528 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

it was not the Federal government's role in Vietnam but the Federal
government's relationship to the states and its role in resolving urban
conflict that was our number one concern.

Discussion of the critical problems of human and urban renewal,
the need for major metropolitan investment, and the failure of Fed-
eral programs to date to produce meaningful solutions to urban di-
lemmas preoccupied the majority of our time.

Although our national economy has entered its eighty-first con-
secutive month of expansion, the Gross National Product has ex-
ceeded $800 billion and the Dow-Jones average is predicted to reach
900 before the year's end, this unprecedented progress has been ac-
companied by an increasing polarization in wealth. This in turn has
produced awesome and awful social implications. As the many with
rising incomes and expectations have moved to the suburbs, the an-
guish and rage of the few trapped in the slums have become more
obvious and overt. This summer racial violence in seventy-six Ameri-
can cities destroyed over $100 million of insured property — and here
I am citing only the loss of property, not the loss of the more precious
commodity, life!

Although the Federal government vociferously expresses acute
awareness of this problem, the 90th Congress has to date been plagued
by indecision resulting in a failure to act. The national administration
is under constant attack on urban issues. The President claims to
have provided $30 billion in Federal aid to the cities. Yet in testimony
before a Senate subcommittee, his Budget Director, Charles Schultze,
set the figure at $10. 3 billion — and even this lesser figure includes
$2. 1 billion for the construction of urban expressways which hardly
help the poor whose homes lie in interstate highways' paths.

Most deplorable of all is the plethora of Federal programs sponsored
without evaluation or coordination, and without any attempt to as-
sure continuity. The Federal government has widely scattered seed
money and after a year or two withdrawn or curtailed support, leaving
the city with its extremely limited resources to foot the bill. The city
is forced either to cut off programs, raise already high taxes, or appeal
for state aid. Thus, the state government — previously ignored by
the Federal-city alliance — winds up holding the bag or the bill. This
has been the pattern and this was the number one problem discussed
at the National Governors' Conference.

Perhaps there is a measure of historical justification for this situa-
tion. State governments — prior to reapportionment — often failed to