Passage of Reorganization Bill Urged By Pettee as Needed Executive Reform

"Altogether the whole act would simply give us a more effective administrative machine for the carrying out of the policies of government," George S. Pettee '26, instructor in Government, said last night in a Guardian broadcast over WAAB in which he urged the passage of the recently shelved Government Reorganization Bill.

The measure, he predicted, "is very likely to be revived in the present Congress, and is also quite likely to pass."

Opposition to the bill, Pettee said, "has lain largely in the vague distrust of the President aroused by the Court Plan, and by loose talk on the subject of dictatorship." He concluded that "there is no real danger of dictatorship in any part of the Bill."

Outlined Provisions

Outlining the chief provisions of the act, killed by a narrow margin in the House last March, Pettee recommended, its adoption to remedy the tangle in the Executive department, which he likened to "a thousand room apartment house designed and built one room at a time."

As he pointed out that both Houses have already given approval to three of the main points, namely the executive assistants, the Department of Public Welfare, and the power of the President to rearrange agencies, Pettee placed part of the blame for the Bill's defeat on "the over-optimism which caused the Administration to insist on the whole Bill or nothing."

Hits President

He also dubbed the President's statement to the effect that he didn't want to be a dictator, "one of his most ineffective gestures."

That the President is overworked, and that the Executive branch is sadly in need of reorganization, everyone is agreed, Pettee said, and until the administrative machinery is overhauled, "with all due regard for the responsibility of the executive to Congress, there can be no real responsibility in such confusion."