Fdr's Budgeteer and Manager-In-Chief: Harold D. Smith, 1939-1945 by Mordecai Lee

Author:Mordecai Lee [Lee, Mordecai]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Executive Branch, American Government, Political Science, Public Affairs & Administration
ISBN: 9781438485355
Google: SkonEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 57285189
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 2021-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

First Supplemental National Defense Appropriation Bill, October–December

After the first quarter of FY 1944, and based on FDR’s requests, Congress considered an omnibus bill covering additional defense appropriations for the rest of the fiscal year. One item requested by the president was to increase BOB by $355,300 (US House 1943e). This was partly to recapture the requested funding that had been rejected in the Independent Offices bill and partly to cover other additional costs. Smith wanted to hire eighty-one new staff and transfer ninety-one positions currently funded by temporary and emergency funding to permanent funding. It was an ambitious request, particularly because the bill was not being heard by the friendly Independent Offices Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, but rather by its Subcommittee on Deficiencies. Clarence Cannon (D-MO), chair of the committee and subcommittee, described the political context of the bill when Smith testified in October:

The greatest complaint that we are having today from the laity, so to speak, is that every bureau and department of the government is overstaffed. You hear it in radio broadcasts; you see it in the magazines; you read it in the columns … that every office in the Government is full of people who have nothing to do, who are falling all over each other. And you hear a great many circumstantial stories, many of which are apocryphal, but widely circulated to the effect that there is much overstaffing. (US House 1943f, 844)

In other words, the conservatives had conquered the media and public opinion. Their political claims trumped facts. Smith tried his best to deal with this political storm surge. He emphasized the facts coming from the statistics BOB routinely released on federal employment levels, gave examples of agencies with diminished staffing, described the overall personnel cuts BOB had pushed for, and—closer to (his) home—said that BOB’s efforts to reduce overstaffing or duplication could be improved by expanding BOB’s staff. That would give it greater ability to monitor personnel levels. For example, BOB management studies often led to reductions in personnel because they recommended such things as cutting red tape, streamlining procedures, and eliminating unneeded questionnaires. These were not glamourous and none led to headline results, but they were fact-based and consistent. At the time, one of the politically popular ideas on the Hill was to order a 15 percent across-the-board cut in personnel in all agencies and departments. Smith gently argued against it because it was not merit-based and not targeted. He also made the point that, for example, firing federal employees working in government arsenals might reduce the head count, but someone (presumably in the private sector) would have to provide staffing to manufacture munitions. Smith doubted that, by definition, federal employees at arsenals were less efficient than if they worked for business doing the same thing. “I suspect that in many cases they are more efficient than people working elsewhere, or certainly just as efficient” (868).

The most withering and sarcastic interrogation was conducted by John Taber (R-NY), the ranking minority member on the committee and the subcommittee.

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