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Louisiana State University, January 25, 1973
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Gerald R. Ford Congressional Papers
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The original documents are located in Box D34, folder "Louisiana State University,
January 25, 1973" of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at
the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Copyright Notice
The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of
photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. The Council donated to the United
States of America his copyrights in all of his unpublished writings in National Archives collections.
Works prepared by U.S. Government employees as part of their official duties are in the public
domain. The copyrights to materials written by other individuals or organizations are presumed to
remain with them. If you think any of the information displayed in the PDF is subject to a valid
copyright claim, please contact the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library.
Remarks by Rep. Gerald R. Ford, Republican House Le₂der, at Louisiana State University,
8 p.m., Jan. 5, 1973.
For Release On Delivery
Maffice Copy
It is said that Congress convened Jan. 3 in a defiant mood.
The Congress was reported to be angry with the President, believing that the
President has encroached on legislative powers. Democrats in the Congress are
threatening drastic measures to get back these powers allegedly taken from them.
There has been much discussion in the pre SS about the President taking over the
powers of the Congress. If you analyze closely what has happened in the Congress and
in
its relations with the President, you have to conclude that this simply is not
true.
There has been an erosion of congressional power in one respect--that of the
power of the purse. But the President has assumed more power in this area simply
because the Congress has
abdicated its re sponsibility for making the hard
spending decisions necessary to maintain at least a semblance of Federal fiscal
sanity.
The President late last year asked the Congress for authority to hold total
Federal spending to $250 billion. I cosponsored that legislation. The House
approved the President's request. The Senate balked.
Now
the
President
is
going
ahead on his own to restrict Federal outlays to
the $250 billion level for fiscal 1973. He is impounding appropriated funds.-simply
refusing to spend them. To hold Federal outlays to $250 billion, he is forced to
impound up to $10 billion.
Am I being a blind loyalist in speaking sympathetically of the President's
impoundment of appropriated funds?
Listen to these words spoken by Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield at a
caucus of Democratic senators on Jan. 3, 1973:
"The fault lies not in the Executi ve Branch but in ourselves, in the Congress.
We cannot insist upon the power to control expenditures and then fail to do SO. If
we do not do the job, if we
continue to abdicate our Constitutional responsibility,
the powers of the
Government will have to be
recast so that it can be done
elsewhere."
The question that is being posed is whether Congress is willing to change its
archaic procedures to make itself a modern institution able to
deal with the
complexities of today's world.
In no area are Congress's procedures more archaic than in the con sideration of
the budget--the basic plan through which the Federal Government sets its
priorities.
Digitized from Box D34 of the Ford Congressional Papers: Press Secretary and Speech File at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
-2-
Not once does the Congress ever consider the budget as a whole. There are 15
major
appropriation bills.
None of these bills is considered in relationship
to another. There is no setting of priorities, except in the President's budget.
Congress considerts each money bill as though it were the only appropriation bill to
be dealt with
all year, tugging and pulling at it in response
to the influence
of lobbying groups. Incidentally, one of the strongest lobbies is the education lobby.
$25
This fiscal year the Federal deficit is
expected to be
billion, a
fact which the
liberal Democrats in Congress blithely ignore
Our national debt is now approximately $444 billion, and the interest on that debt is
$23.1 billion a year.
It would not be necessary for the President to impound funds if the Congre SS were
more reponsible in its handling of the
taxpayer's dollar.
A major
confrontation over constitutional powers would be avoided if
Congre SS would reform its own procedure: to insure that appropriations are considered
responsibly and with a broad overview of national needs and priorities. I personally
ple dge myself to support that kind of reform.
In the closing hours of the 92nd Congress, Congress created a Joint Committee to
recommend procedures for improving Congressional control over the budget. The committee
is supposed to complete its work by Feb. 15. That is proving impossible. The committee
will submit an interim report to Congress, and the life of the committee probably will
be extended.
The committee's task will be to formulate answers to weighty questions concerning
the budget. How do we divide an overall figure among the various maj or priorities and
programs? Who will exercise a degree of control over expenditures proposed in
legislation?
There is being developed a unified computerized system for the Federal Government
which may be helpful. This system will permit classifying various programs and
expenditures of the Government so that the Executive Branch and the Congress will know
how much is being spent for a particular purpose. This knowledge is ssent al if we
are to achieve
ffective control
over Federal expenditures on the basis of
a system of priorities.
