Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  Udall said later, “I had the best job in the cabinet… and … I could see the significant accomplishment [that] was taking place.” “We were breaking new ground … coming up with new ideas.” Udall wanted the country to “reshape its goals” on the environment. On conservation, Philip S. Hughes of the Bureau of the Budget said, Udall “was the key figure. He is a guy of vast energy. He gave us all kinds of trouble but had lots of energy and lots of dedication and lots of courage.”

  Udall transformed the Department of the Interior. It would cease being just western and acquire, he said, a “national image and a national role.” He welcomed the views of conservationists from east of the Mississippi, set up national parks and a seashore in the East, helped provide outdoor recreation facilities for those in the cities and the suburbs, and, of course, was concerned about the national problems of pollution. His aspiration was to convert the Department of the Interior into a department of natural resources.

  Udall was full of ideas and was constantly proposing new legislation. Both Kennedy and Johnson, he said, “seemed to have a great deal of confidence in me and therefore I had pretty much of a free hand.” In fact, the only brake he ever felt was in the latter years of the Johnson administration when the war in Vietnam squeezed his budget, a victim of guns over butter. In fact, he would have preferred more attention from the White House. No staff member oversaw Interior as Douglass Cater monitored Health, Education and Welfare. While he personally wrote the weekly activity reports, he was not sure that Kennedy read them and Johnson seems only to have skimmed them.

  Most important, Udall could do pretty much as he pleased legislatively. He was the only cabinet member with congressional experience. “I was able to formulate, initiate and carry out the programs.” He developed his own congressional relations staff and did not go through Larry O’Brien.

  Udall hired Robert McCone from New Mexico, who knew the chairmen of both Interior Committees, Senator Clinton Anderson of New Mexico and Aspinall. McCone and his staff knew their way around the Capitol and started the day there each morning. “I think,” Udall said, “ours was one of the most efficient and effective liaison operations that was run.” He got Johnson to name Aspinall’s son the governor of Samoa. He needed the President’s help for a call to the Hill only once or twice.

  Udall’s relations with Kennedy had been excellent, but the results were limited. While the President philosophically favored conservation, it was certainly not a priority issue for him. He depended on Udall. At the outset the secretary was busy reorganizing his department and was feeling his way programmatically. There was, however, one conservation issue about which Kennedy felt strongly: Cape Cod. He had sailed his boat for years out of Hyannis Port and, like everyone else, was enraptured by the Cape. After the war it was surrendering rapidly to unplanned development. Kennedy wanted to save what was left and while in the Senate had proposed turning part of the great outer beach into a protected national park. When he became President, he moved with Udall at his side. Until that time no seashore was part of the park system. Udall suggested a new form: the national seashore. On August 7, 1961, Kennedy signed the bill creating the Cape Cod National Seashore Park, noting that “this is a matter of great interest to me.” Udall followed in 1962 with national seashores on Padre Island in Texas and at Point Reyes in California.

  Udall’s relationship with the Johnsons, both Lyndon and Lady Bird, was much closer. The President seems to have approved of every proposal he made. If Udall said, “ ‘This is good for the land and good for the people,’ he bought it.” Udall thought this was because of Johnson’s rural upbringing and because it was a project his idol, Franklin Roosevelt, would have favored. He seemed to have an “instinctive feeling” for the land.

  Lady Bird shared her husband’s outlook and, in fact, developed her own beautification program and came to rely on Udall. He helped get her bill through Congress and with others from Interior drafted her speeches. The first lady, of course, generated great interest in the media and Udall often had her photographed with the national treasures—Big Bend Park in Texas, Point Reyes, the Adams House in Quincy, Massachusetts, and Padre Island—and he even got the noted conservationist, Laurance Rockefeller, to arrange for a ride in a 1911 Stanley Steamer in Woodstock, Vermont. Udall was careful in using the first lady and, excepting the tough fight over the Redwoods National Park, did not make her into a “battering ram.”2

  In 1958 Congress had created the Outdoor Recreation Resources Review Commission to “inventory and evaluate the outdoor recreation resources and opportunities … which will be required by present and future generations” in order to guide the federal government and the states in meeting these goals. The commission consisted of 15 members, four from the Committees on Interior and Insular Affairs of each house and seven informed citizens named by the President. It received an appropriation of $2.5 million.

  President Eisenhower chose Laurance Rockefeller as chairman. He headed the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and had inherited from his father, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., a dedication to conservation on behalf of the nation. He had developed the Jackson Hole Preserve in Wyoming and was establishing the Rocresorts there and in the Virgin Islands. ORRRC had a large staff, an assortment of expert advisory bodies, research contractors, and liaison arrangements with federal agencies and the states. A total of 27 specialized reports were written. All this consumed more than three years and the commission submitted its report, Outdoor Recreation for America, to the President (then Kennedy) on January 31, 1962.

