Guns or Butter

by Bernstein, Irving;

  Dominick and Winston Prouty, the Vermont Republican, would probably have voted against H.R. 2362 had they not known that Morse eagerly sought unanimity. The members of his subcommittee, including the Republicans, held the chairman in high esteem, and, Eidenberg and Morey wrote, “The time-honored canon of politics applied in this case was that one should not go out of his way to make enemies if it is obvious that his side is going to lose anyway.” They would put out IOUs that could be cashed in later. The vote was 10 to 0.

  The full committee on Labor and Public Welfare was even easier. Dominick went through the motions of proposing amendments on allocations, library materials, and private schools. The first was defeated 6 to 4, the others by voice vote. The committee then balloted, again unanimously, for H.R. 2362 on April 5, 1965.

  It would be an exaggeration to call the Senate’s consideration a “debate” or even to add the adjective “desultory.” It began on April 6 and ended on the 9th. On the first day Morse explained the bill to two senators who were talking to each other. On the second Dominick and Company went through their amendment routine to no avail. On the third Sam Ervin, the North Carolina Democrat who had proposed judicial review for Kennedy’s higher education bill in 1963, renewed the amendment. He was defeated 53 to 32. On April 9, H.R. 2362 passed the Senate by a vote of 73 to 18. The Democrats voted for it 55 to 4 and even a majority of Republicans backed it 18 to 14.

  Wayne Morse had pushed the House bill through the subcommittee unanimously, the full committee unanimously, and the Senate overwhelmingly. All within two weeks!

  Douglas Cater suggested to the President that he hold the signing ceremony in “the little schoolhouse which you attended near the ranch.” Johnson embraced the idea.

  On Palm Sunday, April 11, 1965, Lyndon Johnson was on the lawn of the Junction Elementary School in Johnson City, where he had started his education at age four. His teacher, Kate Deadrich Loney, who handled eight grades in one room, came back from California. “Come over here, Miss Katie, and sit by me, will you? … They tell me, Miss Kate, that I recited my first lessons while sitting on your lap.” Hugo Kline had also sat on her knee. Now a barber in Fredricksburg, he had come down for the ceremony. There were other former schoolmates and pupils from San Marcos, Cotulla, and Houston. Senator Eugene McCarthy had lectured at the University of Texas in Austin the day before. Carl Albert, who had helped put the bill through the House, was spending the day in his district in McAlester, Oklahoma. Both came over to Johnson City.

  The Attorney General, Johnson said, had told him that it was constitutional to sign the Elementary and Secondary Education Act on Palm Sunday and his minister said that he would not violate the Lord’s day by doing so to “bring mental and moral benefits to millions of our young people.” He did not want to miss a day in putting this wonderful law into effect. And “I felt a very strong desire to go back to the beginnings of my own education—to be reminded and to remind others of that magic time when the world of learning began to open before our eyes.” It was a warm and joyous event.

  On Tuesday, April 13, the President held another ceremony in the East Room of the White House. He wished that President Kennedy and Senator Robert A. Taft were alive to see this “dream come true.” He expressed gratitude to the Democratic leadership in both houses and, of course, to Carl Perkins and Wayne Morse. “With all the differences I have with Wayne Morse on Viet-Nam, we don’t differ on education.” And he noted the contributions of John Gardner, Francis Keppel, and Anthony Celebrezze.4

  Francis Keppel observed the rapid march of ESEA through Congress with the Higher Education Act not far behind with pleasure alloyed by distress. Stephen Bailey and Edith Mosher summed up his ambivalence neatly:

  Whatever skills Keppel had as a forceful and brilliant policy strategist and external negotiator, he was not a tidy administrator. The mundane details of internal structure and process bored his restless and creative mind. … Furthermore, Keppel’s essential command from Presidents Kennedy and Johnson had been to catalyze new legislative breakthroughs. This role Keppel performed with distinction, but it was a role that precluded the pouring of extensive energies into solving difficult problems of organization and methods inside USOE [U.S. Office of Education] itself.

  The Office of Education was a very old and very stodgy bureaucracy which had spent most of its energies in the collection of statistics. The average age of the professional staff was over 50, and it was distinguished, Bailey and Mosher wrote, by neither “energy [n]or imagination.” The operating bureaus put “sand in the personnel machinery.” The financial and management systems were “decentralized, disparate, and ineffective.” The structure of the agency was hopelessly obsolete. Its personnel, conditioned to the “theology” of local control, avoided national leadership as if it were a fatal disease. Its elderly civil servants isolated themselves from other federal agencies concerned with education, and they harbored an “almost pathological suspicion” of parent HEW.

  The 1963 legislation, particularly the Higher Education Facilities Act, had imposed an immense increase in workload of an unfamiliar kind, program administration, including supervision of construction contracts. Now the new ESEA and Higher Education Act programs would raise the budget of USOE by 526 percent over 1961. The staff would grow during fiscal 1966 alone by 50 percent, over 800 jobs, many at top levels. As if that were not enough, the agency was already responsible for the formidable task of desegregating the nation’s schools under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

  Keppel, who recognized his own limitations, began searching for a tough administrator in 1964 and had trouble finding one. Finally, in March 1965 he located a new deputy commissioner of education. Henry Loomis had a broad background in science, defense, and foreign policy and the reputation of an outstanding administrator. He was leaving as director at Voice of America and made an unfortunate farewell address to the staff.

