Preview: 89th Congress; 5; Congress and Great Society

ogether until the end of the video. The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network.

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 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. It proposes as the first test for a nation, the quality of its people. This kind of society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power.

It will not be the gifts of government or the creation of presidents. It will require of every American for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey. And like freedom itself, it will always be challenged and not fulfilment. And tonight we accept that challenge. National Educational Television presents Preview 89th Congress, Congress and the Great Society. The Great Society, its greatness depends on how Congress responds to the presidential

programs now being unfolded. For congressional reactions to the Great Society proposals, we turn to Senator Edmund Muskie, Democrat of Maine, Senator Jack Miller, Republican of Iowa, Representative Robert Elzworth, Republican of Kansas, and Representative John Bratamus, Democrat of Indiana. Our moderator is Dr. Max M. Campbellman, lawyer, political scientist, and chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Greater Washington Educational Television Association. Gentlemen, it's certainly a pleasure to have you all here. The theme of this program relates to the Great Society, and we just heard President Johnson's statement with respect to the Great Society. It seems to me that perhaps the start this program would be useful if we could answer a question that certainly in my mind, you people in Congress are very close to the American people.

What do you think the American people consider the slogan, the Great Society, to mean? Senator Miller, I wonder if you might care to comment on that. Well I think that we might start it out this way. Almost every great leader, almost every President, Prime Minister, King, and so on, has, I'm sure, presented a program to the people he is leading, which might in one form or another be called the Great Society. You might call it the American Dream, or you might call it the Dream of World Communism, if you were over in the Soviet Union. And so in order to answer your question, I might start out by comparing how I would react to this question to what someone in the Soviet Union, for example, would react. Now over in the Soviet Union, a Soviet citizen would naturally want the Great Society, but it would be a different concept than what I have, and how would these things differ? I think we might say one great difference would be in the realization that this is one

nation under God. That automatically sets us apart. Another concept is freedom, which we believe in here, and which is a different concept of freedom from what the Soviets have. We believe that government exists to serve the people. Over there they believe that the people exist for the sake of the government. I think that we ought to recognize that as far as the American way of life is concerned, this implies the capitalistic economic society, as distinguished from what they would have in the Soviet Union. And so in a nutshell, I think we have to have these as premises to our fulfillment of the American dream, which means a better life, a better health, a better education, and the spiritual values along with it. Now Senator Muskie, as you hear Senator Miller define the Great Society, do you think the American people look upon the Great Society as President Johnson used it in those terms? I suspect that most American citizens are still thinking through the concept.

Perhaps most of them are thinking, and Senator Miller's phrase of the Great Society is the better life. I think of the Great Society as something that had its origins in the Declaration of Independence, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which reflects our belief that society ought to exist for the fulfillment of the individual, his hopes and his capacities, and that if the individual is truly fulfilled, that society itself will achieve its real fulfillment. Now that fulfillment didn't come to us with the writing of the Declaration of Independence, or with the writing of the Constitution of the United States, or even with the beginning of our self-government under the Constitution. This fulfillment has always been a goal. It has never been a full achievement, and it will always remain a goal. And I think this is what President Johnson is suggesting. And this is, of course, what he said in his inaugural address that this is something that we're constantly attempting to achieve.

Congressman Bratamus, would you care to comment on this point? Well, I think that there is no definition of the Great Society to which all Americans, if they're self-conscious about the phrase, would subscribe. But I think that if the slogan, the phrase, has got through, it means something a little different to different Americans. For example, to a high school student in a slum area in New York City, the Great Society may mean an opportunity to get a college education, to a Negro in Mississippi. The Great Society, I should think, would demean the right to cast his vote in elections for him. That would be a great society. To an immigrant from Eastern Europe who desires to come to the United States, the Great Society means the abolition of the quota system and a chance to bring his skills to America. To the American businessman, I think, the Great Society means a society in which he has

an opportunity to compete effectively. And to the American working man, it may mean a society in which he has an opportunity to raise the standard of living of his family. And so the Great Society, I think, means something different to every American, and that is, of course, the genius of our Great Society, diversity. And really, in a sense, somewhat of the genius of a selection of that phrase that occurs to me, as I listen to you, now, Congressman Ellsworth, you come from Kansas, which is in many ways an agricultural state. How do you find the people in your area, look upon the phrase, the Great Society? Well, first of all, I think that the people in Kansas respond to the phrase, the Great Society, and to President Johnson's State of the Union message in much the same way that all Americans do. And I think that Congressman Brad Pitt's point that the Great Society and the things in the State of the Union message mean different things to different people is a very well-taken

point. On an overall basis, I'd have to say that I think the phrase, the Great Society, and the way that the President has talked about it so far in his State of the Union message, and things in the inaugural address, sets an optimistic tone. It creates an optimistic emotional and psychological atmosphere in a very broad, general, vague sense. And I think that it's in that way that the phrase and the talk about it so far has been received by the American people as a whole. Now, that raises a very interesting point. Now, does this mean, gentlemen, that President Johnson, therefore, should have easy sledding with the Congress as he attempts to define the Great Society legislatively and present programs to you? What do you think about that? Well, this, I doubt. You do doubt it. Because when we're talking about legislation, we're discussing not objectives, but means. And it is here that Americans have always divided.

