July 19, 1971
Page 25959
"BEYOND URBAN SURVIVAL"
(Remarks by Senator EDMUND S. MUSKIE, Philadelphia, Pa., June 14, 1971, to the U.S. Conference of Mayors)
We meet today in a moment of hope for the cities of America.
Our hope comes from another meeting last week in Washington – a meeting of mayors, governors, and key congressional leaders called by Democratic National Chairman Lawrence O'Brien. Its results have been widely reported. Because I was there, I feel safe in saying here that cities everywhere in America have a chance to survive in 1971.
It has taken so much time to secure even that much hope. Our cities have been in danger for more than a decade. Washington has been indifferent for almost as long. I have witnessed the indifference again and again during my twelve years there.
In 1959, my first year in the Senate, I was given committee assignments closely related to urban affairs – an issue clearly regarded as equal to the lowly status of a freshman Senator.
In 1962, my proposal for a subcommittee on intergovernmental relations stirred very little opposition – because there was very little competition for the opportunity to worry about State and local finance.
In 1966, as the floor manager for Model Cities, I had to agree to a cut in funds to gain enough support for the bill – and even then it was still touch and go until the votes were finally counted.
And in 1969, my subcommittee held the first congressional hearings on revenue sharing – but we were advised not to report legislation to the Senate because there was no prospect for its passage.
Those years were a time of Federal failure. They were frustrating and they seemed almost endless. Most mayors and some Senators and a few Congressmen were trying to teach a vital lesson – but it often looked as though almost no one was learning. Now, in 1971, the message is finally coming through. If the cities go under, so will the suburbs and the towns and ultimately the country – and that's the only domino theory I know of which is true.
Fortunately, the events of recent days will probably prevent a testing of that truth. In response to the fiscal plight of States and counties, the Congress is likely to enact a phased Federal takeover of welfare cases. And the outlook for the cities is now enough new Federal money to stay in business.
That money is the real question. The name of the game in the cities is survival – and the name of the survival dollars is unimportant. I have introduced a revenue sharing bill which your legislative action committee has endorsed. I believe in that bill, But I also believe that this is not the time to argue over titles or authorship. How much credit there is for any individual is far less crucial than how much money there is for every city.
Our goal now must be survival dollars for the cities – in sufficient amounts, with sufficient local discretion, distributed according to need.
A program for survival must provide at least as much help as my revenue sharing proposal – which gives the cities far more than the President's bill. A program for survival must allow very broad discretion in allocating aid – which is the only way mayors can meet the mounting price of public services. And a program for survival must put the money where the problems are – which cannot be done by an administration formula that leaves a gold coast resort like Miami Beach with twice as much aid per capita as its hard pressed neighbor, the city of Miami.
When we first discussed distribution according to need, we were told that it just couldn't be done. But it has been done. It will be the basis for the plan that finally emerges. And it will be better for the big cities and better for this country, which simply cannot afford anything less than a focused attack on urban decay.
Each of us – mayors and senators alike – must work together for this kind of survival program. Your legislative action committee has been flexible – and you must remain flexible in the days and weeks to come. The outcome will be a bill you can live with – and a bill your cities cannot live without.
We have fought long and hard for the substance of revenue sharing. Now we see the possibility of victory – not for a specific name or a specific proposal – but for the reality of dollars to the cities. It is a victory that once seemed so distant and today seems so close. It will be a victory for all of us – for mayors who worry about the future of their cities and for concerned citizens who care about the fate of our country.
But there is a danger in the possibility of victory perhaps not as clear but almost as serious as the danger in defeat. Some politicians seem to think that survival dollars alone will satisfy the federal obligation to urban America. We must not permit their view to prevail. We must persuade the Congress and the administration and the nation to look beyond urban survival.
The blunt inescapable truth is that this year's likely legislation will leave the cities about where they were when the Kerner commission reported – with just enough money to finance austerity budgets, just enough services to stave off total breakdown, and not nearly enough resources to do enough of the critical work which must be done. Rescue from imminent urban disaster is not equivalent to urban salvation. And each of you know that in a very direct and very painful way.
Mayor Ray Gribbs of Detroit could use survival dollars to rehire 600 laid-off employees, to retain 1,000 who are now in jeopardy, and to reverse reductions in essential health and safety functions. But he would still be helpless in the face of a 45% unemployment rate among black youths in central Detroit.
Mayor John Lindsay of New York could spend survival dollars to resore recent job slashes and to maintain the present, inadequate level of police protection and sanitation services. But he still could not begin to rebuild the sections of Brownsville which look like Dresden after World War II.
Mayor Henry Maier of Milwaukee could use survival dollars to avert what he describes as "drastic cutbacks". But he could not stop the deterioration in housing and schools which has driven 24,000 citizens out of Milwaukee in the last ten years.
Mayor Ken Gibson of Newark could put survival dollars into so many urgent tasks that I would not even try to list them now. But what could he do about 20,000 drug addicts and 114,000 citizens dependent on welfare – a third of Newark's whole population?
And Mayor Jim Tate of Philadelphia could plug survival dollars into the $90 million budget gap which forced the city council to make slashes across the board in police patrols, prison security, and food allowances for needy children. But he could not repair the terrible blight which afflicts so many homes and apartments in the slums just blocks from this hotel.
Most mayors here today could tell similar stories of deprivation and disaster. What it all adds up to is a fundamental urban tragedy that will barely be touched by revenue sharing or its substitute. Unless Washington does much more in every area of concern, most of you will return to this conference next year as little more than caretaker mayors of caretaker governments in cities where survival is a code word for slow disintegration.
I have heard it said that this is what you deserve – that archaic and inept local administrations have bred their own problems – that the mayors are solely responsible for the urban mess. I have heard the charge that you cannot spend wisely and the implication that greater wisdom resides, in Washington. And I cannot believe what I am hearing.
Mayors are not prolonging the war in Viet Nam – a war no general can win and no reason can now make right – a war which has drained our treasure from the tasks of life at home to the tasks of death abroad.
Mayors have not driven our prosperity into the ground, pushed our prices out of sight, or made the jobs of working men and women pawns in a failing economic game plan.
Mayors have not impounded $800 million dollars of desperately needed domestic funds. Mayors have not decided that an ABM deserves priority over decent housing. And mayors have not vetoed increased appropriations for the education of children.
All of that was done in Washington by supposedly wise Federal officials. Mayors are responsible for none of it. But their cities and urban citizens are living every day with the painful impact of such mistakes – mistakes mayors did not make and cannot reverse.
So in the 1970's, the Federal obligation is larger than mere survival dollars to hold the line on decay. It is as large as the damage Federal policies have already inflicted on our cities. Washington must recognize that there is no urban crisis. Not because there is no crisis. But because it is not just urban. It is a total national crisis – and it requires a total national response.
That goal is so easy to say, so hard to reach. How hard, we have found out in recent years.
Despite the warnings of the Kerner Commission – despite the earnest words of mayors and the best efforts of worried Senators and Representatives – despite the resolutions of this conference – we have not come even close to what Senator Humphrey once called a Marshall Plan for urban America. No wonder the cities have remained so far from their potential for a truly civilized life.
We cannot accept more of this failure. The key to our success now is power – a coalition for progress in the cities with enough power in the country to make change happen. In these last hopeful days, we have seen what such a coalition can accomplish. Just weeks ago, the prospect for even a few new urban dollars seemed so bleak. The cities were drowning – and Washington was standing on the dock debating the shape of the life preserver. But together, mayors and city officials and congressional leaders have moved the debate off dead center and toward survival for urban America.
So this is not the moment to disband our coalition, but to expand its scope. Nineteen seventy-one may be the year of survival. Nineteen seventy-two and the year after and the rest of the seventies must become a decade of progress in the cities.
