August 11, 1965
PAGE 20019
STATEMENT ON LEGISLATION CREATING THE DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Connecticut.
I compliment the Senator from Connecticut for bringing this measure so far along the road to passage.
It is clear that at this point the Senate is about to pass the measure. This is a greatly changed situation from that which we faced a few years ago when we considered a similar housing bill from the Committee on Government Operations. It is good to see this proposal finally approaching passage.
The issue before the Senate today, I say to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, is purely and simply one of good organization and good administration, in a word, of good government. We have today in the Housing and Home Finance Agency over a score of programs which this Congress has instituted -- some very large, some small; some as new as the Housing Act of 1961, and others which have been in operation for a quarter of a century or more.
All are related to each other, and each is important to the sound growth and the present and future prosperity of urban communities in every one of the 50 States. Administering them is an independent agency of Government which has served us well in the past, but which has been overwhelmed and outdated by the tide of change. Its administrative structure was established at a time when the principal problem confronting the Government in this area was to overcome the shortage of housing for returning veterans of World War II. Onto that structure have been grafted a dozen or more new programs, some directly concerned with housing and others with much broader though closely related urban matters -- urban renewal, urban planning, community facilities, mass transportation and conservation of open space land near our cities.
Mr. President, the mission of the Agency has outgrown its form.
The lines of authority within the Agency are the result of historical accident. Statutory authority had been conferred on the heads of organizations prior to the incorporation of these organizations into the Housing and Home Finance Agency when it was originally established. Other functions have since been transferred to the Agency from other parts of the Government. As a result, the statutory authority for some of the major functions of the Agency is not vested in the head of the Agency. This means that the mechanism for coordination among the many complex programs of the Agency, with their tremendous impact on our local communities, is inadequate and often ineffective. Of course, all powers of the new Department would be vested in the Secretary as head of the Department.
Perhaps most important of all, there is no continuing and appropriate voice in the highest councils of Government to represent the problems of the people living in our urban areas.
There is no agency -- no adequate instrument -- to which the President, the Congress, and the States and local communities can turn for overall advice and assistance in connection with all the interrelated problems of housing and urban development. This is what the bill seeks to remedy.
Before we finish this debate we shall, I surmise, be talking about everything under the sun from States rights to builders' profits. So be it. But as we enter this tangled maze of arguments and counter arguments, I would hope that we will not forget the real, central point: And that is, quite simply, that the bill reorganizes these already existing programs and administrative agencies into an executive department -- headed by a Secretary who sits in the President's Cabinet -- with crystal-clear lines of authority conforming to an elementary principle of good business management, in or out of Government.
Mr. President, let us see if we can put this whole matter into a little historical perspective.
Back in the 1920's, there was not a program in Government which we would recognize today as a housing or primarily an urban program. There was nothing but the leftovers of a modest and not very successful World War I housing program conducted by the U.S. Housing Corporation -- long since out of business. This was how matters stood until the great depression struck.
That depression, as we all know, brought the home financing and building industries of the Nation to a virtual standstill. During an extended and dreadful period, far more homes were foreclosed than were built or sold -- except at distress sales. Something had to be done, and as ever, necessity proved the mother of invention. One experimental program followed another. HOLC, the Home Loan Bank System, the rudimentary beginnings of a secondary mortgage market device, mortgage and home improvement loan insurance, resettlement housing, public housing, and I am sure still others that I have forgotten. By the time the war came, Washington was full of big and little housing agencies. There was one under every bush, until a trade journal could write in 1942:
The urgent need of coordinated Federal housing agencies was highlighted last week in hearings before the Senate Committee on Education and Labor . . . members of the committee gave up in despair after hearing representatives of 20 different housing agencies offer a description of how they thought the $50 million for emergency housing in Washington should be spent.
In February 1942, the President drew this scattered and chaotic group together into the Nation's first housing agency, under the title of the National Housing Agency. Since this was done under his war powers, it was a temporary reorganization to assist in the prosecution of the national war effort. Thus matters remained until the war ended.
After the war, a new problem arose. The war powers of the President were about to come to an end, but clearly the housing problem was not. There was a desperate shortage of homes for the men of our demobilizing forces. The homebuilding industry was plagued by shortages of land, of materials, and of labor. Construction costs shot up alarmingly. The Congress and the executive branch were alike appalled at the prospect that the temporary national housing agency should dissolve into the scatteration and confusion which had existed before it was created.
