September 29th Franklin D. Roosevelt Address

Sioux, Iowa

September 29, 1932

I accuse the present Administration of being the greatest spending Administration in peace times in all our history.  It is an Administration that has piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs and the reduced earning power of the people.  Bureaus and bureaucrats, commissions and commissioners have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer.

Now, I read in the past few days in the newspapers that the President is at work on a plan to consolidate and simplify the Federal bureaucracy.  My friends, four long years ago, in the campaign of 1928, he, as a candidate, proposed to do this same thing.  And today, once more a candidate, he is still proposing, and I leave you to draw your own inferences.

And on my part I ask you very simply to assign to me the task of reducing the annual operating expenses of your national government.