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National Resources Committee 



be political pressure to eliminate part of the regulatory 

 activities, any regulation usually presupposes a com- 

 prehensiveness that does not lend itself readily to severe 

 reduction in scope without political repercussions. 

 Again, routine administrative work such as accounting, 

 personnel administration, correspondence and files, etc., 

 which keep hiterdependent processes functioning, are 

 difficult to reduce drastically at a moment's notice. 

 Specialized functions, such as military preparedness, 

 construction of public works, conduct of foreign rela- 

 tions, law enforcement, etc., exist, expand, and contract 

 depending upon factors other than the Government's 

 need for retrenchment. There remain the functions of 

 service, promotion, and research. Ketrenchments in dis- 

 tinctly service activities are, of course, objected to by 

 the immediate beneficiaries. Promotion and research 

 are left to bear the brunt of the retrenchment, and pro- 

 motion, which is always vulnerable, is small in amount 

 excepting as it also partakes of the nature of a service. 

 Research activities, especially those without a directly 

 interested, quickly protesting, outside beneficiary, are 

 apt to suffer a disproportionately large part of the re- 

 trenchment, unless the agency in which the research 

 is conducted makes an extraordinary effort to protect 

 the research items. 



Results of retrenchment in the past have sometimes 

 seemed especially unfortunate to the older research 

 agencies. For example, the recent Economy Acts de- 

 prived some of the long-established, well-equipped re- 

 search agencies of part of the means to carry on their 

 investigations. The Economy Acts, enacted largely to 

 help the Government financially in the emergency, were 

 followed within a few months by other acts for dealing 

 with specific emergency problems. New agencies cre- 

 ated to deal with emergency problems found need for 

 the type of information that had been diminished or 

 eliminated under the Economy Acts, and either began 

 research themselves to obtain this information or paid 

 the older agencies to do it. In some cases the immediate 

 result was a partial shift of research activities, especially 

 in the social science fields, from the older agencies to 



the newly created ones. However, as the total amount 

 of research was greatly increased, the losses of the per- 

 manent agencies were temporary, for the most part, and 

 were usually replaced by net gains. 



Prolongation of 

 Research Projects 



The statement is sometimes made that research proj- 

 ects continue long after the needs for the investiga- 

 tions have ceased to exist. Sometimes, however, the 

 continuance of appropriation requests by the agency 

 carrying on a research project does not represent an 

 undue prolongation or repetition of a small piece of 

 work. Rather it represents a shift from one phase of 

 a project to another, in accordance with a well-planned, 

 long-range schedule. A budget officer comments on 

 this problem as follows : 



The question often arises at Budget and Congressional hear- 

 ings as to whether a research activity i.s ever concluded and 

 brought to a close. * * » Probably the principal reason for 

 the frequency of the question is the fact that the basis (even 

 a project basis) on which research is presented in the Budget 

 is usually so broad that profitable and quite necessary work 

 may be conducted for a long period under a project even though 

 a continuous shift may be in process from completed phases to 

 new and unanswered problems. It is rather diflBcult to interpret 

 this point satisfactorily to Budget and Appropriation Com- 

 mittees. The comjilaint is made constantly that nothing is ever 

 brought to a close. In presenting research items the spending 

 agency is constantly on the defensive on this point. Perhaps 

 there is no adequate solution of the problem, since the use of 

 a project breakdown sufBcient to reflect frequent completions 

 of research work would usually he quite impracticable without 

 extensive aud detailed cost accounting. 



Continuance of a nominally identical project through 

 a series of years is likely to occur whenever the investi- 

 gation cannot be bi'oken down easily into independent 

 phases. Such instances are difficult for an outsider 

 without technical advice to distinguish from genuine 

 cases of projects that have outlived their period of 

 greatest usefulness. On the other hand, there is an un- 

 doubted tendency for appropriations that have once 

 been made to be continued until specifically challenged. 



APPENDIX 



Notes on Methods Used in Compiling 

 Data on Federal Expenditures for Research 



Sources of Information 



Published sources of information used in prelimi- 

 nary preparation of data include: 



The Budget of the United States Oovemmenf, 1939. 

 Annual reports of the several Departments and independent 

 establishments for the fiscal year 1937. 



Hearings on each of the major appropriation bills for 1939 

 before the respective subcommittees of the Committee on Ap- 

 propriations of the House of Representatives. 



Budget officers, and in some cases directors of re- 

 search in the various agencies, were intervewied to 

 obtain information not available in usable form from 

 printed sources. Additional information was some- 

 times obtained from memoranda received by the Com- 

 mittee on a Survey of Governmental Relations to Re- 



