spect the fairness with which you have stated your position on all matters before this committee and we have a high degree of confidence in your statement.

STATEMENT OF CLARENCE MITCHELL, DIRECTOR, WASHINGTON BUREAU, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE

Mr. MITCHELL. Thank you very much. It is kind of an educational experience to be before this committee. I thought as I listened to the testimony this morning that there were a number of things that the country needed to hear, some of which you said. I felt, for example, your pointing up the importance of the country knowing that after your committee authorizes a particular appropriation, you have pared it down as far as sensible to pare it down, then some people over at the Bureau of the Budget get hold of it and cut it down further, and actually they are unrealistic.

I really hope that your statement on that and other things that went on this morning can be made available for broad public distribution. I think that the public does not know about some of the things that you said and I hope very much that that will be done.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

Mr. MITCHELL. I am Clarence Mitchell, director of the Washington Bureau of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. I thank you for this opportunity to appear in connection with the hearing on Mr. William Brown III, who has been named as a member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Because the present Chairman, Mr. Clifford Alexander, has resigned effective May 1, 1969, or sooner if a replacement is available, it is my opinion that Mr. Brown would make an excellent choice in the replacement in the capacity of Chairman. However, I believe that if he is to give the high quality of performance that he is capable of giving, there are some matters which should be brought before this committee for its consideration and, hopefully, to cause it to give assistance in strengthening the agency's program.

First, let me say that both Mr. Alexander, the outgoing Chairman, and Mr. Brown are very well trained and capable men.

I heard Senator Schweiker refer to his competence and I would also like personally, Senator Schweiker, to testify to my knowledge of that.

When there was a big dispute on one of the highways from New York to Washington, known as Highway 40, in which a number of African diplomats were arrested because they simply sought service in restaurants, Mr. Brown was a member of a law firm which also included Mr. Leon Higgenbotham, who is now a U.S. district judge in Pennsylvania. It was fortunate that my good wife, who is also a lawyer, was associated with those cases with those gentlemen. I thought they performed an outstanding public service free. They were not paid anything for what they did.

It is a credit to the parents of Mr. Alexander and Mr. Brown and to the community out of which they come and to our country that they have reached high status in public service at early ages. It is my opinion that this is an indication of the progress that we are mak

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ing toward equal justice under law. It also gives an answer to those who say that legislative efforts, court action, and political action are both irrelevant and ineffective in the civil rights struggle. Whenever and wherever possible to do so, the young people of our country should be told about the achievements of men of this kind because this helps to encourage youth in setting high goals. It is precisely because so much depends on the leadership and inspiration that these men can give through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that I have asked to be heard.

At the beginning of the life of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, some of you who are members of this committee and many other Members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, were determined that this agency would be kept out of the uncertain currents of partisan politics. You added to the law a provision which assures that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will have Democratic and Republican members. Acting to implement the will of Congress, I am happy to say that I was among those who strongly urged President Johnson to appoint a distinguished lawyer, Mr. Samuel Jackson of Kansas, as a member of the Commission. Mr. Jackson was then and is now a Republican. He is an Assistant Secretary of HUD under this administration. When we were working for passage of civil rights legislation in 1964, he came to Washington as a volunteer and helped to explain the importance of this legislation to Republican Members of Congress and to any others who would give him an audience. He is a man of unusual ability.

During the life of the Commission there have been a number of changes in its top personnel. In my opinion this was not a healthy development. Many of us hoped that there would be more stability in the Commission when Mr. Alexander became Chairman. There was a general belief that he would serve to the end of his term as Chairman. I do not know of anyone who expected that a change in the White House would automatically result in the ousting of Mr. Alexander for political reasons.

As some members of this committee know, the senior Senator from Illinois, Mr. Dirksen, recently made a public statement asserting that he would seek to have somebody fired if so-called harassment of employers continued. In a matter of minutes after he made that statement a White House spokesman affirmed the intention of the administration to get rid of Mr. Alexander as Chairman, and said so publicly. There followed a shock wave around the entire country that has caused both indignation and apprehension.