Returning to the matter of Presidential impoundment of
funds appropriated
by the Congre
let me emphasize that President Nixon is not the first President to
have taken such action. As a matter of
fact, Presidents have been impounding
appropriated funds ever since the days of Thomas Jefferson. Members of Congre SS have
complained. There have been threats of action against the Executive. But there has
never been a court decision on the legality of Presidential impoundment. Currently,
there is a legal challenge to funds impoundment by Nixon pending in the courts.
There are, in fact, 15 Democratic
committee chairmen in the Senate who have
joined in the suit.
This is highly interesting, inasmuch as Presidents Harry Trumen,
Jack
Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson also impounded funds. I know of no serious chal lenge
by Democrats to funds impoundment by those Presidents.
Harry Truman refused in 1949 to spend money
appropriated by Congress to
increase Air Force strength from 48 to 58 groups. He had the support of his Air
Force Secretary- Stuart Symington-who currently is among the U.S. senator joined
th other Democratic senators as friends of the court in the suit challenging
Nixon's impoundment of appropriated funds.
Presidents Kennedy and Johnson impounded funds largely in the area of weapons
systems development.
Another area of conflict between Congres and the Executive Branch--and this,
again, is nothing -involves the refusal of certain high Government officials to
appear before Congressional committees.
To hear it told now, you would think President Nixon had
invented the
practice of invoking "Executive Privilege" the President's asserted right to
withhold information from Congress.
The facts are that Nixon has invoked Executive Privilege only three times during
his first four years in office.
And
the facts are that Presidents since George Washington have been invoking
Executive Privilege and refusing to tell all.
George Washington invoked Executive Privilege when he refused a House re_uest for
correspondence dealing with the controversial
Jay Treaty with Great Britain in 1796.
The device of Executive Privilege has been used by at
least 18 of Washington's
successors.
The most common reason given for invoking Executive Privilege is the need for
secrecy in diplomatic and military activities.
In a town notor ious for news leaks, it is pretty difficult for a President to
believe he can trust
members of Congress with a high State secret.
I believe there are times when a President is justified int invoking Executive
Pri
ivilege. I think even the Democratic senators who are currently kicking up a fuss
aboutt Nixon's use of Executive Privilege recognize this. But they are going ahead
with a new series of challenges
aimed at the White House. The Senate Democratic
Policy Committee voted unanimously Jan. 16 to require Executive Branch
witnesses
to testify before Senate committees whenever summoned, with only limited right to
claim Executive Privilege. This is a tempest in a teapot. Much ado about nothing.
President Nixon is not being exce ssive in his use of the Doctrine of Executive Privilege.
And, as the Democratic senators themselves have recognized, each individual case has to
be considered on its merits. Mike
Mansfield has said this publicly, and Mike has
noted that it is absolutely necessary to exempt somebody like Henry Kissinger from
interrogation by congre ssional committees.
Mike also agrees with me that Congress can't end the war; it's up to the President. "
That's a direct quote from Mike Mansfield, made during an appearance on "Face
The Nation' on Jan. 14.
That Mansfield statement prompts me to ask of Mike and of everyone else who has
supported so-called congre ssional end-the-war resolutions:
Have such
resolutions served any useful purpose? I think not.
Certainly the President was deter mined to end the war at the earliest possible
moment, consistent with carrying out
United State foreign policy objectives
in Southeast Asia and furthering
longrange peace aims
I think rather than helping to end the war, the so-cailed end-the-war efforts in
Congress have tended to prolong the war. They have led the Communists to believe that
the United States would simply withdraw from Vietnam or would agree to a peance
agreement
couched entirely in Communist terms. I realize there are many
Americans who believe we should have done exactly that--should have withdrawn or
signed a peace of capitulation. But the Vast majority of Americans do not--and they
made their views known when they reelected Richard Nixon last Nov. 7 with one of the
endor sements
greatest
in political history.
There are those who argue that Congress has not had its say on the Vietnam War.
This simply is not true. There have been so-rc alled end-the-war votes in both the
House and Senate. The Senate
approved a funds-cutoff resolution. The House
upherld the Presidents policy. But nobody has been denied the right to be heard or
the right to vote on funding the war.
Congress cannot negotiate an end to the Vietnam War; only the President can do
interfering with
that. Instead of
the Pre sident in his conduct of the war and
his
negotiations to end it, Congress should have been supporting him in all of his efforts
to
bring about an honorable peace.
One might, of course, question
the wisdom of our initial
involvement in Vietnam. I personally have
always believed that the
basic commitment was right and proper--that of thwarting Communist aggression. I
criticized Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the war because I believed the war was being
run badly. But as to the morality of the war, it has always been the actions of
North Vietnam that have been immoral.
