GSA ACTIVITIES INCLUDED IN RENEGOTIATION Mr. JONAS. Does GSA include procurement as well as construction? Mr. HARTWIG. That includes procurement. Mr. JONAS. Does it include construction of public buildings? Mr. HARTWIG. No, sir. I think that would be subject to an exemption. Public building construction would not be defense connected. Mr. JONAS. When you listed GSA, I wanted the record to show what GSA operation is covered and what is exempt. Now, the construction of public buildings, you say, is exempt. Mr. FENSTERSTOCK. So far as the act is concerned, it subjects to renegotiation all contracts of the General Services Administration. However, the Board, under its exemption authority, has exempted a large part of the procurement of the General Services Administration. Mr. JONAS. Why? Mr. FENSTERSTOCK. One of the provisions of the act is an exemption of contracts that do not have a direct and immediate connection with the national defense, and the Board was directed by the Congress to establish in its regulations those areas of the procurement of the various departments named in the act which do not have a direct and immediate connection with the national defense. Pursuant to that direction, the Board in its regulations has set out various categories of procurement by the General Services Administration which, in its opinion, do not have a direct and immediate connection with the national defense, and those categories as specified in the regulations are exempt. Mr. JONAS. The only GSA contracts, then, that are subject to renegotiation are those of procurement for national defense purposes? Mr. HARTWIG. Yes. And even there I think the commercial articles exemption comes into play. Mr. JONAS. Where purchases are through catalogs? Mr. FENSTERSTOCK. That kind of thing, yes, sir. Mr. EVINS. Mr. Minshall? Mr. MINSHALL. No further questions. Thank you. Mr. EVINS. I notice your travel expense jumps from $29,000 in 1964 to $45,000, about a 50-percent increase. Are you going to do a lot of traveling next year? Mr. HARTWIG. This, you know, sir, is a limitation. We do not spend the money if we don't require it. Actually, this limitation is reduced from $50,000 to $45,000. Mr. EVINS. I notice you are paying $10,000 to the Veterans' Administration for tabulating services. Do you want to buy your own equipment? Mr. HARTWIG. I don't think it would be worth while for us to buy our own equipment. Mr. EVINS. You need $10,000 to use the facilities of the Veterans' Administration? Mr. HARTWIG. Yes, sir; and the information we derive from that is used to make these reports to Congress. LT. GEN. LEWIS B. HERSHEY, DIRECTOR OF SELECTIVE SERVICE 1 Includes capital outlay as follows: 1964, $260,000; 1965, $174,000; 1966, $256,000. 2 Selected resources as of June 30 are as follows: Reimbursements from non-Federal sources are derived from repayment of lump-sum leave pay. Mr. THOMAS. It is certainly a pleasure to welcome the gentlemen from the Selective Service. It is always nice to have with us the distinguished Lieutenant General Hershey, the Director, and Colonel Iliff and Colonel Franck. You have an excellent budget here. Mr. Evins and Mr. Giaimo will work it out. Mr. EVINS. General, do you want to make a statement? We would all like to hear you. I think you should make a statement and you will facilitate matters by doing so. GENERAL STATEMENT General HERSHEY. We are asking for about a million, six hundred thousand more, and the great majority of it is in travel of inductees, because, as you know, we are in a loop where one year we are down and the next year we are 50,000 or 60,000 up, due to the fact of the Berlin buildup. For that reason this happens to be a bad year. Of course, there is always a bad year for some reason or other. We have about $200,000 in there, trying to pay clerks we have not paid for getting them to work overtime. About $233,000, something like that, we have got to put in for rent because they have changed the rules. Mr. THOMAS. What was that rule change, General? General HERSHEY. In the old days they picked them up the first year after we rented them. Now they pick them up the second year. So we get stuck. Where we have to go out and acquire space they don't acquire for us, in the old days they immediately picked this up the next year. I think we have around $230-some-thousand in there for this. We got a little bit on equipment. I am sure it is not for file cases. But that is pretty near a million. Mr. THOMAS. And $137,000 for ADP. General HERSHEY. Oh, yes, we are trying to go into the future $137,000 worth. Mr. THOMAS. General, I hope your experience does not jibe with ours. Every time we give an agency some ADP money, automatic data processing equipment money, we cannot find any corresponding reduction in the salary costs. I think yours is about the same way, is it not? Where is the value of this ADP equipment? We cannot find a corresponding reduction. General HERSHEY. Frankly, I probably am not looking as