14 M 
THE WASH II 
Sunday, Feb I 
The yy^ 
Federal 
Diary 
By Jerry Kluttz 
Taber Leads Campaign 
To Trim Appropriations 
The Congressional Record of thej 
past' several days on House debates 
on the Treasury-Postoffice appro-i 
pi’iation bill is exciting and deadn 
serious reading] 
matter for all 
Federal officials 
and employes. 
As Federal agen¬ 
cies go, Treas¬ 
ury and Postof¬ 
fice are two of 
the best-oper¬ 
ated and non¬ 
political depart¬ 
ments in the 
business. The 
ablest career 
men in Govern¬ 
ment hold key jobs in both agencies 
and they are responsible for the 
day-to-day duties. In the years that 
I’ve been covering Government I’ve 
had the minimum of complaints 
from employes in these two depart¬ 
ments and almost none of them 
were about idleness of employes; 
waste, etc. 
But both departments, especially 
Treasury, caught hell in the House 
and several millions were cut from 
the budget estimates of each. In 
fact, Treasitry was given the rough¬ 
est treatment any old-line agency 
has received in years. Led by Rep¬ 
resentative Taber, New York Re¬ 
publican, the department was de¬ 
scribed as wasteful, inefficient, ex¬ 
travagant, and generally no good. 
He really threw the book at the 
department and he was backed up 
to a man by his GOF colleagues. 
The question, of course, is whether 
the Taber drive was inspired by 
politics or economy. The GOP’er 
says economy is his motive and he 
makes out a good case. But Demo¬ 
cratic leaders have a different view. 
Chairman Cannon of the House 
Appropriations Committee, says 
frankly that Taber’s tactics are dic¬ 
tated by politics—GOP politics. 
Moreover, he believes Republican 
members will resort to the same j 
“hack political” methods that high¬ 
lighted the debate on the Treasury 
bill on every other appropriation 
bill that’s brought before the House. 
Cannon has warned his Democratic 
colleagues to stick together and 
beat off the GOP attempts to ham¬ 
string agencies by cutting their 
funds. And to be successful the 
Democrats must stick together. 
Taber missed by only one vote on 
several occasions to force additional 
cuts on Treasury, and if Cannon 
proves to be correct in his predic¬ 
tion you can expect sizable budget 
slashes to be made in other agen¬ 
cies. 
The drive on Treasury started 
some months ago when the House 
ordered its new staff of investiga¬ 
tors, headed by Robert Laughlin of 
the FBI, to look into overstaffing 
and inefficiency in Treasury offices. 
From sketches of the Laughlin re¬ 
port that has been printed it ap¬ 
pears that the investigators dis¬ 
covered idleness only on the part 
of a staff of 27 messengers who 
serve the offices of the Secretary. 
The committee cut the number to 
18 and Taber put over another cut 
reducing the staff to 13. Taber was 
effectively answered by O’Neal of 
Kentucky, who pointed out that the 
House has a staff of messengers and 
they too, could be found sitting 
around in the back of the chamber. 
But the House voted with Taber. 
Taber pounded away on his 
charges of overstaffing and waste 
and O’Neal got up again to give this 
answer: “We have investigators in 
the Treasury and Postoffice De¬ 
partments, meii who have no inter¬ 
est except to get at the facts. I 
have looked through the reports 
and almost without exception they 
have stated that in their opinions 
there is not any overmanning so far 
as personnel is concerned; that 
they are doing a conscientious job; 
and that there is not, with one or 
two small exceptions, a statement 
made by any investigator indicat¬ 
ing this great waste of manpower 
in the bureaus which we hear so 
often on the floor.” O’Neal put into 
the record a statement to show that 
more than 40 of the* key Treasury 
officials had been in the Federal 
service from 18 to 41 years, and 
that the department was in safe, 
sound and conservative hands. 
Other Taber charges: that for¬ 
eign funds pays its economic 
analysts an average of $4788 which 
he believes is too much and that 
its 37 lawyers are too many; that 
the Bureau of Accounts duplicates 
some of General Accounting Office's 
work and that is has two personnel 
offices, its own and one in the 
Division of Disbursements; that the 
Division of Research and Statistics 
is “headed by Doc Haas. Doc js 
the great payroll expert of the 
Treasury and he is not the least bit 
particular what payroll his force is 
on, provided it is on a payroll;” that 
the Bureau of Public Debt was do¬ 
ing business in the same old- 
fashioned, obselete, and antiquated 
ways, and that it had failed to in¬ 
stall modern machines. He said 
that some pieces of paper were 
counted by hand as many as 5ft 
times in one form or another. 
Taber believes the bureau could 
save a million dollars a year by 
paying its file clerks on a piece¬ 
work basis. That’s what he said. 
In the Treasurer’s Office, he said, 
50 per ment of the currency de¬ 
stroyed is fit for reissue. “They 
destroy the money by burning and 
do not save the pulp,” Taber said, 
and that, he believes, “is gross 
waste.” The truth is that Taber 
had uncomplimentary remarks to 
make about most everyone in 
Treasury from the Secretary down. 
He demanded better management 
from Government agencies and 
better management is needed, we all 
admit, but whether Taber’s method 
is the most effective way of 
achieving that end is questionable 
. . . Federal Diary of the Air, to¬ 
day at 4:35 over WRC. 
