The broad and diverse composition of Congress includes supporters of virtually every military concept, military program, and military service. When the executive appears to emphasize one military interest to the detriment of others, the aggrieved interests can normally find sympathetic backing in Congress, strong enough at times to alter executive policy. The congressional coalition which forms to help the military interests rejected by the executive usually consists of three elements with quite different motives. The hard core of support comes from those congressmen who are simply interested in the protection of the one particular program or service. They are reinforced, however, by a second group who support stronger military forces in general and who oppose executive cuts in any defense program. While probably the weakest element in most congressional coalitions of this nature, this group alone in the coalition is motivated by a conscious desire for a pluralistic strategy. In the House this group centered about the Armed Services Committee and most particularly its chairman, Representative Vinson. The report of the Committee in the B-36 controversy, for instance, explicitly endorsed strategic pluralism. In the Senate, the “strong defense” bloc was more nebulous, with Stuart Symington at the end of the postwar decade emerging as its most articulate member. The supporters of particular military programs and those of all military programs would not normally carry great weight in Congress or prevail against the executive if they were not able to enlist the assistance of a third, more diffuse, but larger congressional group, consisting of those who oppose presidential policies either for partisan reasons or from the desire to enhance the position of Congress in the separation of powers. The aggrieved military interest can frequently rally to its support all the inherent jealousy and antagonism which Congress has for executive leadership. While the separation of powers tends to produce an identity of function between Congress and President, it also tends to produce a divergence of policy. The rivalry of the two bodies requires each to distinguish itself from the other by advancing its own contributions to national policy. At times, one branch adopts a policy differing from that of the other branch not because it has any strong opinions on the issue, but simply because it feels that it must assert itself as at least a coequal in running the government. Continued acquiescence by one branch in the policies advocated by the other, even if they were desirable policies, would eventually lead to the subordination of the approving branch to the initiating branch.
Unusual unanimity among executive branch agencies frequently leads Congress to react with suspicion and hostility. In the unification controversy in 1947, for example, the House Committee on Government Operations was in part motivated to open hearings and search out opposition to unification because of the apparently united front of the Army and Navy in support of the interservice agreements of the previous winter.16 A few years later Carl Vinson persuaded the House of Representatives to pass the Marine Corps Bill of 1952 by stressing the virtually unanimous opposition to it by executive military leaders:
I want to make clear [he argued] that this is in all respects a congressional measure. It is not sponsored by the Department of Defense. Our Defense leaders are, in fact, strongly opposed to the enactment of this bill. The Deputy Secretary of Defense sent correspondence to the committee in opposition to the bill and the Joint Chiefs of Staff testified against it. They also testified against the bill in the Senate, but the Senate approved the principles of the bill unanimously despite that opposition. The House Committee, with the same testimony before it, has favorably reported the bill to the House with only one dissenting vote.
So there can be no doubt but that this bill, as much as any measure ever to come before the House, is by and of the Congress and not a bill drawn up in the Pentagon and passed up here for the Congress to enact.17
Under the peculiar dialectic of the separation of powers, in other words, too much executive support for a bill may lead to its defeat and too much executive opposition may lead to its passage.
Congressional military policy in the postwar decade apparently lacked any logic or consistency. All the military services and most of the significant military programs were at one time or another the recipients of congressional protection and support. Those services or groups which were weak in the executive branch appealed to Congress for support — they identified civilian control with congressional control — while the services and groups strong in the executive branch decried congressional intrusion into military affairs. In 1944–1947 when the President favored the Army views on unification, Congress supported the Navy. In 1948 and 1949, when the President opposed the expansion of the Air Force, Congress twice voted additional funds for this purpose. In 1947 and 1948 when the executive limited National Guard funds, Congress similarly increased them over the presidential requests. In 1946–1948 when there were reports of executive hostility to the Marine Corps, Congress protected the Corps by defining explicitly its functions in the National Security Act and demanding from civilian executive officials assurances of their respect for the integrity and existence of the Marines. Subsequently, when the executive branch almost unanimously opposed the Marine Corps Bill of 1952, Congress passed it anyway. In 1953, when the Eisenhower Administration cut back Air Force appropriations, a strong although unsuccessful effort was made in Congress to restore them. In 1954, when the Administration cut back Army funds, the pattern was repeated. In 1955, when the Administration wanted to reduce Marine Corps funds, Congress this time refused to go along and voted the extra money. In 1956, due to antipathy toward Secretary Wilson as well as from fear of the Soviets, Congress approved additional funds for the Air Force despite the Administration’s opposition.
The fact is Congress does not have fixed and definite views on national strategy. Congress, as a whole, is not basically pro-Army, pro-Navy, pro-Air Force, or even pro-Marine Corps. It is simply pro-Congress. Its sympathies and policies change with the needs of the times and against the desires of the executive. The one consistent result of Congress’ actions is to produce a strong trend toward strategic pluralism: the multiplication of programs and activities and a tendency to equalize the division of resources among competing military claims. Congress is frequently criticized for its susceptibility to narrow pressures and interests, its vulnerability to lobbies, its lack of responsibility and discipline, and its inability to develop an integrated approach to policy. In military affairs, however, this dispersion and openness of Congress tend to produce a policy coinciding closely with that demanded by the professional military ethic. Whatever its merits with respect to tariff legislation, tax policy, and agricultural subsidies, the strength of particularism and parochialism in Congress works to enhance the military security of the United States.
ORGANIZATIONAL PLURALISM. The principal means by which Congress tended to produce a pluralistic strategy were through investigations which furnished an opportunity to aggrieved military interests to express their views, statutory prescription of the organization of the defense establishment, statutory assignment of functions to the various military units, and, most significantly, control of the military budget. Congress’ opposition to the executive led it to oppose the centralization of authority in the executive branch and to support military units attempting to defend their independence and autonomy. In the unification controversy of 1944–1947, Congress consistently supported a more dispersed form of organization than advocated by the President. The initial presidential plan, transmitted to Congress in December 1945, proposed a single department of the armed forces with a single chief of staff. Congress compelled this proposal to be dropped. A second presidential plan worked out in June 1946 and concurred in by the Secretaries of War and of the Navy also established a single executive department to house all three services. Again opposition stopped it in Congress. Finally, in the fall and winter of 1946–947, the two services agreed to a third compromise plan which Congress eventually approved in the summer of 1947. Throughout the proceedings, the naval opponents of unification stressed the extent to which
centralized executive authority would diminish congressional influence, and Congress insisted upon a loose organization both to protect the Navy and Marines against possible Army domination and to secure congressional participation in the exercise of civilian control. In considering the National Security Act Amendments of 1949, Congress at first hesitated to create a Chairman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff and eventually agreed to the establishment of such an office only when it was surrounded by strict safeguards and had its powers narrowly defined. President Eisenhower’s reorganization of the Defense Department in 1953 which proposed to increase the authority of the JCS Chairman was disapproved by the House Committee on Government Operations, and approved in the House itself by a vote of 108 to 234. The strength and fervor of the plan’s opponents indicated that Congress had gone just about as far as it would go for the time in acquiescing in the centralization of authority in the defense establishment. In its postwar consideration of the organization of the individual services, Congress likewise favored decentralization and dispersion of authority.18 Congress also strengthened the tendency toward pluralism by preferring explicit and closely defined legal grants to broad and vague powers. In the 1947 unification act, for instance, it attempted to balance what it believed to be executive hostility to the Navy and Marine Corps by defining the functions and duties of those services in much more concrete terms than those of the Army and Air Force.
Congressional support of dispersion existed irrespective of whether there were significant units within the military establishment favoring it also. In the unification debate of 1944–1947, the interests of Congress coincided with the interests of the Navy. In 1953, substantial congressional elements opposed Eisenhower’s reorganization plan despite the absence of open opposition from within the military establishment itself. Congress’ constant concern with the dangers of the “Prussian General Staff System” reflected not so much a fear of enhanced military power as a fear of enhanced executive power.
BUDGETARY PLURALISM: ADMINISTRATIVE REDUCTIONS AND POLICY INCREASES. Highly conscious of its role as custodian of the purse, Congress virtually always feels compelled, except during a war crisis, to make some changes in the President’s military budget. Normally congressional alteration occurs in one of two forms. If Congress in general agrees with presidential military policy, and if no aggrieved interests plead strongly before it, Congress then approaches the budget with economic policy rather than military policy uppermost in its mind. Its policy goal is to reduce the military budget as much as possible without challenging fundamentally the military policy embodied in the budget. Consequently, it tends to make a broad, general, but small reduction in the proposed estimates. Congress here is acting in the general interests of economy and efficiency. It does not tend to make substantial cuts in any particular program but instead distributes its cuts throughout the budget in the hope that each program will be able to absorb its share without serious impairment. In the 1953 budget, for instance, the House Committee total reduction of 8 per cent in military appropriations was distributed among seventy-eight different items. Frequently Congress will simply cut the executive requests back to the next lower round figure. Or the demand will be made for an across the board percentage reduction in all items or for the elimination of a round sum such as one billion dollars from the total military budget. Congress at times may dictate a reduction in military spending but leave it to the executive to determine where the cuts should be made. In making these reductions Congress asserts itself against the President not in the realm of military policy but in the realm of military administration. It is accepting the basic assumptions of the President’s military planning and is challenging the military to produce the same programs with less money.
The second method by which Congress may play an independent role in the budget process is to advance a military policy and national strategy different from that of the President. Its normal way of expressing this more fundamental challenge to presidential recommendations is to support an increase in the funds allocated to one particular service or program. While congressional reductions in military appropriations are generally broad, unspecific, and small, congressional increases are usually specific, concentrated, and substantial. In the one case Congress is acting in behalf of the general interests of economy and efficiency, and in the other it is acting in behalf of the specific interests of some particular military program or service. Prior to 1940, because of its lack of interest in military policy as such, Congress seldom made significant program increases. Its typical method of asserting its role in the budget process was to reduce executive recommendations. Since World War II, however, the increased involvement of Congress in the substance of military policy has enhanced its willingness to increase specific elements in the President’s budget.* While most increases involve minor issues of policy, at times major programs and fundamental policies are at stake. The most significant instance of this type of congressional action was Congress’ increasing the authorizations for the Air Force in the 1948 supplemental budget and in the fiscal year 1950 regular appropriation. As both the President and congressional leaders agreed, a “major question of policy” was at issue in this conflict. On other occasions, mentioned above, Congress increased National Guard and Marine Corps funds, and groups within Congress made strong efforts to restore funds to other aggrieved services. In all these instances, Congress or congressional elements voiced their dissent from presidential military policy by supporting limited specific increases in the military budget.
The relatively few instances in which Congress overrode the Administration and increased the funds for a particular service or program in part reflect the extent to which Congress and President have similar views on defense policy. To some degree, however, it also reflects the extent to which the President takes into consideration likely congressional reaction to budget recommendations. The executive undoubtedly attempts to protect itself against congressional administrative reductions by asking more than it actually needs to carry out its program. Similarly, with respect to congressional policy increases, the executive tends to follow Carl J. Friedrich’s law of anticipated reactions and to refrain from making drastic cuts in any one service or program which might invite congressional attack. Executive approval in 1951, for instance, of the increase in the Air Force goal from 95 to 143 wings was dictated in part by the likelihood that Congress would appropriate the funds for the increase anyway. Similarly, early in 1956 the Eisenhower Administration requested additional funds for B-52 procurement in an apparent though unsuccessful attempt to forestall even larger congressional increases. Thus, while upon the surface Congress almost always makes a net reduction in presidential military estimates, its more subtle and pervading influence is toward a multiplication of military programs and a higher level of military spending.
The extent to which Congress’ actions on the budget further a pluralistic strategy depends, of course, on the extent to which Congress can force the executive to accept and to implement its increases in the military forces. If Congress were unable to compel adherence to its demands for increased spending, no restraints, prior or otherwise, would exist upon executive concentration upon one specific arm or service. In the absence of such authority, Congress might be able to criticize the executive and arouse public opinion, but it would be unable to apply the ultimate sanction. Consequently, the constitutional issue as to whether Congress can compel the executive to spend money which it appropriates assumes considerable significance. The issue arose most dramatically with respect to the actions of the executive impounding research and development funds in 1946, the extra money for the fifty-eight group Air Force in 1949, and the increase in Marine Corps appropriations in 1955. Few people, and certainly no one in Congress, would challenge the power of the President to refrain from spending money if he found that programs could be implemented with less funds than previously thought necessary. Congress is all in favor of administrative savings and reductions. But it draws a sharp distinction
between these and executive refusal to carry out a congressional policy decision. As Representative Mahon remarked, apropos of the impounding of Air Force funds:
I do not think it would be proper for the will of Congress on matters of policy to be circumvented. I would not object, as I know other Members would not object, to any reasonable economies in Government. But economy is one thing, and the abandonment of a policy and program of the Congress another thing.19
Congressional opinion has generally agreed with Mahon. The House Appropriations Committee condemned President Truman’s impounding of Air Force funds as the unconstitutional usurping of a function of Congress. The House Armed Services Committee termed the action a flagrant denial of the wishes of Congress and recommended legislation requiring the executive to consult with the Appropriations Committees before withholding funds. Secretary Johnson, on the other hand, defended the President’s action on the grounds of his inherent powers as Chief Executive and Commander in Chief.20
The merits of this argument are definitely with Congress. If the President has the power to sign an appropriations statute into law and then nullify a major policy embodied in that statute by refusing to spend a substantial portion of the funds appropriated, he has in effect an item veto. More than that, he has an absolute veto exercised without danger of being overridden by a two-thirds vote of Congress. Neither the Commander in Chief clause nor any other clause in the Constitution gives him an item veto or an absolute veto. Congress not the President has the final authority to determine the size and composition of the armed forces. The powers of Congress to “raise and support armies” and to “provide and maintain a navy” are positive powers not limited to establishing a ceiling on the services. The constitutional authority of Congress to provide funds for the military and other executive departments necessarily implies the constitutional power to compel the funds to be expended.
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