March 16, 2016

Today’s ETW Document of the week is a memo to President Kennedy from his senior advisor Ted Sorensen written 53 years ago today, on March 16, 1962, as the Administration was working on the text of the transportation message to Congress that the President would submit on April 5 of that year.

Part I of the memo relates the disputes between Kennedy’s White House advisors and the Department of Commerce over proposed federal regulation and deregulation of transportation. Part II relates to the proposed new program for urban mass transit, including the resistance by Congressional Appropriations Committees to the prospect of giving contract authority to fund mass transit grants, as well as what Sorensen called “The Peculiar Los Angeles Problem.”