Considerations for a President Bent on Reorganization

Abstract

President Carter spoke often during his campaign of his intention to reorganize the federal government. Previous Presidents, especially Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, carried with them into the White House similar convictions that the effectiveness of the United States Government could be substantially improved through reorganization. Each appointed study commissions with sweeping mandates. Two such commissions were appointed by Johnson and one by Nixon; all recommended major regroupings of federal functions.1 Yet most of such restructuring never occurred. President Johnson was successful in 1965 and 1966 in gaining congressional approval of two new departments-Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation-but when he tried to combine the Departments of Commerce and Labor into a single department in 1967, it was a fiasco. Thereafter, he recommended no more consolidations to Congress. In 1971, President Nixon built his State of the Union message around sweeping reorganization proposals that would have created Departments of Community Development, Human Resources, Natural Resources, and Economic Affairs, replacing the Departments of Agriculture, Interior, Commerce, Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Health, Education, and Welfare. These sweeping changes were also pigeon-holed by Congress. The natural inference was that it was much easier to gain congressional approval for the creation of new departments than for the consolidation and abolition of existing departments. Since neither President succeeded in bringing about any of the major consolidations their advisers counselled, was it faulty advice, congressional obstinacy, or presidential ineptitude and lack of follow-through that blocked their purposes? Or was it that the President and his advisers look at the subject of organization in a very different way than does Congress? None of the three advisory commissions, it should be noted, had members with congressional experience. In any event, President Carter and his advisers would do well to ponder the lessons of this experience. The principles of organization that should guide a President in considering how to structure the federal government differ in many respects from those that normally guide the head of a huge industrial corporation, and even in some respects from those that should guide governors of states. The organization of the federal government affects and reflects many of the purposes and values of the body politic and should be thought of as one of the dynamics that shapes the future of our national society. Organization is especially important at the federal level in expressing the nation's priorities, in allocating resources, in attracting its most competent leader-executives to key positions, and in accomplishing the purposes of the President, the Congress, and the body politic. It may be useful at the outset of a new administration to offer a number of criteria-not a exhaustive list-that the President and his