CONGRESSIONAL RECORD -- SENATE

April 5, 1966

Page 7601

INTEREST IS BUILDING IN CREATIVE FEDERALISM AND INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS

Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, the growing interest of the Nation's press in the development of a creative federalism to help State and local governments better meet public needs is both salutary and significant. This interest, of course, is heightened by President Johnson's particular concern with modernizing our Federal system to bring State and local governments into a closer partnership with the Federal Establishment. A very well-written and thoughtful article by William Chapman appeared last Sunday in the Outlook section of the Washington Post entitled "The States as Partners."

It highlights some of the thinking of Presidential assistants, State leaders, and others on this important subject.

I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Chapman's article be printed in the RECORD.

There being no objection, the article was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

THE STATES As PARTNERS -- L.B.J. WANTS THEM TO COOPERATE WITH FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BUT NOT AS LITTLE BROTHERS

(By William Chapman)

In city halls and State capitols, ears are cocked apprehensively toward the White House these days for answer to a widely discussed question: "What is creative federalism all about?"

It is a common but enigmatic phrase that President Johnson has employed for nearly 2 years in speeches and messages touching on the Federal, State, and local governments. To interested visitors, the President has spoken of it in stirring terms, declaring, "It means we've got to get this country ready for the year 2000."

The guests usually go away as uncertain as when they entered.

More positive guidance is expected this spring when Mr. Johnson is to deliver a special message on the issue and appoint a study committee to spend 2 or 3 years surveying the broad fields of Federal-State relations. For the present, White House aids and independent observers offer only some clues as to what they think the President is thinking. Their description goes like this:

The Federal Government is bound to grow larger and more powerful as States, cities, and towns turn toward it for help in providing everything from sewers to jet airports.

Washington will provide money and set standards to serve these needs, but it should not attempt to control every step fn the process, leaving nothing to local imagination or initiative.

Yet the States and localities are poorly organized to do their part, and the existing systems for sharing Federal revenues are unwieldy and outdated.

It is the task of creative federalism to foster new institutions at the grassroots level and develop new fiscal arrangements so that State and local governments can become true partners with the Federal Government, and not merely little brothers.

WATER POLLUTION AN EXAMPLE

One Presidential aid, aware that this explanation is a bit fuzzy, cites the administration's water pollution bill as an example of things to come. A single State cannot clean a river. A regional agency with jurisdiction along the river's entire course is necessary. Therefore, the bill withholds funds from any State whose Governor has not promised to join an interstate body having power to force compliance on those who can control sources of pollution.

"We are saying, 'You put together an organization of counties, cities, towns, and States, and we'll give you the money to clean your river,' " explains the White House assistant.

An example of new revenue-sharing ideas is found in the administration's recent proposal for rebuilding urban hospitals. Previous Federal assistance has been funneled to the States through Hill-Burton grants and loans. It has gone primarily for construction of new hospitals under a formula that guaranteed help for rural States with low per capita incomes.

But it did little for the larger cities, where most of the Nation's obsolescent hospitals are located.

So early in March the President sidestepped the Hill-Burton program with a new grant-and-loan plan geared specifically for old hospitals that need new equipment or a general rebuilding. It is tailor made for big cities and it is generous in financial terms, even by the standards of the American Hospital Association.

A TREND SYMBOLIZED

The break with tradition in aiding hospitals symbolizes a trend in several other Great Society programs proposed or enacted in the last 15 months. The drift is away from across-the-board grants-in-aid and toward programs that are directed, through Federal standards, straight to points of greatest need.

Elaborate and specific guidelines bind the anti-poverty program, demonstration projects in cities, and educational funds for children of low-income families. Even the school milk and lunch programs, Mr. Johnson suggests, should go only to those children who need them, not to every child that enters a schoolhouse door.

The shift to tighter Federal restrictions means less authority for Governors. States participate fn the new programs primarily in conjunction with other States through such associations as the Appalachia Commission or the proposed regional river commissions. The Governor who had wide latitude in determining where an interstate highway went in the 1950's will have no such authority in a clean river project of the 1960's.

The confusion and disagreement over trends in federalism are nowhere better revealed than in the cities demonstration program. A key figure in this plan for rebuilding central cities is the Federal coordinator, the man who would be assigned to pull together Government programs at the block level

His role is viewed by administration designers as one of creating more initiative, dynamism, and variety in local development plans. But local officials are wary of potential czardom.

"Already, proposed coordinators of Washington's handouts to metropolitan areas are being hailed as Federal mayors,-- charges Michigan Gov. George Romney, who has described a "new centralism" in which power flows to Washington as Federal money comes to the localities.

Aware of this trend, such Governors as John Connally, of Texas, and William W. Scranton. of Pennsylvania, far apart in distance and political philosophy, have voiced identical complaints: that they are not given a loud enough voice in the development or operation of Federal programs.

Connally has traveled to Washington to keep his hand in the Camp Gary job corps. Scranton complained that the Federal Government keeps talking about cooperation without seriously seeking State advice.

Many share California Gov. Edmund G. Brown's lament that "while an increasing number of government services are administered under joint State and Federal auspices, the Governor is brought into the policymaking discussions only infrequently, informally, and haphazardly."

NEW INSTITUTIONS NEEDED

A key element entering into any discussion of creative federalism is the need for new institutions, and White House officials speak of both public and. private institutions. In the public sector, examples are obvious: the river commissions, metropolitan planning organizations encouraged by the carrot of financial aid and the rural development districts proposed to do what separate country towns cannot.

Applying creative federalism to the private sector is more difficult. Officials speak of drawing universities into cooperative research centers with the magnet of Washington money. Or they talk of semipublic corporations formed to do what private business alone cannot afford.

One test of the new approach, they say, is coming soon in the development of a prototype of the supersonic transport aircraft. Private industry alone cannot foot the bill, sometimes put at $50 billion, for an SST program running from initial research through the first generation of 200 planes.

But the Government wants to avoid a permanent subsidy of the sort that threatens to engulf it in connection with the maritime industry. Federal officials now are trying to work out an arrangement with manufacturers before entering the prototype stage next year.

"We are looking for some arrangement in which we can give them the money to get over the hump, help them with information and then get some of our money back," one official said.

Such innovations in either the private or public sector would be critically reviewed in Congress, which is normally skeptical of fundamental changes. But there is evidence of growing concern.

Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Democrat, of Maine, citing the critical absence of coordination in Federal grants-in-aid and the local governments' shortage of skilled planners and managers, is on record in behalf of two fundamental reorganizations. He wants a National Council for Intergovernmental Affairs established in the White House and extensive Federal help fn training local personnel.

What creative federalism really means is still anybody's guess. Mr. Johnson apparently is not sure himself, for in his state of the Union address he announced that "a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs" would be created to "develop" the new concept.

There is little doubt, however, that the President expects it to be a major contribution of his years in the White House.