Mr. CLARK. Mr. President, I hope that the Joint Economic Committee will study this bill in connection with its review of the Employment Act. As chairman of the Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, I also intend to schedule hearings on it. I hope that out of these deliberations by the two committees the outlines of a more comprehensive and effective national policy for full employment will emerge. Under this amendment to the Employment Act-which incidentally derives directly from the original intentions of the authors of the Employment Act—the President could provide us with rough targets in employment and investment needed to efficiently utilize our manpower and productive resources. If a level of unemployment no higher than 3 percent were to be attained by 1968, for example, the President, under this amendment, would estimate that we will need a gross national product of $734 billion in 1963 dollars. To achieve that GNP his calculations would find that we must put an additional $5 billion into the pockets of consumers each year from now until 1968, or public purchases of goods and services must increase by a like amount, or there must be a combination of the two. I agree, however, with the Joint Economic Committee that not all of the needed expansion in GNP can or should be provided in the private marketplace through tax cuts and monetary incentives. Because of the heavy financial burden this Nation has borne for 20 years in national defense, there is a gigantic legacy of unmet needs plaguing the Nation holding back whole regions, and thus the country as a whole, from meeting its full potential because of obsolescence. Some of these chronic needs will be met by the administration's new programs in the war on poverty, Appalachia, and economic development, and education. But a serious effort to meet them can cure both chronic obsolescence and chronic unemployment. "The door is open for a great expansion of educational, health, and other services to the Nation's disadvantaged people and to other far-reaching efforts to remove the scars from our society and reduce the obstacles which hamper its progress—" The Secretary of Labor commented in the President's Manpower Report. "The very success of the economy in achieving record levels of output, employment, and income has helped to overburden many public services to the point where future economic growth will be adversely affected unless these services are rapidly strengthened. Automobile purchases and use, for example, have outstripped the capacity of streets and highways. Gains in industrial output and population growth have placed severe strains on water and other natural resources and on police and fire protection services. And the prospect of continued rapid population growth adds another dimension of need for enlarged school, hospital, recreational, and other facilities." It is in meeting such needs as these-most of them identified in the past as in the public sector of the economy-that much of our future employment potential lies. This is why the bill which I have introduced requires the President to catalog such needs in a capital budget and design a plan to fill them in his full employment budget. The allocations to community development and housing, for example, have never been governed by considerations of how they might affect annual employment levels. Yet programs of this type, having a very high labor content per dollar spent, are an important part of the job-creating impetus which Federal expenditures can give. Witnesses before the Employment and Manpower Subcommittee estimated the urban renewal and housing labor content at from about $560 to $660 per $1,000 contract award. The Department of Labor estimates that each $1 million of contract awards in construction creates 115 man-years of work. The field of community development-which includes housing, urban rer ewal, mass transit, highways, pollution control, the construction of other local public facilities, and community planning-represents one of the largest areas of unmet needs in the Nation. There are, at the present time, between 7 and 8 million substandard dwelling units in our urban areas. The crop of young people in the war babies generation is now reaching maturity and will soon be marrying and starting families. The demands for new and rehabilitated dwellings, therefore, will increase dramatically. In addition, the growing proportion of older citizens in the population calls for the construction of housing specially adapted to their needs. An additional need for more low rent or purchase housing units is evidenced by the number of families who are unwillingly doubled up for economic reasons. There are an enormous number of obsolete commercial and industrial structures in our metropolitan areas. Continuous expansion of metropolitan regions will increasingly direct attention toward improving inadequate transportation facilities-whether bus, subway, or railroad commuter service as well as stepped-up construction of roads, bridges, and tunnels to accommodate mushrooming auto traffic. Additional investment in facilities to support metropolitan growth is essential: schools, colleges, hospitals, health centers, playgrounds, and recreation buildings, welfare institutions, sewer and water plants, and lines. The sums which will be required just to keep up with population growth in urban areas are staggering. Reliable estimates indicate that an investment of between $500 and $700 billion, both private and public, will be necessary just to accommodate the increasing urban population over the next 20 years. If the elimination of existing blight and obsolescence is included, an average annual investment of between $120 and $125 billion in private and public funds will be required each year over the next two decades in order to preserve and restore the vitality of the metropolitan areas of the country. This compares to public and private expenditures of about $50 billion in 1961. In the sparsely populated sections of the Nation, urgent needs also exist. In one study cited before the subcommittee, the total Federal investment in resource development-watershed conservation, forest stand improvement, soil conservation, and recreational development-required over a 10-year period came to $4 billion, about twice the current rate of expenditures. Approximately 250,000 new jobs would be generated by an additional $2 billion allocated for this purpose over a decade. Several years ago, Resources for the Future, Inc., estimated that a backlog of needed work programs in forestry, soil and water conservation, parks, fish and wildlife, range revegetation, water pollution, and sediment and other similar investments would require an investment of nearly $20 billion. This calculation did not include the heavy construction programs in water development with a backlog of authorized prospects nearly equal in size. Total requirements for withdrawal of water from lakes and streams in the United States in 1954 was 300 billion gallons daily, or only about 27 percent of the