Louis Brandeis

“ Indeed, an important, if not the chief, reason for employing these incorporated agencies was to enable them to employ commercial methods and to conduct their operations with a freedom supposed to be inconsistent with accountability to the treasury under its established procedure of audit and control over the financial transactions of the United States. [8] It is true that a kind of audit of the Fleet Corporation's transactions was later made by the general accounting officers pursuant to special legislation, said to have been enacted at the request of the Shipping Board. ”

“ Even if section 2 (c) has no application, because the contracts were not entered into pursuant to the power delegated by the President in 1917, it does not follow that the claims fall within the jurisdiction of the Comptroller General. For the Fleet Corporation is an entity distinct from the United States and from any of its departments or boards, and the audit and control of its financial transactions is, under the general rules of law and the administrative practice, committed to its own corporate officers, except so far as control may be exerted by the Shipping Board. ”

“ Nor is there any basis for the further suggestion of Skinner & Eddy that the Shipping Board has power to make settlement, if it can; but where a settlement is not made and a suit by the United States is brought or threatened, the Comptroller General is the official to whom must be presented all claims for credit in such suit. It is true that the Merchant Marine Act did not modify section 951 of the Revised Statutes or impair the right of a defendant to a credit, if sued by the United States upon a Fleet Corporation contract. ”