The language of the bill, I think, pretty well covers the fact that any administration of the legislation would have to take into consideration factors which my good friend has brought up. Mr. GOLDBERG. As I said, I have not studied the language. I just wanted to make that general observation about it. Mr. PUCINSKI. Mr. Secretary, as you know, the State of Illinois in the last session of the legislature passed an employment practices bill. Two or three weeks ago one of the newspapers in Chicago ran a very elaborate article on the problems that employers who want to comply are running into in being unable to find skilled workers to meet their peculiar demands. This, I imagine, is a problem that we have to consider when we consider this legislation. I was wondering if, as Secretary of Labor, you have any views on this subject? Mr. GOLDBERG. I think this committee has already given consideration to these problems and as a committee has discharged its responsibilities in this area by recommending to the Congress for passage the manpower and training bill and the youth employment bill. Both of those bills are designed to afford help to the employers of the country and to people generally to improve the skills and upgrade the skills of our work force. I am very hopeful that the Congress will act upon the good advice of this committee. This bill, as you know, was passed by the Senate, the manpower bill, and is now before the Rules Committee. I am very hopeful that there will be early action by the Rules Committee so that the House can follow the good advice given by the members of this committee to the Congress and complete action on this bill. We desperately need in this country the upgrading of the skills of our work force. As our technology improves it is becoming more and more important to have a skilled work force, and the manpower training bill and the youth bill which this committee has considered and favorably acted upon will be important weapons in this area. Mr. PUCINSKI. I gather then, Mr. Secretary, from your testi mony Mr. ROOSEVELT. The Chair will have to state that in order to be fair to the remaining gentleman on the committee who has not had a chance to ask questions that the gentleman from Illinois has 1 more minute. Mr. PUCINSKI. Every place you go around this Congress we have the minute rule. It is getting to the point now where you can't defend legislation any more because you are boxed in by time regulations. But I was going to ask you this question, Mr. Secretary, on the basis of your statements here and replies to the questions I have propounded that this whole field of job discrimination, hiring discrimination requires an approach from a broad standpoint. This legislation itself is not a panacea. This legislation has to be complemented by a manpower bill, by the youth retraining bill, by some consideration as to whether or not there are cost factors involved in hiring older people. This is something that has to move on a broad front and each of these respective proposals completes each other if I understand your analysis correctly this morning. Mr. GOLDBERG. You have said exactly the right thing. In this area, because it would be unfair to employers of America, it seems to ง me, to pass a bill for equal employment opportunity and then criticize them for not employing minority groups, if the minority groups are not afforded the opportunity to become skilled. We have to provide both aspects as a measure of the real sincerity of our intention to deal with this problem. Mr. PUCINSKI. Thank you very much. Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. Goodell? Mr. GOODELL. Mr. Secretary, it is always a great pleasure to have you here. I noticed your reference to the manpower bill. I am very pleased you did make reference to it. As you know, I supported that bill as the ranking minority member on the subcommittee. I hope we will get action on it. You come here, Mr. Secretary, speaking for the President on this legislation? Mr. GOLDBERG. That is correct. Mr. GOODELL. Some of us have gotten the impression up to now that this bill might be some sort of political orphan, playing third fiddle to a number of other items here in the legislative priority list of the President. Is this bill rated 57th or 83d or 113th in the President's priority list or where is it? Mr. GOLDBERG. When a bill has the sponsorship of a committee as eminent as yours and the support of the President I would say it is not an orphan, it has pretty good parents. Mr. GOODELL. That is very well put. Then is it a high-priority in the administration program? Mr. GOLDBERG. A bill of this type has the full support of the administration. We have found that when you get into this priorities business that it is self-defeating. The Congress of the United States, the President proposes, the Congress disposes. Mr. GOODELL. You would not want to classify this as a highpriority item? Mr. GOLDBERG. All of our measures are high-priority items. Mr. GOLDBERG. Every piece of legislation that we have recommended or supported is urgently required for the benefit of the country. Mr. GOODELL. This has no more urgency than any other piece of legislation you have recommended. Mr. GOLDBERG. I have mentioned a piece of legislation already recommended by this committee which is before