June 9, 1969
Page 15214
AFTER VIETNAM: THE DOLLARS AND CENTS OF PEACE
HON. GEORGE E. BROWN, JR. OF CALIFORNIA
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Monday, June 9, 1969
Mr. BROWN of California. Mr. Speaker, the May 24 issue of the Saturday Review contains what I consider to be an outstanding presentation of the economic potentials and impacts facing this Nation when the Vietnam war finally draws to a close.
Because of the immediacy and urgency of these problems I stress the need for all my colleagues to read these articles which I now place in the RECORD at this point:
AFTER VIETNAM: THE DOLLARS AND CENTS OF PEACE
Vietnam now is the longest war in U.S. history, and one of the most costly. Billions of dollars have been expended on explosives -- a greater tonnage than was loosed on Nazi Germany in World War II -- and on gargantuan logistical support networks. Despite peace negotiations, more than 600,000 Americans still are based in Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, our domestic crises have intensified, and hunger, poverty, and disease afflict much of a swiftly multiplying world population.
When peace finally comes to Vietnam -- as appears possible soon -- what economic challenges and opportunities will we face?
In this week's special issue, prepared with the assistance of former SR feature editor Alfred Balk, four distinguished contributors examine this question. U.S. Senator Edmund S. Muskie of Maine, 1968 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, emphasizes the urgency and priorities of our internal problems in "What Happens When Peace Breaks Out?" Murray L. Weidenbaum, newly appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury and chairman of the Washington University economics department, presents a profile of "Our Vietnamized Economy." The third author in this section is John R. Stark, executive director of Congress's Joint Economic Committee, who examines the disposition of fresh resources and manpower at war's end in "How Much Money for Plowshares?" Finally, Lt. Gen. James M. Gavin (USA, Ret.), former U.S. Army chief of research and development, now chairman of Arthur D. Little, Inc., focuses on the private sector in his article "Can Industry Manufacture Social Solutions?"
No society's reservoir of resiliency is inexhaustible; no pool of economic resources unlimited. If the nation is to achieve essential progress after the war ends, it must be rooted in wise economic decisions now.
The EDITORS.
AFTER VIETNAM: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEACE BREAKS OUT?
(By Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE)
When I was a young naval officer waiting for the end of World War II, I often considered what I would do when the war ended. For the most part my dreams and plans related to picking up where I had left off as an aspiring attorney in a small Maine city. There was excitement and comfort in those dreams and plans. They meant new challenges and a return to something I had known.
My dreams were not very different from those of millions of other Americans, in and out of the service. When we had defeated the Axis we would turn to the normal, happy pursuits of family, job, community life, and recreation. The immense productive capacity of our country would be used for our domestic needs. A number of us had a dream for using part of that capacity to build a better world.
Our dreams in 1944 and 1945 were quite different from those of 1969. The war in Vietnam is not a war against the Axis. It does not give us a sense of accomplishment as we try to end it. We cannot forecast a return to a "normal" life when peace breaks out in Southeast Asia.
The war is different, and our country is different. The bright hopes of those who weathered the Depression and survived World War II have been dimmed by the nagging problems of international rivalries and nuclear threats. Our dreams have been undermined by our apparent inability to use our economic and technological resources to solve the age-old problems of ignorance, disease, hunger, and poverty. Those who did not experience either "The Depression" or "The War" are understandably impatient at the gap between promise and performance. The realities of the intercontinental ballistic missile -- tipped with a nuclear warhead (or more) -- coupled with the drain of Vietnam, have brought us down from the never never land of "guns and butter."
What happens when peace breaks out? Not much, if we don't make it happen.
The question of what we need to make it happen is wrapped up in what we call the urban crisis. That crisis has been referred to as the top item on the national agenda of unfinished business, and it has been described as the "most explosive of all domestic issues confronting the American people today." Both statements are true.
Events of a few weeks ago brought with them reminders of the seriousness of our current domestic problems and the urgency of getting about the business of doing something about them.
