March 12, 1974
Page 6380
GOVERNMENT CREDIBILITY
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, in a timely column appearing in the Outlook section of the Washington Post yesterday, David Broder has addressed a subject which all of us should begin to think about as our Nation approaches its Bicentennial Anniversary.
The issue, put quite simply, is the need to restore to good health a Federal system which is not functioning as well as it should in the eyes of those whom it is supposed to serve.
The implications of this issue are profound indeed. If we are going to address it seriously, we must be prepared to challenge some of the most basic premises upon which Government – particularly at the Federal level – has come to function in the postwar years.
Yet, if we are to make the most of the unique opportunity offered by our Nation's 200th birthday, we cannot afford not to ask ourselves these kinds of questions. From all around us, we hear that the American people have lost confidence in the way their Government operates. We must ask ourselves "Why?"
We also hear that the American people believe that the system can be run better, and that they are willing to participate in a system more responsive to them. We must ask ourselves "How can we meet such a fair and reasonable expectation?"
I intend to explore such questions as these during the present session of Congress, through the Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations. And I am glad to learn from Mr. Broder's column that others are planning to ask similar questions.
I commend Mr. Broder's article, entitled "The States Step Forward," to my colleagues. I trust you will find it as timely and thought-provoking as I did. I ask unanimous consent that Mr. Broder'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 STEP FORWARD
(By David S. Broder)
The mayors and the governors were in Washington last week for their winter meetings, and next week a group of scholars will assemble here for two days to discuss "Using the Federal System More Effectively."
The meetings come as a healthy reminder to Washington that this is not a one-dimensional government but one in which most of the decisions are made at the state and local levels.
Much of the visiting mayors' and governors' time was taken up with a pastime familiar to permanent Washington residents – grousing at Congress and the administration, whose sluggard habits of procrastination are beginning to wear on everyone.
There were chuckles of instant recognition when Norfolk, Va., Mayor Roy B. Martin, Jr., the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, said the national government is beginning to look "like a slow student ... to whom each new problem comes as an overwhelming surprise."
To the local officeholders, those problems are not abstractions or statistical deviations. They are all too real – whether they are discussing the doubling of unemployment in some cities, the tripling of propane prices, or the looming shortage of fertilizers.
But the mayors and governors brought more than complaints to Washington. They also brought a sense of their growing capability to cope – with a sense they expressed in accents as different as the cities and states they represent.
The new confidence came through most clearly in the keynote speech of the governors' chairman, Daniel J. Evans of Washington state. After a generation marked by multiple attempts from Washington "to poke and prod and mold us into a homogeneous mass," he said, Americans have come to realize that "national progress must lie in a shared experience" derived from the experiments in the "50 working models of representative democracy" that are the states.
Evans argued that to the degree the states and cities redefine their relationship with the national government as "a partnership essentially of equals ... the years just ahead of us can be the years when the balance is restruck and the federal system reassumes the form envisioned by the founders of our Republic."
Whether that 18th-century notion of a deliberately divided and layered government makes sense in the late 20th century is one question very much on the mind of those who will gather here this week to discuss the state of the federal system as America approaches its bicentennial.
In a volume of essays distributed to conference participants by the Center for the Study of Federalism at Temple University in Philadelphia, Vincent Ostrom, an Indiana University political scientist, lists no less than 10 major advantages in a federal system of government.
They range from the claim that "citizens in a highly federalized political system will be able to exercise greater voice in the conduct of public affairs" than those in a large unitary government, to the reiteration of Hamilton's and Madison's arguments, in the original Federalist Papers, that a federal republic is less susceptible to military coups.
In reality, the reputation and the viability of American federalism will depend less on the acceptance of such abstract arguments as these than on a demonstration by state and local governments that they are dealing with the problems and needs of America's citizens.
That is why it is welcome news that the National Governors' Conference has decided to revise the format of its annual summer meeting to make it a showcase for the efforts and accomplishments of state government.
Dan Evans, who will be host to the meeting in Seattle in June, announced that the governors have been invited to present – both as written, papers and in exhibits, displays and convention booths – programs exemplifying "state leadership in the federal system."
Later this month, he is launching an ambitious citizens' program in his own state to outline alternative future growth options for Washington state, as a guide to needed planning decisions. Evans says he hopes the effort will "persuade people to lift their eyes" beyond the current malaise.
The papers received from other states, he said, show state innovations "in such varied fields as land use planning, school finance, energy, emergency medical services, social services delivery, inmate education and training, management improvement, productivity, volunteers in state government service, regionalism, tax relief and long-range investments."
Nothing could do more to restore Americans' battered sense of self-confidence than a convincing demonstration that government is working – somewhere. In undertaking to prove that it does, the governors are making the right move at the right time in the right way.