Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

Highways; education; address by President Eisenhower; state government operation; and natural resources

Points of Interest:

Pursuant to enactment of the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956, Governors talked about progress they had made with respect to highway development and safety. Opposition was expressed to extension of the Davis-Bacon Act requiring that prevailing wages be paid to workers on federal and state construction contracts, on the ground that it constituted federal interference and was expensive to administer.

With respect to education, Governors focused on the problem of limited classroom space. Governor George Timmerman of South Carolina told of a proposal in his state to stagger student attendance over a full 12 months, but northern Governors said it would be difficult to implement such a plan in their states with the expectation that some students' vacation time would occur during the winter months when outdoor activities were limited. Also discussed were the alternatives of constructing instructional mobile units and using educational TV, in addition to seeking federal emergency aid for school construction.

In his address to the Governors, President Eisenhower spoke of the cold war but gave greater attention to state-federal relations. He made clear that in spite of his support for the preservation of federalism, states were in part to blame for inaction or inadequate action in assuming their rightful responsibilities. He proposed that a task force be established to: designate functions that states were ready and willing to assume and finance; recommend federal and state revenue adjustments necessary to enable states to assume such functions; and identify likely future functions and responsibilities and recommend which level(s) of government would be best equipped to handle them.

On the subject of government reorganization, Governors discussed achieving greater efficiency through consolidation of agencies, greater interdepartmental cooperation, and the use of mechanization and computers.

Memorable Quotes:

Governor G. Mennen Williams of Michigan said: "...today with 6 per cent of the world's population and 7 per cent of its resources, we have managed to amass 50 per cent of the material wealth of all of the world. When we ask ourselves how this happened, we certainly can't answer by saying that we have worked harder than other people...We have to go further...We have believed from our founding fathers on down that education was not something which was reserved for the elite, but which was something for all of our people....In order to achieve this kind of an education, there is no other final answer than the investment of more state and federal tax money, although this must be done most prudently and only after the consideration of all methods of the economy so that what money we spend is spent efficiently...In my opinion, we should [conduct an attack] on our educational problem based on a reasonable program of state aid to education and of the extension of federal aid to education which we already have and which we have had for several generations."

President Eisenhower said: "...the Soviets are learning the age-old truth that those who have known freedom will never willingly live in slavery. The assertion and maintenance of its independence by Yugoslavia, the unceasing unrest in East Germany, the upsurge of freedom in ruthlessly repressed Hungary, the increasing liberation of controls in Poland, all bear witness to man's eternal refusal to live enslaved by his fellow creatures or as the pawn of the State. I am profoundly convinced that one day--inevitably--those nationals and those people will again be free. Evolutionary change, generated by pressures from within and without, hopes and yearnings of the oppressed, kept alive by the friendships of the free peoples of the earth, will eventually destroy or disintegrate despotic power, and those downtrodden populations will again walk upright upon the earth."

With respect to state-federal relations, the President said: "...the national government was itself not the parent, but the creature, of the states acting together...today it is often made to appear that the creature, Frankenstein-like, is determined to destroy the creators...[yet the] tendency of bureaucracy to grow in size and power does not bear the whole of the blame. Never, under our Constitutional system, could the national government have syphoned away state authority without the neglect, acquiescence, or unthinking cooperation of the states themselves...like nature, people and their governments are intolerant of vacuums. Every state failure to meet a pressing public need has created the opportunity, developed the excuse and fed the temptation for the national government to poach on the states' preserves...Opposed though I am to needless federal expansion, since 1953 I have found it necessary to urge federal action in some areas traditionally reserved to the states. In each instance state inaction, or inadequate action, coupled with undeniable national need, has forced emergency federal intervention...it is idle to champion states' rights without upholding states' responsibilities as well...by removing barriers to effective and responsible government, by overhauling tax and fiscal systems, by better cooperation between all echelons of government, the states can regain and preserve their traditional responsibilities and rights. Or--by inadequate action, or by failure to act, the states can create new vacuums into which the federal government will plunge ever more deeply, impelled by popular pressures and transient political expediencies."

