Message to the Congress Transmitting Final Report of the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.

To the Congress of the United States:

Pursuant to the provisions of Public Law 109, 83rd Congress, as amended, I hereby transmit to the Congress of the United States the final report of the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations.

One hundred sixty-eight years ago the Founding Fathers designed our federal form of government in response to the baffling and eminently practical problem of creating unity among the thirteen States where union seemed impossible. The framers of our Constitution reached a solution now recognized as one of the most significant advances in the history of representative government.

Since their day, our federal structure has been adapted successfully to such phenomenal changes as a forty-fold increase in our population, the industrialization of our economy, and the rapid urbanization of our society. No other federal system, since established, has so effectively blended the capacity for energetic and responsible national action and the spirit of local initiative and autonomy.

In our time, however, a decade of economic crisis followed by a decade of war and international crises vastly altered federal relationships. Consequently, it is highly desirable to examine in comprehensive fashion the present-day requirements of a workable federalism.

The interests and activities of the different levels of government now impinge on each other at innumerable points, even where they may appear to be quite separable. The National Government's defense policies and programs, for example, have important repercussions on virtually every phase of State and local activity. Conversely, the effectiveness of our national defense policies depends on a myriad of State and local activities affecting the health, safety, and social and economic welfare of our people.

Because of this increasingly intricate interrelationship of national, state, and local governments, it is important that we review the existing allocation of responsibilities, with a view to making the most effective utilization of our total governmental resources.

To this undertaking the Commission on Intergovernmental Relations has made a notable contribution. Its report includes numerous specific recommendations. Insofar as these would entail action by the Executive Branch, I shall see that they are given the most careful consideration. I commend to the attention of the Congress, as well as of State and local executives and legislatures, the recommendations pertaining to them.

The Commission on Intergovernmental Relations is the first official body appointed to study and report on the general relationship of the National Government to the States and their local units. Consequently, the Commission wisely devoted much of its time to an examination of the general nature of our federal system, and of the means whereby it can be made to work more effectively. I am confident that its report will result in increased and sustained interest in this vitally important problem of government.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER