necessary to show the legality of the transaction for which the accountable officer is claiming credit.

Mr. BIDDLE. Now, if you decide after review that any particular disbursement is not in accord with the statutory authority, what steps do you then take?

Mr. TULLOSS. We deny credit in the officer's account.

Mr. BIDDLE. Would you explain that a little more? I am not clear what that means, when you say you deny credit.

Mr. TULLOSS. Well, in settling that account, or in process of settlement, we lay that particular item aside and notify the officer that his accounting is not sufficient, is not satisfactory, that we need more information, or he has made the expenditure in violation of law, or something of that kind.

Mr. BIDDLE. Then if you find, after ultimate explanation, after he has explained it all he can, you have taken an exception, what happens ultimately, is he surcharged, and how is it done, and what happens to the particular item?

Mr. TULLOSS. If the item is never satisfactorily explained, or if it is contrary to law, the credit is denied in the final settlement of his account, and then in time we have to proceed under the law, in 5 years, to recover that money.

Mr. BIDDLE. Five years after payment of the item?

Mr. TULLOSS. No; after the settlement.

Mr. BIDDLE. Settlement of the item?

Mr. TULLOSs. Yes.

Mr. BIDDLE. Do you proceed from your Office or do you proceed from the Attorney General's office?

Mr. TULLOSS. Through the Attorney General. We report it to the Attorney General for suit.

Mr. BIDDLE. What percentage of accounts for Government agencies settled and adjusted in your Office are submitted to preaudit in order to determine the legality in advance of the transactions? In other words, to what extent do you preaudit accounts?

VOLUNTARY NATURE OF PRE-AUDITING PROCEDURE

Mr. TULLOSS. We have no mandatory requirement on preaudit. It is a voluntary submission of the accounts. That varies according to the wishes of the department and the establishment. I don't know of any way to say just how much we do or have done or have not. Mr. BIDDLE. There is no requirement under the law of any preaudit, is there?

Mr. TULLOSS. It is entirely in the discretion of the Comptroller General.

Mr. BIDDLE. Really a preaudit is a convenience given by your Office to any particular department of the Government, so that the disbursing officer will know on any doubtful question whether or not the expense is a proper one; wouldn't you say that?

Mr. TULLOSS. Let me qualify my previous answer by saying that there is a provision in the old act of 1894 requiring the Comptroller to render an opinion in advance of payment upon submission of any accountable officer or the head of any department or establishment. In a sense, that is a preaudit, because the Comptroller determines the legality of the transaction there.

Mr. BIDDLE. It is made at the request of the accounting officer. Mr. TULLOSS. So there, in that sense, it is mandatory upon the Comptroller to respond to those requests.

The preaudit that we are speaking of generally is voluntary, a voluntary submission of vouchers and the like for examination along with the postaudit. The same auditors likely-or generally a little higher qualified man examines those preaudit vouchers.

Mr. BIDDLE. Largely for the convenience of the department that you are doing it for?

Mr. TULLOSS. Well, no; not largely; because it is just as important and probably more important for the protection of the interests of the United States to see that the proposed payments will be in accordance with the law, and will not be the basis of exception in the accounts and result in large expense to the Government.

Mr. BIDDLE. So that by the preauditing you control the payments. to the extent preaudits are made?

Mr. TULLOSS. We don't control them exactly. By the preaudit, we give them the advantage of our views on the matter, and by doing that we protect the certifying officer and the disbursing officer under their responsibility.

CONTROL OVER TREASURY REQUISITIONS

Mr. BIDDLE. Now, does that control, the control in your Office, extend to the Treasury Office? If the disbursing officer of any particular department fails to follow your ruling, can you shut off the funds from the Treasury?

Mr. TULLOSS. Yes; under the act of 1894, the Comptroller may refuse to pass a requisition for funds.

Mr. BIDDLE. Is that because the warrants drawn against the Treasury are countersigned by the Comptroller?

