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ADDRESS BY
HONORABLE FARRIS BRYANT
DIRECTOR
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING
BEFORE
THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
STATE BUDGET OFFICERS
HONOLULU, HAWAII
SEPTEMBER 9, 1966
earlier economic thinkers: an assumption
that man is not a slave to his environment
but its master.
This assumption, which even now is
having difficulty being accepted in the
economic world, has an honorable heritage
in the political world. The American
Revolution was fought because our fore-
fathers thought we had the capacity to be
the masters of our political environment.
They sought to escape from political
tyranny; now we seek to escape from other
tyranny's: the tyranny of ignorance; the
tyranny of physical handicaps; the tyranny
of poverty.
It is in this intellectual, political
and social atmosphere that the States today
must serve. As custodians of the American
Revolution, with its innovations, its
break throughs, its release from tyranny,
the States fathered this great nation of
ours. They banded together; they overcame
jealousies and colonial pride. In the
exercise of their sovereignty they created
the Federal Government and shared their
sovereignty because it offered them an
opportunity to expand their freedom.
I am not going to dwell now upon 190
years of our history. It would be
intellectually false to fail to recognize,
however, that the political climate in
which this nation has matured has for the
most part been a climate created by the
States. If today we have the greatest
educational system in the world it is
five! have.
beaaase the Statesbuilt that system.
If we for these scores of years have
been able to cultivate the proper mix of
political freedom with the requirements
of law and order, the States have done it.
The fireman at the station, the policeman
on the corner, the patrolman on the
highway, the engineer at the water plant,
the doctor in the emergency room, the
game warden in the forest -- these are
manifestations of State authority, not
that of the Federal Government.
But that is history. The appetite
of the people of America for improvement
in their environment has not been
satisfied.
The States were the custodians of
the first revolution; choice and
circumstance decrees that they be partners
11
in the second. They should be and need
be neither silent nor supine partners.
It is a little sad, but none-the-less
true, that the position of the States in
this partnership will be determined, not
by past contribution, but by future
performance. If they wish to make their
rightful contribution to the partnership,
they are going to have to be as creative
and aggressive as the other member --
the Federal Government. They are going to
have to recognize that our age is different
from another era, that we are not a static
but a dynamic society. The future is
upon us as soon as the present has begun.
And it is one of the great strengths of
the American society that it adapts
itself rapidly to take advantage of the
newest and best tools for each new task
it faces.
For the last six months I have been
engaged in the business of helping to
strengthen the partnership between the
States and the Federal Government.
President Johnson believes, very deeply,
that there has been a breakdown in that
partnership which has in part resulted
from a failure to communicate, and that
if the lines of communication can be
re-established thit our federalism will
regenerate its creative process.
So there has been a constant stream
of Governors and legislative leaders into
Washington, and wherever President Johnson
in chat?
travels around the nation, E£E$s to
13
provide that opportunity for cross-
fertilization of ideas which will create
new ways for federalism to serve.
President Johnson, in speaking to State
legislative leaders last June, expressed
the faith
"I think we are going to prove that
federalism, America's unique contri-
bution to political science, will
be equal to the challenge that
faces us in the 20th Century."
It is in this thought-frameworXthe
State Budget Officer must approach his
task today.
First, he must recognize that this eds-
partnership is one of the central facts
of our political life.
Second, he must identify, and con-
5% it
stantly re-appraise, the proper share of
authority and responsibility inAthat
partnership.
Finally, he must design and administer
the most efficient means for expressing that
authority and sharing that responsibility.
I am going to be bold enough to suggest
some of the ways in which those things can
be done.
1Qu_mu§1_gommuuigaigz You must estab-
lish instant awareness of the activities
and plans of the Federal Government in
those thousands of instances where your
authority and responsibility overlap. It
is inconceivable that you can perform
properly in the areas of pollution control,
crime fighting, education, health, welfare,
road construction, park development, and a
15
multitude of others unless you know the
facts and possibilities of Federal action
in those areas in your State.
