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Show The Garn Opinion Humphrey -Hawkins Act II the past. Certainly the goals of greater employment es poused by Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey-Hawkins II are worthy. I doubt that anyone in this country would be opposed to reducing the unemployment rate to 4 percent. However, it would involve a fundamental fun-damental shift in American economic policy and greater inflation would result. This is not the answer. The best solution lies in spurring private sector development and resorting, when judged necessary, to measures such as youth and handicapped employment programs and public service jobs. Our free enterprise economy, which is the finest and most flexible in the world, must be preserved. The Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey-Hawkins Act II would ignore the law of supply and demand, and the free market and I will vote against it. member of the Senate Banking Committee, I have heard numerous testimonies from proponents of the Act. It was stated by Dr. Alice Rivlin, Director of the Congressional Budget Office, Of-fice, that the lowest estimate of increased costs for implementing im-plementing the Act would be in the neighborhood of $40 million to $50 million a year. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who also favors the legislation, testified that the act woulkd be ' highly inflationary unless there were strict wage and price controls to go along with it. It is easy to see the pattern of more and more government govern-ment involvement taking shape. The Humphrey-Hawkins Humphrey-Hawkins Act II would be an overwhelming centralization cen-tralization of national economic power which could seriously hurt private enterprise en-terprise where economic stability has proved itself in The Humphrey-Hawkins Act is making its second appearance before the Senate this session. When the original version of the bill met with great opposition, op-position, it was sent back to the Banking Committee for further revision. The first Humphrey-Hawkins Act would have directed the federal government, including in-cluding the president, the Congress and the Federal Reserve Board to design and coordinate economic policies and programs so that there would be an economic plan of action to insure full employment and balanced growth. I am adamantly opposed to any legislation that will further involve the federal government govern-ment in national economic planning and eventually make the government the ultimate American employer. em-ployer. The second version of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act has the same economic goals but it has been returned to the Senate with some major revisions. It does not make the government the employer em-ployer of last resort and it does not direct the president to take specific action to achieve the goal of reducing and keeping a ceiling on unemployment at 4 percent. Even through the enforcement en-forcement teeth have been taken out, I still oppose these attempts at national economic planning. The Humphrey-Hawkins Act II will not improve the economy, and it will worsen our inflation rate. As a |