Editing 76-17-B4 (section)

=== Transcript ===
For those of you who haven't heard of or who only dimly remember hearing
something about the "Snail Darter", let me offer an explanation.

The "Snail Darter" is a minnow. Now that may not be biologically accurate,
but to everyone but a biologist a tiny fish two or three inches long is a minnow.
There are 77 or so varieties of Darters with 77 or so names and the differences
between them are indistinguishable to everyone but a student of Ichthyology.

What makes the Snail Darter unique among its cousins is that it is one the
endangered species list, lives only (so far as we know) in a 17 mile stretch
of the Little Tennessee river and has held up a $116 million dam for four years.
It is interesting to note that in this hassle it is a bureaucratic civil war
the Environmental Protection Agency versus the Tennessee Valley Authority.
T.V.A. was building the dam.

The thing that brought the "Snail Darter" (I still say it's a minnow)
back into the news was a recent action by the House Appropriations committee.
With an eye toward settling the dispute and getting the Tellico dam completed,
the Committee appropriated $9 million to transplant the fish, which they estimate
number 10,000.

It only takes a little arithmetic to figure out that comes to $900 per fish.
Think about that the next time you use minnows for bait.

Somehow this makes some other shenanigans of government easier to believe.
For example, Secretary of Transportation Brock Adams has announced that the
federal interstate highway system is ready to be completed -- at $2,000 a foot.
It will take about $40 billion to finish the job, which is a little more than the
whole system was supposed to cost in the first place. However, it does come out to
a little less than the cost of a World War.

By the way, on the subject of finishing jobs; do you recall the Federal
Paperwork Commission which came into being two years ago? With great fanfare
we were told it was established to reduce the blizzard of paperwork which threatens
to bury all of us. In these two years its staff has grown to 30 times its original
number. Government-required paper work now takes 143 million manhours a year
-- up 13 million from when the commission set out to reduce it.

Now, having told you that, I'm going to plug a particular piece of paper work.
It's a document called "Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism". I know it
doesn't sound very exciting, but it's a product of the Advisory Commission on
Intergovernmental Relations and is a treasure trove of reliable data of government
spending. I'm told it is free and can be obtained by merely writing to the
Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, Washington, D.C. 20575.
Don't write to me or this station. I'll repeat that address. Advisory Commission
on Intergovernmental Relations, Washington, D.C. 20575.

It'll help you win a lot of arguments. For example did you know that 20
years ago civilian employees of the federal government averaged earnings of
$4,802 a year. Those who paid the taxes to support them only averaged $3,959.
By 1974, the government workers had gone up to an average of $14,111, but the
pay average in the private sector was only $9,840. The title of the publication
again is, "Significant Features of Fiscal Federalism". 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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