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Something like this has already happened in the British Parliament.Mr. Harold J. Laski, economic adviser to the British Laborparty, who enjoys peculiarly intimate relationships with our WhiteHouse, tells us that the British Parliament is hardly to be classed asa formal legislative body any more. "Its real business is to act as theCabinet's organ of registration." 2 And Mr. Carr, of the LondonTimes, confirms this view by assuring us that "the best Parliamentcan do is to confine itself to vague pronouncements of its intentionand then give wide powers to the executive to carry this intentioninto effect." 3If this is true, it is easy to understand Mr. Laski's characterizationand Mr. Carr's assurance that the Parliament is "rapidly losingpower to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister." There is, of course,no doubt that the objective of our New Dealers is a governmentnearer this type—where almost unlimited power is in the hands ofthe central government but with that power centered mostly inthe hands of the executive.It must not be supposed that these are the views of men who areoutside of the New Deal high command. On the contrary. As I havepointed out, the New Deal has had, up to recently, a great planningagency—the National Resources Planning Board. It was a bureau ofthe President's own executive office. It was headed by his uncle, avery aged but highly respected gentleman who was mere windowdressing. It was supposed to be making blueprints for projects inthe postwar world. Actually it was making a blueprint for the newsocial order. It was this board which was propagandizing the programof Dr. Alvin H. Hansen for unlimited postwar spending ofborrowed funds. But it had views also respecting our politicalmechanisms. Dr. Hansen himself outlined them. In an interviewprinted in the Chicago Journal of Commerce he said:Congress will surrender to the administration the power to tax, keepingto itself the right only to establish broad limits within which the administrationmay move.Congress will appropriate huge sums; will surrender the power of directinghow and when they will be spent.2 The American Presidency, by Harold J. Laski, Harper's, New York, 1940.Conditions of Peace, by Edward H. Carr, Macmillan, New York, 1942.*3*