industriously as some people are to find some of these savings. I have a small agency and I just can't afford efficiency. Mr. THOMAS. It is not too small; it has a pretty good sized budget. Mr. EVINS. Almost $50 million. Mг. THOMAS. That is not pocket change. General HERSHEY. We are doing pretty well, for people being abolished. Mr. JONAS. This is the first time I have ever heard it expressed that way-you can't afford to be efficient. General HERSHEY. We can't. Mr. THOMAS. The general has been hanging on. They haven't wound him up. Mr. EVINS. In 1964 the general had $40,217,000, and for 1966 he wants 49,500,000. This is a pretty big jump up in 2 years there, General. We are going to put in the record pages 1 through 4, and page 5, which is the gist of your budget statement. Personnel costs are up, personal benefits are up, travel is up, transportation remains the same, and your rent is substantially increased. We will put in the chart on page 5. The general says he needs all of this. (The pages follow:) GENERAL STATEMENT There is presented herewith justification for the request of $49,500,000 with which to operate the Selective Service System, the National Advisory Committee on the Selection of Physicians, Dentists and Allied Specialists, and the National Selective Service Appeal Board during the fiscal year 1966. The Selective Service System is organized to carry out the primary functions of registration, classification, selection, and presentation for induction in the Armed Forces of the men necessary for maintenance of those forces at the determined strength and by means of deferment, urges men into these occupations and activities necessary to the maintenance of the national health, safety, or interest. It also determines the availability of men for a selective callup from the Standby Reserve. The collateral functions of administration, planning, training, and records management are also performed by this agency. For 1965 and 1966, there is included the additional function of assisting in the manpower conservation program by forwarding I-A 18-year-old registrants for physical examination. The use by the Selective Service System of the services of over 48,000 uncompensated officials is unique in Government. These patriotic citizens will become less enthusiastic in their giving of service unless adequate clerical personnel is provided. The request for fiscal year 1966 includes the provision for clerical service in project 30. The Selective Service System, which is decentralized, is organized on a pyramidal structure, the broad base of which is the local and appeal board element where the contact is maintained with 291⁄2 million registrants by the uncompensated members of the System and the local and appeal board clerks who staff the 4,063 local boards and the 94 appeal boards. The next largest group is composed of the 56 State headquarters; the relatively small group which comprises the national headquarters is the apex. The strength of the Selective Service System lies in the fact that classification is the responsibility of those uncompensated civilians living in the communities with the registrants. They have no pecuniary interest in their position but perform their tasks as a patriotic service. The size of the calls or the number of inductions in any given period directly affects only one cost factor; namely, selectee travel. This estimate for fiscal year 1966 is based on the induction of 125,000 registrants, compared with 95,000 in 1965 and 150,781 actually inducted in 1964. Executive Orders Nos. 10166 and 10185 created the National Advisory Committee on the Selection of Physicians, Dentists, and Allied Specialists. Pursuant to these orders, the Selective Service System is required to furnish funds for its operation and provision is included herein. Executive Order No. 9988 created the National Selective Service Appeal Board. The Selective Service System is required to pay the members of the board and "to furnish suitable office space and other necessary facilities and service." This requires more personnel in national headquarters to the extent necessary to meet this requirement. This budget includes a request for funds to accomplish this purpose. The principal factors in this request for an increase in 1966 over 1965 are: (1) The increase by one-third in the number to be inducted; (2) financing more fully local board clerks' pay based on the workload changes including full cooperation in the manpower conservation program; (3) the increase in rent due to changes in the GSA rental procedure: (4) equipment replacement which cannot be undertaken this year with the limited appropriation; (5) administrative travel has been increased (this is detailed under applicable projects); and (6) for 1966, a request is included to experiment with the use of automatic data processing in the recording of data on individual registrants at an estimated cost of $137,000. This cost is identified in the several objects and projects. |