APPALACHIAN REGIONAL DEVELOPMENT ACT OF 1964 THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1964 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, AD HOC SUBCOMMITTEE ON APPALACHIAN REGIONAL in room The ad hoc subcommittee met at 10 a.m., pursuant to recess, 1302, Longworth Building, Hon. Clifford Davis (chairman of the ad hoc subcommittee) presiding. Mr. DAVIS. The subcommittee will be in order. Fortunately, this subcommittee is always able to start promptly, so we have reached the hour of 10 and we are delighted to have Governor Scranton here as our first witness. Would you come forward, Governor? We are delighted to have you, Governor, this morning, to appear in the interests of this important project. You served with distinction in the House of Representatives, and all of us who knew you then recognize your fine intellect and your high character, and your dedication to public service. We were all happy when you were elected Governor of a great State, and I say in all sincerity that we hated to see you leave the House. We are now delighted to have you appear in support of this bill, and I may say that Jim Auchincloss, Mr. Baldwin, and all the rest of us on this committee have tried, so far as possible, to approach the matter in a nonpartisan or bipartisan attitude, because we recognize that a hungry man doesn't often recognize that he is a Democrat or a Republican, but we are dealing with human beings and human needs. I am going to ask now, one of our colleagues who is on the full committee, and not a member of this special committee, John Kunkel if he won't introduce to this committee the Governor of his State. Mr. KUNKEL. Mr. Chairman, that will be indeed a great privilege and honor. Iwon't take much time, because we are convening at 11, and we may have this hearing cut short. Nearly everyone here knows the Governor, and knows his fine work in Congress, as you so ably pointed out, and all I would like to add to that is that he has been able to put through a magnificent program in Pennsylvania, a very difficult situation, and he has been doing a great job for the State of Pennsylvania since he has been Governor of that State. Thank you very much. Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, John, and Governor, you may proceed in your own way. 33-149-64--14 STATEMENT OF HON. WILLIAM W. SCRANTON, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA; ACCOMPANIED BY JOHN K. TABOR, SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA, DANIEL ROGERS, DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE; AND R. OTTO AMANN, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR, BUREAU OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT, PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE Governor SCRANTON. Well, Mr. Chairman, I certainly appreciate the opportunity of coming before your committee. As you know, I have appeared before a Public Works Committee and subcommittees of it before, and I am very grateful to you for allowing a hinterlander from Pennsylvania to come to you and to talk to you about a matter which not only is of basic importance to us in our own State, but to the other Appalachian States, of which there are 10. I thank all the members of the committee and Mr. Kunkel in particular for your very kind words and for the opportunity of being with you, and sincerely hope that what I have to say will be of help to you in your deliberations in this which we consider to be one of the most important pieces of legislation for the people of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania that has ever come before the Congress of the United States. Twenty-three hundreds years ago Plato described poverty as the "parent of meanness and viciousness" and he urged that society declare war on it. "It would be strange indeed," he wrote, in a state even "tolerably ordered" if the poverty stricken were to be "utterly neglected" or allowed to fall into "utter destitution." Long centuries later our great Nation still has what this year it has become fashionable to call pockets of poverty. Our society is shamed and weakened by their existence, whether they be patches of outright human misery or whether they be areas where prosperity is a fragile thing because there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. The difference between Plato's time and our own, however, is that we have within our society the power to do something about it. Plato could only dream; we can act. If properly designed and skillfully implemented, the legislation you are considering for the so-called Appalachian region can be truly effective. May I first clearly indicate the point of view from which the Pennsylvania State administration approaches a regional program for Appalachia. We believe that the human beings of the area must have complete opportunity for self-realization. Productive work in a job is a key to this, and thus we believe that the economic potential of the area should be developed to provide these enduring and productive jobs. Because of peculiar circumstances of history, geography, terrain, economics, and other factors, we believe that there is a legitimate role for Government to play in this development. We do not believe that among the various levels of government the Federal Government has any special magic to handle this kind of problem. In fact, the State and local governments-and even more important-local citizens-are more capable than the Federal Gov ernment of developing a program that will be effective on the local level. What the Federal Government does have is money. Because of the way tax resources are divided in this Nation, the State and local governments do not have the financial wherewithal to solve this problem alone. Use of Federal funds makes necessary some Federal participation. It does not make necessary complete Federal control. It does not make the necessary formation of a hybrid regional supergovernment that would substitute for the constitutional duties of the State and local governments. We do not believe that the Federal system is outmoded. We do not believe that the doctrine of States responsibilities has become invalid. We believe that there is room for legitimate concern, not only in terms of political philosophy, but in terms of downright practicality that State responsibility not be reduced in a program such as that planned for Appalachia. Aside from their lack of tax resources, the States ought to have more responsibility than the Federal Government for the details of the program because any State government worth its salt ought to know more about the needs of its own area and people. State governments and local governments can attack each "pocket of poverty on a pinpoint basis and help solve the problems. It is because of these beliefs that we have and will continue to seek maximum State and local control of the Appalachian program. Furthermore, the history of the past three decades shows us that programs of the Federal Government frequently become needlessly proliferated and uncoordinated to the point of undermining their ef fectiveness. We have worked with this program from the very beginning of the specifics, which is over a year and 3 months ago, and some of the gentlemen who have worked hard on this, day in and day out, are with me, and may I have the opportunity of introducing them, sir. First, the secretary of commerce