After many false starts and extended national debate, the President sent to the Congress Reorganization Plan No. 3 of 1947, which became effective on July 27, 1947, and established the Housing and Home Finance Agency as a permanent agency of Government.
The Housing and Home Finance Agency as it was established at that time bore little resemblance to the Agency as we know it today.
There was no urban renewal administration; no community facilities administration; no Federal national mortgage association. It was, quite simply, a housing agency. It had no responsibilities for slum clearance and urban renewal, or for assistance to States and local communities in comprehensive planning, advances for planning of non federal public works, and so on and on.
The first great breakthrough toward a more comprehensive approach toward the problems of growing urban communities came in the Housing Act of 1949. That was the act which established the slum clearance and urban development program -- a major new program which was not housing as such, and yet was profoundly related to housing purpose, method, and result. Title I of this act proclaimed for the first time a national housing policy which stands unchanged today:
To serve better all income groups in our population and to move ever closer to the goal of a decent home in a suitable living environment for every American family.
Here was something new, indeed.
Mr. President, we are now getting into relatively recent history, and most of us will readily remember many of the new programs which Congress has authorized since 1949 and assigned to the Housing and Home Finance Agency. I could mention college housing, for example, or public facility loans, or the several special programs to aid in housing our older people, or assistance for cooperative housing, and so on. But since these are more familiar, I will not detain the Senate by going through each one of them.
We have come a long way since 1949. Only the name remains the same -- and it woefully fails to convey a true impression of the present functions and programs of the agency. In simple truth, the Housing and Home Finance Agency has long since become in fact, though not in name, an Urban Affairs and Housing Agency.
What the President asks us to join him in doing is not to change the character of the Agency, but to give long overdue recognition to what it actually is today.
Before turning to the next phase of this discussion, it is convenient here to point out that these programs are not only numerous -- not only complex -- not only closely related among themselves -- not only large and significant: they are also, with minor exceptions, permanent activities of the Federal Government.
Now, I am well aware, Mr. President, that as a legal technicality all the programs of the Federal Housing Administration will expire on a date certain under existing law -- some in 1963 and the remainder in 1965. But that is only a legal technicality. Surely there is not a Senator on this floor -- or off it, for that matter -- who seriously believes that the Congress of the United States is going to let the Federal Housing Administration go out of business in the summer of 1965. It has been extended periodically since it was set up 27 years ago, and we all know it will continue to be extended.
Most of the major programs have no expiration date at all. Some of them, to be sure, have dollar limits on their authorizations. But here again, the record shows that the Congress has increased these limits as they were reached or about to be reached.
The programs are also national in scope, extending to large and small communities throughout the country. There is not a single State which is not significantly affected by one or more of these programs.
THE ARGUMENTS FOR THE PLAN EXAMINED
Mr. President, I turn now to a review of the reasons why, in my judgment, the reorganization proposed by the President is not only desirable, but urgently needed. I should like to stress three principal points:
First, the plan is needed to improve organization at the top level in the executive branch.
Second, the reorganization is needed in the interest of economy and efficiency.
Third, the reorganization is needed to assure the highly necessary coordination of a group of programs which are closely related in their objective, and which should be equally closely related in their planning and execution.
I submit, Mr. President, that the issue before the Senate is first and foremost one of good organization -- of simple good government.
I submit that it makes plain, good common sense for the major programs of the Federal Government which deal directly with the problems of planning and shaping urban growth to be established as a Cabinet department, headed by a Secretary with the authority appropriate to his position and necessary to discharge his responsibilities. To use the words of Nelson Rockefeller in his memorandum to President Eisenhower of July 2, 1957, these programs go far beyond housing and involve "the general physical planning and development of communities." There is nothing novel about this proposal. We are merely applying here time-tested concepts of good business and good government -- applying them to a new situation, which has grown up because of the pace of urbanization in the last few decades.