It isn't just where are we going about how do we get there? And I think it's healthy that we've always disagreed, and I would hope that we would always have the spark of controversy to sharpen our legislative vehicles for achieving these objectives. I would be very unhappy, frankly, if Senator Miller's party and the Congress and the Eldler's party, just to play a dead and roll over and let us pass this legislation or adopt the means that we choose without examining it closely. I mean, am I a quarrel with my fellow Democrats? You certainly make a plural list. I do think that the election of President Johnson by such a remarkably large margin, and these very large margins in the Congress, mean that we are at some kind of significant watershed in American politics. And I think the President is perhaps the most consumable, skillful politician in my judgment ever to occupy the White House.

And I think he knows that he has a mandate. He knows how to develop a consensus behind his policies. The fact that his state of the Union message has drawn such calm and the uncritical comments so far in this program from our two Republican colleagues indicates to me that he is going to be able to win most of his legislative program. Well, man, I differ with my Democratic colleague. All right. What seemed to me, Senator, that you are more qualified to discuss the question of how Congress or the Republican parts of the Congress are going to react than either of the two previous gentlemen? Well, first of all, I want to say this, Congressman, that I think you're spelling out the specifics of this concept of the great society is most appropriate. Because this is where we get into difficulty when we reduce this vague concept to which Congress and the House were referred down to the specifics, down to the specific pieces of legislation.

That's when you get into differences of opinion. Everybody agrees that the quality must be good, but what is good to you and to me when you get down to specific legislation may be quite different. But I must say that I'm not quite convinced that the President has a great mandate. I think rather the mandate was away from some of the things the people thought he has opposed it stood for rather than a mandate for some of the things that President Johnson was advocating. I think we've got to be very careful not to misinterpret the vote of the electorate. And I hope that they don't because if there is an interpretation that this was indeed a mandate for all kinds of programs which we will be receiving from the White House, then I think the people will be disappointed and properly sold. But there's no question about what? The Congress is controlled by the President of the United States, two to one, at least by his party. Now the test is going to come.

The test is going to come in saying whether or not not only the Republican members, but the Democratic members of Congress will serve in this independent legislative capacity as a separate and distinct branch and an equal branch from the executive branch. But I hope they will. But aren't the Republicans really at a point where they have some fundamental decisions to make? Senator Muskie indicated, as I listened to him, that he hoped the Republicans were to pose and criticize and look at these things very carefully and structurally, well, but the point is a minority party always has this dilemma. Do they oppose for the sake of opposing or don't they? Let me say in that that I can tell you, at least on the basis of what our new Republican leader in the House, Jerry Ford, has said, we're not going to be opposing for the sake of opposing. We're going to be taking positions and where they agree with the President's positions. We're not going to very to shift our ground just because of that. But now to get back to this question that John Bradamus touched on, and that is the

reaction of the Congress to the implementation of the Great Society, I agree with him. I think that at least so far as the House of Representatives is concerned that the President ought to have, by all odds, very easy sledding with his legislative program in the House. Not only does he have a tremendous, massive, two-to-one majority, but in addition to that, he and the leadership of the Democratic Party in the House have reformed the Rules Committee in a way that takes us back, really, I'm sure John will agree with me, to before World War I, so that the Speaker now has enormous power to control the flow of legislation and to bring it up and to get it passed through. This is not to say, Senator, that the Republicans are going to roll over because we're not. We're going to be very aggressive, we're going to be very positive, we're going to be very loud and vocal. But Bob, it seems to me that what you're saying imposes an extraordinary new and different kind of responsibility on us as Democrats.