total streamflow, withdrawals in 1980 would be about 559 billion gallons daily and in the year 2000, more than 888 billion gallons daily, or more than 80 percent of total streamflow. Water programs up to 1980 total almost $55 billion for Federal programs and $173 billion for non-Federal programs. Some of the programs for expansion of development of water facilities are based on urgent needs to overcome accumulated backlogs. For example, the Public Health Service estimates that to overcome the backlog in municipal sewage treatment facilities by 1971 would require expenditures of $600 million annually, or more than twice the present rate of expenditure. There are many new areas affording opportunities for new employment and investment in the technological segments of the private sector, too. Properly directed, technological advance can create far more new employment opportunities than it destroys. It can do so if applied in whole new areas of human endeavor. In late 1963, the Subcommittee on Employment and Manpower heard from over two dozen representatives from the aerospace industries concerning the opportunities for new employment which could be created by conscious use of the new technology we have devised in the space and defense efforts. They were almost unanimous in their judgment, however, that it would take a conscious, directed effort by the Federal Government to induce the use of these new technologies into untried fields. They argued that the markets for these new potentials are too ambiguous at present to lure investors into them unless Government creates the special opportunities necessary to make such an undertaking profitable. It was this testimony which prompted the subcommittee to recommend creation of the President's Commission on Technology, Automation and Economic Progress which was subsequently approved by Congress and which will make its recommendations on these matters next January. The subcommittee was able to discover numerous highly technological fields in which the enormous technological expertise gained in the defense and space efforts can be applied, such as worldwide detailed inspection and surveillance systems for policing arms control; communications, command, and control systems; new educational technology for the classroom; new aids for air traffic control; medical electronics; new energy sources; mass transportation, and oceanography. We have a national obligation to bring the many lessons we have learned in defense-related enterprise to bear upon the continuing unmet public needs of our communities and our people-needs which the defense industries and their 59-179-67-3 30 advanced technologies may be able to help meet in this century of technological In my view the time is soon approaching when we must harness the kinds of I have in mind the millions of American children who are waiting for the benefits of 20th century technology to provide them with adequate schools, educational facilities, and teaching aids. I am confident that a communications system which can flash a television picture around the earth in an instant, can solve the communications tangle in our schools and provide a topnotch information and education service to millions of schoolchildren. Can we harness the technology which has put us in space to meet these pressing human and community goals? What is the proper role of the Federal Government in providing the benefits of 20th century technology to a community's schools, its mass transportation system, its public works, its public and private housing, and its productive resources? These are some of the challenging ques tions for this economy of systematic invention. These are some of the questions with which the new Presidential commission deal. The new jobs we need so desperately will not come from the application of sophisticated technology to traditional productive enterprise, but they will come from the application of technology to whole new lines of endeavor and unmet need. Today, I speak only of those employment policies needed to create the new jobs we need for full employment. In another speech I shall discuss the manpower policies we need to make certain that the skills of our people meet the needs of the economy. Today, I wish only to stress that our technological society has become so massive in its capabilities and its real problems so incredibly complex that we can not hope to utilize our full potential without some major departures in public and private policy. We will have to apply the same principles of the systems approach as we have in defense or space. Such an undertaking implies that we shall have to engage in some of the longrange national planning and coordination which nearly all of the nations of Western Europe have adopted since the end of World War II. The essential defect in America's kit of economic programs is coordination. There must be some direction, some coordination. Someone must set national objectives and performance levels. Someone must hitch present policy to future prospects. And in no field is this more true than in our attempt to bring our technological capabilities to bear on some of our chronic public needs. The bill I introduce today would move us toward that objective by requiring the President to define goals for us and devise programs to achieve those goals through intelligent use of the Federal budget. Change is the only permanent part of the modern scene. In a static society anticipation and foresight are unnecessary. But when the daily lives of 200 million people are in constant flux; when their individual welfare is threatened by forces beyond their control; then planning and a definition of social objectives is essential. And only government can provide that perspective for the community as a whole. John Dewey once wrote that a "culture which permits science to destroy its values without permitting science to create new ones is a culture destroying itself." Now, in the early days of the second industrial revolution, we have this op portunity to create those new political values which will carry us toward our objectives. This bill today attempts to define some of the issues implicit in such an undertaking. "We built this Nation to serve its people-" The President said in his 1965 state of the Union message. We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man. "We do not intend to live-in the midst of abundance-isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure. "The Great Society asks not only how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth, but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed." The most dangerous phenomenon in American life today is social and political lag, a lag between what the world requires and what our political institutions are willing to provide. Our purpose must be to build a world in which technological innovation and efficiency are not ends in themselves. Our purpose is to blend them to the cause of human freedom, intellectual excellence, perfection of the community and full employment of our talents and