The statements taken together will undoubtedly give comfort to those who want to defy the Equal Employment Law. Those who advocate seeking redress of wrongs by methods that have no legal sanction now have a new example of why, as they put it, the system. does not work.

In order to reaffirm the intention of Congress to give our citizens an orderly and effective method for ending discrimination in employment, I urge that this committee do the following things: First, give speedy approval to the appointment of Mr. Brown.

Second, express its concern about the importance of maintaining the bipartisan composition of the Commission.

I really want to stress that point because the EEOC Chairman has the power under this law to make the staff appointments. I believe that those people who serve in that agency are experts on the basis of experience. If they continue to serve they become more valuable to the Government on the basis of experience. Therefore, it would be a calamity if somebody decides that this agency is going to be a pork barrel and just fire all the people in order to make jobs available. I have enough respect for Mr. Brown and know enough about him to know he would not do that himself. But being aware of political realities, I know how even when a chairman has good intentions some people can overcome those good intentions. These people in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission should be treated like career people in the State Department or Defense Department. They have expertise and we must do all we can to keep them on duty, even though they might not be members of the given party in power.

I was very proud of the way that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations handled, for example, the appointment of Mr. John Doar, who was in the Justice Department. Mr. Doar came in under the Eisenhower administration. He was, I assume, a Republican, but whatever he was he was appointed by the Eisenhower administration. He stayed in the Justice Department and to my personal knowledge enjoyed the confidence of President Johnson when he became the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division.

Third, I hope we will have early hearings and a favorable report on legislation that will give the Commission itself enforcement powers. Fourth, I hope that this committee, just as the Chairman so eloquently expressed himself this morning in connection with problems in the field of education, and Senator Pell and others indicated their intention to have a kind of oversight function, I certainly hope that the committee will maintain an oversight function with respect to this agency because it needs every friend that it can get, particularly in the Congress.

I hope you will maintain a diligent interest in the appropriations of the Commission to assure that it is adequately financed. I am sure you don't need to say to any member of this committee, because you have already expressed yourself on it, that one of the neatest little jobs of annihilation of good programs is done by the process of authorizing a lot of money and thereafter in the appropriation committee, when nobody is looking, give them the coup de grace. This is really what we have got to be watchful on and I hope the committee members will consider that.

The fifth thing is maintaining a continuing oversight of the Commission's functions to make certain that it is not handicapped by unfair pressures designed to keep it from doing its job.

I think that the reason the attack was made on Mr. Clifford Alexander, when he appeared before Senator Kennedy's Subcommittee on Administrative Operations of the Judiciary Committee, was because Mr. Alexander had been out in California exploring the problems in the television and motion picture industry where there is acute discrimination and also because he had been exposing some of the terrible discrimination that takes place in the agencies and companies that have Government contracts.

Now, it is a mockery if when these people undertake to do their job somebody is going to come-in and make an attack on them because. they have done what the law authorizes them to do. I feel this will always happen unless a committee such as this maintains an interest in the matter.

In a very real sense, this Commission offers the Government of the United States a priceless opportunity to show that our country can and will act with speed and effectiveness in the field of employment discrimination. I hope that all of us will work together for that important purpose.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, for that very informative statement.

With reference to the financing of this work, it seems that insofar as the Bureau of the Budget is concerned, this Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has done better with reference to authorization than educational agencies.

In 1968, the actual appropriation was $2,914,000. The estimate for 1969 was $4,624,000. And the budget recommendation for fiscal 1970 is for $9.967.000. That is for enforcement.

Now, the total program, that is, all the programs, legal and research, the total in 1968 is $6,505,000. I don't have the 1969 estimate as to what was finally spent. After money is appropriated then they freeze the funds. The estimate for 1969 was $9,032,000. Then in 1970 the estimate was $16 million.

