Legislative Control over Administration: Congress and the W.P.A

Under our Constitution, the national administration is an agent of the people acting through the Congress and the President. The legislature determines policies, establishes or authorizes the creation of administrative agencies, appropriates funds for their work, and attempts to control their operations by directions and limitations before and checks after the administration acts. But the establishment of controls at once effective and not unduly restrictive has become increasingly difficult as the business of government, legislative as well as administrative, has expanded and become more technical. Consultation with and advice to administrative agencies by citizens and their organizations are important, but they supplement rather than supplant legislative control, which remains the principal means for supervising the administration. The standard works on public administration discuss methods of control, but do not deal in detail with this relation between legislatures and particular agencies. The present analysis of congressional control of the Work Projects Administration has been undertaken in the belief that “case studies” may be useful for verification, modification, or contradiction of general propositions about legislative control of administration.