PAUL O'NEILL PAPERS, 1975-77

The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was established in July 1970. The Office's primary responsibility was to assist the President in preparing the budget and to keep the President informed on the progress of government agencies with respect to legislation proposed, and projects initiated or completed. OMB also provided coordination so that overlapping legislation was reviewed by all Federal organizations potentially affected.

Paul O'Neill joined OMB during the Nixon administration and served as Assistant Director, then Associate Director. There are no Nixon-era papers in the collection, however. As Deputy Director during the Ford administration, O'Neill assisted OMB Director Roy Ash and Ash's successor, James T. Lynn. O'Neill often represented them in meetings with the President, and he frequently signed outgoing correspondence as Acting Director.

The collection is a chronologically arranged file of O'Neill's outgoing correspondence with the President and his staff; Federal agency officials; state governors and civic leaders; and federal and state legislators. The materials range from courtesy notes and summaries of annual reports of Presidential advisory bodies, to substantive comments on particular programs, proposals, and budget concerns.

Related Materials (October 1992)
Selected budget-related Ford Library materials include White House Central Files Subject File categories FG 6-16 (Office of Management and Budget) and FI-4 (Federal Budget-Appropiations); budget review files in the White House Special Files Unit, the Files and Papers of James M. Cannon, and the Papers of Arthur F. Quern. See also the Hyde-Wayne interview collection. Several collections offer outstanding material on economic issues, presumably including the budget, e.g. Arthur Burns Papers, L. William Seidman Files; William Simon microfiche; and U.S. Council of Economic Advisers Records.