executive officer for the President, making the final decision on many details within the framework of Presidential policy as previously ascertained, and advising other officials of the Government authoritatively as to the program of the President with respect to legislation and appropriations. In addition, there have doubtless been occasions on which the President has delegated authority informally to members of his immediate staff to settle particular matters after investigation.

The instances, however, in which there has been a general delegation of formal Presidential authority to an official of the Executive Office have so far been few in number. Until the present emergency the leading precedent of this character was the wartime delegation to the Director of War Mobilization. Matters of military policy and of diplomacy were the notable exceptions in practice to the scope of that delegation. In the present emergency similar delegations have been made to the Office of Defense Mobilization.

The questions just discussed would exist if the President had full freedom in every respect to organize the Executive Office as he saw fit. Different but related questions arise out of the relations of the President and the Congress.

The congressional tradition has been one of seldom refusing the President anything he has asked for his immediate staff in the White House Office. But Congress has obviously not been prepared to consider other units of the Executive Office as being beyond congressional interest and possible intervention. There have been several recurring points of possible difference.

Confirmation of major Presidential assistants has sometimes been waived and on other occasions insisted upon. Confirmation is not required for any of the assistants in the White House Office. The staff concept as the basis for waiving confirmation of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget was spelled out in the congressional debates of 1921 and was accepted. In recent years confirmation has been required for members of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Chairman of the National Security Resources Board, and the Director of Defense Mobilization, but not for the executive secretary of the National Security Council.

The question of statutory delegations of authority has been another troublesome point. In the legislation establishing the Office of War Mobilization and Reconversion, powers were vested in the director that could be regarded as essentially Presidential and the director was furthermore made subject to confirmation. The legislation was considered by some students of government an invasion of the prerogatives of the President because of the combination of the two features, but the President himself accepted the arrangement in approving the enrolled bill.

Proposals for full-time boards and for ex officio committees recur frequently in congressional discussions of organization and have found their way into the Executive Office structure in the case of the Council of Economic Advisers and the National Security Council respectively. Both types of organization unquestionably limit the freedom of the President in carrying on his own administrative work when they are required by law for organizations bearing a close relationship to him.

The future development of the Executive Office will undoubtedly be affected by the nature of the relations between the President and the Congress, the personal views of the President in office at any given time as to how his own office should be organized, and the extent to which emergency conditions persist over a long period of time.

Nevertheless, the subject is one that appears in need of organized attention with the objective of clarifying a body of administrative doctrine on which there could be greater agreement than has been attracted by previous efforts. The political struggle over the problem of the unification of the armed services had important overtones with respect to the nature of the Presidency and of the Executive Office. The continuing political issues with respect to the nature and form of organization in the field of foreign affairs may prove no less difficult than those in connection with military affairs. It seems unlikely that the decisions of the next few years for the organization of the Government in the field of foreign affairs can be taken without giving special consideration to the problems of organization in the Executive Office of the President.

CHAPTER IV

ORGANIZATION FOR THE CONDUCT OF
FOREIGN ECONOMIC PROGRAMS

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Foreign-aid programs have involved grants and credits of over 30 billion dollars since the end of the Second World War, most of which has been in the category of economic assistance. Continuing activity on an extensive scale is promised by the heavy demands for economic assistance related to the military build-up abroad and the need for strategic raw materials from the underdeveloped areas. The present foreign economic programs follow in the wake of extensive wartime activities and a number of emergency undertakings engaged in immediately after the war.

The extent of these foreign economic activities and the speed with which they expanded have resulted in makeshift organizational arrangements and trial and error methods of administration. These have created administrative inconsistencies and conflicts that must be resolved if the maximum effectiveness of foreign economic programs is to be realized.

The most urgent questions relate to the role of the Economic Cooperation Administration and the Department of State, particularly since the former agency is scheduled for termination as of June 1952. A clear administrative choice would be to carry out major foreign economic programs either through an independent agency for foreign economic affairs or through the Department of State. These basic alternatives involve further questions of degree, however, and they also introduce questions concerning the role of other agencies of Government as well as international organizations. Whatever decisions are reached as to agency responsibility for program administration, there are further administrative problems with respect to the formulation of foreign economic policy, its coordination with over-all foreign policy, and the reconciliation of domestic policy with foreign commitments.

The present chapter presents a brief picture of the foreign economic programs in which the United States is now engaged, the agencies of Government participating in these activities, and the organizational evolution through which foreign economic programs have passed in recent years. Several major issues are then discussed, including what

953820-51-7

agency arrangements would provide for the most effective administration of foreign economic aid; what other economic activities should be carried on in conjunction with foreign economic aid; and how certain basic problems of economic policy coordination might be resolved.

The problem is to determine the basic structure of organization in the executive branch most suitable for the conduct of foreign economic programs.

BACKGROUND AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Today the principal programs in the field of foreign economic affairs include activities concerned with long-range economic development, reconstruction of war-disrupted economies, relief, the economic aspects of occupation, and provision of the economic means of achieving military strength among the allies. They involve loans and grants, technical assistance programs, the acquisition of strategic materials, export controls, and the development of adequate economic intelligence to provide a basis for operations abroad and foreign policy decisions generally.

In addition, the general field of foreign economic affairs includes many important and permanent activities that are given only limited attention in this report. A substantial part of United States foreign economic policy since the end of the Second World War has revolved around such problems as the reduction of trade barriers in world commerce, the development of an international monetary policy consistent with the expansion of world trade, the development of international commodity agreements that meet the needs of producers and consumers, and the conclusion of agreements to facilitate the progress of shipping, aviation, and telecommunications on a world-wide basis. These activities have required much intergovernmental negotiation both bilaterally and multilaterally, and have been an important concern of the Department of State, as well as of the Departments of the Treasury, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor.

Such activities have seldom involved large direct expenditures of public funds or large-scale administrative operations, but in their policy aspects have important interrelations with the foreign economic programs with which this chapter is mainly concerned.

Description of foreign economic activities

From the standpoint of administrative requirements, the most important foreign economic activities today are the several programs of economic assistance being conducted by the Department of State and the Economic Cooperation Administration. At present, the Economic Cooperation Administration is carrying out the remaining tasks of the European recovery program and at the same time reorienting