Plenary Session Transcripts

Governors Attending:

Guests:

Discussion Subjects:

• Agriculture and Rural Development (AG) – agricultural trade beyond our borders
• Economic Development and Technological Innovation (ED) – the Administration's agenda on housing and economic development; the congressional agenda on housing and economic development; and a report on science and technology
• Energy and Environment (EE) – the Administration's environmental agenda
• Executive Committee (Exec) – the federal budget deficit
• Human Resources (HR) – presentation of the Governors' Council on the American Workforce; and presentation by the Department of Labor on workforce issues
• International Trade and Foreign Relations (ITFR) – Europe 1992; the United States trade agenda; tourism; and the U.S.-Canada trade agreement
• Justice and Public Safety (JPS) – dealing with prison capacity and problems inside prison walls; public-private partnerships for public safety; attacking drug abuse and drug trafficking; and a view of street-level drug operations
• Transportation, Commerce, and Communications (TCC) – state focus on bus safety; report on rural public transportation legislation; update on telecommunications; and one-year outlooks in Congress and the Administration
• Other Governors' Sessions – education roundtable on choice
• Plenary and Special Session Discussion Subjects - Economic competitiveness; international education; investing in children; and combating drugs

Points of Interest:

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed the view that there were two philosophies of foreign policy, one of which saw it as a subdivision of psychiatry (i.e., about good will) and the other as a subdivision of theology (i.e, a struggle between good and evil). At the margin, Kissinger said, the two philosophies met in the notion that international quarrels were akin to personal quarrels that could be ended by single individuals. But he cautioned against placing trust in a single Soviet leader like Mikhail Gorbachev, arguing that Soviet/Russian history had been one of expansion and of weakening nations along its borders. Kissinger went on to say that nations of different histories and domestic experiences required a balance between conflicting notions of justice and legitimacy. The United States had failed in this regard, looking for perfection and rejecting the notion of balance of power. But such balance should be considered a means of containing tension, not causing it.

David Halberstam told Governors that national security wasn't just about a weapons count; it was an index of broad national health. He argued that our nation failed to recognize the end of our hegemony and that we were wrong to scapegoat foreign nations for our lagging educational and economic advancement.

In recognition of the need for Americans to have broader knowledge of the world, Governor Thomas Kean of New Jersey spoke of a report that had just been issued on international education. With the report was a list of organizations with resources that could be useful to teachers and school administrators in offering international education programs, as well as descriptions of activities undertaken by states to make international education available to the business community.

In addition to looking at American views of foreign relations, Governors focused attention on what domestic policies were needed to help make the United States more competitive internationally—with a focus on better caring for our children and our infrastructure. Then-Governor Bill Clinton of Arkansas reported the findings of NGA's Children's Task Force that our nation did a poor job of bringing children into the world, of preparing them for school, of keeping them healthy, and of creating an environment in which they could resist drugs, teen pregnancy, and other problems. As a result, we had higher school dropout rates—with more youth winding up in the correctional system—than any other advanced nation in the world.

Education expert William Woodside echoed Governor Clinton's sentiments, stating that the single largest threat to our nation's long-term security was the abysmal condition of children under the age of five. He noted that the U.S. ranked 19th among industrialized nations in infant mortality, that Head Start was made available to fewer than 20 percent of the children who needed it, that there were sharp restrictions on the number of women and children receiving the benefits of food and nutrition programs, and that targeted federal assistance to public schools in disadvantaged areas was severely limited. If current trends continued, according to Woodside, by the year 2000 one out of every four children in this country would be poor, one in five would be at risk for becoming a teenage parent, and one in seven would become a high school dropout.

Like Clinton, Woodside argued in favor of prevention programs such as access to prenatal care for all pregnant women, immunization of all children against infectious diseases, provision of quality day care for working parents, and expansion of Head Start eligibility. Because lack of prenatal care was often linked to limited health insurance coverage, Woodside advocated allowing small businesses to form consortiums to be able to afford to provide health insurance to their employees.

Governor Jim Blanchard of Michigan said that NGA's task force on domestic markets was focusing on ways in which states could develop systems that would enable firms operating within their borders to compete more successfully against foreign firms. To survive, Blanchard said, firms would have to develop and deploy advanced technology and products and processes, which in turn would require improving the skills of their workforces.

Governor James Thompson of Illinois said that NGA's task force on infrastructure was preparing to hold meetings and hearings across the country that would focus on the relationship between public investment and infrastructure; finding innovative ways to finance infrastructure improvements; and identifying infrastructure planning priorities.

Leading a special session on drug abuse and drug trafficking, Governor Michael Castle of Delaware reported the following findings, among others, of the White House Conference for a Drug-Free America.

• 50 percent of the high school class of 1987 had used marijuana or hashish, 15 percent had used cocaine, 3 percent had used PCP, and 92 had used alcohol.
• 15 percent of 8th grade students reported having tried marijuana, of whom 44 percent reported first using it by the 6th grade.
• Of people entering the full-time workforce for the first time, 65 percent reported illicit drug use.

Governor Castle went on to say that drug abuse cost business some $60 billion annually, $35 billion of which was in lost productivity due to absenteeism, workplace accidents, rising medical costs, and theft. Castle also noted that the third largest cash crop in the United States was marijuana, and that of the world's production of illicit drugs, 60 percent were consumed in this country.

U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh noted that President Bush's budget for the coming fiscal year included $1 billion in new outlays for education, treatment, and enforcement in the drug field, as well as $326 million for state and local governments to help in the fight against drugs.

Governor Bob Martinez of Florida told Governors that NGA was sponsoring three national drug seminars to bring together drug policy advisors and leaders in education, criminal justice, and treatment region by region in an effort to implement the recently-enacted Anti-Drug Abuse Act.

