Letter to Percival F. Brundage, Director, Bureau of the Budget, on the Hoover Commission Report on Budget and Accounting.
[Released April 29, 1956. Dated April 26, 1956]
Dear Mr. Brundage :
I have reviewed your analysis of the Hoover Commission's Report on Budget and Accounting, transmitted with your letter of April 23, 1956• Your plans for carrying out the Commission's recommendations represent a constructive approach toward realizing the Commission's objective of strengthening the budget and accounting processes of the Federal Government.
The Hoover Commission's Report on Federal budgeting and accounting is a document of great public significance. I join the citizens of the Nation in thanking the Commission for this as well as for the other important studies which it has made. Moreover, because the formulation and administration of the Federal Budget are vital responsibilities of the Chief Executive, I am especially and personally appreciative of the contribution which Mr. Hoover and his distinguished associates have made in proposing improvements in budget and accounting systems which will enable more effective management and control of the programs administered by the executive branch.
I consider it desirable and necessary that the executive departments and agencies intensify their efforts, along the lines indicated in your analysis, to establish budget and accounting systems that will provide better financial information and enable both the improvement of our budget presentations and the strengthening of our budget controls. In addition, I approve of your plans to have the Bureau of the Budget give greater emphasis in its work to the evaluation and advancement of administration in the executive agencies, as a means of more rapidly bringing about improvement in organization and management, including more effective budgeting and accounting practices, throughout the executive branch.
I commend to the Congress its consideration of those Hoover Commission budget and accounting proposals which are particularly pertinent to the role and functions of the Congress, with the assurance that the executive branch will cooperate fully in actions to strengthen the appropriation and financial control processes of the legislative branch.
Sincerely,
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Note: In releasing the exchange of letters between the President and Mr. Brundage, the White House announced that two of the recommendations were already in effect: No. 1, which called for an expansion of the Bureau of the Budget in order to make more effective the discharge of its managerial and budgeting functions; and No. 10, which proposed that there be established under the Director of the Bureau of the Budget a new Staff Office of Accounting headed by an Assistant Director for Accounting. The White House announcement also states that many of the other proposals of the Budget and Accounting report were also being adopted at once and others were being discussed with the Congress and the other departments of the executive branch.
Mr. Brundage's letter and the analysis are published in "Hearings on Supplemental Appropriation Bill, 1957, Before the Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, House of Representatives," Part II.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letter to Percival F. Brundage, Director, Bureau of the Budget, on the Hoover Commission Report on Budget and Accounting. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/233140