Nation: THE 89TH CONGRESS: Acting on the Visionary

THE thrust and direction of the prodigious 89th Congress were set by Lyndon Johnson in two speeches. Before a University of Michigan audience at Ann Arbor on May 22, 1964, the President called on the nation to “create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the national capital and the leaders of local communities.” In his State of the Union address to the assembled Congress in Washington last Jan. 4, he defined his own soaring dreams of what American life should be. “Our nation,” he said then, “was created to help strike away the chains of ignorance and misery and tyranny wherever they keep man less than God means him to be.” The Congress, warming up to the “creative federalism” approach to nationwide problems, has already transformed many of President Johnson’s visionary phrases into laws and programs.

We begin to build our Great Society in our cities, in our countryside, in our classrooms.

URBAN AFFAIRS. A $7.8 billion housing program aims to meet such varied needs as urban renewal, campus dwellings for college students, and 60,000 more public-housing units. Congress went further and created the first new Cabinet post in twelve years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which amalgamates a batch of existing bureaus within a single agency devoted to the problems of the cities, where 70% of all Americans now live.

THE ENVIRONMENT. Congress passed an unprecedented highway beautification bill that provides for withholding some federal road funds from states that tolerate unsightly billboards and unconcealed junkyards. The 89th also 1) authorized $240 million for new landscaping along certain federal highways, 2) set up federal regulations that by 1968 will limit atmospheric pollution from automotive exhaust pipes, and 3) approved a water-pollution control law that could lead to courtroom prosecution of industries or individuals responsible for fouling U.S. waters.

EDUCATION. The Congress made history with its education bills. One act allows public-school districts to receive federal funds for the first time without specifically detailed directives as to how the money must be spent. Most of the $1.3 billion authorized for elementary and secondary schools will go to districts with 3% of their student enrollment from families making under $2,000 a year—a qualification that includes 90% of all U.S. school districts. To sweeten the package for some of those who have opposed such bills in the past, the Johnson measure allows private and parochial (largely Catholic) schools to get their own federal funds for books and to “share” whatever new federally purchased public-school facilities are created in their area. A $2.3 billion higher-education bill, rammed through last week, allows $70 million for the nation’s first Government-financed college scholarships (up to $1,000 a year per student), offers $460 million in construction grants to colleges, sets up funds to finance programs aimed at strengthening developing institutions (particularly small Southern Negro colleges), underwrites interest on loans for college students from families making under $15,000 a year.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all.

IMMIGRATION. The Congress junked the outdated national-origins quota system, opening U.S. doors to thousands of eager immigrants who had been kept out in the past because of arbitrary numerical limitations set 41 years ago.

VOTING. After nearly a century of neglect and outright violation, the 15th Amendment’s “guarantee” of the vote to all Americans at last became a viable, enforceable part of U.S. law. After a 24-day filibuster in the Senate was choked off (marking the seventh occasion in U.S. history that a cloture vote has passed), the Congress cleared a tough voting-rights bill that abolished much-abused literacy tests and allowed federal registrars to move into Southern counties where blatant racial discrimination had existed for decades. Within three months of passage, 168,000 new Negro voters had been registered in the South.

We will build a richer life of mind and spirit.

CULTURE. No U.S. Congress had ever done more than laugh at the idea of spending taxpayers’ money for anything as intangible as the arts—until the 89th. With scarcely a titter, it approved an Administration-originated bill establishing a National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, authorized $63 million to back it up.

Give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty.

APPALACHIA. The President failed to get the bill in 1964, but this year Congress passed (62-22 in the Senate; 257-165 in the House) Johnson’s request for $1.1 billion in aid to the depressed eleven-state Appalachia region. The bulk of the money ($840 million) will go toward a highway system in the area aimed hopefully at bringing in new industry and making jobs more accessible to mountain folk.

ANTIPOVERTY. A hefty $1.8 billion ($285 million more than Johnson himself requested) was authorized for the war on poverty, mostly to finance job-retraining programs for the unskilled and the unemployed and to set up Youth Corps camps. A regional development bill providing $3.2 billion to finance public-works grants and loans that will create new jobs in depressed areas, also went through without trouble.

Our goal is to match the achievements of our medicine to the afflictions of our people.

HEALTH. Harry Truman started pressing for a medicare program in 1945. Twenty years and three Presidents later, the 89th came through with a vast, $6.5 billion plan for people over 65 providing 1) hospital and nursing-home care paid for by a compulsory payroll tax, and 2) voluntary coverage of other medical costs (including doctors’ bills), financed by a $3-a-month premium from participants themselves. The Congress also authorized $340 million for intensive research into heart disease, cancer and stroke; set up strong new controls over the sale of barbiturates and amphetamines; extended federal programs to immunize children against diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough and—for the first time—measles; insisted that all cigarette packages carry the message, “Caution: Cigarette Smoking May Be Hazardous to Your Health”; granted $224 million to mental health centers, and $205 million more to help retarded children.

We must keep our nation prosperous.

ECONOMY. The 89th pushed through a wad of economy-stimulating bills, most notably a measure slashing excise taxes on items such as furs, jewelry, appliances, cars and entertainment by $4.8 billion over the next four years. The debt limit was hiked to $328 billion. Because of increasing industrial demands for silver, a bill was passed to eliminate it completely from dimes and quarters and cut silver content of half-dollars to 40%. Congress eliminated the 20-year-old requirement that each Federal Reserve Bank keep gold reserves totaling 25% of its total deposits, thus releasing $5 billion in gold to meet international demands on the dollar and allowing the nation’s money supply to expand.