Mr. TULLOSS. No; it is specifically required under the law.

Mr. BIDDLE. Warrants are countersigned by the Comptroller?
Mr. TULLOSS. They are; yes, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. Would you say that the auditing functions of your Office are not so much the auditing functions of a commercial audit as the inspection and control of disbursals, coupled with final authority over withdrawals of money from the Treasury?

Mr. TULLOSS. I would say the latter; that the responsibilities of the Comptroller General there are very broad. He must not only examine the warrants, the requisitions, but he must also pass upon the appropriations under which they are contemplated to be made. It is the last recourse, you might say, of the Government to avoid,. to retain in the Treasury-or avoid improper expenditures, and retain

the money in the Treasury without incurring expensive costs in recovery.

CONTROL OVER DEPARTMENTAL ADMINISTRATION

Mr. BIDDLE. The result is, is it not, that you have control over departmental administration?

Mr. TULLOSS. No; no; not at all.

Mr. BIDDLE. Don't you control departmental expenditures in the sense that by preauditing you can state that they will be illegally made?

Mr. TULLOSS. If the department submits the matter for preaudit, or for an advance decision, and the Comptroller should decide against the proposed plan, that might be accepted as a restriction upon administrative wishes, or something like that, but it is wholly voluntary.

In other words, at that point, the head of the Department can still go ahead and pay what he knows the accountable officer may suffer a disallowance on, as we call it, in the accounts.

Mr. BIDDLE. I think that is a very accurate way of putting it.

OPINIONS OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Now, in interpreting Federal statutes which determine the legality of any particular transaction, do you feel yourselves bound by the opinions of the Attorney General of the United States?

Mr. TULLOSS. No. Now, wait a minute. You are speaking to me personally?

Mr. BIDDLE. I mean, does your office?

Mr. TULLOSS. The Comptroller has ruled-and I can only speak from his decisions in the matter, as I recall them-has ruled that the opinions of the Attorney General are not necessarily conclusive upon him, because, as stated in the law, the opinions of the Attorney General are advisory only, and there is no authority in the Attorney General, as I understand the rulings, to go beyond administrative advice.

Mr. BIDDLE. So that your legal interpretation of a statute would not be affected by contrary legal determination or construction of this statute by the Attorney General?

Mr. TULLOSS. It might be affected; yes, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. It would not be controlling?

Mr. TULLOSS. Not necessarily controlling. If the Comptroller General felt otherwise about it--he could not join with the opinion of the Attorney General-why then he has the obligation, he is dutybound under his oath of office, to hold otherwise.

Mr. BIDDLE. That is what I thought. I wanted to be clear.
Representative JENKINS. May I ask a question?

Mr. BIDDLE. Yes; of course.

Representative JENKINS. Do you know that is the case of all other departments; no department has to follow the Attorney General if they don't want to?

Mr. TULLOSS. That is correct, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. You don't know to what extent other departments do, do you, on matters of law? I am speaking of matters of law, of

course.

Mr. TULLOSS. Maybe I cught not say this.

Mr. BIDDLE. I am asking you; I don't know.

Mr. TULLOSS. The reason I mention it is there came to my attention an instance where the department, realizing it was not going to get a favorable opinion from the Attorney General, withdrew the question. The department evidently in that case intended to do other than the Attorney General was going to advise, so the question was never decided by the Attorney General.

COURT DECISIONS

Mr. BIDDLE. Do you feel bound by the decisions of the United States district courts, which might be contrary to your interpretation of an ordinary statute? When I say "you," of course I mean your office, Mr. Tulloss.

Mr. TULLOSs. To the extent that the decision of the court would be final, we would follow it.

Mr. BIDDLE. I don't mean final in the particular case, I mean final in ruling the principle contrary to your legal interpretation of the

statute.

Mr. TULLOSS. We are very fond of citing the decisions of the courts in support of our decisions. That has always been the rule.