While some were making solemn affirmations about the abolition of poverty and racial injustice, troops were being mobilized in Chicago, and a curfew was once again being imposed in Memphis. Once again we are girding ourselves for another "long, hot summer." If the response is more troops, more curfews, and more piety, this summer we will pass the "crisis" state and begin to appear more and more as a "disaster area."
Since last fall, I have traveled the length and breadth of this nation and visited in many of its cities and towns. I have learned much about our country -- enough to know that too many of us are angry and frustrated. We are angry because too many of us are being disinherited from the benefits and advantages of our affluence. We are frustrated because of what we continue to do to our air, our land, our water, and environment in general, knowing we will reap a whirlwind of desolation. We are angry because we still have an estimated 22 million Americans living in poverty, despite 100 months of unprecedented economic growth and expansion. We are frustrated because we managed to produce 8,500,000 new job opportunities over the past five years, but 8,400,000 Americans are on welfare.
There are those who say we can solve these problems, when the war is over. But the end of the war does not mean an automatic end to the military drain on our resources. The best evidence of this is President Nixon's recommendation for deployment of the anti-ballistic-missile system. In a period when the military estimate of defense requirements involves the development, procurement, and deployment of multibillion-dollar weapons systems, we cannot assume a normal reduction in defense spending at the end of an armed conflict. ABM is a critical issue because of its impact on the arms race, and because it is a symbol of the kinds of choices we must make.
The decisions the Administration, the Congress, and the people make on ABM in the next several months are not merely decisions for 1969; they are decisions for the 1970s. Those are not merely decisions about the best kinds of weapons for us to have; they are decisions about the kind of society we want to have. Those are not merely decisions to determine the strength of our deterrence to nuclear attack; they are decisions which will determine the strength of the world's resistance to nuclear destruction. Those decisions will not wait to the end of the Vietnam war; they are being made now. If they are going to reflect any commitment to peace, to a sane defense policy, and to a just life for all Americans, they must reflect new thinking and new priorities.
Our options and our resources are not unlimited; we face enormous demands on our resources if we are to provide food for the hungry, jobs and income for the needy, decent housing for families, educational opportunities for all, health care for young and old, cities of hope and towns of promise, and the domestic tranquility that grows out of justice and effective public protection.
Up to now we have not concentrated enough resources in any one place at any one time to demonstrate what can be done to make the system work better for all of us. Our approach to the problems of urban and rural poverty has suffered from fiscal and institutional malnutrition. In too many cases we have whetted appetites without providing bread.
It may be more than coincidence that the wittiest new musical to hit Broadway this season is Promises, Promises.
In 1946, soon after peace broke out, we enacted the Full Employment Act. "Full employment" was adopted as a national objective. Since that date we have launched additional efforts, all aimed at providing greater job opportunities, a better chance for each American to live in decency and dignity and to enjoy the fruits of his labor. Few modern nations have bitten off a more ambitious set of objectives; yet we seem as far removed from their accomplishment today as we appeared to be at the time of their adoption.
Our general prosperity and economic growth have not met the needs of the hardcore poor. An announced national policy to the contrary, job discrimination remains a serious problem, and it continues to reenforce the concentration of minority groups within low-income, low-status jobs.
Little progress has been made to open up business opportunity to minority entrepreneurs. The list of items is endless. And yet, each of those items -- job discrimination, minority business development, housing, education, economic growth, employment -- represents straightforward objectives toward which this nation presumably has been moving for the past twenty years.
We mistook rhetoric for action, demonstration for accomplishment. We made the mistake of assuming that by announcing our objectives, they would be achieved. But no such process occurred. Nothing happens unless will, energy, drive, and commitment are made as one. Otherwise, promises made too often become promises unkept.
If we look behind the urban scene -- its riots, its protests, its confrontations between individual and authority -- we can see demands which are not unreasonable. They are unreasonable only if one accepts a policy of drift, charted by unstated priorities.
We have learned painful lessons about the consequences of grievances left unattended. If we fail to meet those grievances we shall learn even more vividly that a nation without answers for its domestic needs has no security. We shall not have the opportunity to find out what happens when peace breaks out.
The grim chain of urban sprawl and rural decline, of individual poverty and social disorganization, of wasted resources and hostile environments will not be broken by a government which is indifferent, or a private sector which is inactive. The chain can be broken only if we set priorities, if we make a commitment to meet them, and if we organize ourselves to fulfill our commitments.
I have indicated the priorities I would establish. They are not the priorities of a fortress America, placing its reliance on a diversion of more of our resources to ingenious and terrible war machines. The priorities I would set are the priorities of men and women and children who have a right to enjoy for themselves the fruits of this world and to help insure that same right for others. The priorities we must set recognize the interrelationship of jobs, income, education, health care, housing, transportation, public facilities, recreation, and environmental protection in the balanced development of urban and rural communities.
Consider the imbalance between our needs and our priorities.
We lead the world in medical research, but compared with other countries we rank twentieth in longevity and sixteenth in infant mortality. Adequate health care is frequently unavailable to those who need it the most.
We will need 26 million new and rehabilitated housing units in the next ten years -- roughly 2,600,000 a year. We are the most prolific builder in history but we are building only 1,600,000 housing units a year and we are tolerating 11 million sub-standard living units. In the last twenty years we have demolished more than 3,100,000 houses and apartments with federally-aided construction projects. We have torn down more housing than we have built with all our federal-aid housing programs.
Our education system has been the most ambitious in history, but in the last fifteen years, 16 per cent of all young men being tested for military service have been found unfit because of educational deficiencies. Today 28 per cent of our young people are not graduating from high school, and in the last twenty years the number of dropouts has increased nearly 100,000 a year to a total of 700,000 a year. Most high school dropouts are from our major cities -- seven of which have dropout rates in excess of 30 per cent. New York's rate, for example, is 37 per cent; Detroit's, 38 per cent; Philadelphia's, 47 per cent.
Metropolitan rapid transit facilities have a direct impact on job opportunities for poor people, but the federal government spends fifty times more to build highways connecting our cities than to build rapid transit systems in our metropolitan areas.
Everyone wants clear air. We know that air pollution causes and aggravates respiratory diseases. Emphysema is one of the fastest growing causes of death in the United States; 1000 workers are forced into early retirement each month because of lung disorders, and the economic losses resulting from dirty air exceed $11 billion a year. In spite of these costs, our federal investment in air pollution abatement is only $78 million a year.
Rising crime rates shock the nation, causing fear among all segments of our population. Crime costs between $20 and $50 billion each year -- in lost earnings, property damage, and uncollected public revenue -- but we are investing less than $5 billion a year for crime prevention and law enforcement, penal institutions, and rehabilitative services. We spend about the same amount on toiletries.
We have limited the Office of Economic Opportunity budget to about $2 billion a year -- or less than two-thirds of what we pay for jewelry and watches, and about one-twelfth of what we spend for alcoholic beverages and tobacco.
We spend more than $2 billion a year on pet food and care, but spend only $338 million out of our national budget on food for the poor. We spend $966 million a year on the movies, but spend only $253 million on federal investments in sewage-treatment plants.
We are an enormously wealthy nation. Our per capita personal income in real purchasing power has quadrupled since 1900 and is $1000 higher each year than the second most affluent nation in the world, Sweden. Our Gross National Product is approaching $1 trillion a year. We have failed to meet our social and environmental needs because we have not make a commitment to apply our resources to them. Making our commitments stick requires an equitable tax system, a determination to reduce unnecessary investments in arms, a continuing effort to reduce dependence on arms for security, and a willingness to accept the costs of building a better society.
General commitments, however, are not enough. Resources must be applied specifically and effectively where they will do the most good. At present, our institutions of government are not as well organized as they should be to make such an application.
