August 11, 1967
Page 22380
"THE URBAN CRISIS -- AMERICA'S NO. 1 DOMESTIC CHALLENGE"ADDRESS BY SENATOR MUSKIE
Mr. SPONG. Mr. President, on Wednesday, August 8, 1967, the distinguished junior Senator from Maine [Mr. MUSKIE] addressed the 12th annual Virginia State AFL-CIO Convention at the Golden Triangle Hotel, in Norfolk, Va.
Senator MUSKIE's Subject "The Urban Crisis -- America's No. 1 Domestic Challenge," was timely. The speech was perceptive and thoughtful, and reflected the range of understanding concerning the problems of our urban areas that Senator MUSKIE has demonstrated in his years of distinguished service in the Senate.
I ask unanimous consent that Senator MUSKIE'S remarks be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
THE URBAN CRISIS -- AMERICA'S No. 1 DOMESTIC CHALLENGE
Some years ago a British visitor to the United States visited Los Angeles and observed: "I've seen the future and it doesn't work." Anyone reading the headlines in our daily newspapers, this year, would probably echo the feelings of our British commentator and apply them to all our major cities.
News of riots and civil disorders have eclipsed some urban problems and distorted our view of others. We need to remember that the eruptions in our major cities have their roots in a variety of difficulties.
These problems are many, and serious. They include inadequate housing especially for middle and lower income groups, education, poverty, discrimination, inadequate job opportunities, social disorganization, threats to public safety, pollution of our air and water, transportation and parking, beautification and public facilities. No one can deny their existence or their threat to the future of our cities.
As a result, we are confronted by a paradox. Our technology is capable of producing for us the wide range of opportunities for and the choices of living patterns that are the principal virtues of metropolitan life; but our attitudes, our social structures and the political machinery which responds to these attitudes and structures are changing with agonizing slowness.
As the events of the past few weeks have demonstrated, time is running out. The performance of our society has not kept pace with the promises of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. There is a breakdown in confidence in political institutions and respect for the law, civil strife is inevitable.
This leads to the chief domestic question confronting us in terms of our governmental system: Are we organized effectively to improve the quality of life for all Americans in a complex, rapidly changing and crowded society?
When our Constitution was drawn up, only 5 percent of our population was urban. We were a sparsely populated country of less than 4 million. The separations which existed between communities and classes simplified the problems of assigning responsibilities for public functions.
But, by 1900 the urban population of the United States had jumped to 40 percent of the population, or a total of 76 million people. Today, over 70 percent of our population lives in urban areas, and we have a total population of over 190 million.
At this rate, by the year 2000 we will have a total population of over 300 million. Eighty-five to ninety percent of these people will be crowded into our urban and metropolitan areas, which will comprise less than 15 percent of the country's total land area.
We have a foretaste of what this will mean in the megalopolis which stretches from Norfolk, Va., to Portsmouth, N.H., and the similar urban sprawl reaching from east of Detroit to Chicago and Milwaukee.
This development is natural. It has brought us many advantages and disadvantages. We have learned, as Alexis de Tocqueville prophesied that "Great wealth and extreme poverty, capital cities of large size, lax morality, selfishness, and antagonisms of interests are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of states."
Our society does not fit necessarily -- if at all -- into the three layers of the Federal system which were contemplated by the Founders. We need to find ways to adapt that system to the changes which have taken place in our society.
What are the specifics of our urban crisis?
First, it involves increasing numbers of people in urban areas, as I have already noted. That increase stems from the total population expansion and the movement of people from rural areas to the metropolitan centers.
Second, it relates to the impact of technological development and crowding, resulting in air and water pollution, noise, esthetic pollution, housing shortages, inadequate transportation, health, education, and other public services.
Third, it is marked by social disorganization caused by the cultural shock of the city on former rural residents; the psychological impact of crowding and environmental contamination on individuals; poverty in the midst of affluence -- an affluence which gives the poor a chance to see how the other half lives through newspapers, magazines, and television -- discrimination and blocked opportunities for Negroes and other minorities; and competition for jobs and housing between Negroes and whites in middle and lower income neighborhoods.
Finally, the urban crisis is underscored by the obverse problem of depopulated and disintegrating rural communities.
As a result of this crisis, human needs are unmet and human aspirations are stifled by deteriorating prospects for a better future. History and our own experience have taught us a bitter lesson: That when this happens in any society, under any system of government, discontent, unrest, and instability are inevitably followed by disorder and violence.