  Loomis said he was fed up with the “inept leadership” of VOA chief Carl Rowan and that he resented “political interference” in the agency’s operations. Mary McGrory carried his statement in the Washington Star. What Loomis did not know was that the nation’s most omnivorous reader of Washington political news was Lyndon Johnson. Loomis said later that he was pointing at the State Department. But Johnson read the statement as an attack on the White House. He considered it both bad judgment and disloyalty. The fact that Loomis was an Eisenhower Republican and proudly kept a picture of Ike on his office wall probably did not help.

  Johnson, enraged, broke into a phone conversation that Keppel was having with a southern governor, chewed him out, and demanded that he rescind the appointment of Loomis. Keppel refused, insisting on his right to choose his own deputy. Thereafter, whenever he saw the President he was asked, “Have you fired that son-of-a-bitch yet?” Johnson insisted now that all supergrade appointments in USOE must be approved by presidential assistant Marvin Watson, a man Keppel grew to detest.

  Loomis brought over his personal hatchetman, Walter Mylecraine, who became known at USOE as “the terrible Turk.” But he had to delay the wielding of his axe because Cater was concerned about the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.

  Cater got an old newspaper friend, Mike O’Neill, who covered HEW for the New York Daily News and Medical World News, to assess the department. Its high command, O’Neill wrote, was an “administrative mess which has been inadequate to the Department’s mission for more than 10 years and will collapse completely under the weight of its new Great Society responsibilities.” Excluding education, O’Neill went on in this vein for ten pages of detail. On April 2,1965, Cater sent O’Neill’s letter to the President and proposed that a small group consisting of Kermit Gordon, John Macy of the Civil Service Commission, and himself make plans to reorganize HEW. The President approved and the results would be given to John Gardner when he became secretary in July.

  Cater then addressed the “urgent” problem of the Office of Education. Celebrezze and Keppel recommended
formation of a “working task force” to study the agency’s reorganization. Gordon and Elmer Staats of the Bureau of the Budget strongly recommended that Dwight A. Ink be placed in charge. Perhaps the federal government’s top administrator, Ink was now assistant general manager of the Atomic Energy Commission. He was constantly being “borrowed” for tough jobs, most notably for the rebuilding of Alaska after the immense earthquake of 1964. Ink’s availability for the education study delighted Keppel. The other members of the task force were Herbert Jasper of Budget and Gilbert Schulkind of Civil Service. The comprehensive recommendations of the White House Task Force on Education were delivered on June 14, 1965.

  Bailey and Mosher considered the Ink report a “grand design.” Hardly any part of the agency would escape reorganization. “Sweeping in scope, it represented a massive attack upon the traditional shortcomings of the United States Office of Education and an attempt to develop an organizational structure and a management philosophy that would equip this office for the new burdens it was about to assume.”

  Keppel and Loomis accepted the Ink recommendations as gospel and Loomis persuaded Keppel to launch the reorganization swiftly, that is, in late June 1965. The agency was stood on its head. Of 36 divisions only two escaped major surgery; of 25 supergrade personnel only eight held onto their jobs. Bailey and Mosher wrote, “The ensuing, if temporary, administrative chaos was shattering. For days and weeks, people could not find each other’s offices—sometimes not even their own.” Morale declined sharply as the volume of business shot upward. A new crisis emerged over the enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in the North, namely, Chicago. The summer months at the Office of Education, therefore, were traumatic. But, by September, while there was still much to accomplish, the foundations of a new agency were in place.

  Ink was later asked whether the reorganization was carried out. “It was carried out, but not to my satisfaction.” Within a few months Keppel and Loomis were gone and the “momentum had been lost.” The combined impact of Johnson’s attack on Loomis and the catastrophe in Chicago severely damaged the Office of Education.5

  The Higher Education Act of 1965 was in substantial part a holdover from Kennedy’s 1963 agenda. He had made two basic proposals—federal support for the construction of college buildings and financial aid for students. Congress gave him the former in the facilities act, but declined student assistance in 1963. The Gardner task force the next year urged loans, scholarships, and a work-study program for students. This became the heart of the 1965 bill, but there were many other features.

  In fact, the content of the bill was a more difficult problem than its politics. There was no doubt whatever that a higher education bill would pass both houses, probably with handsome majorities. There were a number of reasons for this.

  Keppel did not have to deal with the monsignori or the Protestant churches because there was no church-state issue. In 1961, when the first Kennedy education program was submitted, Alanson W. Willcox, general counsel of HEW, had, after consultation with the Department of Justice, written a memorandum on constitutionality under the First Amendment of federal aid to education, including higher education. One could argue, as many did, that federal assistance to parochial lower schools raised a serious question under the establishment clause. But, Willcox contended, no such argument could be made with regard to colleges.