With respect to state government organization, Governor Orville Freeman of Minnesota said: "At the outset of my first term, we did not have one state employee trained in the general field of electronic computing; only a few scattered agencies had their payrolls under machine operation; most of them prepared manually their semimonthly payrolls involving thousands of paychecks...there were...employees who laboriously copied hundreds of separate listings by hand into huge ledgers, involving detail that, with machines, can be recorded and tabulated literally in one-hundredth of the time."

Governor Raymond Gary of Oklahoma said: "...our big problem right now is oil or the effect of imports of oil upon our economy...under the present policy of our domestic supply of oil, our national security program is being undermined...the rapid increase in imports of oil to replace domestic produced oil is destroying incentive to explore for new oil reserves in this country. The Suez crisis [see note below] proved beyond any question of doubt that we cannot depend upon foreign produced oil to supply our needs during periods of national emergency. Prior to World War II, imports supplied 5 per cent of our domestic production. Five years after the close of World War II, imports supplied 10 per cent of our domestic production, and at the present time imports are supplying more than 20 per cent of our present production. Over two years ago the President's Cabinet Committee found that our national security program would be threatened if imports exceeded 16.6 per cent of domestic production...in view of the President's Cabinet's own finding, the national defense program, our security program of this nation, is being endangered. When you destroy the desire to discover new oil reserves...naturally our reserves are going to go down, and as our reserves go own, we are going to have to import more foreign oil...we will find ourselves...in the position of supplying more and more American capital to locate new oil reserves in the foreign countries...In case of a national crisis or war, we might find ourselves with inadequate reserves of oil to supply our needs if this policy continues, and we might find the oil that we have discovered with American capital, in foreign areas, being used to the benefit of those that we might be in conflict against." [Note: By an agreement reached two years earlier, Great Britain in 1956 withdrew troops from the Suez Canal Zone in Egypt, where it had previously enjoyed the right to maintain defense forces. But when Egypt concluded an arms deal with communist-controlled Czechoslovakia, the U.S. announced the withdrawal of funds and assistance to Egyptian President Nasser, who responded by nationalizing the Suez Canal. When efforts to reach agreement with Egypt for international control of the Canal failed, Britain and France sent troops to occupy it. This action was opposed by the United States as a violation of Egypt's right of self-determination, and the U.S. voted in the United Nations General Assembly for withdrawal of the invading troops. In early 1957, under supervision of a United Nations police force, the Suez Canal was reopened to shipping.]

Selected Resolutions Adopted:
(1) To continue the Committee on Highway Safety and request that it seek to develop legislative recommendations with respect to the requirement of safety design features for new automobiles; (2) requesting the appointment of a committee to study the problem of air pollution and report its conclusions with respect to ways and means of developing an effective interstate program; (3) suggesting that the President and Congress take cognizance of the additional burden on taxpayers resulting from the acceleration of interest rates on bonds issued to meet local funding needs, with a view to alleviating this burden; (4) affirming the recommendations of the 1956 report of the Special Committee on Civil Defense of the National Governors' Conference, approving the Committee's 1957 report recommending that all state governments establish lines of succession for their executive branches, and urging that aid be available to State Defense Forces and National Guards; (5) urging that adequate funds be appropriated by Congress to meet the minimum Army National Guard training and armory requirements; (6) urging Congress to take favorable action to revise the pay structure in the armed forces upward in order to attract the best personnel; (7) expressing the Governors' desire that the effectiveness of the Federal Bureau of Investigation be continued and that all possible avenues be explored to protect the nation's security while affording its citizens all possible personal protection consistent with that security; and (8) authorizing the Chairman of the National Governors' Conference's Executive Committee to appoint a special committee to work with federal Presidential appointees to develop ways and means of attaining a sound relationship of functions and finances between the federal government and the states and to formulate definite proposals to these ends.

Presidential Addresses: