Cost of living compared to cost per square foot of new house, table_ 374 374 375 Statement of Federal budget priorities by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America__ 379 Changes in the San Francisco housing inventory, San Francisco Department of Planning, April 1969– 381 "Inflation Proves Unshakable Problem for Nixon Economists," article from the Washington Post, May 24, 1970_. 412 Letter to Senator J. W. Fulbright from Leonard Woodstock, president, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agriculture Implement Workers of America (UAW), enclosing statement..... 415 How inflation affects taxes, 1965-69, table_ 419 Median earnings of male civilian year-round, full-time workers, 1968-69, table... 421 Who is gaining from tax reform, 1969-73, table_ 423 Percent of families below poverty level, 1964-69, table__ 427 Letter to Senator J. W. Fulbright from Jacob S. Potofsky, president, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America enclosing keynote address. Statement on foreign policy... 447 455 Letter to Senator J. W. Fulbright from Jerry Wurf, international president, 458 IMPACT OF THE WAR IN SOUTHEAST ASIA ON THE U.S. ECONOMY TUESDAY, APRIL 28, 1970 UNITED STATES SENATE, Washington, D.C. The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m., in room 4221, New Senate Office Building, Senator J. W. Fulbright (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Fulbright, Aiken, Case, and Javits. The CHAIRMAN. The committee will come to order. OPENING STATEMENT The committee is meeting this morning to continue a series of hearings on the impact of the Vietnam war on the American people. Today the committee will hear testimony concerning the effect of the war on the cities. We are pleased to have as a witness Mr. Jerome Cavanagh, who served as mayor of Detroit from 1962 until he retired voluntarily earlier this year. Mayor Richard Hatcher of Gary, Ind., had been scheduled to testify, but notified us this morning that because of a local emergency he would be unable to appear. The statement that he prepared will be included in the record, however together with a resolution of the City Council of Gary, Ind., and a memorandum from Mayor Hatcher to the council commenting on the resolution. (The information referred to follows.) SPEECH GIVEN BY MAYOR RICHARD GORDON HATCHER, GARY, IND. Gentlemen, when I first learned that your distinguished committee had embarked upon this particular series of hearings, I experienced an immediate feeling of hope and encouragement. I can think of no more important topic for you to consider today than the impact of the Vietnam war on our citizens. I can only say that I was pleased and honored to be invited to testify here today, and I hope I can adequately convey to you my feelings and the feelings and desires of my constituents. The war in Vietnam is a barbaric war. It has needlessly destroyed the lives of almost fifty-thousand American young men and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese. It desolates the Vietnamese countryside. It seeps poisonously into neighboring countries-Laos, Cambodia, Thailand . so that we now face two, three, no one knows how many potential Vietnams. We waste our national treasure destroying Vietnamese villages, when that money should be spent to restructure our sick and dying American cities. Support for the war is rapidly dwindling, and opposition grows. The average citizen is gradually awakening to the horror of the war-to how it corrupts the spirit of his country. The recent courageous act of the Massachusetts State Legislature in passing a law which in effect declares the war illegal, is an indication of this awakening. A similar bill has been introduced into the New York State Legislature. I am proud to tell you that the Gary City Council has also expressed our city's opposition to the war. Earlier this month, it adopted a resolution, which I endorsed and signed, petitioning the President and Congress to adopt measures which would ensure an immediate end to our involvement in the war and the withdrawal of all our military forces not only from Vietnam, but from Southeast Asia as well. The resolution further supported the proposals for ending the war of our esteemed Senator from Indiana, the Honorable Vance Hartke-long an advocate of peace. You may be familiar with this resolution, as it was read into the April 15th Congressional Record by our distinguished Congressman, the Honorable Ray J. Madden. Mr. Madden accompanied the resolution with appropriate remarks of his own in which he pointed out the sacrifices the American people, particularly those living in urban areas, have had to make because of the billions spent in waging an unwinnable and immoral war. It is about those sacrifices .. those desperate needs, that I would like to speak to you this morning. I speak as mayor of a highly industrialized American city—far from the largest metropolis in this vast land-but typical, I think, in many ways of cities everywhere, and certainly typical in the problems it faces. The late poet Langston Hughes could well have been speaking for this generation of American mayors . . . and addressing the current national administration when he wrote: ... "The things that make me crazy don't even bother you, but I will keep on acting crazy 'til it makes you crazy too." The primary cause for this nearly insane situation within our cities is the fiscal crisis which we, as mayors face. This crisis is generated from two sources: One, increasing demands for public services and public facilities made upon inadequate local tax structures and, Two, the need for major increases in local operating funds to meet these growing requirements and demands for public services. Let me first discuss increased demands made on inadequate local tax structures. Larger demands are made of the cities as each month passes. Legitimate salary increases for policemen, firemen, teachers and other municipal employees have added costs to city government. The need for more and better trained policemen for additional teachers; for better housing and elimination of slums; for more health and recreation facilities; for more and better traffic arteries and traffic control; for elimination of air and water pollution; for elimination of hunger, all these take money. I submit to you that these are not local problems. They are national responsibilities that span the length and breadth of our entire country. Yet most people look to their local governments for solutions. Let me state, unequivocally, that local governments do not have the financial resources to assume this national challenge. If it were not for the limited Federal assistance Gary now receives, we would have no effective slum clearance program, no major airport development, no real housing program, no job training facility and no substantial increases in recreational facilities. Even with the assistance to date, we may be losing more battles than we are winning... Let us next look at the need for additional funds at the city administration level. City administrations are almost unanimously confronted with major operating deficiencies. For example, consider the pervasiveness of urban blight which does visual violence to all who view it: Psychological and sometimes physical violence to all who dwell in it. Faced with the enormous task of eliminating or at least checking the debilitating effects of blight. We have several weapons. Among the : Code enforcement for arresting and improving blighted building conditions and for preserving what good housing stock we have . . . . Rubbish and Refuse Collection. ... Beautification programs, to provide trees and landscaping for our stark city scapes . . . . And planning and zoning activities, to plan and protect the development of pleasant, functional environments for living and working. Consider with me, for a moment, the capability of my city, Gary, Indiana, which I again remind you is typical of cities everywhere, in the area of checking blight. You will be appalled. Surveys document that 47% of all our housing is substandard. Yet our current operating staff capability allows us to perform code enforcement inspections for our total housing supply only once every twenty years. After we have performed these infrequent inspections and identified code violations, we do not have the lawyers to provide the necessary legal back-up even for this inadequate performance. Our rubbish and refuse collection services are less than satisfactory because we cannot afford to hire enough sanitation workers to do the job. Nor do we have enough inspectors or lawyers to enforce anti-litter ordinances. Gary, like many other American cities has been stricken with Dutch elm disease, and we are left with a legacy of streets lined with dead or dying trees. We do not have the operating personnel to remove and replace these eyesores which rapidly become safety hazards. In Gary, where one industry alone releases more than 32,000 tons of solid pollutants into the air annually, we need major financial assistance to help solve our air pollution problem. As a city on the shores of Lake Michigan, we are interested in preserving our lake from the fate which befell Lake Erie. We certainly haven't the capability for doing that alone, nor has any other city along the beautiful lake. To top it all off, our local operating funds are insufficient to develop adequate planning and zoning staffs to assure environmental improvements in the future. And what of the salaries our overburdened city budget permits us to pay civil servants? I'll just cite one example of their inadequacy. The salary of our building commissioner, the man, who by law oversees the operations of our entire building department, is twelve thousand dollars a year. And for this, our municipal code stipulates the man must have a minimum of ten years experience in design, construction and superintendence of building. He must be knowledgeable about all the building trades, materials and techniques. His assistant, whose responsibilities are only slightly less than his, receives the munificent sum of ninety-one hundred dollars annually. How many civic minded, dedicated, selfless men do you think a city can find who are willing to work for wages like those? In summary, without major assistance coming directly to cities in the form of additional operating funds, we anticipate the worsening of the inhumane conditions caused by urban blight. Tragically, the impact of the fiscal crisis faced by our cities, as well as the impact of the war itself has been most severe on poor blacks, poor browns and poor whites. The sons of the affluent find their way into our Armed Forces in far fewer numbers than do the sons of the poor. The burden of the income tax surcharge rests most heavily on those who can least spare the extra money. And the poor suffer most from deprivation of needed city services and programs. Indeed, it is not only the poor who perceive themselves as suffering under present conditions. We now have the spectacle of lower middle class whites protesting even the pitiful amounts which have been doled out in poverty programs and demanding, as in many cases they have a right to do, their share of the affluence which is supposed to be the hallmark of America. The racial and ethnic divisiveness which have grown out of this competition for inadequate funds are nowhere more dramatically illustrated than in Gary where a group of ethnic whites is leading a movement to disannex a part of our city. They argue that the city administration and its new Federal programs are only interested in serving poor