  Participation in outdoor recreation, the commission calculated, had been growing at a prodigious rate since the end of World War II. This was the result of a sharp increase in population, rising prosperity, greater leisure time, and improved transportation, particularly cars, among other factors. The commission anticipated that this trend would not only continue but accelerate. It estimated that about 90 percent of Americans engaged in such activity in the summer of 1960 on 4.4 billion occasions. By 1976 this number would grow to 6.9 and by 2000 to 12.4 billion. The physical facilities to meet this demand were not available presently (the strains on Yosemite and Yellowstone National Parks were already notorious). There must be a great and planned expansion of the lands and waters for parks to meet the need.

  A long-term program would require the cooperation of federal, state, and local governments, along with the private sector. The commission identified six classes of recreation areas:

  I. High density areas designed for mass use in and near urban centers

  II. General areas for a variety of specific uses

  III. Natural environments that lent themselves to specific uses

  IV. Unique areas of natural wonder, scenic splendor, or scientific interest that should be available for limited use

  V. Primitive (wilderness) areas that should be severely restricted

  IV. Historic and cultural sites, such as Mount Vernon, Civil War battlefields, and the Indian dwellings in Mesa Verde, for very limited use

  A program of this magnitude required central leadership. Thus, the commission recommended establishment of a new bureau of outdoor recreation in the Department of the Interior to coordinate about 20 existing federal programs, stimulate and assist state planning, administer grants-in-aid to the states and localities, conduct research, encourage regional and interstate cooperation, and formulate a national recreation plan.

  While ORRRC placed no price tag on its proposals, it stated that “substantial additional funds would be needed at all levels of government for planning, acquiring, developing, operating, and maintaining facilities.” It recommended a variety of financial devices: general obligation and revenue bonds, user fees, federal matching grants to the states, general funds from the Treasury, and federal loans to the states.

  Both Udall and Kennedy welcomed the ORRRC report with open arms and the former was spurred into action. On February 7, 1962, only a week after receiving the study, the secretary submitted to the White House the
draft of a presidential message to Congress on conservation along with bills to effectuate the commissions’s recommendations, a reorganization plan to create the bureau of outdoor recreation, and a proposal for a White House conference on conservation in April.

  The message went to the Hill on March 1 and outdoor recreation was its centerpiece. The President enthusiastically endorsed the proposals for the new bureau, for matching grants to the states to finance land acquisition for parks, and for a sharp increase in the federal system of national parks, forests, and wildlife refuges. He would present a bill to finance this program from user fees in federal facilities, user charges on boats, diversion of taxes paid on boat fuel from the Highway Trust Fund, and receipts from the sale of federal nonmilitary real property. To encourage the prompt acquisition of land, the President asked for immediate Treasury loans to a total of $500 million for eight years to be repaid from the anticipated income.

  On April 2 Udall established the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation. It would work with federal departments in formulating policies and with the states in developing their programs, but it would not itself administer any programs. He chose Edward C. Crafts as head of the bureau. He had graduated from the University of Michigan School of Forestry and had a Ph.D. from the University of California School of Forestry at Berkeley. He had worked for the Forest Service for 29 years, the last dozen as assistant chief forester, where, among other duties, he was responsible for congressional relations. Crafts had assisted in creating the Rockefeller commission. He knew the members of the Agriculture and Interior committees in both houses, and considered Stewart Udall a good friend.

  On April 27 the President issued Executive Order 11017 creating the Outdoor Recreation Advisory Council of the heads of departments and agencies involved in recreation. “It is essential,” Kennedy stated, “that there be close coordination among these different groups and that all plans be fitted into a basic national policy.” “Coordination” was a code word for the avoidance of jurisdictional disputes. Everyone involved with conservation knew of the titanic brawls that had been waged between Agriculture and Interior over the Forest Service in the Progressive and New Deal eras. Fortunately, the relations between Agriculture Secretary Orville Freeman and Udall were excellent and there would not be a third bloodbath.

  The White House Conference on Conservation met at the end of May. Key committee members of Congress, governors of many states, and conservation organizations were urged to support the administration program.

  The legislation proved far more daunting. This was not due to disagreement over the basic proposal; almost everyone accepted the idea that a great expansion of outdoor recreation facilities was desirable. Rather, the controversy was over funding, and there were two basic complaints.

  Udall hoped to establish a kind of Interior Department conservation bank account that would have a continuing source of income from user fees on parks and boats, the recapture of fuel taxes on motor boats, and the sale of surplus federal lands. The funds would be used to acquire land, which was rapidly appreciating in price, and to administer the system. “It was clear,” he said, “that we had to have a new policy. … Some kind of conservation fund … like the highway trust fund.” But he soon ran into roadblocks within the government and from those with an interest in the free use of waterways.

  On February 12 Udall had circulated four bills and quickly met a stone wall. The Bureau of the Budget objected to earmarking revenues by removing them from budget review and control, for it made budget balancing difficult, and it objected to “backdoor” borrowing from the Treasury without an appropriation. The Treasury agreed. The Council of Economic Advisers, despite strong support for the expansion of parks, also considered the financing arrangements improper. Walter Heller thought there should be “a new breed of fiscal animal—perhaps called a capital fund—which would take its place beside the trust fund as a type of expenditure outside of the normal budgetary process.”

