Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies
SUBJECT: 1966 Budget Expenditures
Last November, I wrote certain Departments and Agencies that it was imperative to hold 1966 expenditures to the absolute minimum required for carrying out essential responsibilities.
Today, the need is doubly imperative. As the rising costs of Vietnam are added to the private demands generated by a prosperous highly employed economy, the necessity to guard against inflation takes on added urgency.
In this period, your careful control over every dollar of Government spending will not only avoid direct waste of our resources, but will also help prevent the indirect and inequitable waste that results from the deterioration of the dollar's value.
Therefore, I am asking that you
--Report to the Budget Director no later than April 1 your best and most up-to-date estimate of Fiscal 1966 expenditures for your agency--for the administrative budget and for the major trust funds (i.e., those shown separately in table B-4, page 390, of the 1967 budget) as well.
--Identify the programs involved and explain the reasons for the differences if your latest estimate for 1966 differs from the amount shown for your agency for 1966 in the 1967 budget document.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON
Note: For a statement by the President in response to a detailed report by the Director, Bureau of the Budget, on cost reduction efforts by Federal civilian agencies during fiscal year 1966, see Item 603. See also Items 181, 197, and related material in the Index under the heading "Cost reduction."
Lyndon B. Johnson, Memorandum on the Need for Controlling Expenditures by Federal Agencies Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/238363