You have it, in my opinion. Because I sit on the Education Committee. We have the votes on that committee, 21 to 10, to pass out almost any kind of education bill we want. It seems there for me that we have an even more clear responsibility, more difficult in some respects to challenge, to criticize the legislative recommendations of our own party in order to be sure that what we know we're going to pass is good. But you Republicans have a responsibility that up to now, you have not exercised. And I hope that your election of Mr. Ford will indicate you plan to, and that is, to come up with something positive and not simply to be viscerally negative and hostile to everything that the Democrats say. Well, let's say, John, that I challenge that right down to the ground because we have been positive, we've been creative, we've been constructive in so many areas already in the past, and we can continue to be, I assure you, but to get back to your original statement, you do have an extraordinary responsibility because of your margin and because of what

you've done with the rules in the House, you have just exactly that responsibility. And I don't see how, politically speaking, you're going to get out from under it. Because the minority party, please, Senator. I think there's responsibility resting on the shoulders of all of us, indeed there is. The point that I was trying to make earlier is that despite the apparent, tremendous majority, and it is apparent in some respects in the Senate of the House, you're Republicans by the very nature of the fact that you are Republicans with the traditions of a great political party, and with the convictions that that implies, I go on to undertake to force us to do a workman-like job, and you must do so, and your job is going to be more difficult because of the fact that your numbers are smaller. And so I challenge you to exercise your responsibility in a workman-like way and a constructive way.

And it seems to me that, as we view the work of the Congress, we've got to agree first of all on what are the very real problems, and it seems to me that in the state of the Union message, the President outlined those, secondly, what problems require action on the part of the federal government, and thirdly, what forms show that action take. Now you know, all of you know, that in both parties, there are going to be people who won't even agree that these problems exist in a way that requires the exercise of responsibility by government. And even if you agree that there are problems, many will say that those are problems that are outside the per-view, the legitimate per-view of the federal government. And then we get to the third point of how do we work out and now answer to it, and we're going to have divisions on both sides. Well, let me say first of all that I agree with great deal of what you've said, but you've opened the way for me to make what I consider to be a very pertinent comment about the state of the Union message, and that is that I think underlying the entire tone of the state of the Union message, the inaugural address, is a very, very strong assumption that the federal government is going to do it all, and that state governments and local governments and

private organizations and individuals have no part to play. I know that you're going to come back and quote to me the one phrase in there that says the president can't do it all, but that's all there is. But that's all, and I think that traditionally, the President's speech, the President's speech, and no, that's right. His job is to be the president of the United States, but I'm saying that he left that out and has left it out, and he's left it out of his programs while he's been president and the tradition of the Democratic Party in modern times has been to leave out this business of local responsibility and initiative. I disagree. Well, Senator, do you think that the issue will be an issue as to which branch of government, that is whether states or federal governments will in fact carry out these objectives? Do you think that's the debate that's going to take place? Well, that, of course, is always one of them. But I think it ought to be made clear for certainly for the sake of our audience that much of our work in the Congress is completely bipartisan. I spent hours with my friend Ed Muske on this water pollution control bill last year,

which we passed in the Senate. And many others worked on that subcommittee, and I would say that 95% of the time I would defy anybody to come into that subcommittee room and point out a Democrat or a Republican without knowing ahead of time, because this was a completely bipartisan job. And one of our emphasis was to clearly define the responsibility of federal and state levels of government. That's right. But I'd like to let me just wind up this one thing. This, of course, is one of the fundamental differences between the Republican and the Democratic Party, at least in its presence in their present states. The Republican Party would like to not centralize as much control in the federal government. The Democratic Party generally would like to have more centralized control. We would prefer to leave more to the state and local governments, if necessary, because the federal government has literally usurped the revenue-raising measures, returned some

of the revenue-raising sources to the states. This is a matter of degree, not of a difference. But the trouble with that theory, Senator, is that, or maybe you wouldn't put it this way, is you can go ahead and talk that kind of politics, and we'll go ahead and keep winning the elections. The point is, and here's why I want to challenge Bob Ellsworth, it's common and a political fair for our Republican friends to say that we Democrats want to centralize everything in Washington, D.C. And yet this is a vague phrase, they seem to get skittish when you begin talking about specific. I mean, I interrupt on the subject. You're for the Federal Water Pollution Control Act. What does that bill provide? Is it a grant-making program? Oh, yes, but. Oh, yes, but. But here, if you could have lived through the long tedious hearings and the conversations and the conferences that we would have had, you would have seen this bill come down from a completely centralized federal control over standards, down to a real working partnership

between the federal government and the state government. Now this is what I'm talking about, and fortunately we had complete meeting of the minds on this thing. It was a completely bipartisan effort in the area of water pollution control. I regret that this has not been so in many other areas. But in so many other areas where there are specific felt needs on the part of people in the United States, it has been, I would argue, the genius of the Democratic Party to look practically at the problem come up with some kind of pragmatic solution to it, not as part of some grand design to centralize everything in a vast bureaucracy in Washington and try to do something about it and move ahead. What's been the response? The response has been that the people say yes to the Democratic Party and say no to the Republican Party. Well, John, I don't want to get personal about it or talk about my own situation, but in the state of Kansas where we've had Republican government for a hundred years and where we've taken responsibility and we've created outstanding mental health

programs on a state basis, highway programs, education programs and so forth, the people have been saying yes to the Republicans for a hundred years in Kansas and should be. And should the people in New York state have been saying yes to the outstanding work in programs of Governor Rockefeller, same thing in Pennsylvania with Governor Scranton and Michigan with Governor Romney? And so I disagree with you. I applaud state response. You sound like a Republican. I interrupt for a moment to ask the question with respect to the Water Pollution Bill. As I gather, this is move forward rather rapidly. Here the new Congress is just born and yet we're moving on this legislation, isn't this rather unusual? Senator Musty, you've got some responsibility on this bill. Yes, I'm chairman of the subcommittee that's working on the bill and the Senate is making it a first order of business to deal with it largely because we laid the foundation for it in the last session of the Congress and are in a position to move.

Well, do you feel that other legislation will move as rapidly? I think that we can expect action on the Appalachia bill in the Senate fairly soon for the same reason. That great deal of the foundation was laid in the last Congress. I don't think that the objective is speed for the sake of speed because, for example, in the quotation from President Johnson's State of Union, which we heard earlier, he said it will require every American for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey. So speed isn't the key. It's quality. Well, you're so right. And timing is tied in with that. There are many times, I might say, when many of us Republicans just cannot support some of these measures, not because we don't believe in them, but because we think that they are poorly timed. For example, you just can't do everything all at once. Everybody knows that. It's a question of which comes first, and we deeply need a schedule of priorities for legislation over on the hill coming over from the White House, and we haven't had that

in the last four years. We're always standing in public in criticism. And I, of any program, it's responsible criticism. But it's responsible criticism, John, and there are many things that we Republicans are going to support. Why do you have to tell the Negro in Mississippi that he has to wait for a right to vote bill while you pass a school bill to take care of the needs of people in urban slums? John, I don't really many such things. I don't have many such things. Well, of course the Congress, Jack, will never follow any schedule of priorities sent down by the White House anywhere. I think there, if there ever is a time with the power that President Johnson has, with the 2-to-1 majority he holds over the Congress. Now is the time for the President to exert the leadership necessary to establish these priorities. And I think if he did it, he would be followed by— You're arguing against all that's instinctive with you politically. Not a bit. Not a bit. You would not suggest that the Congress yield this business of priorities to the President. The President, his first message was education. The second message was health.

And then he has sent down the immigration that I met. This is not quite what I meant. He has a way of indicating his idea of the importance of these things. This is not quite what I meant. I don't mean for the President to say we want you to pass the water pollution bill first and the education bill second. But there ought to be maybe 20 or 30 bills, which he feels are the must-bills. Well, he's given that. He let Congress act on them sometime during this session and there may be a 10 or 20 others that he say, well, let them go over until the next session. That's what I'm talking about. In the State of the Union message, he listed nine top priority subjects. Can I make one point on the great society and get a good point, but I'm afraid it may be the final point. All right. And I want to get in the last word. And it is only this that I think it's distinguished by the President's concern, which is I am sure the concern of all of us, that we care about the quality of American life, as well as about meeting the material needs of American life. Should have priority. Well, as I listen to this conversation, which has been a most interesting and fascinating conversation, both sides of the hill, both parties, it would seem to me that the President

has been perhaps politically wise in selecting the term the great society to identify his administration. Because to each of us, it means something different. And to the extent that the President's program can be identified with that, which is desirable as far as each individual is concerned, to that extent was it a wise move. Of course, he is a President that has tried to be a consensus President, and this may be in that spirit. Also seems clear to me, however, that this does not necessarily mean that the legislative program that he submits will automatically be accepted by the Congress. Of course, those who have followed the Congress know that the rubber stamp Congress are certainly a thing of the past. This is one of the strengths and the beauties of the American congressional system. And I certainly, as a citizen, was pleased to see the Republicans challenging the majority party to be responsible and the majority party challenging the minority party to be responsible. And both groups are assuming that any proposal that's sent down has to be carefully examined.

But I believe that I'm also correct in stating that in your views, the overwhelming majority, since the President's party received, will mean that in effect, the President will be successful with the Congress in attaining his legislative objectives, though the details may be altered. Now, you're all nodding your heads, and with that, I want to thank all of you for having appeared here, and in behalf of National Educational Television, say, good night. This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.