Arkansas in the Federal System: Cooperation and Conflict
In a small town where we choked on dust in the summer and bogged down in mud in the winter, where sewage ran down the ditches from overflowing outhouses...it was a caring Government in the 30's that gave us loans and grants to pave our streets and build a waste treatment facility....And when Betty and I returned to our little hometown to...raise our beautiful children, we raised them free of the fear of polio and other childhood diseases that had been conquered because of vaccines developed with Government grants.
Senator Dale Bumpers, 1984
All we're trying to do is get states' rights back....The power of the F E R Cto impose these kinds of burdens arbitrarily, capriciously, and without us having any input, is the power to destroy our respective states.
Senator Dale Bumpers, 1986
If Arkansas government and politics operated in complete isolation, this chapter would be unnecessary. The consequences of absolute autonomy, however, would be much more momentous than the absence of a chapter. That very sizable portion of Arkansas schools, highways, bridges, dams, courthouses, clinics, jails, levees, sewer systems, and parks constructed wholly or partially with federal funds would be nonexistent. The $1.2 billion Arkansas River navigation project, the largest civil works project ever undertaken by the U. S. Corps of Engineers, would not exist, nor would
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