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Show Lord's Way of Fixing Up the Budget the executlce department " heads put In their estimates for the fiscal year ending June 30. 1024. they called for $2(X),000,000 more than Die available Income. General Lord, director of the budget bureau, took the preliminary estimates and went over each one of them painstakingly, striking strik-ing out what appeared to him less pressing expenditures, till he got all the departmental estimates down to a point where they added up to n total not exceeding the three billion two hundred million limit set by President Presi-dent Harding. Then, not telling the departments Just how he reached his conclusions, lie notified each of them of the figure which he regarded as the limit. He told them they must somehow try' to live within that limit, and he Instructed them to revise their estimates accordingly. But lie did not stop there. First, he Indicated the total only and let each department mnke such adjustments adjust-ments within that total as It saw fit In revising Its estimates. Second, he permitted each department to put In a supplemental list of Items over and above the revised estimates which the department chief considered essential. Then with the p.ellmlnary estimates, the revised estimates the supplemeo- nil lists, nnu tables of tonne, appropriations appro-priations nil before lilm. General Lord held hearings on the revised estimates esti-mates and listened to each nepart-nient nepart-nient chief plead his case. A a result re-sult of these hearings, adjustments In the revised estimates were made vherever necessary. ' The final estimates that went to congress Included those adjustments. Some of the departments which were particularly aggrieved over the tentative ten-tative revision of their estimates found thnt when the final figures went in they had been Generously treated. As the years go by, It Is General Lord's hope thnt the representatives of the budget bureau will come to know more about the different departments de-partments than th .department chiefs themselves. |