A coalition for progress must make its voice heard and its views count – all the way from city hall to Capitol Hill. It must exert a maximum effort for three minimum demands.
First, the Federal Government must guarantee a job for every worker.
Even when the indicators told us there was a boom, there was no boom in your inner cities. And the current bust has hit harder there than anywhere else. Only when the Federal Government becomes the employer of last resort, can we ease the despair of countless urban Americans – workers without work – workers whose anger could snap urban tensions into urban explosion at any moment. We must create jobs for them in the public sector – and we must begin with the current public service employment bill.
The President vetoed the bill last year – and he has threatened another veto in 1971. That is not the way for this administration to keep its pledge to take people off of welfare roils and put them onto payrolls. America must fulfill that pledge. And mayors and Senators must play their part by demanding a Federal job guarantee for every worker.
Second, the Federal Government must assure a livable urban environment.
I am not just talking about pollution. I am talking about the total physical environment. I am talking about cities strangled in their traffic because they cannot sell enough bonds to build enough mass transit. I am talking about schools where students fall further and further behind and hospitals where patients grow sicker while they are neglected. And I am talking about slum children who cannot move to housing that is not there – and cannot avoid the lead poisoning that is everywhere.
We have discovered and studied and even endured the decline of the urban environment. Now we must do something to change and enhance it – to make the reality of our cities equal to the promise of urban life. The Federal Government must muster the resources to build and sustain mass transit, better schools, and quality housing. We must reform our medical care system and enact national health insurance. We must make cities more than places to exist. We must make them truly places to live.
Third, the Federal Government must mount a maximum attack against urban crime.
Creating jobs and repairing the total physical environment is not our entire urban task. It is also essential to restore the rule of law in the streets of our cities.
In the urban America of 1971, too often the only thing that walks the sidewalks after dark is fear. Crime has subverted the sense of community and trust and driven more and more families into the isolation of their own homes – guarded by triple locks and the solitude of separation from the neighbors who should be their friends. The people of our cities have a right to be more than prisoners of suspicion and apprehension. They have a right to safe streets and secure lives and parks where a careful mother can let her children play.
But the federal government has done so little to protect that right. We have a new attorney general and new restrictions on the bill of rights and a swing toward strict construction. But violence and theft and addiction have continued to climb.
What the cities need from Washington is more resources, not more tough talk. The cities need federal aid for additional policemen, better trained and better equipped. The cities need an all out federal campaign against drugs, at home and abroad, to destroy the curse of addiction which spawns half of our urban crime. And cities and states alike need help to make our courts sure and swift in convicting the guilty and freeing the innocent – just as they need federal help to make our prisons places for rehabilitation instead of schools for crime.
In short, billions of new federal dollars must be poured into every area of urban endeavor for every year of the seventies. The cost in money may seem high but the cost of what we are doing now is human suffering and human deprivation.
And we can afford to pay the price for urban decency. We can afford less than seventy-five billion dollars for defense. We can afford to stop a war which is infecting brave young Americans with the disease of heroin. We can afford to invest the savings in the salvation of our cities. And we can afford nothing less.
For half a decade and more, mayors have been standing on the thin margin of disaster. I am convinced that in the last week you and your cities have won a chance to step back from the edge. You have probably won some time for urban America – something which was in desperately short supply just a few days ago.
We must now use that time to move beyond urban survival.
If foreign enemies were destroying our neighborhoods, undermining our health, poisoning our air, and spreading crime and violence in our streets, this nation would stop at nothing to stop them.
And that is almost what is happening to urban America. The only distinction is that the enemy is within – the enemy is indifference and neglect.
We must begin now to defeat that enemyor we will ultimately lose our cities and our country.
As mayors, you have been in the thick of the battle year after year.
You and your allies at every level of government have gained some vital ground. Now together, we can win the urban battle. Our cities can do more than survive. They can prevail.