Reorganization Act of 1939: FDR Creates Executive Office of the President, Permanent Staff Infrastructure of Modern Presidency

Opening

On April 3, 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Reorganization Act (P.L. 76-19), which authorized him to propose reorganizations of the executive branch subject to congressional veto (then constitutional under Humphrey’s Executor and pre-Chadha doctrine). Under this authority, FDR issued Executive Order 8248 on September 8, 1939, establishing the Executive Office of the President (EOP) as a permanent institutional unit comprising the White House Office, the Bureau of the Budget, the National Resources Planning Board, the Office of Government Reports, and the Liaison Office for Personnel Management. The creation of the EOP transformed the American presidency from a constitutional office with minimal staff (fewer than 50 professional employees before 1939) into a permanent institution with its own extensive bureaucracy. Over 86 years, the EOP has grown from ~600 employees in 1939 to roughly 1,800 today, with the White House Office alone employing about 450. The Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council, the Council of Economic Advisers, the Office of the United States Trade Representative, the Domestic Policy Council, the National Economic Council, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and the Office of the Vice President are all EOP components. The 1939 Reorganization Act is the quiet but foundational act establishing the institutional presidency.

What Happened / Key Facts

The Reorganization Act was the result of the Brownlow Committee’s 1937 report, Administrative Management in the Government of the United States. The Committee — Louis Brownlow (University of Chicago public administration scholar), Charles Merriam (political scientist), and Luther Gulick (public administration theorist) — had been appointed by FDR in March 1936 to design a modern presidency capable of managing the expanding New Deal administrative state. The Committee’s famous conclusion: “The President needs help.”

The report recommended:

• A permanent professional White House staff
• Consolidation of budget, planning, and personnel functions under the President
• Extension of civil service protection
• Creation of an “Executive Office of the President”

Congress initially resisted. The 1938 version of the bill failed, in part because it was perceived as another court-packing-style power grab following Roosevelt’s failed February 1937 court-packing plan 1937-02-05–fdr-court-packing-plan-executive-vs-judiciary. After the 1938 midterm elections weakened the New Deal coalition, a more constrained version passed in April 1939.

The key structural features:

1. Presidential reorganization authority. The Act authorized the President to propose reorganization plans that became law unless either House of Congress disapproved (by concurrent resolution — a legislative veto eventually invalidated in Chadha 1983-06-23–ins-v-chadha-legislative-veto-unconstitutional). Between 1939 and 1983, more than 125 reorganization plans were implemented under this authority; since Chadha, only three have been enacted, and the reorganization authority has been allowed to lapse (it must be specifically renewed each Congress).

2. Executive Office of the President. EO 8248 (September 8, 1939) moved the Bureau of the Budget (previously in Treasury) to direct presidential supervision; created the White House Office as a formal staff entity; established the National Resources Planning Board and other coordinating units.

3. Bureau of the Budget transformation. Moving BoB from Treasury to EOP was the most consequential component. BoB (renamed OMB in 1970) became the principal instrument of presidential control over executive-branch spending, regulation, and policy development. Every modern administration uses OMB to implement its agenda across agencies; OMB’s director is a Senate-confirmed position but operates as a senior presidential adviser.

4. Civil-service expansion. The Act increased the scope of positions protected by competitive civil service, shielding career federal employees from political removal — a provision that Trump I’s 2020 Schedule F executive order (reversed by Biden, reinstated by Trump II in 2025 as “Schedule Policy/Career”) has attempted to undo.

Why This Event Matters

The Reorganization Act and EO 8248 created the institutional apparatus that makes the modern imperial presidency operationally possible. Four structural consequences:

1. Policy capacity. Pre-1939 presidents had no dedicated policy staff. Roosevelt’s Brain Trust (1932-37) was an informal ad hoc group. After 1939, the EOP created permanent policy capacity: the Council of Economic Advisers (1946), the National Security Council (1947), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (various incarnations from 1951 forward), the Council on Environmental Quality (1969), the Domestic Policy Council (1970s forward), the National Economic Council (1993), the Homeland Security Council (2001, later merged into NSC). Each of these units gave subsequent presidents the capacity to shape federal policy independently of the departments and agencies staffed by career civil servants.

2. Centralized regulatory review. OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), created by Carter and expanded under Reagan EO 12291 (1981), became the principal choke-point through which all significant executive-branch regulation must pass. OIRA’s cost-benefit-analysis requirement has become the structural vehicle for de-regulatory administrations to block regulations agencies want to issue, and for regulatory administrations to compel agencies to regulate. The 1939 Act made this possible by moving BoB into the White House.

3. Institutional memory and coordination. The permanent EOP staff structure means that presidential transitions involve change at the top but continuity of institutional capacity underneath. This both stabilizes governance and, critically, creates the infrastructure that makes “policy whiplash” possible when administrations change — each new president can activate the EOP’s accumulated capacity for rapid policy shift.

4. Legitimation of the administrative state. By putting the administrative state’s coordinating apparatus inside the White House, the 1939 Act made the administrative state itself appear more politically accountable — the President is elected, and the President directs the administrative state through the EOP. This legitimation argument has been foundational to 86 years of administrative-law doctrine.

Critically for the unitary-executive movement: the 1939 EOP structure has been cited both by supporters of strong executive authority (the President needs operational capacity to fulfill his constitutional role) and by opponents of the administrative state (the EOP’s control of the agencies makes them effectively executive instruments, undermining the “independent” agency framework). The Trump II 2025 argument that every executive-branch employee must be ultimately removable by the President rests, in part, on reading the EOP’s managerial authority as an Article II imperative.

Broader Context

The 1937 Brownlow Report is one of the foundational documents of 20th-century American public administration. Its approach — the President as chief executive of a unified, professional, hierarchical administrative apparatus — became the standard model against which both New Deal-style administrative governance and Reagan-era administrative reform have been measured.

Louis Brownlow, Charles Merriam, and Luther Gulick were drawn from the University of Chicago’s public-administration tradition, itself indebted to German-tradition administrative theory. The report’s recommendations reflect a managerial-progressive vision that has influenced every subsequent reorganization of federal government, from Eisenhower’s reorganization plans (1953-58) through the Department of Homeland Security creation (2002).

The Act’s legislative-veto mechanism for reorganization plans (§5) was specifically singled out by Chadha in 1983 as a paradigm example of unconstitutional legislative vetoes. Post-Chadha, the reorganization authority has been effectively dead; subsequent reorganizations (DHS 2002, DNI 2004) have required stand-alone authorizing legislation, which has made reorganization politically more difficult but has not addressed the underlying EOP structure.

Research Gaps

• FDR White House file on EOP formation (March-September 1939)
• Comparative analysis of EOP growth across administrations (ProPublica and CRS publish partial datasets)

Related Entries

• 1934-06-19–office-legal-counsel-founded-doj-reorganization
• 1935-05-27–humphreys-executor-fdr-independent-agencies-removal-limit
• 1937-02-05–fdr-court-packing-plan-executive-vs-judiciary
• 1947-07-26–national-security-act-executive-power-architecture
• 1983-06-23–ins-v-chadha-legislative-veto-unconstitutional
• investigation-map-april-2026