Exercising such authority, of course, would require an enormous federal policing force, perhaps in the thousands. Already, employers, in their long-standing voluntary programs to make their plants safer, scratch hard for qualified safety experts. Labor Secretary W. Willard Wirtz blandly explained to Congressmen that getting people would be no drawback. He said he could staff his safety policing team with the hard-core unemployed. These presumably would then show up as federal ‘inspectors’ armed with power of life or death over your business.
There is no question but that this legislation would put Federal bureaucracy in complete control of the size, the weight, the pictorial matter, and the copy on every food package. I wonder if anyone has stopped to think that the idea of seeking Government authority in advance before making a vital business decision is absolutely inconsistent with some of our most fundamental and cherished American traditions….Unless I have been misinformed all these years, I have been under the impression that we are dedicated to the proposition that within reasonable limitations the American citizen is free to do as he pleases…
...we cannot stand idly by now, as the Nation is urged to embark on an ill-conceived adventure in government medicine, the end of which no one can see, and from which the patient is certain to be the ultimate sufferer.
These bills, if enacted, will have a profound impact upon this great industry. Unwise legislation in this field could produce repercussions which would be felt throughout the country’s economy. I am confident that the Congress will exercise great care before taking any action which would seriously disrupt this important industry….We are strongly opposed to these bills. We do not believe that any governmental action is necessary or called for with respect to cigarette advertising or labeling.
This bill would renounce the safe, proper, and acceptable role for Government as a referee of disputes between the governed. It would interpose the Government as a biased protagonist, armed with the awesome authority of the Federal Government, in addition to rulemaking and umpire powers. The broad grants of power to the Attorney General to initiate and intervene in civil actions would go far toward transforming him into George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ of ‘1984,’ in the year 1964.
…this bill will require the creation of a Federal police force of mammoth proportions. It also bids fair to result in the development of an ‘informer’ psychology in great areas of our national life—neighbors spying on neighbors, workers spying on workers, business spying on businessmen—were those who would harass their fellow citizens for selfish and narrow purposes will have ample inducement to do so. These, the Federal police force an ‘informer’ psychology, are the hallmarks of the police state and landmarks in the destruction of a free society.
The Community Relations Service would be another pro-civil rights Federal agency attempting to make people do what the policy of the Federal Government demanded that they do. Moreover, in title II of the bill, this Service is made an agent of the court without due thought as to the effect on legal and judicial procedures.
The Civil Rights Commission should never have been brought into existence. It has been most prejudiced in its viewpoint, and has fomented trouble and racial disturbance since its inception. It should be abolished, not extended.
This bill, by vesting the power to withhold or terminate Federal funds, creates a concentration of power of economic coercion unequaled in the history of governments—a power concentration which defies the experience of mankind with the temptation of power to corrupt.
The two portions of this bill to which I have constantly and consistently voiced objections, and which are of such overriding significance that they are determinative of my vote on the entire measure, are those which would embark the Federal Government on a regulatory course of action with regard to private enterprise in the area of so-called public accommodations and in the area of employment—to be more specific, titles II and VII of the bill. I find no constitutional basis for the exercise of Federal regulatory authority in either of these areas; and I believe the attempted usurpation of such power to be a grave threat to the very essence of our basic system of government; namely, that of a constitutional republic in which 50 sovereign States have reserved to themselves and to the people those powers not specifically granted to the Central or Federal Government.