for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, John K. Tabor, who is here on my right. Another is Mr. Dan Rogers, who is the director of the bureau of community development of that department, over here on my extreme right, and Mr. Otto Amann, who is the assistant director of that bureau. They have worked, they and others in our State administration, a great deal with all of the details of this program with the people in the Federal Government since its very beginning. For this reason, we repeatedly made to this Appalachian Commission, suggestions aimed at streamlining the activity of the Federal Government, and we also have made every effort to make it as workable a program as possible. We have prepared, and I will leave with the committee, a memorandum which details changes which we believe ought to be made to House bill 11065 as it was introduced. This is a rather long and rather detailed statement, sir, and it goes into each section of the bill and explains what we believe the problems are in it, and what the recommended changes might be. I will not bother you with the details, but I would sincerely hope and urge that the members of the staff on both sides of the committee. would have an opportunity to go into these suggestions. We believe honestly and sincerely that these are suggestions which would make a cleaner bill and a more specific one, and this is one of the great problems of doing an overall program of this sort, is to make sure that it is specific, and that it does do a job and that is why we have suggested these changes. Yes, sir. Mr. DAVIS. Governor, I want to express my own personal appreciation for this memorandum. I have had only 30 seconds to just glance through it, but I saw immediately the worth to this committee of this thorough and well-prepared memorandum, and while the staff will go into it, I want you to know that that is some homework for me, and I am sure others will join me, but this is excellent, I can see, because it will be so helpful. Because in a big program like this, I can foresee now that we may well make certain changes and clarifications in the bill which has been presented, and as you are familiar, it is much better to come up with a clean bill. It is my thought that when this committee gets a little bit further along, that we will come up with a bill possibly more exclusive and certainly clearer than the one on which we are now holding the hearings. The members on both sides will agree that that would be the better part of preliminary procedures, so without saying anything further, I do want to thank you for this very helpful memorandum, which I know will be most useful. Mr. SCHWENGEL. Mr. Chairman, I am impressed with what you have said, and I, too, am impressed with the evident study you have given this, Governor, and I think, Mr. Chairman, it might be well to have this put in the record at this point, so we can have it before us in clear form as part of the record before us when we consider the amendments to the bill. Mr. DAVIS. All right. If I may ask you to wait just for a little time, because this is rather lengthy, and as the Governor said, in some detail, and let us have an opportunity to do some study on our own, and then we will see how much of it and how far we would put it in the formal record. It may well be that we will want every word of it in, but I am sure the Governor has presented it to us as a real worksheet, to supplement the statement he is now making. Pardon me, Governor, one step further, because we do meet at 11. I should like to note the presence for the record of former Member Jim Van Zandt. Where are you, Jim? That is the first time I ever saw you in the back of any room. [Laughter.] You are usually on the front row, and usually, Jim can be heard. And then Mr. Fulton, Congressman Fulton. Where are you? Mr. DAVIS. I want the record to show his presence. (Discussion off the record.) Mr. DAVIS. Mr. McDade is here. Any other Members from Pennsylvania? Mr. Whalley is here, from Pennsylvania, and Frank Clark is a member of the full committee, and under our rules, we won't permit him to ask any questions, but we are delighted to have him here, along with us. Mr. Johnson of Pennsylvania is also here. Now, Governor, pardon me for that, but it was important that these men from your State were here, and I am sure others are equally interested from your State, but these men came down to be with you, and to hear you this morning. Pardon me again. You may proceed. Governor SCRANTON. Thank you, sir, and I appreciate the kind compliment you have paid to the work that has been done mostly by the staff members, sir, in the State administration, and not by me, and I do hope that this will be helpful to you. This is what it is intended to be. Having had some familiarity with hearings in congressional committees, I was aware we would not have a lot of time, and so, for my direct presentation, although I do not want to minimize in any way the importance of the work that has been done in all of these items that are indicated by the memorandum, I choose to talk about only two things in the limited time because I believe they are probably unique to our presentation. The first is the amendments that are forthcoming for the mining areas of Appalachia. This is a program for the restoration of the mining areas, which is not included in the first draft of H.R. 11065, but which the President-President Johnson-supports as an addition to the Appalachian program. May I digress for a moment to say that I was overjoyed with the courteousness and the reception that I received at the White House from the President when I presented this to him, and with the fact that he was not only very helpful but very enthusiastic about it, and we are looking forward to a really splendid program in this field, which, as you will find in a moment, in our viewpoint at least, is the single most important part of the Appalachian program for Pennsylvania. Up until yesterday, the administration had not submitted these amendments, and I cannot overemphasize how important it is that they be properly and effectively drawn. In a nutshell, this additional program ought to be designed to eliminated the blight which exists in important sections of Appalachia in the wake of the mining industry. In one sentence, this is land reclamation in the East, and extremely important as such. We have an opportunity to solve once and for all the serious and longstanding problems that are peculiar to the coal regions and which interfere with their future progress and prosperity. The problems include: (1) Mine subsidence and surface caving; (2) underground mine fires; (3) the ravages of abandoned strip mine operations please note my word "abandoned"; (4) culm piles which are unsightly and cause a serious air pollution hazard; and (5) mine drainage and acid water pollution. These problems have several elements in common. They are, for the most part, left over from the heyday of the anthracite and bituminous industries. They are tremendously expensive to solve. They are severe handicaps-I think the greatest handicap-to the future economic growth of the coal regions and the State. They are located in that part of Pennsylvania which is included in the so-called Appalachian region. They can be solved now if the Federal Government financially supports programs already in being and functioning. |