February 21, 1973
Page 4883
HEARINGS BEGIN ON NEW FEDERALISM POLICIES
Mr. METCALF. Mr. President, the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations today opened the Washington hearings on President Nixon's policy of "New Federalism" and the impact of that policy on the performance of State and local governments.
Many distinguished city officials took this opportunity to testify on their problems with categorical aid programs and their plans to use general revenue-sharing funds. These hearings will continue, with Governors and other State and local government officials providing their views on this subject.
The subcommittee's very able and distinguished chairman, Mr. MUSKIE, opened today's hearing with an illuminating and incisive statement of the issues under consideration. He said:
The Hobson's choice offered to all Americans is between higher property and sales taxes or the starvation and eventual death of worthwhile social initiatives.
Full understanding of this issue is critical if we are to act rationally and decisively in this area, and I therefore ask that Senator MUSKIE's statement be printed in the RECORD.
There being no objection, the statement was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE,
FEBRUARY 21, 1973
The hearings we begin today in the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations will examine the policy the President calls the New Federalism and the impact of that policy on the performance of State and local governments.
In such a setting, we should expect that the issues raised will be immediate and intensely political. There will be forceful debate on the priorities set in the Federal Budget for Fiscal 1974.
We will hear painful questions asked about the elimination or drastic reduction of important and popular programs of Federal assistance. We will explore the danger that diminished national expenditures in many vital areas, will force heavier, not lighter, tax burdens.
I welcome such argument. And I do not shrink from the idea that the controversy will be political. It is through such contests between partisans of differing ideas that America shapes its purpose and identifies its goals.
But at the outset, I want to define the broad framework in which these hearings are held. When Americans passed from a shaky Confederation to a strong Federal republic, they did so, as the Preamble to the Constitution said, "in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty." And they gave the Congress the power, in Article 1, Section 8 of their Constitution to "provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
Ever since 1788 when the Constitution was ratified, a creative tension has persisted over the interpretation of those words, over the relative responsibilities of the National and State legislatures to act decisively for the general welfare. Still the most durable standard for cooperative Federalism in 1973 is the one set out by Alexander Hamilton in 1791, when he said:
"It is ... of necessity left to the discretion of the National Legislature to pronounce upon the objects which concern the general welfare and for which, under that description, an appropriation of money is requisite and proper. And there seems to be no room for doubt that whatever concerns the general interests of learning, of agriculture, of manufactures, and of commerce are within the sphere of the national councils as far as regards an application of money."
We have amplified Hamilton's interpretation to match the growth of the society he helped to found. "The general interests of learning" now extend to Federal aid for disadvantaged children, handicapped by illness, by race or by poverty. "The general interests of agriculture" have been read to cover the need for conservation programs, disaster loans and the electrification that makes isolated rural communities working parts of the whole nation. "The general interests of manufactures" now mean tax incentives for industrial investment on one hand and consumer protection on the other. "The general interests of commerce" extend to the battle to restore an endangered environment as well as to the regulation of interstate transport.
To "establish justice" we have enacted Federal civil rights laws and provided for their enforcement. To "insure domestic tranquility" we have worked to aid cities renew their most battered neighborhoods and deprive crime of its breeding grounds. To "promote the general welfare" we have sought to guarantee hope in childhood, broad opportunity in the working years, medical care in illness and dignity in old age. To "secure the blessings of liberty" we established systems to assure legal counsel to the poor and to obtain equal treatment under the law for all.
Over the last 40 years the States and cities, the Congress and the President have established a cooperative Federalism that takes the Constitutional mandates of government as obligations to all Americans, goals that transcend State lines and purposes that are blind to distinctions of class or wealth or race or sex or religion. Pressed by competing pluralistic interests, we have used the Federal setting to define "the general welfare" and to match national resources against overall needs.
But now we face a revival of the old slogans of selfish interest, masquerading this time under the banner of government economy, smoke-screened by sallies against bureaucratic waste, and trumpeted as streamlined efficiency. The rhetoric of the New Federalism is clever, but the substance is the long-discredited belief which, in the words of Alexander Pope, ordains "self love and social be the same."
Sadly, perhaps, they are not the same. "Social evils pile up," Adlai Stevenson wrote a dozen years ago at the end of another period of government by apathy, "when little beyond unchecked private interests determines the pattern of society."
Now, in 1973, the Administration is telling us that governmental efforts to determine the pattern of society have, by and large, been failures. On the basis of this highly arguable diagnosis, the President is moving to dismantle those parts of the Federal apparatus which were constructed out of concern for the public interest.