  The water user objections came from two sources. The barging industry on the Mississippi and Ohio river systems, according to Crafts, was determined to protect its free use of these watery roadbeds, which provided a competitive advantage over the railroads and trucking. The bargers opposed any precedent of a fee or tax on the use of waterways. Recreational boating also objected. The Army Corps of Engineers had built dams in Oklahoma, east Texas, southwest Missouri, and northwest Arkansas which formed backup lakes that boaters used without charge, and the same was true in the Tennessee Valley. Both the Corps and TVA opposed user fees.

  There were abortive House hearings in July which served as a forum for these objections. Later that year Interior searched for a different solution. The original bill had stressed federal land acquisition; now the emphasis would be on grants to the states for planning, acquiring, and developing state parks. This would prove more popular in Congress and the Bureau of the Budget approved. The Senate committee held hearings in March and the House followed in May and July.

  Aspinall held the bill up for more than a year. On November 4, 1963, President Kennedy wrote him to urge that this “most significant legislation” should be enacted in the current session. By now virtually every conservation organization and 46 states had endorsed the measure. The Interior Committee reported out the Land and Water Conservation Fund bill, H.R. 3846, on November 14 in essentially the form the final statute would take. It would create a self-sustaining trust fund for 25 years. Sixty percent of the money would be distributed to the states in matching grants that would cover up to 50 percent of the cost of both land acquisition and the development of parks. The remaining 40 percent would be used by the federal government, but only for land acquisition. The fund’s income would be received from the sale of federal surplus property (estimated at $50 million annually), the motor boat fuel tax presently going into the Highway Trust Fund ($30 million), and new entrance and recreation user fees at national parks, national forests, and other federal properties, including Corps of Engineers and TVA sites ($60 to $65 million). Fees for water navigation by commercial vessels were prohibited. Congress would make a supplemental appropriation of $60 million annually. Udall wrote President Johnson: “The House Committee has reported an excellent bill. Outlook is favorable.”

  The bill sailed through Congress. On July 22, 1964, a test roll call on the rule for debate in the House passed 338 to 8. The next day the body adopted it by voice vote. There was even less trouble in the Senate. The amendments were picky, such as entrance fees to Great Smoky Mountains National Park only with the consent of North Carolina and Tennessee. The Senate passed H.R. 3846 on August 12 by a vote of 91 to 1. The conference committee had little to do and its report was adopted by both chambers by voice vote on September 1, 1964.

  By early August Udall realized that his one-armed bandit was about to give him a huge legislative payoff. He and presidential aide Lee White thought there ought to be “a very big to-do” at the White House over the signings. Udall wrote President Johnson on August 13, “It now appears that by a strange quirk nearly all major conservation bills will reach your desk jackpot-fashion in the final days of the session.” There were two landmark measures—Land and Water Conservation Fund and Wilderness (to be treated next)—along with many of regional significance. Johnson selected three of the latter for the occasion—Ozark National Scenic Riverways, Fire Island National Seashore, and Canyonlands National Park, the first new national park in North America in 17 years.

  The ceremony was held in the Rose Garden on September 3, 1964. The President delivered a glowing message on conservation. The nation was now in what Udall liked to call the third wave of conservation. TR had led the first, FDR the second. Now, as Johnson put it, the 88th Congress, the “conservation Congress,” was launching the third. It was far more than the laws he was now signing. “Action has been taken to keep our air pure and our water safe and our food free from pesticides; to protect our wildlife; to conserve our precious water resources.” He stressed the overwhelming votes in
both houses (Wilderness passed 73 to 12 and 373 to 1) as evidence of broad bipartisan support. He expressed special gratitude to Udall, Clinton Anderson (and Senator Henry Jackson of Washington, who succeeded to the committee chairmanship), and to Congressman Aspinall. His only regret was that Laurance Rockefeller was unable to be present. The President wrote him: “You may well take pride in your contribution … , not only in your part in the ORRRC Report and the results so far accomplished, but for the many other personal contributions that you, and your father before you, have made to the field of conservation.”

  Crafts gradually built up the Bureau of Outdoor Recreation to handle its responsibilities. When fully operational, it had almost 500 employees in Washington and in regional offices in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, and San Francisco. BOR undertook the drafting of a national recreation plan. It required the states to prepare their own detailed plans as a condition of federal aid. It worked with the National Park Service, the Forest Service, and the Bureau of Sport Fisheries and Wildlife to promote land acquisition and the development of federal recreational facilities. It helped produce several new concepts—national recreation areas, wild and scenic rivers, both interstate and local trails, miniparks in the cities, and coastal and freshwater islands.

  By 1968 BOR had approved assistance to states and cities for more than 3000 projects, 1500 in the last year. By 1967 the National Parks, the Forest Service, and Sport Fisheries and Wildlife had acquired 313,000 acres of land with help from the conservation fund.

  The consequences were dramatic. The growth of state and municipal parks was unprecedented. At the federal level the accomplishments exceeded those of Franklin Roosevelt and Harold Ickes during the New Deal. For the Johnson period, 1963–68, that is, excluding the Kennedy administration, the national park system grew by 46 new areas, including several novel forms that differed from the traditional national park: