Remarks at the Governors' Luncheon.

MRS. JOHNSON and I are happy and proud to have you here, visiting the White House.

As representatives of the people of 50 States, and of the Territories and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, you are the symbolic owners of this House. There have been some occasions in the past when Governors have not been satisfied with symbolic ownership, and they have attempted to assert a full possessory interest. I report this purely for its historical value.

Today I want to take a few moments to explore some our our mutual concerns as public men and women.

I have spent 36 years in Washington-first as an assistant to a Congressman, then as a Congressman myself, then as a Senator, and finally as a member of the executive branch.

In all candor, I cannot recall a period that is in any way comparable to the one we are living through today. It is a period that finds exhilaration and frustration going hand in hand.

--When great accomplishments are often overshadowed by rapidly rising expectations;

--When complaints about the suppression of dissent and violations of civil rights have accompanied the greatest breakthroughs in the history of civil liberties in America.

The President of the United States is naturally the focus of this frustration and discontent. It is part of his job description.

Still--when I look at our time in historical perspective, I confess that I would not wish to trade places with any other President.

For while we face crises in 1967, they are different in quality from any we have faced before. They are crises born of responsibility, not of disaster. They are crises that have arisen from the American people's commitment to its ideals, not from public despair.

If we must have crises, these are the sort that a great nation should want to have.

The relationship between the various levels of government is one of these areas of continuing frustration and continuing accomplishment.

Never before has there been such a high level of State and Federal cooperation in the formulation and administration of vital social and economic programs.

Yet the increased involvement of the National Government has in some cases led to an increase in complaints about Federal power.

Never have the States received so much practical assistance and resources from the National Government in meeting our common obligations. Never, in concrete terms, have the States exercised more authority.

But our theory has not caught up with our practice. All of us--to some degree--are trapped by 19th century slogans or the stale ideologies of the 1930's.

If we are going to meet the challenges of the sixties and the seventies, we are going to have to abandon the old disputes about "States rights" and "State wrongs"--about "all-powerful Washington" and "unrepresentative State governments". These arguments make for good stump speeches, and good debates in the lecture hall, but they don't get us far down the road toward meeting the problems of modern America.

And the people want their problems met-more than they want answers to abstract questions of political science.

Meeting them will require mutual effort, not mutual exclusiveness. It will call for cooperation among vigorous and independent government units--for joint action, not jealously guarded isolation.

That, of course, involves massive problems of management and administration. Think of the complexity of our government structure in the United States. We have 50 States, over 3,000 counties, 28,000 municipalities, more than 27,000 townships, almost 25,000 school districts and more than 28,000 special districts. You, and I, and thousands of other political leaders are serving nearly 200 million people through these units of government.

We are using the federal system of government to improve the quality of American life

--by helping the poor among us to become productive and independent citizens

--by attacking the decay of our central cities and the chaos of urban transportation

--by helping our rural population to gain a better life

--by bringing decent medical care within the reach of all citizens

--by cleaning up the pollution and the eyesores which blight the environment of the wealthiest nation on earth.

In setting out to reach these goals, the Executive and the Congress have kept several basic facts consistently in mind:

First, money alone will not solve our basic problems. Their solutions require more than the mere use of the Federal taxing power to strengthen the general finances of State and local governments. We are dealing with nationwide problems, and we must develop broad national strategies to attack them.

But just because these problems exist in the State and local communities, their solution must be adapted to specific State and local needs and conditions. And so the Executive, the Congress, and the States have chosen to operate through the grant-in-aid mechanism. The grant-in-aid is designed to combine a broad national strategy with local knowledge and local administration.

Second, attacking the major problems of poverty and urban decay requires doing many things at the same time--providing education, jobs, housing, health, transportation, and improved law enforcement. We cannot make up for the neglect of years with one simple panacea.

Third, many of the problems we are dealing with at the State or local level, cannot be solved by a single government jurisdiction. Urban transportation is not a problem of the central city alone; the control of water pollution involves whole river basins; the smoke of one city or State may spoil the air in another; and the development of depressed rural areas cannot succeed as long as single counties or States go it alone. Joint planning and joint action are indispensable.

But the joint actions we have taken in the past few years to improve the quality of American life have placed a great strain upon our Federal system.

They have also showed us that there never are enough good managers to go around.

Our problem is not political federalism. It is administrative federalism--a system and method whereby the many units of government at the working level coordinate and join their resources to get a job done well.

Here, as I see them, are the immediate tasks before us:

--Federal assistance programs are in need of coordination and simplification--in Washington, and in the field. I have asked the Director of the Budget, Mr. Schultze, to develop a plan that will permit Federal agencies to combine related grants into a single financial package wherever that is possible--and thus simplify the Governor's and the mayor's job in dealing with the Federal Government. Representatives of State and local governments will be working with him on a joint task force to produce this plan. I expect their report within a month, and shortly thereafter I will submit legislation to the Congress to carry out their plan.

--State and local governments are in need of modernization in organization and finances. Some of the assistance they need to do this can be found in the model cities program, for which we are asking the fully authorized funds this year.

--All levels of government need to communicate among each other more easily and regularly than they have in the past. In my State of the Union Message this year, I said that one of our objectives is creating an effective partnership at all levels of government.

And that partnership rests, to some degree, on money. During the past 3 years we have returned to State and local governments almost $40 billion in grants-in-aid. About 70 percent of our Federal expenditures for domestic programs will be distributed through State and local governments. If these enormous sums are to hit their mark--and improve the lives of 200 million Americans-we must work as partners to improve and simplify their administration.

But any sound partnership rests on something more important than money. It rests on trust--mutual confidence--and on common goals.

If that sometimes seems difficult to achieve as we argue over guidelines and criteria and matching funds, think what it was like two centuries ago when the Founders tried to make a nation out of thirteen proud colonies.

John Adams looked back on those days when he wrote to a friend, in 1818, that "The colonies had grown up under constitutions of government so different; there was so great a variety of religions; they were composed of so many nations; their customs, manners and habits had so little resemblance; and their intercourse had been so rare and their knowledge of each other so imperfect, that to unite them in the same principles in theory and the same system of action was certainly a very difficult enterprise. The complete accomplishment of it, in so short a time and by such simple means, was perhaps a singular example in the history of mankind. Thirteen clocks were made to strike together--a perfection of mechanism which no artist had ever before effected."

Now there are 50 clocks. Through trust, through tolerance and good sense, and through an unswerving devotion to our people's needs and dreams, they can be made to strike together--and they will.