Special Message to the Congress on Consolidation of Federal Assistance Programs.

To the Congress of the United States:

In the administration of Federal programs, one of the principal needs today is to improve the delivery systems: to ensure that the intended services actually reach the intended recipients, and that they do so in an efficient, economical and effective manner.

As grant-in-aid programs have proliferated, the problems of delivery have grown more acute. States, cities, and other recipients find themselves increasingly faced with a welter of overlapping programs, often involving multiple agencies and diverse criteria. This results in confusion at the local level, in the waste of time, energy and resources, and often in frustration of the intent of Congress.

As a major step toward improved administration of these programs, I urge that Congress enact a Grant Consolidation Act.

Under our present fragmented system, each one of a group of closely related categorical grants is encumbered with its own individual array of administrative and technical requirements. This unnecessarily complicates the planning process; it discourages comprehensive planning; it requires multiple applications, and multiple bookkeeping both by the Federal agencies and by State and local governments.

The legislation I propose would be patterned in part after procedures used successfully for the past 20 years to reorganize Executive Branch functions. It would give the President power to initiate consolidation of closely related Federal assistance programs, and to place consolidated programs under the jurisdiction of a single agency. However, it would give either House of Congress the right to veto a proposed consolidation within 60 days, and it would establish stringent safeguards against possible abuse.

In order to make consolidation possible, it would be necessary in many cases to make changes in the statutory terms and conditions under which individual programs would be administered. Formulas, interest rates, eligibility requirements, administrative procedures, and other terms and conditions of the various programs being consolidated would have to be brought into harmony. The proposed legislation would empower the President to do this in drawing up his consolidation plans--but only within carefully defined limits. For example:

--Only programs in closely related functional areas could be consolidated.

--Terms and conditions could be changed only to the extent necessary to achieve the purposes of the consolidation plan.

--In setting new terms and conditions, the President would be limited by the range of those already provided in the programs being consolidated. Thus, if a program providing for a 10 percent State matching share were being merged with one providing a 20 percent matching share, he would have to propose a matching share between 10 and 20 percent.

--No consolidation plan could continue any program beyond the period authorized by law for its existence.

--No plan could provide assistance to recipients not already eligible under one of the programs being merged.

--Responsibility for the consolidated program could not be vested in an agency or office not already responsible for one of those being merged. The effect of these limits would be to safeguard the essential intent of Congress in originally establishing the various programs; the effect of consolidation would be to carry out that intent more effectively and more efficiently.

The number of separate Federal assistance programs has grown enormously over the years.

When the Office of Economic Opportunity set out to catalogue Federal assistance programs, it required a book of more than 600 pages even to set forth brief descriptions. It is an almost universal complaint of local government officials that the web of programs has grown so tangled that it often becomes impermeable. However laudable each may be individually, the total effect can be one of government paralysis.

If these programs are to achieve their intended purposes, we must find new ways of cutting through the tangle.

Passage of the Grant Consolidation Act would not be a substitute for other reforms necessary in order to improve the delivery of Federal services, but it is an essential element. It would be another vital step in the administrative reforms undertaken already, such as establishing common regional boundaries for Federal agencies, creating the Urban Affairs Council and the Office of Inter-governmental Relations, and beginning a streamlining of administrative procedures for Federal grant-in-aid programs. Its aim, essentially, is to help make more certain the delivery and more manageable the administration of a growing complex of Federal programs, at a time when the problems they address increasingly cross the old jurisdictional lines of departments and agencies.

This proposal would permit rapid action, initiated by the President, while preserving the power of Congress to disapprove such action. It would benefit the intended beneficiaries of the programs involved; it would benefit State and local governments, which now have to contend with a bewildering array of rules and jurisdictions; and it would benefit the American taxpayer, who now bears the cost of administrative inefficiencies.

RICHARD NIXON

The White House

April 30, 1969