ABSTRACT
When I was invited to give this paper, few people were predicting that the Revenue Sharing Bill would be passed by the 92nd Congress. I shall leave it to the political scientists to explain why the Bill did get through—eight years after the idea was launched by Walter Heller and worked out in detail by a Task Force which I chaired (see Chapter 14 above). But it is an important piece of legislation, and a significant departure from past federal grant-in-aid policies. Furthermore, it was enacted for an initial period of five years, so it cannot be regarded as a permanent feature of the federal grant structure. It is not too soon, therefore, to begin evaluating the legislation as it was finally enacted so that Congress will be able to judge the programme when the time comes to renew or abandon it.
