The Administration: A Sense of What Should Be

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department in two ways. Vertically, he aims to consolidate its eight existing agencies into three major bureaus with separate secretaries for Health, Education and—instead of the New Dealish-sounding Welfare—Individual and Family Services. That would give it a structure roughly akin to the Pentagon's, with its Secretaries of the Army, Navy and Air Force and a Defense Secretary above all. He is also contemplating a horizontal reorganization, moving men of similar skills from one agency to another rather than leaving them to grow stale in one office.

Key to the Door. When the department was created in April 1953, all three levels of Government plus private individuals and groups in the U.S. were spending $42 billion a year on health, education and welfare. Today the figure is $95 billion, including $40 billion on health, $45 billion on education, $10 billion on welfare. Shortly before Gardner took office, Johnson signed two bills of historic importance. One was the $1.3 billion Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which he called "the key that can unlock the door to a Great Society." The other was Medicare. Together, the two bills guaranteed that HEW would be the real engine of the Great Society.

Today, in advance of Gardner's reorganization plan, it is still a hodgepodge of eight disparate agencies. In the past, they have often behaved like independent satrapies; under Gardner's cross-pollinizing influence, they are growing less parochial and are beginning to look beyond their borders. The eight:

∙ SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION.

The biggest and probably best-run HEW agency, it spends $1 billion a year administrating payments of $25 billion to 21.7 million Americans.

∙ OFFICE OF EDUCATION. Once a haven for musty-minded traditionalists, OE was given new life by Sputnik and turned into a giant by Lyndon Johnson. Its $3.9 billion budget is 100 times greater than it was in 1950, and it promises to keep growing. In the past three years, Congress has enacted 24 major education bills that affect almost all of the 54 million students in the U.S. Eventually, the Office may also get the preschool children of the poverty war's Head Start program. To ensure that Head Start momentum is not lost when slum children enter grammar school, the Office is preparing legislation for a "Follow Through" program for the lower grades.

∙ PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE. With a $2.5 billion budget—40 times greater than it was in 1945—PHS embraces the Surgeon General's office and a spate of field hospitals, clinics and research centers from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Indian reservations. Its most notable component is the National Institutes of Health (NIH), whose research budget has ballooned in 20 years from $3,000,000 to its current $1.1 billion. The research paid off in the cracking of the genetic codes, the discovery of fluorides and the development of a German measles vaccine. Still, the results of NIH research were barely reaching those who needed them. A major shift in emphasis was L.B.I.'s $340 million program to build special heartdisease, cancer and stroke centers across the U.S. to make the benefits of new medical knowledge available to all.

∙ FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION. Though its budget is only $63 million, Gardner says FDA "makes up in controversy what it lacks