Recently a resolution, Senate Res. 264, was introduced in the U.S. Senate to extend the life of the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs for two years past its current expiration date of December 31, 1977. Tomorrow the Rules Committee will vote on the resolution, after which it will (one hopes) go to the Senate floor for approval. Inasmuch as select committees generally need to be reauthorized periodically, this seems a trivial development. However, this past February the Senate and the leaders of the Nutrition Committee committed themselves to folding the Select Committee into the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry. It is surprising, then, that any serious effort is being made now to revive the Nutrition Committee. Yet it is not at all surprising when one realizes that the February decision to abolish the Select Committee was a case of the Senate cutting off its nose to spite its face, one of the biggest mistakes it made this year, and most critically, a gross injustice to the poor people of this country made in the interests of "organizational efficiency."

The decision to abolish the committee was a part of reorganization of the whole Senate committee system. The reorganization plan, embodied in S. Res. 4, was the outcome of two years of research by the Temporary Select Committee on Committees chaired by Adlai Stevenson III (D.-III.). The resolution took effect February 4. The thrust of the plan was to consolidate and rationalize an overgrown system which had last been reorganized some 30 years before. In addition, there was general agreement that before 1977 senators were spread too thin over the mass of committees and subcommittees and thus could not effectively serve on any of them. For example, the average Senator served on nearly 20 committees and subcommittees, one actually had 31 different assignments.

Stevenson's method of attack was, not surprisingly, two-fronted. First, he proposed to consolidate committees along functional lines. This meant redefining the jurisdictions of committees and eliminating some special, select, and joint committees. Generally it was a cut and paste job aimed at pulling together into 15 major standing committees the major substantive issues of the nation. Many of the jurisdictional assignments made since the last committee reorganization had been arbitrary. Second, Stevenson's bill as introduced would have limited each senator to membership on two standing and one select or special committee, and to only two subcommittees per standing committee.

Just after being introduced, the plan ran into opposition. The opposition grew with time. First, the chairmen of committees that were to be abolished, such as Small Business and Veterans Affairs, protested the loss of a voice in the Senate; leaders of interest groups that dealt with these committees echoed this complaint. Second, there was opposition to some of the jurisdictional changes, such as transferring international economic policy from Foreign Relations to Banking. Third, there were technical questions about whether the Senate could unilaterally abolish joint committees. Fourth, there was opposition to what some senators, including Barry Goldwater (R.-Ariz.), thought was artificial and irresponsible pressure backers were bringing to bear for quick passage.

Finally, there were more general objections to the method of reorganization. These fell along two lines. First, some issue areas are not clearly in only one committee's logical domain and this duplication of jurisdiction sometimes is beneficial. Second, liberals were concerned that the consolidation and limitation of subcommittee membership would reduce leadership opportunities for junior Democratic members, who tend to support liberal causes and hire liberal staff. Similarly, some Republicans questioned the political wisdom of limiting minority (Republican) staff representation just as they lost the White House.

By the time S. Res. 4 had passed through its first sieve, the Rules Committee, the opposition had made some changes. Among other things, the Veterans Affairs Committee was retained; international economic policy stayed in Foreign Relations; the number of subcommittees on which each committee member could serve was increased from two to three; and the Joint Economic Committee was saved from extinction.

Both the Nutrition Committee and the Special Committee on Aging, however, remained slated for abolition when S. Res. 4 reached the Senate floor. A comparison of the fates of the two committees is useful in understanding how poor people rate in the Senate. The rationale for getting rid of both was similar. Neither committee had legislative authority--that is, any legislation they might find desirable still had to pass through some other Senate committee before it could be considered on the floor. Backers of the reorganization effort reasoned that not only did this lead to a duplication of effort, but that once consolidated into a legislative committee these special committees could more effectively act upon their research findings.

This rationale ignored a critical fact.

Both of the committees are interdisciplinary and would have had to limit their scope if incorporated in any legislative committee. Indeed, this was ostensibly the point of having a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs--to bridge the gap between the Agriculture Committee and the Labor and Public Welfare Committee. Forty percent of the members of Nutrition were to come from Agriculture, 40 per cent from Labor and Public Welfare, and 20 per cent from the Senate at large. Although this mix of disciplines was not built into the Aging Committee's structure, it clearly is part of its function. Some of the areas the Aging Committee has investigated recently include: Food Stamps and the Elderly (Agriculture has legislative jurisdiction over this area); the Impact of Rising Energy Costs on the Elderly (Interior); and Medicare and Medicaid Fraud (Finance).

Similar as the pro and con arguments were for both committees, only one survived the reorganization. The Special Committee on Aging was made a permanent Senate special committee by a unanimous vote on the Senate floor (a few Senators, however, abstained). Encouraged by this vote, Nutrition Committee Chairman George McGovern (D.-S. Dak.), Sens. Robert Dole (R.-Kan.), Hubert Humphrey (D.-Minn.), Henry Bellmon (R.-Okla.), Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D.-Mass.) and others fought to extend the Nutrition Committee on a year-by-year basis, as had been done in the past. Nutritions ranking minority member Charles Percy (R.-Ill.) made the impassioned plea:

I appeal to my distinguished colleagues to find some basis not to just say, "In the reorganization plan, what we are going to do is wash our hands of this problem [hunger and poverty]--by organization chart we will dump it over here, but in our hearts we know they are not going to do a thing with it."

That is not reorganization; that is shirking our responsibilities. I do not think that is justified by having a clean organization chart.

However, both the year-by-year extension and a final two-year extension were voted down. Yet a last ditch effort resulted in an extension of Nutrition's life through 1977; the extension had certain provisions: no staff positions could be filled as staff members left, and staff members would not be granted certain benefits accorded to staffs of other phased-out committees. It is indicative of the dedication of the staff members that none of those who had not previously planned to leave have left yet.

Although this outcome cannot be explained entirely by power group politics, a good deal can be. First, committees with large, powerful, organized constituencies--such as Aging and Veterans Affairs--were saved, in large part because of these groups' intensive lobbying for "their" committees. Second, the amended bill gave the political parties the pay-offs they wanted (assuming that some reorganization was politically necessary at the time). Specifically, the liberal Democrats got more opportunities for liberal leadership by increasing the numbers of subcommittes, and were allowed to keep the Joint Economic Committee (largely liberal in it's economic outlook); the Republicans obtained the option of naming one-third of the committee staff and of receiving some separate funds. Third, poor people still are not a potent enough political force really to affect Congressional action. If the retention of the Veterans, Aging, and Joint Economic Committees can be explained by the power of their respective groups, the loss of the Nutrition Committee can be explained by the fact that poor people still are not an organized voting bloc. It is ironic that those people and groups with the least independent influence on Congress are deemed least in need of a committee to listen to them, while those who will have great influence regardless of the committee structure or who is in office get special committees anyway.

It has been assumed up to this point that the Nutrition Committee has been a very constructive and productive force in the Congress; that it has been a place where poor people's needs were recognized and means to help them were developed; and that in representing the poor it did something that the Senate had failed to do previously and is still unwilling to do. The history of the committee proves these assumptions.