He is acting like a doctor treating an infected thumb by recommending amputation of the whole arm. The patient's health is of less concern than the chance to perform radical surgery.
I do not doubt that the infection is serious. But the cure seems worse than the disease.
In the course of these hearings we will look at some of the remedies the President has ignored.
We will ask why defense expenditures should rise $4.7 billion in this year of peace and international detente. We will ask why, subtracting the costs of Vietnam from the budgets this year and last, spending for other defense and military assistance programs should increase $7.5 billion. Further, we will ask why immediate reform of our tax laws could not produce both greater equity for all and new revenues from those who now pay less than their fair share.
Finally, these hearings will investigate ways to correct the problems of delay and duplication, frustration and waste of resources that now hinder the effective operation of many categorical grant programs. The problems are there. A survey of cities by this Subcommittee, being distributed in preliminary summary at the opening of the hearings, details the extent of the breakdown in the delivery of Federal assistance. But the responses we have received from concerned city officials spell out a cry for reform, not a mandate for mutilation.
For there must be no mistaking the truth; the President's proposals amount to a radical reversal of the concept of Federal responsibility for "the general welfare" as that concept has developed through our history. The New Federalism says that the Federal Government can slash its contributions to meeting national educational, medical, environmental, urban and employment needs and assign primary responsibility for those areas to State and local authorities.
Such an abdication of national commitment means that these enduring obligations will have to be met in the future by local financial structures that are already ill-equipped to handle existing burdens ... or not met at all. Taxes will not be saved. They will be shifted. Self-reliance will mean that State government or local government or those least able to bear the costs will have to pay the bills.
The Hobson's choice offered to all Americans is between higher property and sales taxes or the starvation and eventual death of worthwhile social initiatives. Cooperative Federalism with its generous insight into national needs gave birth to these programs. A narrow definition of economy is now intent on strangling them before they can bear full fruit.
And the claim of economy is a false one. What savings can result from terminating the Public Employment Program that will not be outmatched by higher unemployment insurance costs?
What thrift is there in ending Neighborhood Youth Corps when such a move propels idle youngsters into crime and forces higher expenditures for police protection? What logic can there be in closing day care centers – or in failing to establish needed ones – which would permit welfare recipients to become working citizens?
The President will claim that the special revenue sharing he has proposed will redeem the Federal obligation while putting the responsibility for successful execution of social programs at the level nearest the real needs. But the budget figures belie that assertion. The funds requested for grants-in-aid and special revenue sharing combined for Fiscal 1974 represent a net drop of $3.6 billion under the outlays for programs that were carefully targeted last year. And the removal of the features that matched Federal money to local efforts further harms the development of private philanthropy as an extension of governmental endeavor.
General revenue sharing, our survey of cities indicates, has gone for many of the purposes it was intended to serve. The first year's allocations are being targeted on the capital construction needs, improved official salaries and better public safety which many cities could not have undertaken without the supplementary help general revenue sharing provides.
One area, however, has obviously been neglected. Only a small proportion of these first funds are being spent by the cities on social services for the elderly and the poor, even though such essential expenditures were one of the law's priorities.
And now the assistance given with one hand is being withdrawn with another – in total contempt of the promise implicit in last year's commitment of Federal help to hard-pressed local governments. Revenue sharing was not considered when it was passed – and must not be considered now – as an excuse to cut back Federal funding of social programs. Speaking two years ago to the very group of Mayors who will appear as the Subcommittee's first witnesses today, I said:
"We can never get maximum benefit from the war against poverty, from the Model Cities Program, and from the air and water pollution control programs so long as the streets of our cities are strewn with garbage for lack of money to collect it or so long as our cities remain hotbeds of crime and violence because they cannot afford police to prevent it.
"What the cities need now is financial assistance they can use to pay the operating costs of government. They need money to pay for police and fire protection, schools, and garbage collection. They need, in short, general revenue sharing."
What the cities and States do not need – and cannot afford – is a betrayal of the promise of general revenue sharing. What they do need is a reform in the bureaucracy which now obstructs the efficient delivery of Federal assistance. These hearings will seek to determine the most appropriate reforms.
But the Congress is not ready to pass sentence of death on the concept of Federalism that has grown to meet the needs of a growing nation. We are not prepared to accept something called the new Federalism without understanding that it is a profound retreat back to the reactionary view of government as a necessary evil. We remain committed to the belief that through cooperative Federalism we can make government again an instrument for the general welfare, a weapon to restore our sense of shared purpose and of great national enterprise.