  This was a difference rooted in history. The states had opted for compulsory public education for lower schools where the teaching of religion was prohibited. Higher education had an opposite history. At the outset most colleges were private and had a religious origin. Even now 41 percent of college students were in private institutions. Attendance at lower schools was mandatory, at colleges voluntary. It would be ridiculous for the federal government to offer financial aid exclusively to public institutions in the current context of strain on the colleges to admit all those clamoring at the gates. The nation needed private institutions, even if church-related. No opponent of federal aid to the colleges bothered to raise the establishment clause issue during the legislative history, nor, evidently, was a suit filed later to challenge the law.

  The structure of the Congress made aid to colleges inherently popular. There were about 2300 higher education institutions in the country located basically in accordance with the distribution of population. All were eager to receive the funds that would become available under the new law. Thus, every senator was well supplied with constituents who wanted him to vote for the bill. Even low-density states were stocked with colleges. Alaska, for example, had nine, and Wyoming had eight. The number of institutions per district in the House was similar. Thus, any member of either house who opposed the bill would be voting against the interests of important constituents.

  The colleges, now reeling under the impact of the baby boom, were in obvious need of financial assistance. A Congress which had voted overwhelmingly for ESEA could hardly fail to do as well, and probably better, with a politically more acceptable higher education bill.

  The measure introduced by the administration, S. 600, had four substantive provisions. Title I addressed community problems—housing, poverty, government, recreation, health, and so on. The funds would go to university extension departments to develop programs to deal with these questions.

  Title II would improve inadequate library resources. The libraries of half the four-year and 82 percent of the two-year institutions failed to meet minimum standards of books per student. The skimpy libraries of many research universities called for a very large increase in acquisitions. There was also a severe shortage of librarians, estimated at 125,000. Grants would be made to colleges and universities to address the book shortage and to expand or establish schools for librarians.

  The 2300 institutions of higher education in the U.S. were of extremely varied quality. Almost 10 percent were unaccredited; several hundred lacked research facilities and qualified instructors; professor salaries in many were extremely low. Title III would strengthen “developing institutions” by providing funds to improve their academic programs.

  Title IV, the heart of S. 600, would help meet the financial needs of low- and middle-income young people to obtain a college education. There would be three new programs—scholarships, insured reduced-interest loans, and work-study. In addition, the existing National Defense Student Loan Program would be extended for three years.

  There was little controversy over the first three titles and scholarships and work-study. The key issue in the legislative history was student loans. If one assumed that national policy should encourage young people to attend college, the need for financial assistance, including loans, was obvious. In 1960, 78 percent of high school graduates from families with incomes over $12,000 attended college; only 33 percent from families with incomes under $3000 did so. In a study of 1,860,000 high school graduates who went to college, 22 percent dropped out during the first year. The most important reason for doing so was financial difficulty. The average annual direct cost of college in 1962–63 was $1,480 in public and $2,240 in private institutions. Median family income was $6000. Thus, keeping a son or daughter in college was a heavy burden on most families, exceeded only by the cost of a home. Most students did not qualify for loans under the restrictions of the National Defense Education Act.

  The Citizens National Committee for Higher Education opposed all forms of federal aid for education, including low-interest guaranteed loans. It strongly urged the tuition tax credit which would allow deductions from the income tax for tuition payments, not just for students and their parents, but also for other persons. A similar conservative position which many Republicans had long supported was voluntary college attendance. Federal financial assistance to students was not acceptable. Students, their families, private donors, cities, and states must bear the costs. But the massive force of the baby boomers marching onto campuses overwhelmed these conservative arguments. In fact, the Citizens Committee did not even testify on S. 600.

  The
student loan idea was in the air. The launching of the Sputnik in 1957 had alarmed the nation and had raised questions about the adequacy of the educational system. The next year the Congress enacted the National Defense Education Act in order to strengthen programs related to defense. It provided fellowships, grants, and loans to students to encourage the study of science, engineering, mathematics, and foreign languages. As noted, Title IV of the higher education bill would extend the life of NDEA.

  By the end of 1964, 14 states had established loan guaranty programs and had 78,595 loans outstanding. Massachusetts and Maine had led the way in 1957 and New York came on the next year. They concentrated in the East where there were many private institutions with high tuitions, but there were two in the Midwest and two in the South. Excepting New York, with 50,820 loans outstanding, and Massachusetts, with 4,468, they were very small programs. By July 1965, five other states had established programs. Senator Javits proposed an amendment to S. 600 to protect the state and private arrangements with a 50-50 matching formula with federal funds.

  United Student Aid Fund, a nonprofit corporation, started in 1960 to guarantee loans to college students. By 1965, 5,522 banks and 685 colleges were participating; the 68,379 outstanding loans totaled almost $49 million. Sophomores, juniors, and seniors could borrow $1000 annually up to a maximum of $4000, graduate students $2000 a year to the same ceiling. United Students Aid Fund was concerned that S. 600 might put it out of business. It proposed amendments to protect itself and that was one purpose of the Javits amendment.