Dr. William Bennett, director-designee of the newly-established national drug control policy office, told Governors that he would appreciate their help in developing a national control strategy.

Jack Lawn, director of the Drug Enforcement Administration, focused his talk on the proliferation of crack cocaine. In just two years, between 1985 and 1987, the percentage of cocaine abusers seeking treatment who were using crack as opposed to powder cocaine rose from fewer than one-quarter to more than one-half. In addition, 50 percent of emergency room admissions for drug abuse were caused by the illicit use of legal drugs. Lawn also noted that 25 percent of marijuana consumed in the United States was grown here. He went on to say that the Anti-Drug Abuse Act had provided authority to share assets seized in drug raids with state and local governments. In 1986, one out of every five dollars had been shared with state and local authorities. That number had risen to one out of four in 1987 and one out of three in 1988.

Senator George Mitchell outlined issues that would be addressed by the Senate in the coming year, including reauthorization and improvement of the Clean Air Act. Governor Thompson of Illinois noted that states were working with industry and labor to develop a unified position on acid rain legislation, and that he and fellow coal state Governors had been discussing the potential for legislation that would alleviate acid rain concerns at the same time economic interests were protected. He asked Senator Mitchell whether it would be possible to put together legislation that mitigated against the effects of fuel switching policies (switching from high- to low-sulfur coal), which negatively affected high-sulfur coal states. Senator Mitchell responded that he had introduced the first legislation to control the emission of the precursors of acid rain in 1981, and he felt confident that legislation could be developed to accommodate both environmental and economic concerns.

Paul Kennedy, author of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, spoke of the need to address a variety of issues, among them: (1) world population shifts that left advanced Western democracies facing an expected decline to between 7 and 8 percent of the world's population by the turn of the century; (2) global warming; (3) the potential for biogenetics to increase agricultural output by 20 percent but also to risk world starvation by concentrating production in the hands of a small segment of the world's farmers; and (4) the loss of America's competitive edge, and the reality that successful societies would be those with high levels of literacy, skills in math and science, and knowledge of foreign language, culture, geography, and history.

Memorable Quotes:

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said with respect to glasnost linked to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: "I would argue that the American domestic debate has been polarized between those who considered foreign policy a subdivision of psychiatry and others who treat foreign policy as a subdivision of theology. The psychiatric approach treats relations between nations like relations between people, and it emphasizes personal goodwill, atmosphere, creating a climate out of which, then, almost automatically, reconciliation will emerge. The theological approach sees foreign policies as a struggle between good and evil…And at the margin, the theological and psychiatric approach[es] meet each other, because both of them tend to believe that international quarrels are akin to personal quarrels, [and] that they therefore can be ended by single individuals…[This is the] nostalgia of American foreign policy…The nostalgia…has been that some day, some Soviet leader would come long, who is just like a regular guy."

Kissinger also said: "…no settlement can ever perfectly satisfy everybody. If somebody were perfectly satisfied, the odds are that somebody else would be perfectly dissatisfied. So the problem is to find a relative balance between the conflicting notions of what is just…American statesmen, from Wilson through Reagan [indicate]…we are trying to create something in which there is universal bliss and in which the concept of balance of power is considered a contributing cause to international tension instead of one means not of removing it, but of containing it."

David Halberstam, author of The Reckoning, told Governors: "The danger is not that American hegemony is over…The danger is that it’s over and we do not accept the new reality, the new limitations…[I]t’s almost as if we, seeing it change, seeing other nations doing things that we used to do better than anyone else…are paralyzed…The danger is in…looking for scapegoats. Japan and Korea may be difficult competitors. There may be protectionism there. The reason they’ve been so successful is they have had primacy of education and primacy of manufacturing…The age that is over is the one that was brought to us by World War II. We were brought kicking and screaming to the zenith of our power when we, protected by oceans in an age when weaponry could not cross an ocean, came through unscathed and all our potential competitors, allies and adversaries, were in different ways ravaged, broken by that war…We mistook an historical accident and believed that it was a permanent condition…the Japanese…are the pioneers in a new age when economic power comes from the maximization of the human brain."

Selected Policy Positions Adopted:
(1) Recommending retargeting tax credits for child care toward low-income families by making the credit refundable and increasing the monetary value of the credit; (2) clarifying support for community-based services and endorsing the establishment of a single public financing source to fund long-term care—with private financing sources to complement the public funds; (3) seeking an extension of targeted slots in federally subsidized housing programs to those at risk of becoming homeless as well as those who already homeless; (4) calling for permanent housing as the primary focus of any long-term solution to the problem of homelessness and recognizing prevention activities, support services, transitional housing, and emergency shelters as important components of any strategy to help the homeless; (5) establishing principles to guide the development of a national commitment to systematically extend health care coverage to all Americans; (6) suggesting that vocational and technical education should become more integrated and responsive to the needs of the economic development strategy of the state, its individuals, and its private sector; (7) calling for additional funding for the WIC supplemental food program and encouraging states to coordinate the activities of the WIC and Medicaid programs and to use competitive bidding in the purchase of infant formula; (8) outlining guidelines for the development of a national energy policy, including such options as investment tax credits and other incentives for the production of traditional and alternative energy forms, redirection of current research and development efforts, measures to improve energy emergency preparedness, and steps to improve energy utilization, such as higher auto fuel efficiency standards; (9) calling for stronger auto emission control measures in clean air legislation; (10) requesting funding for construction of municipal sewage treatment facilities; (11) establishing a goal of "no net loss" in wetlands, and seeking new power and flexibility for states to manage and protect their wetlands; and (12) supporting political self-determination for Puerto Rico.