I am not in the least impressed with the arguments of those who try to confuse this issue by suggesting that this Department would be, or should be, or might become, a department of everything-that-happens in cities. That would be absurd, of course -- about as absurd as trying to put into the Department of Interior everything that happens within our continental limits, or into the Treasury everything that costs money. We have a very clear unifying theme for this proposed Department, and that is to encourage and to help provide good homes in good neighborhoods for our growing urban population. That is what this plan is all about.
To accomplish that objective, we need an executive department which has the primary responsibility for working with other departments and with States and local governmental agencies to encourage the analysis and identification of their problems of growth and development -- not simply their problems today, but their problems 2, 5, and 10 years hence.
This Department should also have the necessary tools to aid local governments in comprehensive planning for the solution of these problems, and in the actual execution of their programs of housing, urban renewal, and the provision of necessary community facilities. Once these plans are made, with proper consideration for the total land use pattern in the community, then of course it simply makes good sense for agencies like the Bureau of Public Roads, for example, to continue to carry out its operation program within the context of the needs of our Interstate Highway System, or for problems of air and water pollution and hospitals to continue to be treated as public health problems, which obviously they are.
The President has said, and I agree with him, that the people who live in and near our cities deserve a spokesman in the highest council of Government -- the President's Cabinet. But I submit that the reverse proposition is equally valid: The President and the Cabinet itself need a Secretary of Urban Affairs and Housing.
What is the significance of the President's Cabinet in our form of government? Opinions differ widely on this question, and it is not easy to give it a simple answer. As we all know, the Cabinet is not established by the Constitution; it is an invention of the Executive, which has grown up over the years. The use made of the Cabinet has varied considerably with different Presidents. Some have made extensive use of it as a method for coordinating the Government's varied programs; other Presidents have used it largely as a political sounding board.
In general, however, I think it is fair to say that the Cabinet, together with the President, constitute the hard core of an administration. These are the men who have most continuous access to the President, and the most intimate understanding of his views. These are the men who have the most continuous responsibility for coordinating the almost unbelievably complex activities of modern government. Of course, final decisions must be made by the President himself -- he cannot delegate them to a committee. But these are the men who hammer out the policy, subject to his final approval.
Now let us suppose that the Cabinet undertakes a review of the state of the general economy. Should not such a discussion include the views of the Government's principal housing official, considering that housing is perhaps the third largest factor in the entire economy?
It is difficult to think of anything more vital to economic stability, prosperity, and growth, yet there is no Cabinet officer to bring special knowledge and experience to bear on this subject.
Or let us imagine that the Cabinet is concerned with the many problems resulting from the movement of population from the farms to the cities. How absurd it is that we have a Cabinet officer present to discuss the problems of the areas from which the people are moving, but none to represent the areas to which they are moving.
I could give a dozen other examples. For instance, the Cabinet often reviews the general budget picture. Surely, such a review must be incomplete without a spokesman for the programs of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, which constitutes one of the largest and most complex parts of the entire budget, outside the national security area.
I think it is self-evident that the programs of the Department of Agriculture, or of Labor, or of Health, Education, and Welfare, or of Commerce would benefit by having at the Cabinet table a spokesman for urban affairs and housing.
Now, it has been argued since this proposal was made that the Housing Administrator can and sometimes does attend Cabinet meetings at the invitation of the President. In all charity, this argument is just a little silly. Of course the Administrator can go to a Cabinet meeting if the President asks him. So could I.. A man may eat by invitation in the Senate dining room, but that does not make him a Senator. An official does not get to be a member of the President's Cabinet by attending meetings -- he gets there by heading an executive department of Government.
People may talk as much as they like about this being a mere matter of prestige, and so on. But there is not one person on this floor who does not know that a Cabinet officer has more influence, more weight, and more effect than the head of an independent agency. That is a fact of life, and will continue to be.
Mr. President, I conclude that the facts clearly show that the President and the Cabinet itself need the inclusion in its structure of a Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, if the Cabinet is to function as it should to assist this and future Presidents in their duties as Chief Executive.
In Government, as in business, improved organization should yield greater efficiency and productivity in all programs, not just one.
After all, the principles of organization in big government are not greatly different from those in big business. If Government agencies were big private corporations, we would not have any doubt about what to do, and we would confidently expect that clarifying the basic organization structure and establishing clear lines of authority and responsibility would pay off in increased efficiency.
