Letter to Arthur F. Burns, Chairman, Council of Economic Advisers, Concerning Report of Cabinet Committee on Small Business

Dear Mr. Chairman:

I was particularly pleased to receive and read the Progress Report of the Cabinet Committee on Small Business which you and your colleagues have been working on for many weeks.

This Administration is engaged in a continuing effort to ensure that the American economy is based on a strong, broad foundation of healthy free enterprises--small and large. The first Progress Report of the Cabinet Committee on Small Business is a further forward step in this effort.

The scope of the Report's analysis and recommendations demonstrates that no constructive potential avenue of improvement-either legislative or executive--is being overlooked in our search to widen the opportunities for small businesses in America.

We must continue to strive to eliminate obstacles hindering the growth of small businesses. I also firmly believe that uneconomic or sweeping nostrums have no place in this Administration's program; such measures usually help no one and eventually injure all. I am glad to see that the Committee emphasizes the importance of maintaining competition and of continued vigilance against any outcroppings of monopoly; also that the Committee's report recognizes the need of preserving and increasing efficiency in business, and that it has focused on positive measures to help small businesses get started and grow.

I want to assure you that I shall give the recommendations of the Committee the prompt and favorable consideration they deserve--both in preparing for executive action and in drawing up the Administration's legislative program for the new Congress. I shall ask the departments principally concerned to advise me further.

I wish to thank you and your Cabinet colleagues for this forward-looking and useful progress report, and I urge the Committee to continue its studies of small business problems and to keep its findings current in order that no opportunity will be neglected to strengthen this vital segment of the American economy.

Sincerely,

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER