Senate creates Truman committee, March 1, 1941
On this day in 1941, the Senate by unanimous consent created a special investigative committee charged with stamping out waste, corruption and profiteering in the U.S. defense industry, which had moved into high gear as World War II swept across much of Europe. (While the initiative received unanimous backing, only 16 out of 96 senators were present in the chamber.)
The Senate chose Harry S. Truman, a Missouri Democrat first elected in 1934, as the committee’s chairman. Truman had conceived the idea that bore fruition on this date soon after completing a 10,000-mile inspection tour of military bases. During his 1940 trip, Truman found repeated instances of contractors being paid set fees regardless of their performance. He found that certain firms were receiving more than their fair share of contracts.
The waste and profiteering Truman encountered during his trip led him to use his subcommittee chairmanship within the Committee on Military Affairs to start investigations into abuses while the nation prepared for a possible war. That effort morphed into the decision to form a special panel and to place Truman at its helm.
Senior military officials told President Franklin D. Roosevelt that in their view the legislative oversight panel was a recipe for trouble. Reaching back in history, they cited the problems caused during the Civil War by the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. Capitol Hill leaders, however, convinced Roosevelt that Truman was a reliable sort and, moreover, could not do too much damage with a committee budget initially pegged at $15,000.
Truman chose his first target to produce quick results. He knew that an investigation of waste and inefficiency in military housing projects would save lots of money while garnering favorable publicity for the committee. On April 23, 1941, he opened hearings into cost overruns generated by the construction of new military facilities at such places as Fort Meade in Maryland, Indiantown Gap Military Reservation in Pennsylvania, and Camp Wallace in Hitchcock, Texas.
Under Truman’s leadership, the committee beat expectations. Its members held hundreds of hearings and saved taxpayers as much as $15 billion, a huge sum at the time. Truman developed a great deal of valuable expertise in dealing directly with business, labor and farm leaders as well as with a wide range of executive branch agencies. His widely praised work helped him overcome the image he brought with him when he entered the Senate as a machine-bossed political hack.
The activities of the Truman committee ranged from criticizing the “dollar-a-year men” hired by the government, many of whom proved ineffective, to investigating a shoddily built New Jersey housing project for war workers. The committee’s activities put Truman on the cover of Time magazine.
In 1944, when Democratic leaders vetoed retaining Vice President Henry Wallace on the ticket, Roosevelt agreed to accept their choice of Truman, who would become president in April 1945.
SOURCE: WWW.SENATE.GOV