The communication must be two-way.
it is inconceivable that the Federal
Government can properly design and imple-
ment its programs unless its agents know
your plans and possibilities, as well as
your problems.
That communication cannot be casual.
It must be organized and comprehensive.
There must be focal points at both the
State capital and the Washington level.
It must not be fragmented, or gaps will
inevitably appear. It must supplement,
not attempt to replace, the Congressional
function. It must not be isolated, but
be cooperative with other States. And
it must be of such a caliber that it will
insure the confidence of State officials and
command the respect of Federal officials.
Second, you must innovate. The States
are in a position to be the first to per-
ceive a need, they must be the first to
respond to it. With increasing frequency,
in these changing times, that response
should not be "more of the same" -- the
same old medicine in larger doses -- but
the application of new techniques arising
out of the extension of man's ability to
control his environment.
Third, you must elexaig_1gu£
standards of perigcmange. The sophis-
ticated use of dataprocessing techniques,
the cultivation of advanced management
techniques, the upgrading of administrative
17
personnel, the improvement of telecommuni-
cations, are available and popular steps
which can be revolutionary in this appli-
cation. Career personnel can be exchanged
for short periods with the Federal Govern-
ment and with other States to broaden
the horizon and improve the performance
of all.
Most of all, this world of awesome
and accelerating change must be faced
with a clear conception of our needs today
and our goals tomorrow. We need a creative
federalism - a generative Federal-State
relationship -- as swift in motion and as
stupendous in design as the environment
of this new day.
it is wonderful to return to the
storied isle of Oahu. This visit brings
back very fond and very vivid memories
from nearly a quarter of a century ago
when, as a Naval Officer, I served in
Hawaii and in the South Pacific.
Each time i return I remember those
days; and I remember an incident which
occurred during a previous visit to Hawaii
with Mrs. Bryant. I had always been curious
about the correct pronunciation for the
word "Hawaii." Some people said "Hawaii
and others called it "Havaii." Finally,
as we strolled down the street one balmy
night, I approached a native of our fiftieth
State and asked if he could tell me which
pronunciation was correct. He said, of
course, it is "Havaii." i thanked him
kindly, and he replied "You're velcome."
It was Henrik Ibsen who wrote that
"...man is in the right who
is most closely in league
with the future."
In our day, the future is now. Our
institutions must be in league with it.
You function as State Budget Officers
when the governments you serve, and the
people that serve them, can add another
glorious chapter to the story of man's
climb from the dim recesses of the cave
to life among the stars.
i '5 I'
Having received that intelligence,
I went back to the more conventional
pronunciation. But however you call,
Hawaii or Havaii, it is a wonderful place
to be. With its beaches, its ideal
climate (and that is more than a casual
compliment coming from a former Governor
of Florida), and the tranquility and
warmth of its people, it seems far removed
from the din and controversy of the
Nation's capital.
So it is a good place to meditate
upon our mutual tasks!
We perform those tasks -- yours and
mine -- in a new day. No one can really
say when that new day dawned or, certainly,
what it will bring. It is not a new day
just in the sense that rockets will be a
common mode of travel in my day or yours --
though this may come to pass; it is not a
new day just in the sense that we are
producing exotic new foods and freezing
them in ways that would have startled our
fathers, though this has come to pass; it
is not new merely in the sense that we
are replacing diseased or disabled organs
of the body with substitutes contrived by
man, though we are doing that too.
These things are the superficial
signs of a new day, but it is of something
deeper and far more meaningful than an era
of applied science, or an extension of the
industrial revolution, that I speak.
What makes this day so new is that we
are thinking differently and in different
dimensions than ever before. There is a
new understanding of the life process.
Our concepts of self are being transformed
before our eyes. The very elemental
matter of life -- protoplasm -- is being
subjected to new scrutiny, not merely with
better microscopes which yield larger
images, but with greater understanding.