the Rules Committee. In order to get enactment it has to get through your committee first and go over there. So I would say that we regard this to be a very important bill. I don't want to bypass your question. Mr. GOODELL. Well, Mr. Secretary, you have said that the administration will work cooperatively and this committee has the appreciation and support of the administration, that you strongly endorse the principle although you have not read the bill. Would you agree that it is the usual procedure with any major piece of legislation for the administration to send a draft bill embodying its recommendations. Mr. GOLDBERG. Not invariably. We have had very important legislation which has emanated from the Congress. I would like to cite some examples of, which we have supported enthusiastically and which have been enacted into law. The area redevelopment bill which we are very proud of as an administration bill was developed due to the great efforts of members of this committee and Senator Douglas over on the Senate side. We supported essentially his bill. Mr. GOODELL. You are not saying you did not send up a proposed area redevelopment bill from the administration, are you? Mr. GOLDBERG. We sent up a bill which was based almost entirely upon what Senator Douglas proposed. Mr. GOODELL. But you did send a bill up with the President's endorsement, a draft bill to the Congress, and pressed for its enactment. Mr. GOLDBERG. I believe in that instance that is correct. I was going to give some instances where the Congress took the entire responsibility of developing a bill and we respected the leadership that Congress displayed. The Senate of the United States last year passed five measures dealing with migratory labor, a subject which I regard to be of high importance for the benefit of neglected workers in America. Those bills were developed under the leadership of Senator Williams and Congressman Zelenko of this committee. We did not send up a draft bill. I appeared in wholehearted support of the bill which emanated from the Congress and the Senate took action. I hope the House will take action on those bills. Mr. GOODELL. Mr. Secrtary, can you name any major piece of legislation that the administration supports now where you have not sent a draft bill up here which you are pressing upon the Congress as a proposal? Mr. GOLDBERG. I named five which we regard to be major legislation just now. Mr. GOODELL. Do you feel this is in the same category as the migratory labor bill? Mr. GOLDBERG. Again, I don't want to attempt to say that this problem or that problem is of one category or another. By the way, the migratory bills are antidiscrimination bills. Most of the migratory laborers of our country are members of the minority groups, Negroes, Puerto Ricans, and so on. Mr. ROOSEVELT. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. GOODELL. Yes. Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. Secretary, is it not also true that the Pension and Welfare Disclosure Act which I believe you fully supported and which is now before the Senate and which passed this committee resulted from congressional initiation and you did not send up a draft bill but you allowed us to work it out on our own and then you got behind it wholeheartedly and we have high prospects of passing it? Mr. GOLDBERG. You anticipated a statement I was going to make. I think in a partnership between the Congress and the administration which we are anxious to foster, it is appropriate always that the administration send up some measures, Congress initiate some measures. This is the way traditionally legislation has been enacted. Mr. GOODELL. Certainly, I feel if you have given any high priority to the legislation we have had the tradition that the President will send up a draft bill. I feel the lack of this very deeply, as a good many others do in the Congress in respect to this legislation. Mr. GOLDBERG. May I say this, Mr. Goodell. In the normal course the President is going to send, as are now being developed, 15 or 16 specific legislative proposals to the Congress, specific bills. What higher priority could we give after this committee, getting on to this job, has developed a bill, before the normal problems which are involved in administration clearance and the Budget Bureau, and so on, take place, than coming here with my appearance here this morning and saying we endorse the principles of your bill. Isn't that a high priority action of our administration? Mr. GOODELL. I am glad to hear you say that this bill has high priority. It is just that I feel very deeply that it is an exercise in futility if the President sits on his hands and just says that he supports it. He is going to have to push, to recognize the realities we face with reference to this legislation and to give it very high priority and very high urgency. I might say that I am very glad that the development by this committee of a bill has finally smoked the administration out so they finally came up to give us a comment. For a while I thought they were not going to say a word about it. Finally we have gotten a very esteemed, respected member of the highest echelons of this administration and we are glad we have. I hope it is not going to end there. I would like to ask you the question: Whatever happened, Mr. Secretary, to