One government run program from the New Deal that could be effective during the Great Recession of today is the Economy Act of 1933. It was designed by the Roosevelt Administration to balance the budget deficit by cutting the salaries of government workers and veterans. Initially, the act was supposed to free up $500 million and allow the President to reorganize executive branch agencies (to a limited extent) that were ineffeciently run.
I think that the Economy Act had good intentions, but I disagree with the provision to cut the benefits of veterans—men who risked life and limb for the United States of America. If a bill similar to the Economy Act of 1933 was passed without the provision to cut the pay of veterans, then I think the bill would benefit Americans and help to ease the current economic crisis America is in because. In my opinion, the most beneficial part of the bill would be the president’s limited ability to reorganize the executive branch and all of the agencies that have sprung up in the past few decades that are a part of it, like the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Transportation, and Treasury, not including all the independent agencies, boards, commissions, committees, and bureaus that fall under the umbrella of the executive branch.
In the 1930s, there weren’t nearly as many executive agencies as there are today, even though many got their start, ironically, as part of the New Deal. President Obama passed passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in order to ensure that “Recovery Act funds are expended for projects that further the job creation, economic recovery, and other purposes of the Recovery Act and are not used for imprudent projects.” In addition, I think that all the expenditures of the executive branch itself should be made public knowledge and society’s concern. If we reorganized executive agencies, of which there are, in my opinion, too many, then we would cut the national deficit and be able to focus those remaining executive agencies towards providing inexpensive public options for services whose rates are ever-increasing, like utilities and healthcare, which are necessities that are, for the most part, privatized.
I think we should give the president the power to cut government salaries and reorganize executive agencies so that Americans will have cheaper public options for necessary public services and so the government will be spending less money in the executive branch that they can use elsewhere.
Lee, Mordecai. Institutionalizing Congress and the Presidency: The U.S. Bureau of Efficiency, 1916-1933. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
Feldmeth, Greg D. "U.S. History Resources"
http://home.earthlink.net/~gfeldmeth/USHistory.html (31 March 1998).
Botti, Timothy J. Envy of the World: A History of the U.S. Economy and Big Business. New York: Algora Publishing, 2006
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,748895,00.html
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Memorandum-for-the-Heads-of-Executive-Departments-and-Agencies-3-20-09/
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