We have the resources in this country to make it possible for every member of our society to develop his potential, even in the crowded and problem-ridden metropolitan centers. But we have not been moving our resources from where they are to where they are needed.
The advances in our technology and management technique have added greatly to our capacity to change and to improve our society. The new techniques of acquiring, storing, processing, and using information offer ways out of one of the oldest dilemmas for man and his society -- the gap between knowledge and the need for action. Now, sometimes in a matter of seconds, we can obtain large quantities of information to guide us through the thickets of complicated social or physical resource problems.
But, as our capacity to apply knowledge and to modify our society and environment accelerates, our margin for error decreases, and, as Atomic Energy Commission Chairman Glenn T. Seaborg has said, our "knowledge, and hence power, is so much greater as are our needs for it that every miscalculation in the type or scope of actions brings wider disruption in our society. Our civilization is now such a complex and organically interdependent system that almost every change reverberates through it, causing displacement and further change, sometimes where we least expect it."
This fact, and the insights we have gained into the consequences of inaction, have lent an urgency to our efforts to make more effective and responsive our development of public policy and to improve the operation of government to meet the present and future needs of people.
Put simply, we need to combine Federal, State, and local resources and planning to solve community environment problems for all -- not just a few -- of the people.
We need to set national goals of education, economic and social betterment and justice carried to the people through cooperative State and local governments.
We need to encourage State and local governments to the greatest extent possible to meet their growing needs and to develop their communities through their own financing, planning, and modernization of government.
Many of the problems we are concerned with are national in scope. They require national strategies, but solutions must be tailored to specific local needs.
A second point to keep in mind is that attacking the major ills of our society -- poverty, crime, pollution and decay -- requires the interaction of many agencies working together at different levels of government.
Third, we need to remember that many of our urban problems transcend established boundaries. Air and water pollution, for example, respect no state or municipal lines. Neither does mass transit with commuters moving in and out of central cities and across different state borders. Many of our programs, therefore, require new groupings of old jurisdictions, working together for the first time.
The Federal grant-in-aid system is the primary tool the national government has used in executing its domestic programs. This is a useful means of combining broad national strategy with local knowledge and administration. In addition, it leaves initiative where it belongs, at the levels of government closest to the people.
Federal aid programs have grown enormously in recent years. In 1946, they totaled less than $1 billion. Their dollar volume tripled by 1956, reaching $3.2 billion, and quadrupled again in the next decade, rising to $12.9 billion. In fiscal year 1968, they will run close to $17 billion.
This expansion has been voted by the Congress in response to public demands, because of urgent needs for which there was no other answer. State and local governments have not had the capacity, and in some cases have not had the interest or the will, to tackle them without financial initiative and Federal aid.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the problems of our cities.
The central city carries the burden of maintaining many services for the surrounding communities and the industrial and commercial interests of the metropolitan area, of taking care of the poor and rebuilding their housing. At the same time, the cities face a declining tax base and discrimination at the hands of state governments who favor the suburbs in their allocation of state and Federal assistance.
This circumstance should caution us against too great optimism on the results of reapportionment, particularly if the result is a new and discriminatory alliance between rural and suburban interests, leaving the central cities to fend for themselves.
Nothing could be more damaging to the future of the States themselves. The needs of the central cities are the single most pressing problem in the domestic affairs of our country. They cannot be left to decline into bankruptcy and decay with their crowded millions of the poor and deprived who are caught up in a "revolution of rising expectations."
One of the most important efforts we have made to help the urban centers of our country was the "Demonstration Cities and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966." That legislation was aimed at giving cities the resources and the flexibility they need to develop new approaches to their problems. I have been encouraged by the response from the cities. I hope the Congress will respond with adequate appropriations for model cities, for rent supplements, and for pollution control -- all programs essential to the development of improved cities where life is more than a struggle for existence.
You who are members of the labor movement know that decent wages came after long and arduous struggles. Your organization has contributed to the health and welfare of our Nation by broadening purchasing power, by your support of social security and medicare, by working for increased aid to education, and by pushing for conservation of our natural resources.
Many of you have benefitted from the results of collective bargaining and the Federal aid programs. You are enjoying the fruits of our industrial society, as you should. I urge you not to slacken your efforts to help make the American dream come true for those who have not even got their feet on the first rung of the economic opportunity ladder. I urge you to encourage your State and local governments to meet the needs of our cities and their people.
For as long as there is misery and despair, as long as there are men and women who have known only rejection, hate and vengeance will threaten to break loose, tearing down all we have tried to build for ourselves and our children.