So we are in a creative period such
as man has not been through before. We
are not only thinking the unthinkable, we
are dreaming the undreamable, and then
realizing our dreams. With our vastly
increased knowledge of the facts of life,
we are applying a vastly increased under-
standing of the processes of life, and
coming out with new concepts of what life
can mean .
This creative process is not limited
to biological sciences. We are growing,
too, in our understanding of the economic
forces that help shape our lives. It is
no longer enough to cite the brilliant
work of Adam Smith as the harbinger of our
free enterprise system. His contributions
will ever be respected. But we have gone
beyond the society in which he lived, and
thought, and wrote.
Neither is it relevant to condemn the
notions of Karl Marx, his call for working
class rebellion, and his ill-founded
prophesies of the plight of the laboring
man in a free society.
it is important to note that those
two thinkers, one who tried to chain the
world and one who tried to free it, had
this in common: Their theories were
propounded against a backdrop of scarcity.
They started off with the proposition,
express or implicit, that there was not
enough to go around; that someone must
starve, someone must suffer, someone must
pay for the success of a Nation.
Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx were
primarily concerned with cutting up a pie
which they conceived to be too small for
all to share in abundance.
Today we are still concerned with
cutting the economic pie, but we no longer
assume that it is too small to go around.
A great President of the United
. States put it this way:
"We in America today are nearer to
the final triumph over poverty than
ever before in the history of any
land..."
"We have not yet reached that goal,
but given a chance to go forward...
zed we shall soon, with the help of
God, be within sight of the day when
poverty shall be banished from this
nation."
Those words could have come, I think,
from a speech of Lyndon Johnson heralding
the "War on Poverty." In fact they are
a part of a speech of Herbert Hoover, made
when he accepted the nomination for Presi-
dent in 1928.
There is no longer a problem in this
nation of providing enough housing to meet
the needs of all. The problem is: how
can housing be provided for all without
destroying the values, human and spiritual,
which created the very economy of abundance
which makes the housing possible.
There is no longer a problem in this
nation of providing enough food to meet
the needs of all. The problem is: how
can we provide food for all without
destroying the incentives which created
the systemsthat make it possible to provide
food for all. We have reached an acceptable
solution as far as school children are
concerned; has our creativeness deserted
us there?
These problems and all of those
which parallel them, are new because they
include an assumption that was alien to
PAGE 1
ADDRESS BY HONORABLE FARR IS BRYANT DIRECTOR OFFICE OF EMERGENCY PLANNING BEFORE THE NATIONAL ASSOC NATION OF STATE BUDGET OFFICERS HONOLULU, HAWAII SEPTEMBER 9, 1966
PAGE 2
earlier economic thinkers: an assumption that man is not a slave to his environment but its master. This assumption, which even now is having difficulty being accepted in the economic world, has an honorable heritage in the political world. The American Revolution was fought because our forefathers thought we had the capacity to be the masters of our political environment. They sought to escape from political tyranny; now we seek to escape from other tyranny's; the tyranny of ignorance; the tyranny of physical handicaps; the tyranny of poverty. It is in this intellectual, political and social atmosphere that the States today must serve. As custodians of the American 9
PAGE 3
Revolution, with its innovations, its break throughs, its release from tyranny, the States fathered this great nation of ours. They banded together; they overcame jealousies and colonial pride. In the exercise of their sovereignty they created the Federal Government and shared their sovereignty because it offered them an opportunity to expand their freedom. I am not going to dwell now upon 190 years of our history. It would be intellectually false to fail to recognize, however, that the political climate in which this nation has matured has for the most part been a climate created by the States. If today we have the greatest educational system in the world it is bthe Statesbuilt that system.
