Alphabet agencies

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. 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. Others were established through Roosevelt executive orders, such as the Works Progress Administration and the Office of Censorship, or were part of larger programs such as the many that belonged to the Works Progress Administration. 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 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." While previously all monetary appropriations had been separately passed by Act of Congress, as part of their power of the purse; the National Industrial Recovery Act 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 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, and several were founded or expanded in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Alphabet agencies in this sense of the term may also be called three-letter agencies, because they often use three-letter acronyms.

Cabinet departments

Partial list

Notes

1. NATO phonetic alphabet
2. APCO radiotelephony spelling alphabet
3. Alphabet soup (linguistics)
4. Alphabet soup
5. Government agency
6. Alphabet Inc.
7. Spelling alphabet
8. Trevor Aaronson
9. Three-letter acronym
10. Police code
11. Capitalism in America
12. Kazakh alphabets
13. Swedish alphabet
14. Acronym
15. Albanian alphabet
16. Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation
17. Puerto Rico Reconstruction Administration
18. Alphabet murders
19. Great Depression in the United States
20. Komi alphabets