Mr. President I am convinced that this reorganization means savings to the taxpayer over the next few years not of thousands but of millions and tens of millions of tax dollars.
I turn next to the importance -- in my judgment, the critical importance -- of the highest degree of coordination among all the related programs and activities of the Housing and Home Finance Agency. For it is precisely here that our cities and urban areas will benefit most from the reorganization proposed by the President.
Let us take a neighborhood in some city -- almost any city. It could be in a great metropolitan center, or in a town of 25,000 or 10,000. This neighborhood we are supposing is getting old; it has started down the incline that ends in a slum. Part of it is a slum now -- much of it is not -- not yet. Every Senator has seen a hundred such neighborhoods in his own State.
Now, a local public agency begins to survey this area and make plans for rescuing it -- for stopping the process of decay and starting the neighborhood back on the upgrade. It is enabled to do this job by a planning advance under title I of the Housing Act of 1949, administered by the Housing and Home Finance Agency.
When the planning job is done, the local agency receives a contract for an urban renewal project, which will involve clearance of those parts of the neighborhood that are too far gone, and conservation and improvement of the rest.
Under title I, the urban renewal plan for the area must conform to a general plan for the community as a whole. If that plan is inadequate or obsolete -- or if, as is too often true -- it doesn't exist at all, then another branch of the local government may seek assistance from the Housing and Home Finance Agency under section 701 of the Housing Act of 1954. If our neighborhood is in a small city or town, that grant will come to it through the State planning agency.
When the local agency begins to carry out its project, people and small businesses will have to be relocated. The Urban Renewal Administration in the Housing and Home Finance Agency makes grants to pay relocation expenses, up to the limits specified in the law. But moving expenses are only part of the problem. Where are the people to live? Perhaps, if they are low-income families,
in public housing assisted by the Public Housing Administration with annual contributions.
Or if they are in the middle income range, in new or rehabilitated housing financed with FHA mortgage insurance under section 221. Or, if their incomes are high enough, in new or existing standard housing financed under FHA's section 203, or perhaps in rental housing under section 207. Perhaps a labor union or some similar group decides to form a cooperative to provide the needed housing. In that case, probably they will find their financing through FHA's section 213.
Experience has shown that a great many of the people who have to be relocated from project areas in the central cities are advanced in age. It is a tragic fact that rundown neighborhoods tend to be heavily populated by older people. All five constituents of the Housing and Home Finance Agency have special programs designed to assist the local community in the solution of this very human relocation problem. Each program, of course, is pointed toward a different kind of need.
For example, the Federal Housing Administration provides a special form of mortgage insurance for housing for elderly people where the capital put in and the revenues of the project make up an economically sound, long-term loan. The community facilities administration makes direct loans at the college housing interest rate, to provide decent housing at lower rentals. And at the lowest income levels, the Public Housing Administration has a special program for older people.
But we still have not considered what is to be built on the cleared land. Is it to be residential? In that case, because of the special elements of risk involved in what formerly was a slum or near-slum area, in all probability the financing of the housing to be built will have to be supported by FHA insurance under section 220. Or perhaps public facilities are necessary to improve the area. If so, planning advances are available from the community facilities administration of the Housing and Home Finance Agency to be repaid when construction is actually undertaken, sometimes with the aid of a CFA loan. But let me note that the Housing Act of 1954, which authorized the public works advance planning program, requires that any project so assisted conform to any applicable general plans for the development of the area as a whole -- and so we come full circle.
Mr. President, I feel safe in asserting that there is no other department or agency in Government where it is so clearly true that one major project in one city or town may involve, not only every major constituent agency or bureau, but even every program administered by these different but associated agencies.
Perhaps I have not said enough about the Federal National Mortgage Association. Note well that the FNMA is as much in the heart of these operations as any of its sister agencies. It is the special assistance support of the FNMA which is the catalyst, if you will, for such diverse activities as housing in urban renewal areas, housing for relocated families or the elderly and other special-purpose forms of financing which have not yet established their place in the private market.
I could expand this discussion further. For example, we all recognize the tremendous economic importance of maintaining and improving our existing stock of housing, in which the Nation has an investment on the order of $500 billion. That is a key piece of our hypothetical urban renewal project -- to preserve and upgrade the major portion of the area, without having to resort to the drastic surgery of clearance and demolition. And to accomplish this, probably the key tool is the authority granted to FHA in the Housing Act of 1961 to insure loans up to $10,000 and up to 20 years for major home improvements.