Part of our difficulty stems from the multiplication of crises. Larger and more mobile populations place unexpected strains on existing institutions. Problems of pollution, housing, transportation, recreation, and public services spill across jurisdictional lines. Federal, State, and local programs designed to meet those needs are badly coordinated and sometimes unrelated.
We have been making efforts to overcome our disjointed systems of government, by requiring more regional planning, by broadening categories of grants-in-aid, by encouraging coordination of local efforts in such programs as Model Cities, and by trying to find better ways to pull different agencies together within federal, state, and local government. All of these efforts have taken place against the background of citizens’ demands -- from the ghetto to the suburb -- for a greater voice in public policy. Plans for large-scale coordination are being challenged by voices who want to be heard and should be heard. We are learning again the importance of the democratic process in a democratic society, even when the requirements of complicated problems in crowded societies call for more administrative efficiency.
The goals of administrative efficiency and democratic procedures are not inconsistent. The one has to do with how we develop public policy; the other has to do with how we carry it out. To make both possible and compatible, we need to utilize the devices of automatic data processing, of communication, and of management techniques to sort out the volumes of information which threaten to inundate us. Having measured our needs and developed analyses of the alternative solutions available to us, we need to put that information in the hands of public policy-makers whose responsibility is to the electorate. Wherever possible we need to place the decisions on details as close as possible to individual voters, within the context of national goals and regional requirements. Finally, we must be prepared to implement public policy accurately and with dispatch.
We have a variety of techniques available to us to insure closer coordination of public and private institutions: from the Urban Affairs Council to rational federal agency regions; from regional planning agencies to community action agencies; from block grants to revenue sharing; and from public grants to public-private partnerships. We are not lacking in ingenuity to resolve the technical problems of making the system work.
Our greatest needs are the determination to make certain that peace does break out; the sense of purpose to keep our priorities straight; the commitment to devote our energies and our resources to the fulfillment of the promise of our democratic society. We can't return to the dreams of 1944 and 1945, but we can kindle the hope we had -- and with better reason -- if we have learned our lessons well.
AFTER VIETNAM: OUR VIETNAMIZED ECONOMY
(By Murray L. Weidenbaum)
Although American troops have been stationed in South Vietnam since 1954, the major buildup occurred between the middle of 1965 and the middle of 1967. This substantial and rapid expansion in U.S. military spending -- from $50 billion before the buildup to $80 billion now -- has had many important effects. Fundamentally, it has altered the allocation of the nation's resources between the private and the public sectors. At the end of 1964, 20 per cent of the Gross National Product was purchased by government agencies and the remaining 80 per cent was available to the private economy. By early 1968. the government portion had risen to 27 per cent and the private share had fallen to 73 per cent.
The Johnson Administration consistently underestimated military expenditures, particularly during the crucial buildup period in late 1965 and much of 1966. Most economists and government administrators, moreover, failed to appreciate how quickly the military buildup was influencing the national economy -- that the economic impact was occurring as soon as the defense orders were placed and, thus, substantially before the work was completed, paid for, and showing up in the federal budget. Furthermore, policy measures to offset inflationary pressures were not taken soon enough or in a substantial enough way. The January 1966 budget message of the President maintained that the United States could afford simultaneously to wage a two-front war without raising taxes: the domestic war against poverty and the war in Vietnam.
But the program choices made were not as simple as the classroom dichotomy of "guns vs. butter." In a sense, we chose both more guns (military spending) and more butter (more consumer purchases). However, we also chose -- in part as tight money began to affect specific parts of the private economy -- less housing and fewer automobiles. Simultaneously, the nation was voting for more social welfare programs -- thus increasing both the military and the civilian portions of the public sector. As a result, 1966 witnessed what was then the most rapid period of price inflation since the Korean War.
Several major economic problems face the United States as a legacy of 1965-66. With the collapse of the stable price and cost situation prevailing prior to Vietnam, inflation is a major concern. Unusually high interest rates have been set in a thus far unsuccessful at