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In response to the worst ever economic crisis in the U.S., the New Deal was created by the President Franklin Roosevelt. It was not just an expansion of the existing programs but a qualitatively different way to distribute federal funds to people in need. In the first chapter of my dissertation I analyze the appropriation acts for the major federal spending programs. This is the first detailed study of such nature. The first veterans' aid federal programs were started before the Civil War and were specific in how federal funds could be allocated. The Bureau of Reclamation, highways, and rivers and harbors improvements programs that followed were equally tightly regulated by the Congress, with the congressional oversight written into the law. The change in the appropriations acts did not come until 1933 when the newly inaugurated President Franklin D. Roosevelt introduced his New Deal legislature. The new federal spending programs were aimed at alleviating unemployment and providing relief during the Great Depression. Due to the economic emergency and the need for swift relief measures, the New Deal acts gave wide powers to distribute federal funds to the President and the agencies he would create. There was no Congressional oversight, no project approval process. The Congress appropriated money to general relief programs (agriculture, conservation, national industrial recovery, etc.) to use "at President's discretion." Lack of tight regulations made it possible to direct the money where it was most needed in a timely fashion. At the same time, as I show in Chapter 2, it enabled the President to allocate more funds to the swing voting states and gather political capital for the reelection. Most of the New Deal acts were labeled as emergency and had a termination date. Even though the termination date was sometimes extended, the laws were later changed making the Executive branch directed distribution of federal funds a New Deal phenomena.The New Deal funds were not e