Mr. President, there are probably a half dozen or more important programs I have not yet cited in this connection, but it seems to me that this is enough. It would require, it seems to me, an astonishingly effective set of cross-eyed spectacles for anyone to fail to see the importance -- the basic national significance -- of establishing at the national level that form of organization which will produce the highest degree of coordination and unity of purpose in the planning and execution of these necessarily complex problems.
Mr. President, on February 7, 1962, the senior Senator from Pennsylvania addressed this body on the proposed new Department.
No one in this body has had deeper concern for the problems of our cities or done more to help solve them than the Senior Senator from Pennsylvania. After laying to rest the most terrifying of the "bogeymen" raised by opponents of the Department, he explains these four important things which the creation of the new Department would do:
First, it would raise the status of a cluster of governmental programs, which, taken together, have a tremendous impact on the development of communities of all sizes.
Second, the plan would bring greater attention to the problems of urban America.
Third, the reorganization would improve the coordination of Federal functions affecting communities.
Fourth, the new Department would be in a better position to provide information and technical assistance to State and local governments on problems arising from urban growth.
These are four major benefits which would flow to all of our communities and ultimately to all of the Nation.
THE ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE PLAN EXAMINED
Mr. President, the arguments which have been made against the proposal to establish a Department of Urban Affairs and Housing are to me clearly without foundation. This is not because they are lacking in surface plausibility but rather because each of them is based on a misconception of what the bill would actually do or not do.
Some have criticized it because they fear that the reorganization by itself will mesmerize future Congresses into enacting substantive proposals which will somehow destroy the States. On the other hand, those who mistakenly expect this reorganization to solve major substantive as well as organizational problems naturally feel that the bill does not do enough. They say it would merely create some high-ranking offices, and that this is hardly worth all the bother. Interestingly, neither of these two inconsistent views of the matter is without precedent.
In the House debate on January 15, 1903, Mr. Gaines had the following objection to the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor, the predecessor to our two present departments:
In such action, Mr. Chairman, are we undertaking to absorb, by right of might, if you please, the powers and rights of the State? Is not such legislation an invitation for the Government of the United States to rush down and undertake to attend to all the varied business of the States and crush the latter? If we continue to do this and we see the great tendency toward it -- how soon will it be before the States are destroyed -- the States that created the Union?
In the House debate on May 21, 1888, Mr. Blount spoke as follows in opposition to setting up a Department of Agriculture:
Mr. Speaker, if I could see any benefit to result to the farmers of the country from this bill, I would give it my cordial support. . . . What is proposed in this bill for the purpose of advancing agriculture? You have today the Agricultural Bureau in existence, with all its functions; and what are you proposing now? Simply to create some new offices. You propose to make the head of that Department a Cabinet officer, with increased salary; and you propose to create an assistant who is to receive a liberal salary. Beyond this, except transferring to the Agricultural Department the signal service -- a service which, so far as I know, is well conducted today -- there is nothing in this bill. I cannot see anything in it for the purpose of promoting agriculture.
Returning to the bill now before us, I want to try to summarize the objections which have been made and explain why they do not persuade me.
First. It has been said that the establishment of a new department will lead to large increases in programs and spending for urban development and housing. This argument fails to give full and proper weight to the fact that only the Congress can establish new programs of assistance for housing and urban development and only the Congress can authorize or appropriate funds for new or expanded programs. The Congress will do neither when it approves this bill.
Certainly, the need for a Cabinet department to handle Federal programs of urban development and housing will make it easier for the executive branch to administer and coordinate any future expansion of Federal interest approved by the Congress in this area. The lack of a Cabinet department has not prevented the Congress from enacting new programs and expanding existing ones to help alleviate some of these problems of urbanization. Nor will the existence of a Cabinet department create -- in and of itself -- new programs and expenditures.
