Federal Highway Aid and the Depression

Archive Report

Proposed Suspension of Federal Aid for Roads

President hoover in his message transmitting to Congress the budget for the fiscal year 1934 recommended that the appropriation for federal highway aid for that year be restricted to the amount needed for expenditures under authorizations already made. He proposed that further authorizations for federal aid for highway construction be withheld “until the financial condition of the Treasury justifies such action.”

The annual federal highway allotment to the states, which stood for a number of years prior to 1931, at $75,000,000, was increased to $125,000,000 for the fiscal years 1931, 1932, and 1933. These sums were further augmented by emergency appropriations totaling $200,000,000, the large additional funds for road building being advanced as a means of giving work to ...

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