In addition to the matters we mentioned this morning of appropriations being only a token of the actual authorization, there is another way in which the money available has been cut back. And the amount actually spent is far less than the amount appropriated.

You know, some years ago the Congress passed a law giving the Bureau of the Budget the power to freeze certain funds if it was imperative to the national interest. That is not the exact language, but that is the essence of it.

Last year when there was a run on the dollar around the world, it was felt the foreign creditors might call for payment of obligations in gold and, as a result of this many things were frozen. After we appropriated the money, the Bureau of the Budget cut was to be spent by the various agencies. It said, "Don't you spend this much," except in the following January we get a deficiency bill. It sounds like a markdown on a fire sale: $3,900 million extra expenses of Vietnam, not in the regular budget. And in that way, after we first authorized this money, we have terrific difficulties getting appropriations for these progressive programs to put them into effect. After we appropriate the money they cut further by the device where the Budget Bureau puts a freeze order under the emergency power to protect our economy. We will have to cut this spending and that is this second cut. So it phased down all three and we see these phase-downs in practically every domestic program in America. We don't see that kind of phase-down in South Vietnam or other gross expenditures overseas, especially military expenditures overseas.

Mr. MITCHELL. You know, Senator, I think it would be a good thing if Congress would investigate the Bureau of the Budget. I really think that the Bureau of the Budget under all administrations exercises an inordinate and unconscionable control over the programs that are sup

posed to help the people, the ordinary people of this country. They are kind of a secret agent operation, you know, which gets all these agencies in and intimidates them. Then you find, where you thought you had given agencies enough money to operate and be constructive, somebody over at the Bureau of the Budget has cut it down to a pittance. Lots of times when agencies representatives really in their own minds know they need more money they don't dare ask for it.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, the main difference in the statement you and I made on this subject was you said "unconscionable" control and I said "unconstitutional" control. The power to raise money, levy taxes, and to appropriate money to run the Government is vested by the Constitution in the Congress. The executive uses this power to thwart the will of Congress. By this device the Bureau of the Budget cuts certain of our appropriations and spends it for other purposes, billions of dollars as a deficiency, and comes back when the next session starts in January and they say we have already spent this, you will have to appropriate the money to replace it. I think that is a device that has come up over the years where the executive department has usurped the power of Congress.

I don't think the Congress is going to be a coordinate branch until it reaches out and recaptures the purse string. We are not a coequal branch of the Government except under the Constitution. We have permitted that to be taken away from us. The powers are going to follow those who seize and hold it and if we don't reach out and seize and hold it--if we don't have the will to assert it and exercise it-it will go further away from the Congress.

I think this power has been used by the Bureau of the Budget these recent years to cut programs that are, in my opinion, the most beneficial to the American people. They squander money on something that is not as beneficial as education, health, and all these other programs that Congress has been voting for. They cut down the quality of American life authorized primarily through this committee in the fields of education, health, manpower, retraining, and poverty, with certain rights, railroad retirement, bilingual education, international education, this whole spectrum of human rights. Even after we fight our battles in committee and on the floor and get half of this money from the Appropriations Committee, the Bureau of the Budget reaches out and cuts another big plug out and we end up with tokenism on many programs that are vital to the development of this Nation.

Senator PELL. I think one reason for that as brought out by the senior Senator from Wisconsin the other day, is that 10 percent of the manpower in the Bureau of the Budget works specifically on the 66 percent of the budget covered by defense items and the other 90 percent of the manpower work on the programs involving human resources. That obviously means that the Defense gets a free ride all too often.

I would like to ask the witness one question here perhaps of a subjective nature. Is it your view that Mr. Brown is a strong and vigorous advocate of fair employment and civil rights?

Mr. MITCHELL. It is, Senator Pell. I think he would advocate with strength and with dignity.

I would just like to say that this little sequence might help in giving my opinion of him.