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The government, if it carries out its plans for universal insurancewith security from the cradle to the grave, will soon be in possessionof the great bulk of the savings of the United States. As for privateinsurance companies—in what will they invest? Private investmentwill gradually disappear from the scene and they, along with almostevery other kind of investment agency, including the savings andcommercial banks, will be forced to buy United States bonds.If you want some mortgage money on your house or wish to buya home, it will be federal funds which will provide the money or atleast the federal government will control its flow through itsguarantee and mortgage-insurance agencies. If you have a farm andwant to borrow money, it will be from a financialinstitution eitherowned or controlled by the federal government.Most of the states are at the end of the road financially. Thesame thing is true of the cities. Yet when the war is over thedemands upon these local government agencies will be beyond theirpower. How will the states and cities meet the enormous costs ofeducation? The answer is simple. The government is already layingplans to become their banker and financial fortress—the banker ofthe states and cities and school districts and counties. Governors,county commissioners, mayors, and school-board members willstand in line at the federal treasury for their handouts. They willstand in line not before Congress but before a federal bureaucratwith almost absolute powers in his hands. Will it be necessary toamend the Constitution to give that bureaucratic spendthrift powerover the object of his philanthropy? He will have no constitutionalpower to require either a state or a city or a school district or anindustrial corporation or a building company or a local utility to doanything. But he will have the power to give or not to give, to openthe treasury door or not to open it to the suppliant governor,mayor, or corporation executive. The pass admitting them to thevaults of the treasury will be a certificate of compliance with theconditions which the bureaucrat makes for the federal gift.The Supreme Court held, in the AAA case in which that famouscreation of Mr. Henry Wallace was held unconstitutional, that itwas based on this very theory, that it undertook to do by indirectionwhat the federal government could not do under a direct grant244