Letter to the Chairman, House Appropriations Committee, Concerning the Need for Additional Funds for Advance Planning of Public Works.
[ Released November 7, 1945. Dated November 6, 1945 ]
Dear Clarence:
I wish to bring particularly to your attention my communication to the Speaker under date of October 18, 1945, (House Document No. 343), regarding the supplemental estimate of appropriation to permit the Federal Works Agency to continue and expand the program of advance planning of State and local public works under the basic authority contained in Title V of the War Mobilization and Reconversion Act of 1944.
You may recall that in my message to the Congress on September 6, 1945 (House Document No. 282), I invited attention to the fact that the appropriation thus far made for this purpose was entirely inadequate and that I would therefore request additional funds in order to speed up this important activity during the reconversion period. It was pursuant to this that I submitted my request of October 18, 1945, for an additional appropriation and contract authorization.
The matter of advance planning is one in which I have always had a close, personal interest. To have available for immediate construction a well developed and completely planned shelf of worthy public works projects is the best insurance against the waste which results when a program of construction is undertaken without detailed drawings and specifications being available. The fact that the law requires the repayment to the Treasury of advances when construction is undertaken tends to insure that the public works planned by the use of such funds are needed public projects of worthwhile character as the local communities are thereby using their own credit to finance this work.
It is my earnest hope that your Committee will give prompt and favorable consideration to the recommendations made in the message referred to above.
Very sincerely yours,
HARRY S. TRUMAN
[Honorable Clarence Cannon, Chairman, Appropriations Committee, House of Representatives]
Note: The President's communication of October 18 (printed in House Doc. 343, 79th Cong., 1st sess.) requested an additional appropriation of $50 million for fiscal year 1946 and an additional $57.5 million in contract authority for the Federal Works Agency. The details of the proposal, as set forth in a letter of the Director of the Bureau of the Budget, are also printed in House Document 343.
For the President's message of September 6, see Item 128 above.
Harry S Truman, Letter to the Chairman, House Appropriations Committee, Concerning the Need for Additional Funds for Advance Planning of Public Works. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/230303