skills. The promise in the Employment Act of job opportunities for all those able and willing to work has not yet been fufilled, the President stated in his economic report. The test of government of, by, and for the people is how well it responds to the challenge of providing a gainful role for every citizen. The bill I introduce today is designed to achieve that end. Senator CLARK. S. 1630 would require the President, as part of his economic report, to submit to Congress each year a national employment and production budget, anticipating for the approaching fiscal year and the next 5 years the production rate performance of the national economy and the degree to which this performance will exceed or fall short of conditions necessary to assure full employment and production with price stability. The President would also submit to Congress a full employment Federal budget setting forth the gross national product needed to attain maximum employment, production and purchasing power, in the following fiscal year. This budget would include a short- and long-range capital budget for expenditures in such employmentgenerating fields as resources conservation and development, transportation, education, community development, agriculture, health, welfare, and environmental improvements. The bill would also establish a National Economic Advisory Council which would consult with the Council of Economic Advisers in the preparation of the full employment and production budget and the entire economic report. The Council would be composed of 20 representatives from industry, labor, agriculture, consumer and other interested groups, and State and local governments. Senator Javits has asked me to read into the record the following statement with respect to S. 2632. I am quoting now from Senator Javits: I am most pleased that the Employment and Manpower Subcommittee has undertaken these hearings at the initiative of our chairman, Senator Clark. We share a desire to have the first full-scale review of the Employment Act of 1946 since its enactment almost 20 years ago. We have both introduced measures, S. 1630 and S. 2632, which would amend the act so as to change our Nation's economic policymaking machinery. The premise of both measures is that the existing machinery is inadequate. But the machinery proposed to substitute for it is quite different in the two bills. My own approach, which is offered as a feasible Republican alternative to governmental economic planning, is to establish a Commission on National Economic Goals, building upon the experience of the Eisenhower Commission on National Goals and the British National Economic Development Council. I ask unanimous consent that my remarks on the Senate floor at the time of introduction of S. 2632 be inserted in the record of the hearings at this point. At Senator Javits' request, the remarks he made on the Senate floor when he introduced S. 2632 will be inserted in the record at this point. (The remarks referred to follow:) [From the Congressional Record, Oct. 12, 1965] COMMISSION ON NATIONAL ECONOMIC GOALS Mr. JAVITS. Mr. President, I send to the desk a bill to establish a Commission on National Economic Goals, and ask that it be appropriately referred. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be received and appropriately referred. The bill (S. 2632) to amend the Employment Act of 1946, to establish a Commission on National Economic Goals, introduced by Mr. Javits, was received, read twice by its title, and referred to the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. Mr. JAVITS. Mr. President, the bill provides for an independent, 12-member group of nongovernmental experts who would conduct a continuing, objective study of the Nation's long-term economic policies and would make annual reports of its findings and recommendations to the President and the Congress. The reports would be published as part of the Economic Report, already required under the Employment Act of 1946. I offer the bill as a feasible alternative on the part of the minority to the idea of governmental economic planning, based on the fact that we do not have in our system as yet any procedure for obtaining a long-range forecast as to what Government and the private sector can do with respect to the economy. The present, long period of economic prosperity presents an excellent opportunity to review dispassionately the adequacy of our national economic policymaking machinery, which in my judgment is definitely inadequate. The Bureau of the Budget, the executive departments, and the Council of Economic Advisors, under the Employment Act of 1946, perform a vital part of this function, but they do so necessarily as an integral part of the administration and on a relatively short-range basis. A number of private groups provide valuable independent analyses and recommendations in periodic published reports, but they are not privy to the data and the hard choices which are really being presented to the administration in its inner councils. The result is that even the Congress is not sure whether the right questions are being asked and the hard choices really being faced. The public at large is certainly not left in a position to know. Only an independent group, not tied to the administration or partisan politics, but with access to the governmental data upon which policy is in fact being made, can be expected to make the kind of objective analysis and evaluation of the Nation's domestic and foreign economic goals, of the existing programs designed to realize those goals, and of priorities among such goals. Only such a group, for example, can be expected to make reasoned recommendations as to how to reduce unemployment below the persistently unacceptable present level, as to what level would even be acceptable, as to the extent to which other goals, such as price levels, for example, would have to be accommodated in order to achieve an acceptable level of unemployment, and as to the relative costs of the various alternative goals. The range of factors involved in economic policy is, of course, much wider than this, but the example is illustrative of the kinds of questions on which an informed, but independent, Commission could be of inestimable help as the complexity of the many interdependent factors increases. The Eisenhower administration recognized this need for independent analysis and recommendations by establishing the high level, nonpartisan Commission on National Goals, which issued its report in 1960. My proposal would build on that useful experience by creating a permanent institution, with its own fulltime Executive Director and staff, but limited in its responsibility to the field of domestic and foreign economic policy. A similar body, the National Economic Development Council, was established in Great Britain several years ago and is now fully integrated into the British governmental structure. It performs the somewhat broader service of actually setting broad economic goals for the British economy and enunciating means for their achievement. |