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Letter to Dr. Erwin D. Canham, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on the Federal Budget.

December 08, 1959

[ Released December 8, 1959. Dated December 2, 1959 ]

Dear Dr. Canham:

Your letter of November nineteenth arrived in my office only several days after I had received a report from the Director of the Bureau of the Budget on improvements in budgeting, present and contemplated. It occurred to me that this report was directly relevant to the questions you have raised, and I am taking the liberty of forwarding a copy of it to you.

Thank you for sending me so useful and constructive a letter on these important matters.

With warm regard,

Sincerely,

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Note: Dr. Canham noted in his letter that the National Chamber had been pleased by the emphasis on budget reform m the 1960 Budget Message and hoped that a similar statement would be included in the Budget Message for 1961. He recommended giving the following deficiencies high priority in any action taken: (1) the failure of Congress to review and act upon the spending program as a whole; (2) the failure of Congress to review the principal aspects of Federal budgeting as a whole--revenues, expenditures, and the debt; (3) the use of "backdoor" spending methods which authorize obligations and/or expenditures outside normal budgetary control processes; (4) the inability of the President to exercise the veto power on items in appropriation legislation or other legislation which authorizes expenditures.

Dr. Canham's letter and the President's reply were released in Washington. The report of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget was made public as part of this release.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, Letter to Dr. Erwin D. Canham, President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, on the Federal Budget. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/234772

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