He confessed, "I see no quick or easy answers. They are inherently missing." The U.S. mission was oriented away from liberal "oppression", through "recognition of the equality of women, new laws supporting labor unions and the right to strike, and educational reforms, among other challenges". Japanese foreign exchange earnings were drastically limited by high priced exports, making them uncompetitive in world marketing. The zaibatsu were able to pay off company debts and more easily acquire smaller competing companies, due to the devaluing of the yen through runaway inflation. This also, consequently, priced them out of exportation marketing. From September 1945 to August 1948 prices rose by 700% primarily due to, as Dodge suspected, deliberate policies of postwar Japanese governments. The Dodge mission, as a product of American ambitions in Japan, was to alleviate Japan from their rapid inflation rates by imposing a regime of fiscal austerity to balance the Japanese budget, establish a single exchange rate for the yen, and abolish the black market. A month after his arrival in Tokyo, Dodge submitted his revised proposal for economic stabilization. "The Dodge Line was cast; it centered on the following four objectives: balancing the consolidated national budget; establishing the U.S. Aid Counterpart Fund in place of the lending operations of the RFB; establishing a single foreign exchange rate; and decreasing government intervention into the economy, especially through subsidies and price controls." United States Budget Director After President Eisenhower's election in 1952, Dodge was appointed his director of the Bureau of Budget in 1953 with cabinet-level status, the two having met through General Lucius Clay. Dodge attributed his new job as Budget director to "being taken by the scruff of the neck and thrown into a basket of snakes." Dodge and Eisenhower shared paralleled priority to curbing inflation by reducing government spending. Prior to the revised budget for fiscal year 1954, that Dodge helped formulate, former president Harry S. Truman had a projected deficit of $10 billion. Dodge was able to reduce this deficit by half during the fifteen months he was in office. Dodge accomplished this by making use of every conceivable revenue, no matter how supposedly insubstantial. For one, he required all government agencies rank proposed programs and cut low-priority spending. Additionally, Dodge rose the rent in Government housing, admissions to national parks, and even told agencies to charge for supplying copies of records. He forbade government agencies and departments