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V. Organizing Government Staff Services for Full Employment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 September 2013
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Since the time of Adam Smith, we have more or less passively accepted the type of economy which tossed us from boom to depression and back again. The adoption by Congress of current proposals for “full employment” legislation would constitute a substantial divergence from this passive course. The representatives of the American people would declare, essentially, that they propose to do whatever is necessary to make the national economy provide employment for all men and women who wish to work. Acceptance of this policy implies simultaneous acceptance of the responsibility for devising plans for influencing the economy and creating governmental machinery for carrying them out. Hence, our purpose here is twofold: first, to suggest the tasks to be performed by the federal government in maintaining full employment; and second, to raise the foreseeable questions about the organizational arrangements within the federal government that may be required to accomplish this end. At the present stage in the evolution of the rôle of government in the maintenance of full employment, much that will be said must necessarily be speculative.
But political scientists have as much right—and obligation—to speculate as do economists. The economists have speculated effectively as to the pleasant state of affairs that will obtain when there are jobs for all who want to work. They have speculated fruitfully as to ways of achieving full employment. It is high time, now, that the political scientists contribute the results of their own speculation. What, for example, are to be the responsibilities of government in the “full-employment age”? How will government discharge these responsibilities? How will the federal government formulate an annual employment and production budget and the complex integrated network of national policies essential to the achievement of full employment? The political scientists may also be expected to consider how the collaboration between the federal, state, and local governments and each sector of private enterprise essential to this objective will be obtained. They, too, are obligated to evolve a prescription for the planned, harmonious administration of these integrated policies by a considerable number of agencies of the federal government. When they essay such speculation, they will conclude that the “Full Employment Act” focuses attention on the need for effective governmental staff services as no previous legislation has done.
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- Maintaining High-Level Production and Employment: A Symposium
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- Copyright © American Political Science Association 1945
References
1 Specifically, the “Full Employment Act of 1945,” as revised after hearings before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, required in Section 3 (a): “The President shall transmit to Congress at the beginning of each regular session the National Production and Employment Budget (hereinafter referred to as the National Budget), which shall set forth: (1) for the ensuing fiscal year, and such longer period as the President may deem appropriate, an estimate of the number of employment opportunities needed for full employment, the production of goods and services at full employment, and the volume of investment and expenditure needed for the purchase of such goods and services; (2) current and foreseeable trends in the number of employment opportunities, the production of goods and services, and the volume of investment and expenditure for the purchase of goods and services, not taking into account the effects of the general program provided for in paragraph 3 hereof; and (3) a general program, pursuant to section 2, for assuring continuing full employment, together with such recommendations for legislation as he may deem necessary or desirable. Such program shall include whatever measures he may deem necessary to prevent inflationary or deflationary dislocations or monopolistic practices from interfering with the assurance of continuing full employment.”
2 This summary statement of the type of appraisal required is based upon “The Problem of Estimating Future Expenditures by Consumers, Business, and State and Local Governments,” a memorandum submitted by Harold D. Smith, Director of the Budget, in connection with his statement on the Full Employment Bill (S. 380) before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, Aug. 30, 1945.
3 Indeed, critics of the Full Employment Bill declare the preparation of such estimates impossible; e.g., Schmidt, E. P., Can Government Guarantee Full Employment?, Postwar Readjustments, Bulletin No. 13 (Washington, 1945), p. 24.Google Scholar This same viewpoint is expressed in an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Aug. 22, 1945, p. 16, which states in part: “Only last May the War Manpower Commission's unemployment forecast for August 1 overshot the mark by 30 per cent. Yet the ‘full employment, full government spending bill’ now before a Senate committee, would require the President to estimate the number of available jobs as far as 18 months ahead.”
4 The responsibility for assisting the President in “the formulation of the fiscal program of the government” is specifically assigned to the Bureau of the Budget by Executive Order No. 8248 of Sept. 8, 1939. This differs somewhat from popular assumptions as to the responsibility, of the Treasury Department.
5 Macmahon, Arthur W., “The Future Organizational Pattern of the Executive Branch,” in this Review, Vol. 38 (1944), p. 1183.Google Scholar
6 Loc. cit. in note 5, p. 1182.
7 For a description of this activity of the Bureau of the Budget, see Marx, F. Morstein, “The Bureau of the Budget: Its Evolution and Present Rôle,” II, in this Review, Vol. 39 (1945), pp. 880 ff.Google Scholar
8 For further description of such a proposal, see “Summary of Testimony of Paul G. Hoffman before the Senate Banking and Currency Committee, Aug. 30, 1945,” p. 9.
9 Much has already been written about the functions of the President's Executive Office and its organization. Most of this is pertinent to the determination of how the President shall be assisted in formulating a program for full employment. For example, see Holcombe, Arthur N., “Over-All Financial Planning Through the Bureau of the Budget,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 1 (1941), pp. 225 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the group of papers making up a symposium on “The Executive Office of the President” by Louis Brownlow, Harold D. Smith, Charles E. Merriam, William H. McReynolds, Lowell Mellett, and Luther Guliek, ibid., Vol. 1 (1941), pp. 101 ff.
10 See sec. 5 of S. 380 as reported to the Senate by its Committee on Banking and Currency, Sept. 22, 1945.
11 See Seventh Report of the House Special Committee on Postwar Economic Policy and Planning, “Postwar Public Works and Construction” (1945).
12 Full Employment in a Free Society (New York, 1944), p. 32 and pp. 166 ff.
13 Ibid., p. 32.
14 House of Representatives, Doc. No. 128, Part 2, 78th Cong., 1st Sess.
15 For example, see H.R. 4068, a bill “to provide for aid in industrialization of under-developed areas and for other purposes.”
16 See History of the Employment Stabilization Act of 1931, a report to the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency, July 30, 1945, 79th Cong., 1st Sess., Committee Print No. 3.
17 Beveridge, op. cit., p. 36, says: “Full employment cannot be won and held without a great extension of the responsibilities and powers of the State exercised through organs of the central government.” Virgil Jordan, president of the National Industrial Conference Board, more colorfully—and less objectively—expanded this view in an address before the St. Louis Chapter of the Controller Institute of America, May 31, 1945, as follows: “For us the plain fact is that the political accessories of full employment cannot be attached to the American chassis without a complete alteration of its fundamental design.”
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