PAGE 4
If we for these scores of years have been able to cultivate the proper mix of political freedom with the requirements of law and order, the States have done it. The fireman at the station, the policeman on the corner, the patrolman on the highway, the engineer at the water plant, the doctor in the emergency room, the game warden in the forest -these are manifestations of State authority, not that of the Federal Government. But that is history. The appetite of the people of America for improvement in their environment has not been satisfied. The States were the custodians of the first revolution; choice and circumstance decrees that they be partners 11
PAGE 5
in the second. They should be and need be neither silent nor supine partners. It is a little sad, but none-the-less true, that the position of the States in this partnership will be determined, not by past contribution, but by future performance. If they wish to make their rightful contribution to the partnership, they are going to have to be as creative and aggressive as the other member -the Federal Government. They are going to have to recogn ize that our age is different trom another era, that we are not a static but a dynamic society. The future is upon us as soon as the present has begun. And it is one of the great strengths of the American society that it adapts
PAGE 6
itself rapidly to take advantage of the newest and best tools for each new task it faces. For the last six months i have been engaged in the business of helping to strengthen the partnership between the States and the Federal Government. President Johnson believes, very deeply, that there has been a breakdown in that partnership which has in part resulted from a failure to communicate, and that if the lines of communication can be re-established thm* our federalism will regenerate its creative process. So there has been a constant stream of Governors and legislative leaders into Washington, and wherever President Johnson travels around the nation, -__to 13
PAGE 7
provide that opportunity for crossfertilization of ideas which will create new ways for federalism to serve. President Johnson, in speaking to State legislative leaders last June, expressed the faith "I think we are going to prove that federalism, America's unique contribution to political science, will be equal to the challenge that faces us in the 20th Century." It is in this thought-framework the State Budget Officer must approach his task today. First, he must recognize that thepkpartnership is one of the central facts of our political life.
PAGE 8
Second, he must identify, and constantly re-appraise, the proper hare of authority and responsibility in that partnership. Finally, he must design and administer the most efficient means for expressing that authority and sharing that responsibility. I am going to be bold enough to suggest some of the ways in which those things can be done. You must communicate! You must establish instant awareness of the activities and plans of the Federal Government in those thousands of instances where your authority and responsibility overlap. It is inconceivable that you can perform properly in the areas of pollution control, crime fighting, education, health, welfare, road construction, park development, and a
PAGE 9
multitude of others unless you know the facts and possibilities of Federal action in those areas in your State. The communication must be two-way. It is inconceivable that the Federal Government can properly design and implement its programs unless its agents know your plans and possibilities, as well as your problems. That communication cannot be casual. It must be organized and comprehensive. There must be focal points at both the State capital and the Washington level. It must not be fragmented, or gaps will inevitably appear. It must supplement, not attempt to replace, the Congressional function. It must not be isolated, but be cooperative with other States. And
PAGE 10
it .ost be of such a caliber that it will insure the confidence of State officials and command the respect of Federal officials. Second, ou must innovate. The States are in a position to be the first to peroeiv a ned, they must be the first to respond to it. With increasing frequency, in these chan ing times, that response should not be "more of the same" -the same old medicine in larger doses -but the application of new techniques arising out of the extension of nan's ability to control his environment. Third, you must elevate coor standards of performance. The sophisticated use of data-processing techniques, the cultivation of advanced management techniques, the upgrading of administrative 17
PAGE 11
personnel, the improvement of telecommunications, are available and popular steps which can be revolutionary in this application. Career personnel can be exchanged for short periods with the Federal Government and with other States to broaden the horizon and improve the performance of all. Most of all, this world of awesome and accelerating change must be faced with a clear conception of our needs today and our goals tomorrow. We need a creative federalism -a generative Federal-State relationship -as swift in motion and as stupendous in design as the environment of this new day.
PAGE 12
It is wonderful to return to the storied isle of Oahu. This visit brings back very fond and very vivid memories from nearly a quarter of a century ago when, as a Naval Officer, I served in Hawaii and in the South Pacific. Each time I return I remember those days; and I remember an incident which occurred during a previous visit to Hawaii with Mrs. Bryant. I had always been suriou about the correct pronunciation for the word "Hawaii." Some people said "Hawaii and others called it "Havaii." Finally, as we strolled down the street one balmy night, I approached a native of our fiftiet State and asked if he could tell me which pronunciation was correct. He said, of course, it is "Havaii." I thanked him kindly, and he replied "You're velcome."
PAGE 13
It was Henrik Ibsen who wrote that oan is in the right who is most closely in league with the future." In our day, the future is now. Our institutions must be in league with it. You function as State Budget Officers when the governments you serve, and the people that serve them, can add another glorious chapter to the story of man's climb from the dim recesses of the cave to life among the stars.
PAGE 14
Having received that intelligence, I went back to the more conventional pronunciation. But however you call, Hawaii or Havaii, it is a wonderful place to be. With its beaches, its ideal climate (and that is more than a casual compliment coming from a former Governor of Florida), and the tranquility and warmth of its people, it seems far removed from the din and controversy of the Nation's capital. So it is a good place to meditate upon our mutual tasks! We perform those tasks -yours and mine -in a new day. No one can really say when that new day dawned or, certainly, what it will bring. It is not a new day just in the sense that rockets will be a
PAGE 15
common mode of travel in my day or yours -though this may come to pass; it is not a new day just in the sense that we are producing exotic new foods and freezing them in ways that would have startled our fathers, though this has come to pass; it is not new merely in the sense that we are replacing diseased or disabled organs of the body with substitutes contrived by man, though we are doing that too. These things are the superficial signs of a new day, but it is of something deeper and far more meaningful than an era of applied science, or an extension of the industrial revolution, that I speak. What makes this day so new is that we are thinking differently and in different dimensions than ever before. There is a 3
PAGE 16
new understanding of the life process. Our concepts of self are being transformed before our eyes. The very elemental matter of life -protoplasm -is being subjected to new scrutiny, not merely with better microscopes which yield larger images, but with greater understanding. So we are in a creative period such as man has not been through before. We are not only thinking the unthinkable, we are dreaming the undreamable, and then realizing our dreams. With our vastly increased knowledge of the facts of life, we are applying a vastly increased understanding of the processes of life, and coming out with new concepts of what life can mean.
PAGE 17
This creative process is not limited to biological sciences. We are growing, too, in our understanding of the economic forces that help shape our lives. It is no longer enough to cite the brilliant work of Adam Smith as the harbinger of our free enterprise system. His contributions will ever be respected. But we have gone beyond the society in which he lived, and thought, and wrote. Neither is it relevant to condemn the notions of Karl Marx, his call for working class rebellion, and his ill-founded prophesies of the plight of the laboring man in a free society. It is important to note that those two thinkers, one who tried to chain the world and one who tried to free it, had
PAGE 18
this in common: Their theories were propounded against a backdrop of scarcity. They started off with the proposition, express or implicit, that there was not enough to go around; that someone must starve, someone must suffer, someone must pay for the success of a Nation. Both Adam Smith and Karl Marx were primarily concerned with cutting up a pie which they conceived to be too small for all to share in abundance. Today we are still concerned with cutting the economic pie, but we no longer assume that it is too small to go around. A great President of the United States put it this way:
PAGE 19
"We in America today are nearer to the final triumph aver poverty than ever before in the history of any land..." "We have not yet reached that goal, but given a chance to go forward... aed we shall soon, with the help of God, be within sight of the day when poverty shall be banished from this nation." Those words could have come, I think, from a speech of Lyndon Johnson heralding the "War on toverty." In fact they are a part of a speech of Herbert Hoover, made when he accepted the nomination for Fresident in 1928. There is no longer a problem in this nation of providing enough housing to meet
PAGE 20
the needs of all. The problem is: how can housing be provided for all without destroying the values, human and spiritual, which created the very economy of abundance which makes the housing possible. There is no longer a problem in this nation of providing enough food to meet the needs of all. The problem is; how can we provide food for all without destroying the incentives which created the systems that make it possible to provide food for all. We have reached an acceptable solution as far as school children are concerned; has our creativeness deserted us there? These problems and all of those which parallel them, are new because they include an assumption that was alien to
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