blacks and the city's 13% Latin population. They argue and argue correctly that they too have unmet needs which require attention. We recognize that critical needs do not stop at the poverty program income limits. This is illustrated by the fact that in January, faced with a sizable budget deficit, our public schools were hit by a three-week long teachers strike. To meet the just demands of teachers for a living wage, our school board has had to drastically reduce educational services. The children of welfare mothers and corporation executives alike are affected by this cutback in school services. I could go on to detail for you our other desperate needs-for a more low and moderate income housing, for community health facilities, for programs to feed the hungry, for aid to our ailing mass transportation systems, for more and better job training and job placement programs, for revitalized and realistic welfare programs, for funds to preserve whatever little natural beauty is left to us from the encroachments of industry. If I were to fill in the details, the picture would be similar to what I have already painted-depressingly similar. The conclusion is inescapable that if change is not forthcoming, our cities will continue in their downward spiral. Urban unrest will reach undreamed of proportions and the fabric of our society will be ripped asunder. And where is the impetus for this change to come from? I submit to you gentlemen, that when one rationally and reasonably considers the possibilities there is only one source from which this impetus can spring-the Federal Government. But while the coffers of the Federal Government are being drained by our military involvement in Southeast Asia, the cities can hope for little more than crumbs, left-overs, stale promises and half measures. Even the peace dividend we heard so much about recently has been steadily eroded until now little is left but the phrase. The costs of war do not permit spending for people, not even in a country with the riches of America. Since the end of the second world war, this country has lavished more than one trillion dollars on the military, one-tenth of this on the Vietnam war. And does it end? Take a look at the 1970 Federal budget for your answer. A tiny two point three percent of that budget is allocated for public aid. A meagre fourteen point five percent goes for all health, education and welfare programs. A wropping seventy percent goes to pay for wars past, present and presumably future. And what has this trillion dollar investment bought us? Has it bought us security, unity at home? A good life for all our citizens? You know the answers to those questions. What might this money have bought had it been used for life instead of death? Well, just for example-by last October, the United States had lost in Vietnam six-thousand aircraft valued at six billion dollars. That six billion could have bought, in two-hundred fifty communities throughout this land, a fully equipped elementary school; a fully equipped junior high school; and a fully equipped senior high school, plus a starting salary of seven thousand dollars for 35,714 teachers. The costs of the Vietnam war are of course only part of the picture. Other war spending is equally devastating to our economy. Let us suppose as was predicted, the anti-ballistic missile system costs only seven billion dollars, a dubious prophecy at best. By voting to preserve this illusory security, which only abets the possibility of national extinction, you have denied the society almost fourhundred thousand hospital beds or seven hundred thousand low rent apartments. What is called for is a dramatic reversal of national priorities. Seymour Melman, professor of industrial engineering at Columbia University, recently summed it up when he wrote that a reversal of national priorities ". . . Means that: Watts comes before Vietnam; Harlem comes before the space race. . . First priority for economic opportunity for our people means that ending the slums. medical care, good schools, and job opportunities for our own people are more important than bolstering dictators in Vietnam. The future of America will be decided by the way we cope with the pressing problems of our great citieswhere most of us live-regardless of what happens in Vietnam." I completely agree with Professor Melman that these are the choices before us. In the last twenty years we have not chosen wisely as a Nation. Unless we swiftly and dramatically reverse our national priorities, rechannel and reallocate our national and human resources, there is no future for the American city. A sickness is abroad in this land and the whole world is watching. You gentlemen sitting on this most important committee, conducting these significant hearings, and your colleagues in the Senate and House of Representatives, can exercise the needed leadership in redirecting this country's energies. You will have the support of the vast majority of this Nation's citizenry, silent or otherwise, if you begin the process which will lead us back to sanity. I call upon the United States Senate and the House of Representatives to pass a resolution demanding that the President immediately withdraw all military forces, including military advisers, from Southeast Asia. I call upon you—the legislative branch of our National Government-to recoup its institutional prerogative to declare war, a prerogative which every President who succeeded Franklin Roosevelt has ignored. I call upon my government to stop meddling through its military and the CIA in the affairs or other countries. I call upon my Government to return this Nation's bountiful resources to its cities and its people. Failure to do so will effectively guarantee the death of our cities. There is neither choice nor time. The patient is dying. |