THE 89TH CONGRESS: Acting on the Visionary

THE thrust and direction of the prodigious 89th Congress were set by Lyndon Johnson in two speeches. Before a University of Michigan audience at Ann Arbor on May 22, 1964, the President called on the nation to "create new concepts of cooperation, a creative federalism, between the national capital and the leaders of local communities." In his State of the Union address to the assembled Congress in Washington last Jan. 4, he defined his own soaring dreams of what American life should be. "Our nation," he said then, "was created to help strike away the chains of ignorance and misery and tyranny wherever they keep man less than God means him to be." The Congress, warming up to the "creative federalism" approach to nationwide problems, has already transformed many of President Johnson's visionary phrases into laws and programs.

We begin to build our Great Society in our cities, in our countryside, in our classrooms.

URBAN AFFAIRS. A $7.8 billion housing program aims to meet such varied needs as urban renewal, campus dwellings for college students, and 60,000 more public-housing units. Congress went further and created the first new Cabinet post in twelve years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which amalgamates a batch of existing bureaus within a single agency devoted to the problems of the cities, where 70% of all Americans now live.

THE ENVIRONMENT. Congress passed an unprecedented highway beautification bill that provides for withholding some federal road funds from states that tolerate unsightly billboards and unconcealed junkyards. The 89th also 1) authorized $240 million for new landscaping along certain federal highways, 2) set up federal regulations that by 1968 will limit atmospheric pollution from automotive exhaust pipes, and 3) approved a water-pollution control law that could lead to courtroom prosecution of industries or individuals responsible for fouling U.S. waters.

EDUCATION. The Congress made history with its education bills. One act allows public-school districts to receive federal funds for the first time without specifically detailed directives as to how the money must be spent. Most of the $1.3 billion authorized for elementary and secondary schools will go to districts with 3% of their student enrollment from families making under $2,000 a year—a qualification that includes 90% of all U.S. school districts. To sweeten the package for some of those who have opposed such bills in the past, the Johnson measure allows private and parochial (largely Catholic) schools to get their own federal funds for books and to "share" whatever new federally purchased public-school facilities are created in their area. A $2.3 billion higher-education bill, rammed through last week, allows $70 million for the nation's first Government-financed college scholarships (up to $1,000 a year per student), offers $460 million in construction grants to colleges, sets up funds to finance programs aimed at strengthening developing institutions (particularly small Southern Negro colleges), underwrites interest on loans for college students from families making under $15,000 a year.

The Great Society rests on abundance and liberty for all.