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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Harold Smith began to operate. He was the first Budget Director who had ever given any reality to this Title II, which was to the effect that the Budget Director, in addition to assisting the President in the preparation of the budget, scrutinizing the departmental budgets, and so forth, should make recommendations for the improvement of the efficiency of the operation of the departments and various bureaus. That's a harmless sounding thing. And presumably the Budget Director did from time to time, as he was examining their budget, say to a bureau, through one of his subordinates, “Well, look here, it looks to me as though this money that you're getting year after year for this function hardly accomplishes as much as $50,000 a year ought to accomplish. What have you done? Are you sure that it's being done in the most economical way? How many people have you got? Where do you get them? What do they do when they're not doing this? Couldn't this function be merged with another function in your department and the same people operate both of them?” Presumably he did improve the efficiency of operation.

But Harold Smith took that title and studied it. It seemed to him that this was the big part of the budget act, and that to improve the efficiency of the operations of the government was the primary job of the Bureau of the Budget. I think this idea came to him when he was in the State of Michigan. He was an officer of the State of Michigan under Governor Frank Murphy. That was how President Roosevelt





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