Second. Some fear that the reorganization plan will weaken State and local governments and centralize more power in Washington. Let me say first, on this point, that as a former Governor and as a present member of the Intergovernmental Relations Commission, I would find it impossible to support any measure which would result in the reduction of State and local authority and initiative. In fact, this bill would not extend in any way the power or control of the Federal Government over other governmental jurisdictions, nor would it in any way affect the authority of any State, city, or other local body.
The Department would administer programs enacted by the Congress. The legislation authorizing these programs sets the framework for the relationship between the Federal Government and the State or local governments receiving assistance.
All of the intergovernmental programs which would be assigned to the Department provide financial assistance only to State or local public bodies which request it. Participation by cities or other local bodies must be authorized by the State legislature or some specific constitutional provision, or both.
Establishment of a Federal department with Cabinet rank to deal with particular types of problems has in the past stimulated the States to create their own departments designed to deal with the same types of problems at the State level. For example, the establishment of a Federal Department of Labor with Cabinet rank in 1913 served not only to give labor a voice in the Cabinet, but also lead the way for every State in the Union to form an executive department or agency to deal with problems affecting labor.
As a result of the urban planning assistance program of the Housing and Home Finance Agency, authorized in 1954, about three-fourths of the States have established new State agencies or authorized existing State agencies to participate in that program. It provides matching grants for urban planning agencies. The number of States participating has risen from 4 in 1955 to 47 at present.
It is true, of course, that the States should further strengthen their own capacity to deal with housing and urban matters. For example, only six States now make contributions to urban renewal programs. The need for greater State initiative in this area is well recognized. But far from weakening State participation in these programs, the Department would have as a practical responsibility the encouragement of States to exercise positive leadership in solving urban problems.
Third. The argument has also been made that departments should be organized by major purpose rather than by geographic areas and that a Department of Urban Affairs and Housing will create a cleavage between our urban and rural populations. The new Department would not be established on any geographical basis or on the basis of where people live. Rather, it would be established to deal with problems, programs, and activities which are primarily and peculiarly urban. This would not create any cleavage between urban and rural people, because it does not alter any Federal functions applicable to them. The Department is needed, not strictly because 70 percent of our people live in urban areas, but because of the magnitude and intensity of urban problems which have developed.
The urban development and urban housing functions which would be assigned to the Department all have a unified objective -- to provide homes in good neighborhoods in well-planned communities adequately served by related public facilities. In fact, the functions of the Department are more closely interrelated in objective than are the programs of most existing departments. It is this complex interrelationship of program purpose which has contributed to the demand for Cabinet status for the present agency.
It must be remembered, too, that the Department would not administer all of the Federal programs having an impact on urban areas. The Department would help provide leadership and coordination within the executive branch in regard to the major problems of urban growth, but other important Federal activities for assistance to cities in such areas as education, health, and interstate highways would continue to be handled by the agencies to which they are now assigned on the basis that their primary purposes relate to education, health, and commerce.
There is no more reason to suppose that the establishment of this Department will create friction between urban and rural dwellers than did the establishment of the Department of Agriculture. If anything, I think it is fair to assume that the new Department would achieve a happy balance which has been long lacking.
Fourth. Objections have been made because some important urban functions would not be placed in the new Department. Some have opposed the plan because of its failure to include in the functions of the new Department such functions as assistance for highways, air and water pollution, hospital construction, and others.
The establishment of the Department will provide a Cabinet officer who can deal more effectively with other Cabinet officers on problems of mutual interest. It is neither necessary nor desirable, however, for one department to administer by itself all of the programs affecting urban areas.
The body of programs now being administered by the Housing and Home Finance Agency and which would be transferred to the new Department provide a sound basis for the kind of leadership at the Federal level which is needed. Programs of the Department for assistance to urban areas in comprehensive planning for urban land use and future development permit the localities themselves and the other Federal agencies involved to appraise the need for and the best location of such things as highways, schools, health, and sanitation facilities.
These same comprehensive plans would provide a basis for approval by the new Department of various aids which it would administer directly -- programs for urban redevelopment and renewal, community facilities planning and construction, mass transportation, and housing.
The additional programs which have been suggested for inclusion in the new Department are being satisfactorily administered by the agencies in which they now reside and in which they have been placed on the basis that their purposes related primarily to commerce or health rather than to desirable urban development as such. A Cabinet department will provide a strengthened mechanism within the executive branch for assuring a proper relationship among all of these programs.
