Show au 1 fir as TT Ta Promises promises Promises of full employment surface again in this election year During the interim between the Democratic and Republican conventions some politicians eager to get the votes of the 69 million people out ut of work are promising a solution Their proposed cure for unemployment ment is the Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey bill named for its cosponsors Senator Hubert H H. Humphrey D Minn and Representative Augustus F F. F Hawkins D S 'S This legislation would guarantee that all adult Americans 16 years or older would be given useful paid employment at fair rates of compensation It certainly sounds like a well meaning promise and a noble goal but what about the means by which we attain so called full employment If we track the path of past promises r we find the promise of a war on poverty and the promise of a great society and a promise of a model cities program are all gone to that great graveyard of ambitious social legislation in short a lot of promises with no deliveries The promise of the bill itself is dependent upon a whole string of liberal promises The President must promise to lower the adult unemployment unemployment unemployment ment rate to an arbitrary y t three ree per cent in four years-a years level never achieved in the post World War II even era-even if the federal government must become the employer of last resort The President must further promise to establish yearly goals for employment employment employment employ employ- ment production purchasing power and more promises to further these goals If that's not enough promises to handle the Council of Economic Advisors Advisors Advisors Ad Ad- visors must promise to establish a process of range long economic planning a Soviet year 5 plan to ensure that all of the other promises are kept The unemployed do dp not need illusory pledges but realistic solutions Perhaps Perhaps Perhaps Per Per- haps the saddest part of a all l is that Americans will not even reap genuine benefits under the Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey bill It is not so much for jobs creation as for jobs transfer transferring transferring transferring trans trans- ferring employment and resources from the productive private sector of our economy to the government- government with the bill passed on to the taxpayer And how much will the promise cost The Department of Labor that it costs them about to create one public service job Clearly the American taxpayer cannot afford the luxury of the Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey promise |