William Howard Taft: The Cabinet and the Congress

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      President Taft came to believe during the course of his administration that a number of reforms were needed to make the executive and legislative branches of the government more responsive to one another. In a message to Congress in 1912, he suggested a plan to allow a member of the Cabinet to be questioned by Congress when legislation affecting his department was being considered. Taft's suggestions were eventually implemented. The opening portion of his message to Congress on December 19, 1912, appears below.

      This is the third of a series of messages in which I have brought to the attention of the Congress the important transactions of the government in each of its departments during the last year and have discussed needed reforms.

      I recommended the adoption of legislation which shall make it the duty of heads of departments — the members of the President's Cabinet — at convenient times to attend the session of the House and the Senate, which shall provide seats for them in each house, and give them the opportunity to take part in all discussions and to answer questions of which they have had due notice.

      The rigid holding apart of the executive and the legislative branches of this government has not worked for the great advantage of either. There has been much lost motion in the machinery due to the lack of cooperation and interchange of views face to face between the representatives of the executive and the members of the two legislative branches of the government. It was never intended that they should be separated in the sense of not being in constant effective touch and relationship to each other. The legislative and the executive each performs its own appropriate function, but these functions must be coordinated.

      Time and time again debates have arisen in each house upon issues which the information of a particular department head would have enabled him, if present, to end at once by a simple explanation or statement. Time and time again a forceful and earnest presentation of facts and arguments by the representative of the executive, whose duty it is to enforce the law, would have brought about a useful reform by amendment, which in the absence of such a statement has failed of passage. I do not think I am mistaken in saying that the presence of the members of the Cabinet on the floor of each house would greatly contribute to the enactment of beneficial legislation. Nor would this in any degree deprive either the legislative or the executive of the independence which separation of the two branches has been intended to promote. It would only facilitate their cooperation in the public interest.

      On the other hand, I am sure that the necessity and duty imposed upon department heads of appearing in each house and in answer to searching questions, of rendering upon their feet an account of what they have done or what has been done by the administration, will spur each member of the Cabinet to closer attention to the details of his department, to greater familiarity with its needs, and to greater care to avoid the just criticism which the answers brought out in questions put and discussions arising between the members of either house and the members of the Cabinet may properly evoke.

      Objection is made that the members of the administration having no vote could exercise no power on the floor of the House and could not assume that attitude of authority and control which the English parliamentary government have and which enables them to meet the responsibilities the English system thrusts upon them. I agree that in certain respects it would be more satisfactory if members of the Cabinet could at the same time be members of both houses, with voting power, but this is impossible under our system; and while a lack of this feature may detract from the influence of the department chiefs, it will not prevent the good results which I have described above, both in the matter of legislation and in the matter of administration. The enactment of such a law would be quite within the power of Congress without constitutional amendment, and it has such possibilities of usefulness that we might well make the experiment; and if we are disappointed the misstep can be easily retraced by a repeal of the enabling legislation.

      This is not a new proposition. In the House of Representatives, in the Thirty-eighth Congress, the proposition was referred to a select committee of seven members. The committee made an extensive report and urged the adoption of the reform. The report showed that our history had not been without illustration of the necessity and the examples of the practice by pointing out that in early days secretaries were repeatedly called to the presence of either house for consultation, advice, and information.

Source: Congressional Record, 62 Cong., 3 Sess., pp. 895-898.

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