Fifth. Groups whose interest have been focused on homebuilding have expressed fear that the new department would emphasize urban affairs functions to the detriment of the housing functions assigned it. There is no basis at all for any such nervous concern. The fact is that the bill would make the Government's principal housing official a member of the Cabinet and thus strengthen the organizational position of the housing programs within the Federal establishment.
Historically, housing has formed the nucleus for the other programs assigned the present Housing and Home Finance Agency, and must continue to do so. About three-fourths of all of the privately owned structures or our urban areas are residential. In addition to assisting in the provision of this housing, the programs of the Department would assist in planning, financing, and providing the community facilities and other amenities which are necessary to serve and support housing, including well-planned neighborhoods and communities.
Sixth. Yet another baseless fear is expressed by those who predict that the new Department will emphasize aid to big cities, to the detriment of smaller communities. There is nothing at all in the plan which supports this fear and there is ample evidence in the entire history of substantive housing and community development legislation which negates it. As has been emphasized already, the plan does not change in any way the programs now being administered by the Housing Agency, nor the relationships of the Federal Government with other levels of government in the administration of those programs. The Department would continue to emphasize aid to smaller communities, as the Housing Agency has done in the past, because they frequently have the greater need and because Congress has enacted programs which authorize such assistance to smaller communities, often on a priority basis.
Seventh. Perhaps the gentlest argument against the plan is the one which assumes that the existing Housing Agency can do just as well everything that the new Department would do. The bill would in fact do two very important things which need doing and cannot be done without the plan:
It would elevate to Cabinet rank the agency having primary responsibility for housing and urban development programs; and it would give the Secretary of that Department the clear authority to administer effectively the programs of the Department and to assure that they are properly coordinated with each other and with the programs of other departments.
The importance of these objectives should not be minimized.
Witness after witness before our committee has stressed the need for stronger leadership in urban development and housing at the Federal level.
The kind of leadership we should seek cannot be provided by an independent agency head who is not a Cabinet member and who has only the power of general supervision and coordination over two major constituent agencies whose powers are not vested in the head of the entire agency. A provision in the Independent Offices Appropriation Act, 1955, cited by some as constituting a full grant of authority to the Housing and Home Finance Administrator, is simply inadequate. It must be taken in the context of the statutory limitations on the present powers of the Administrator which indicate congressional intention that basic program functions, as distinct from administrative services, shall not be subject to the Administrator's direction, but only to his general supervision and coordination.
This very limiting phrase is repeated in the 1955 appropriation act provision. The phrase in turn was clearly intended to be far more limited than the phrase "Superintendence, direction, coordination, and control." Indeed, the latter phrase was included in plan No. 1 of 1946 which would have created an overall housing agency 1 year earlier, and this inclusion led to the defeat of the 1946 plan. Thus, the provision most certainly does not provide an adequate, or even a very clear, vesting of responsibility. Also, it fails to vest in the Housing Administrator the statutory functions previously vested in constituent agency commissioners.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Mr. President, I want to reemphasize the fact that this bill is an urgently needed step in good government organization.
The new Department would give a voice in the Cabinet on urban and housing matters so that proper consideration and weight would be given to them in the overall administration of the executive branch. It would enable a better coordination of the interrelated functions of the various departments.
The new Department would give our States and communities an urgently needed agency at the departmental level to assist them in formulating and carrying out local programs relating to their general physical planning and development. This is the basis on which the Department would be established. It would not be established on a geographical basis or provide a cleavage between rural and urban populations. It would administer an especially logical category of functions in the executive branch.
In no way whatsoever would the Department extend Federal authority or reduce the stature and position of the states and localities. Instead, history teaches us that the functions of States and localities in this field would be stimulated and strengthened by the creation of the Department.
The bill would have no significant bearing on either the size of any programs or the size of the organizations administering them, as these would continue to be fixed in legislation enacted by the Congress. In fact, the internal organization of the Department would be put on a sound basis to permit greater efficiency and economy, which should result in substantial savings in the cost of services and in the cost of financing the local projects which are being assisted.
Mr. President, in the interest of the better management of the executive branch and to better serve our States, our cities and towns, and the people for whom they exist, I urge approval of this legislation.