Personal and family correspondence; official correspondence, memoranda, speeches and writings, and daily records documenting Taft's government service in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan presidential administrations in posts at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare, and Dept. of Defense, particularly as legal adviser and assistant to Caspar W. Weinberger in many of the latter's cabinet positions; and records relating to Taft's law practice in Washington, D.C. Topics include an investigation of the effectiveness of the FTC by consumer advocate Ralph Nader, meetings of the OMB Domestic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers, federal-state revenue sharing, effect of an aging population on entitlement programs, presidential impoundment of appropriated funds, tax expenditure analysis, the defense budget, economic effects of the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam, welfare reform, negative income tax, school desegregation, swine flu vaccine liability, and national health insurance.

Family correspondents include Helen Taft Manning, Barbara Hoult Bradfield Taft, John Thomas Taft, Julia Vadala Taft. Robert Taft, Jr., and William Howard Taft III. Other correspondents include Joseph Patrick Addabbo, Les Aspin, Chaplin B. Barnes, Terrel Howard Bell, Peter J. Brennan, Jack Brooks, Jonathan C. Brown, Frank Carlucci, James H. Cavanaugh, Samuel M. Cohn, Lloyd N. Cutler, Robinson O. Everett, Lewis M. Helm, Michael Horowitz, Arthur B. Laffer, Russell B. Long, Forrest David Mathews, William A. Morrill, Tip O'Neill, Richard Perle, Colin Powell, Melvin Price, Elliot L. Richardson, William V. Roth, John Derek Schoonmaker, Pat Schroeder, Carl R. Smith, Edward Byron Smith, Jr., Peter G. Stillman, David Alan Stockman, Charles M. Super, W. Paul Thayer, Strom Thurmond, John G. Tower, Caspar W. Weinberger, and Joseph Robert Wright.