The alphabet agencies, or New Deal agencies, were the
U.S. federal government agencies created as part of the
New Deal of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
. The earliest agencies were created to combat the
Great Depression in the United States and were established during Roosevelt's first 100 days in office in 1933. In total, at least 69 offices were created during Roosevelt's terms of office as part of the New Deal. Some alphabet agencies were established by Congress, such as the
Tennessee Valley Authority
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is a federally owned electric utility corporation in the United States. TVA's service area covers all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolin ...
. Others were established through Roosevelt
executive orders, such as the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
and the
Office of Censorship
The Office of Censorship was an emergency wartime agency set up by the United States federal government on December 19, 1941 to aid in the censorship of all communications coming into and going out of the United States, including its territories ...
, or were part of larger programs such as the many that belonged to the
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...
. Some of the agencies still exist today, while others have merged with other departments and agencies or were abolished.
The agencies were sometimes referred to as
alphabet soup. Libertarian author
William Safire
William Lewis Safire (; Safir; December 17, 1929 – September 27, 2009Safire, William (1986). ''Take My Word for It: More on Language.'' Times Books. . p. 185.) was an American author, columnist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter. He w ...
notes that the phrase "gave color to the charge of excessive bureaucracy." Democrat
Al Smith, who turned against Roosevelt, said his government was “submerged in a bowl of alphabet soup." "Even the Comptroller-General of the United States, who audits the government's accounts, declared he had never heard of some of them."
[Flynn, John. ''The Roosevelt Myth'', Garden City Books, 1948.] While previously all monetary appropriations had been separately passed by
Act of Congress, as part of their
power of the purse
The power of the purse is the ability of one group to manipulate and control the actions of another group by withholding funding, or putting stipulations on the use of funds. The power of the purse can be used positively (e.g. awarding extra fun ...
; the
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also ...
allowed Roosevelt to allocate $3.3 billion without Congress (as much as had been previously spent by government in ten years time), through executive orders and other means. These powers were used to create many of the alphabet agencies. Other laws were passed allowing the new bureaus to pass their own directives within a wide sphere of authority.
Even though the
National Industrial Recovery Act
The National Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 (NIRA) was a US labor law and consumer law passed by the 73rd US Congress to authorize the president to regulate industry for fair wages and prices that would stimulate economic recovery. It also ...
was found to be unconstitutional, many of the agencies created under it remained.
Partial list of alphabet agencies
Agencies created between 1933 and 1938 are New Deal Agencies.
In national security
Since the 1990s, the term "alphabet agencies" has been commonly used to describe the agencies of the
U.S. national security state. Many are members of the
United States Intelligence Community
United may refer to:
Places
* United, Pennsylvania, an unincorporated community
* United, West Virginia, an unincorporated community
Arts and entertainment Films
* ''United'' (2003 film), a Norwegian film
* ''United'' (2011 film), a BBC Two f ...
, and several were founded or expanded in the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks
The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...
. Alphabet agencies in this sense of the term may also be called three-letter agencies,
because they often use
three-letter acronym
A three-letter acronym (TLA), or three-letter abbreviation, is an abbreviation consisting of three letters. These are usually the initial letters of the words of the phrase abbreviated, and are written in capital letters (upper case); three-lette ...
s.
Cabinet departments
Partial list
Notes
{{New Deal, state=expanded
Federal assistance in the United States