ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF ROBERT S. WALKER

``Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee rooms is Congress at work.''

We are all familiar with Woodrow Wilson's aphorism. Our modem equivalent is that ``the real work of Congress is done in its committees.'' This is especially cited when our constituents come to Washington to watch the proceedings in the House chamber and wonder why more Members aren't participating in debates. They are told that Members are shaping legislative proposals in the committee rooms by listening to testimony, debating the merits of various measures, and finally reporting a bill to the floor.

Sadly, however, if one of those very same constituents attended a committee hearing or markup, he would discover the same situation which prevailed on the floor of the House often is mirrored in the committee room. A Member of Congress may vote on a measure which will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars without attending a single hearing, reading a single bit of testimony, or listening to let alone participating in the debates which lead to the marking up and the reporting of the bill to the House floor. Ironically, he need never attend a committee meeting to vote on the measure before the committee.

This method of participation by non-participation is known as proxy voting, which allows a Member who will be absent from the committee because of illness or official business to authorize another Member to cast his vote in his stead.

Seemingly sensible on its surface, proxy voting allows Members who are supposed to be at two or three different places at once to figuratively, if not literally, do exactly that.

This method of doing business has its deleterious consequences however.

Measures which come before the House should be thoroughly debated. It is vital that each Member offer constructive criticism to the measures before his or her committee. By not participating in the debate which leads to the reporting of a measure to the House floor, Members are demeaning the deliberative process, with the anomalous result that absent Members who know little about the measure on which they are voting by proxy can and often do overturn the votes of these informed Members who did fully join in the debate before their committee.

The Republican House Members of the Joint Committee on the Organization of Congress made three separate proposals in an attempt to reform the proxy process: 1) a complete ban on proxies, 2) a ban only at the full committee, or 3) a ban on the use of proxies when such votes affect the outcome of a vote taken by Members present. All three proposals were rejected by the House Democrats on the Joint Committee.

The rationale for this rejection is that given the many competing demands on a Member's time that proxy voting, although not ideal, is one of those necessary evils that enable the system to work.

Indeed, one of the universal areas of agreement among Joint Committee Members was that Congressmen are asked to do too many things and therefore are ``spread too thin.''

Yet when Vice Chairman Dreier offered at least a partial solution to the problem of having to be in too many places at the same time by reducing the number of standing committees of the House from twenty-two to sixteen, all six Joint Committee House Democrats voted against the proposal, thus killing it.

Perhaps the Democrats did not like the specifics of the Dreier plan, but given the bipartisan complaint of time constraints, it was their obligation to, at least, put forward an alternative concept on committee reorganization. Instead, they chose to play a game of ``Catch 22.'' ``Proxy voting is necessary because there are too many committee meetings to attend. But we can't eliminate any committees.''

It is instructive to note that five House committees -- the Committee on Appropriations, Rules, Standards of Official Conduct, Veterans Affairs, and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence -- do not allow proxy voting. In fact, clause 2(f) of rule XI of the Rules of the House of Representatives state that ``no vote by any Member of any committee or subcommittee with respect to any measure or matter may be cast by proxy unless such committee, by written rule adopted by the committee, permits voting by proxy. . . .''

The presumption of the House is against proxies and indeed for a short time as the result of the work of one of this Joint Committee's predecessors, the Bolling Committee, proxies were completely banned from the House. However, it was the Democratic Caucus in 1974 which overturned that reform and has opposed a proxy ban ever since.

Proxy voting is one of those things that shake the public's confidence in their elected representatives. The people rightly expect that their Members of Congress should be fully engaged in the people's work. Eliminating proxy voting would be one of the many small steps that are necessary to restore the public's trust in this House as an institution that is accountable to those who have elected her.

Robert S. Walker.