Now, you know, while I have never practiced law sometimes have not been recognized as a lawyer, in my opinion, a lawyer finds his precedent. It may be on one side or the other of his question. Mr. BIDDLE. What is the answer then?

Mr. TULLOSS. I assume that the answer to that would be that in any legal matter, if the attorney or counsel did not agree with the precedent that he might have found was truly a precedent, he would not cite that against himself in court.

Mr. BIDDLE. Then the answer is, you do feel bound by the district court's opinions which rule on a matter of principle involved, in the construction of a statute affecting your powers, or that you do not feel bound by them? It is not quite clear from your answer.

Mr. TULLOSS. I would feel bound if the action of the court was conclusive in the matter.

Mr. BIDDLE. You mean if it had gone up to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court had

Mr. TULLOSs. No, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE (continuing). Put the conclusive interpretation on it? Mr. TULLOSs. No, sir; what I mean is if the district court had had the particular matter before it and had ruled on that matter, we would not go contrary to that.

Mr. BIDDLE. In your relation to the Congress of the United States, has the Congress any method of enforcing your responsibility to it through any committee to examine your audit reports?

Mr. TULLOSS. It has never enacted any law that I know of to give effect to the decisions of the Comptroller General. I do imagine, though, that if a committee wished to see that the

Mr. BIDDLE. I am speaking of the present circumstances. There is no such present review body of your decisions?

Mr. TULLOSs. No, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. If a department whose accounts you are auditing disagreed with you on a particular item, is there any relief in the courts. for that department? Has the department any standing in any court to question your rulings?

Mr. TULLOSS. Yes, sir; I believe he has authority to go to the Court of Claims.

Mr. BIDDLE. I don't know if you can, but could you cite that authority? You mean the Court of Claims gives authority to a department of the Government

Mr. TULLOSS. That is my recollection, that any department may take the question to the Court of Claims and have it there adjudicated. I don't know of a single instance where that has been done, however. My recollection is that the provision is found somewhere around section 145 of the Judicial Code.

Mr. BIDDLE. That is in the code?
Mr. TULLOss. Old Judicial Code.

Mr. BIDDLE. The Judicial Code?

Mr. TULLOSS. The act of March 3, 1911, I believe it is.

Mr. BIDDLE. You exercise, then, both internal and external control over the administration of departments from the point of view of auditing their books, do you not?

Mr. TULLOSS. No, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. You do not?

Mr. TULLOSS. No, sir.

Mr. BIDDLE. Do you consider that you exercise only external control over it?

Mr. TULLOSS. In examining the books of the department, some of them have seen fit to accord us full freedom, and others have denied us access. We have no means of giving effect to the law with reference to examining their books. We have the authority in the law, but the compliance with the law is largely voluntary.

Mr. BIDDLE. What I meant by external control was a differentiation between the ordinary commercial audit of books, which after payments have been made, audit them and report to the stockholders or directors of the company, and that internal function resulting from preaudits with respect to the expenditures to be made.

My attention has been called to an article by Professor Holcombe of Harvard, and I would like to read you this, because I think this would more clearly than I can state bring out the difference in the two types of control which I have in mind. I am quoting from page 159 of this book, which is called Government in a Planned Democracy by Professor Holcombe, professor of government.

Representative WOLVERTON. May I ask, Mr. Biddle, whether this witness is able to, by virtue of his position, take one position or the other for the Department?

Mr. BIDDLE. Let's ask him.

Are you authorized to speak for the Department? If not, we can have Mr. Elliott. I asked Mr. Elliott before and he rather designated this witness.

Would you prefer me to ask Mr. Elliott, or would you, Mr. Elliott, prefer me to? Whichever is authorized to speak for you. I rather thought you were.

Mr. TULLOSS. I am in somewhat an embarrassing position to answer that question in Mr. Elliott's presence.

Representative WOLVERTON. My objection went further than that. These letters that have passed between the T. V. A. and the Comp