NATIONAL HIGHWAY PROGRAM WEDNESDAY, MARCH 2, 1955 UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC WORKS, Washington, D. C. The subcommittee met at 10:10 a. m., in room 412, Senate Office Building, Senator Albert Gore presiding. Present: Senators Gore (presiding), Symington, Thurmond, McNamara, Neuberger, Martin, Case, and Bush. Senator GORE. The committee will come to order. The committee is very pleased and feels that it is very honored and distinguished today to have three of the Nation's outstanding governors to appear before it. Ordinarily the Chair cannot properly show partiality but in this case I hope Governors Kennon and Kohler will appreciate the partiality of the Chair, and I dare say of this committee, to former Senator and now Governor, Ed Johnson. Will you just stand a moment, Senator Johnson? Welcome back. [Applause.] Governor JOHNSON. Thank you very much. Senator GORE. Now we will return to protocol and impartiality of the hearing. The first governor to appear is chairman of the Governors' Conference, Governor Robert J. Kennon of the State of Louisiana. STATEMENT OF HON. ROBERT J. KENNON, GOVERNOR OF THE STATE OF LOUISIANA Governor KENNON. I am pleased to see so many Senators and Governors. Maybe it is prophetic. Maybe the chairman will also be a Governor. Senator GORE. Thank you, Governor. I have no such lofty ambition. Governor KENNON. Senator, I am at your disposal. Senator GORE. You have a prepared statement? Governor KENNON. I have a prepared statement which I would like to file, yet I beg to be excused from reading the statement. I prefer to testify. Senator GORE. The statement will be included in the record. (The statement is as follows:) I am Robert F. Kennon, Governor of Louisiana, and chairman of the national Governors' Conference. The national Governors' Conference, organized in 1908 and composed of governors of all the 48 States and Territories, has throughout its history concerned itself with matters of major interest to the States and the country. The Governors' Conference meets annually, discusses governmental problems of immediate and acute interest, and develops suggested solutions for these problems which are made available to all of the States. It has, we believe, established an enviable record for constructive action and efficient administration. At the 46th annual meeting of the Governors' Conference at Bolton Landing in New York State last July, the most important one subject discussed was, "What can and should be done to modernize our highway system to conform to present-day needs." The President of the United States, in a message to this annual meeting of the Governors' Conference, outlined the problem and suggested that the governors of the States explore the question in detail and submit to him a suggested plan and program for its solution. He emphasized that the problem of construction, maintenance, and operation of highways had always been a subject of major concern, and was the primary responsibility of the States; that he was most anxious to strengthen State government and to provide the greatest degree of Federal cooperation with the States in the solution of present and expanding governmental problems. One of these, he stated, was the highway problem, and this required immediate action in the interests of national defense and our expanding economy. This proposal met with immediate and enthusiastic response. For a number of years, the Governors' Conference has worked on the problem of a more extensive and adequate highway system. Upon several occasions, it has urged the Congress to repeal the Federal gasoline tax, which has never been dedicated to highways, so as to make that additional source of revenue available for the construction of roads. The Congress has not seen fit to adopt this proposal, but the need still exists, and has become more acute. The conference directed the executive committee of the Governors' Conference to undertake at the earliest possible time an extensive study of the problem and to prepare a report to the President. As chairman of the Governors' Conference, I appointed a special Governors' Conference committee on highways. This committee worked diligently. It directed its attention to the highway needs of the country on a State-by-State basis, and to the most effective and expeditious manner in which such needs could be met. It likewise directed attention to the problem of maintaining and strengthening Federal-State relations through which State governments have the responsibility for the construction, maintenance, operation, and control of highways-at the same time, the Nation as a whole could have the benefit of this critically needed Interstate System of adequate roads. The special committee on highways completed its study, developed its suggested plan, and presented it to the executive committee of the Governors' Conference late last fall. After circulation of this report among the governors in all the States, and after careful consideration, the executive committee of the Governors' Conference unanimously approved the report and submitted it to the President early in December. This report, so conceived, developed, and submitted, was in complete accord with the President's recent message on highways to the Congress. With your permission, Mr. Chairman, I should like to present now the Honorable Walter J. Kohler, Governor of Wisconsin, and chairman of the Governors' Conference special committee on highways, who will discuss the highway situation and the Governors' viewpoint more fully with you. Senator GORE. Would you summarize your statement, Governor? Governor KENNON. Gentlemen of the committee, my being here is not entirely as a volunteer. In Bolton Landing, N. Y., we had the annual conference of governors last summer. At that conference the President of the United States saw fit to unfold or reveal a plan, a desire to do something about the backward condition of the Nation's highways. There is no need for me to say what the President's message there included. In brief it was that our system of highways was really in need of improvement. For the sake of the safety of the people using them, for the sake of the Nation's safety on national defense and of course for the sake of the Nation's economy and because of the growth of population and the growth in number and use of vehicles. So that he requested the Governors to consider a cooperative plan of improving our national road system on the part of the State and its subdivisions. and the Federal Government, and reiterated that in his opinion the actual building and policing of roads was properly a State function, or a local government function as the case might be. In compliance with that suggestion the national Governors' Conference passed a resolution directing the executive committee, which is the active agency of the conference between its annual conferences, to devise a method of complying with the President's request. A committee was appointed, a special road committee of the national governors' conference with Gov. Walter Kohler, of Wisconsin, as chair man. On that committee were representative governors from the eastern seaboard, from the Far West, the Middle West, and even from the wild wastes of Texas. After careful consideration of the problem as a whole, and after a conference with other people interested, and after a conference with our own highway officials, because the American Association of State Highway Officials have had a very efficient organization which has, I believe, been before this committee, and you cannot help but be impressed by the know-how of that group. It is much more than the know-how, as far as I am concerned, of the governors' conference and I am proud of the fact that they are a part of the State organization. They incidentally have been in close cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Public Roads. I am a nonbureau man. I do not believe too much in Federal bureaus, but I do feel that the Bureau of Public Roads and the State highway commissions have accomplished a great deal in the way of bettering the Nation's highways and in laying the groundwork for this plan that is now being proposed. In conjunction with and in coordination with the State highway officials and with an eye to the existing setup, not to come out with something entirely new that would be untried, the national governors' conference recommended to the President personally how we thought the State and Federal Government could best cooperate on this grand highway plan. As things were going it would require something like 50 years or more to finish it. Senator GORE. When you use the word "grand" are you using it as a part of the proper name of the plan or as an adjective? Governor KENNON. As an adjective, I presume. As a part of the impetus that we wanted to give, the governors' highway plan is basically and simply this, Senator, and I am pleased that you should be chairman of this committee because you are the one man in Washington that I think is the man we need to talk with, and I hope to visit with you in your office when I do not have somebody taking down every word that I say. Senator GORE. That can be taken two ways, but you shall be wel come. Governor KENNON. The governors' conference actually wants to get on a genuine understanding with the members of the Senate committee and with the Members of the Senate. But in general our plan, the suggestion we made to the President, was that we continue the local and national cooperation. By "local" I mean State and local. The details of that plan will be given to you by Governor Kohler who has it wonderfully under command. I will simply state the background of it. This governors' conference came to the conclusion and recognized the fact that unless the Federal Government assumed primary financial responsibility for this Interstate System of roads, this 40,000 miles that the highway officials brought before your committee I am sure better than I could, that the system would not be built within the planable or foreseeable future. It will be 20, 30, 40, 50, or 60 years or never before you would have one road from the Atlantic to the Pacific, or from the Great Lakes or the Canadian border to the gulf. It just was not working out that way. You have not sat in the governor's chair like some of these other gentlemen have, and Governor Johnson, but it is true that of necessity the State governors have to obey the will of the majority of the people of any State to make huge expenditures for across-the-nation roads at the expense of and for the convenience of the local peoples and cities and county seats in the State. We do fairly by the Nation's system. We are building 30 miles of 4-lane road at this point in northern Louisiana and we are completing 140 miles of 4-lane free roads in south Louisiana from New Orleans to Baton Rouge and on over to Krotz Springs. We are building some trunkline type highways. Yet the fact remains that immediately a lot of those four-lane highways become busy thoroughfares, and commercial institutions and installations virtually take them over and choke them, just like grass chokes a pathway, they choke the road as an instrument of national travel. So that the States are not building and in our opinion will not build on the Federal matching plan, even though that Federal matching plan be doubled or tripled; that you will not get a road built, say U. S. 80 from Savannah to San Diego, or I can name other United States roads east and west in crossing the Mississippi, for instance, and one at Chicago. We do not believe those roads will be built unless the Federal Government assumes primary responsibility for the financing of the Interstate System requiring no more of the States than has already been required of them. Anything short of that just will not produce the roads that could mean the difference in national defense. I happened to be in Germany and to have seen the autobahns during World War II and I know the reasoning behind it. There the federal government did build the federal roads. I would say, too, gentlemen of the committee, that the States, under the recommendation of the President, which was substantially the recommendation of the governors conference, the State governors and the highway commissions in proposing this plan did not dump the whole matter into the lap of the Federal Government. A minimum plan of immediate need is $101 billion. A plan of what is probably more nearly true may be $200 billion. I do not believe anybody knows what our roads need. Senator GORE. Governor, there has been a good deal of testimony presented here that the States would have difficulty matching the funds provided in the bill which I have introduced. That prompts me to inquire of you how the States will raise their part of this socalled $101 billion program when as a matter of fact the bill before us only provides for $25 billion. There is a wide gap between $25 billion and $101 billion which I understand is to be raised by the States. Governor KENNON. Governor Kohler will show you the history of what the States have done since 1945 toward road financing, and it is revealing, the geometric projection of what the States have provided. The governor's conference of course is not a Congress and it is in truth a conference, and we have no right to tell the United States what they should do, other than to encourage them and to give them the benefit of what other States are doing. But as an instance, Louisiana took $50 million out of surplus in January in a 5-day special session and put it on roads. We took $22 million in 1953 out of sales tax and put it on roads. We took from the dock board in New Orleans a portion of the gasoline tax and put $30 million on roads in 1952. That is over and above the normal revenues and the normal State expenditures. Governor Kohler has the figures, but if nothing else were done, if it runs as is, I think the normal State expenditures would be approximately half of the $101 billion. more than that. Anticipating increases it would be maybe between 50 and 60 billion dollars. So we have to only accelerate about what we ask you to accelerate. We ask you to keep your present plan of Federal aid and accelerate to the tune of about $25 billion to build the National Road System. Our acceleration that we look to our States to do is approximately yours. Senator GORE. Senator Thurmond? Senator THURMOND. Governor, is there any question in your mind that we need this fine Interstate System of roads from the standpoint of interstate commerce and national defense and service to the people? Governor KENNON. Senator Thurmond, I just cannot conceive of anybody not conceding that that is not only a need but a real necessity. If you would travel the length of this National System you will see the congestion of traffic where it has not been protected as a throughway type road. It is a crying need. From the military viewpoint I am interested in seeing that as a matter of egress from our urban centers. The governors put that into their plan, that there should be essential urban feeders into the Interstate System, so that the people, where the great groups of them live, would have ready access to it. I think we would be just closing our eyes to necessity if we do not build this National System. Senator THURMOND. In this day of airborne armies, and when troops have to be moved quickly from one section of a country to another, is it not more essential than ever that a fine system of roads be built that will care for the transport that will be essential in the event of an emergency? Governor KENNON. Senator Thurmond, I know you have been president of the National Reserve Officers' Association, I know that you have a lot of military information. I believe sincerely that if these roads were not going to be used by the public, if they were just to be put in for military purposes, that it would be a necessity that America spend this $25 billion to have that network of national-defense arteries to transport men and material for strategic viewpoints. Mr. Peterson, former governor and head of the governors' conference, and the Civil Defense Chairman of the United States, from 61030-55-17 |