the high priority of a civil rights bill that the President promised in the campaign of 1960 when he was a Senator. He said it would be among the first orders of business in January 1961? Mr. GOLDBERG. Of course, let me respond to the first part of your statement if I may, Congressman. I think it is quite significant and perhaps it may not be regarded so, that the first measure I am testifying on in this Congress is this bill. Mr. GOODELL. You are 1 year late on civil rights already so far as the President's commitment is concerned. Mr. GOLDBERG. I don't believe it can be fairly said that this administration is late at all in the field of civil rights. I know of no subject which has occupied the attention of the administration more than the civil rights area. I claim proudly more progress in this area in the last year than has ever taken place in American history. Mr. GOODELL. Mr. Secretary, my question refers to legislative proposals. I commend the President for his action in the Executive field. You have chronicled a good many actions he has taken in the Executive field for which we all commend him. You may, by chronicling all these Executives measures, imply that we need no legislative movement. Senator Kennedy, as a campaigner, said we need it, it had highest priority. It will be among the first orders of business in January 1961, and therefore we never heard a word from him. We have not yet heard a word from him. We have not yet heard a word from him on it. Mr. GOLDBERG. I want again to remind you, Congressman Goodell, that you have heard from the President in the message that we all heard when he delivered it to the Congress in his state of the Union message in which the President said, and I want to again repeat what he said, "This administration has shown as never before how much could be done through the full exercise of Executive powers, through the enforcement of laws already passed by the Congress-through persuasion, negotiation, and litigation, to secure the constitutional 77736-62-pt. 2- -21 rights of all ***" and then, "*** there is still much to be done by the Executive, by the courts, and by the Congress." This is scarcely a policy statement of the President saying that he does not believe that congressional action is required. Mr. GOODELL. Mr. Secretary, if I may conclude, I would just like to get the record clear on this point. On September 9, 1960, in Los Angeles, speaking to a largely Negro audience, Senator Kennedy as a campaigner said: The President must give us the legal weapons needed to enforce the constitutional rights of every American. He himself must draft the programs, transmit them to the Congress, and fight for their enactment, taking his case to the people if the Congress is slow in acting. Such legislation is already being prepared. I have asked Senator Clark, of Pennsylvania, and Congressman Celler, of New York, to prepare a bill embodying all the pledges of the Democratic platform. That bill will be among the first orders of business when a new Congress meets in January. We not only heard nothing from the President in January or February or March, but nothing whatever on civil rights legislation last year. Mr. DENT. Will the gentleman yield? Mr. ROOSEVELT. I am sorry, the Chair will have to rule that this subject matter is not before this committee, that it is a matter before the Judiciary Committee. Mr. GOODELL. I object to the chairman's ruling. We are talking about civil rights and this is a civil rights bill. Mr. ROOSEVELT. I rule the question out of order. Mr. GOODELL. Accepting the chairman's decision, may I say I hope and pray that we are not going to have some pious expression of support for this legislation but that the President is going to fight alongside of us on a bipartisan basis which is the only basis on which we are ever going to get this kind of legislation enacted. Mr. DENT. Mr. Chairman, I would like to make the record and keep it clear that inasmuch as we now have the approval and the tacit orders as it were of the minority, that the President use all of his pressures, all of the available means at his command, not alone for this piece of legislation which is on his agenda but for all of the present legislation and, we will not hear from the other side that the President is using undue influence upon the Congress. Mr. GOODELL. May I say I hope he is not going to put this at the bottom of the list behind all the other things that he feels are important on which he has to appeal to the various chairmen from the South? Mr. ROOSEVELT. The Chair will let the gentleman from Illinois make one statement and then the committee is not properly in session. Mr. PUCINSKI. I just want to join my colleague from New York in his prayers. I am going to pray just as fervently that the minority party is going to join us in trying to change some rules in the other body so that we can move ahead with civil rights legislation in this Congress. When they are ready to join us in that, then I think we are going to be able to do everything that we have to do to eliminate discrimination on a lot of other things. Mr. ROOSEVELT. Mr. Secretary, on behalf of the committee I want to thank you very greatly for your presence, for your very helpful testimony. I know that you will fully implement the pledge you |