-5-
It is those actions which should be condemned by all who value human life and respect
the right of every human being to
exist free from tyranny. It is the Communists
who have caused all of the bloodshed in Vietnam. They have had the power to end all
of the killing at any time merely by ceasing their aggression and agreeing to a peace
settlement.
It is preposterous to claim that the U.S. bombing of Hanoi
last
December
immoral and that President Nixon should be compared with Adolf Hitler.
sanction the actions of the aggre ssor--in this case, North Vietnam
To claim this is to
his victims--those
by
giving him a moral status equal to that of
against whom
he has committed aggression. It is this
placing of the cloak of morality
around the aggressor that has enabled North Vietnam to attack others without
wide spread public opposition and condemmation.
Judging by the
outcry against the December bombing ttacks, you would think the North Vietnamese had
been conducting a Holy War.
It is this attitude which isd in large part to blame
for the bloodshed that has resulted from the war in Vietnam.
I hope someone someday will write the real story of these years in Washington and
President Nixon's single-minded determination to achieve peace with honor in Vietnam
and to bring about the first full generation of peace in this world.
I have marveled at the ability of the Pre sident to pursie
at
course
involving the most delicate
negotiations while under fire from the left and
the right at every step of the way.
The
success achieved by the President is most remarkable,
considering the handicaps imposed upon him by his own countrymen. He has
as of
this moment virtually ended U.S.
involvement in the Vietnam War, giving
South Vie tham a decent chance to survive as a non-Communist entity. He has
opened the doors of understanding between the U.S. and
mainland China. He has achieved a
degree of nuclear arms control through the SALT Agreement with the Soviet Union. On
many other fronts and through many separate initiatives, resident Nixon has patiently
laid the g roundwork for the first real peace in the world since 1913. Whether you
believe it or not, Americans should be thankful they have this quiet, hard-working,
resourceful man in the White House.
I
think we have, in effect, won the Cold War-with Vietnam as the last
pivotal
battle of that war.
Many Americans see Vietnam as
a miserable adventure, a meaningless mess.
I
think
historians ultimately
will view it in an
entirely
different light. I think they will see it as a conflict which confirmed the success
of our policy of containment of Communism.
-6-
I think the war was badly fought--but if WD had not intervened
South
Vietnam would have fallen to North Vietnam before the middle Sixties. Cambodia then
would have been forced to come to terms with the Communists and might even have been
absorbed by Vietnam. Laos would have gone under, too. Thailand might well have
switched sides under increased Communist pressure. Indonesia would have gone Communist
or at least firmly aligned itself with the People's Republic of China. Leftists
throughout the world would have been encouraged and would have sought advice from China and
Vietnam on how to
achieve their goals. This certainly would have had great
impact in
Latin America.
So not only would Southeast
Asia have gone Communist but the psychology of
Communism as the wave of the future would have been given tremendous
forward
motion. This
would have
encouraged the extramists both in the Peoples Republic
of China and in the Soviet Union. The world today would have been an entirely different
place.
If we have succeeded in preserving a non-Communist South Vietnam, we may have
brought the world to the threshold of a new era of stability. We may, indeed, be on
the
edge of a generation of peace.
######
Memarks by пер. Uerald He Ford, Republican House Leader, at Louisiana State Univer
8 p.m. Tane 3, 1973.
For Release On Delivery
It is said that Congres convened Jan. 3 in a defiant mood.
The Congre SS was reported to be angry with the President, believing that the
President has encroached on legislative powers. Democrats in the Congress are
threatening drastic measures to get
back these powers allegedly taken from them
There has been much discussion in the pro ss about the President taking over the
powers of the Congress. If you analyze closely what has happened in the Congress and
in
its relations with the President, you have to conclude that this simply is not
true.
There has been an erosion of congressional power in one respect--that of the
power of the purse. But the President has assumed more power in this araa simply
bacause the Congress has
abdicated its re ponsibility for making the hard
spending decisions necessary to maintain at least a semblance of Federal fiscal
sanity.
The President late last year asked the Congress for authority to hold total
Federal spending to $250 billion. I cosponsored that legislation. The House
approved the Fresident's request. The Senate balked.
Now the President is going
ahead on his own to restrict Federal outlays to
the $250 billion level for fiscal 1973. He is impounding appropriated funds
refusing to spend them. To hold Federal outlays to $250
billion,
he
is
forced
to
impound up to $10 billion.
Am I being a blind loyalist in speaking sympathetically of the President's
impoundment of appropriated funds?
Listen to these words spoken by Senate Democratic Leader Mike Mansfield at
a
caucus of Democratic senators on Jan. 3, 1973:
"The fault lies not in the Executi ve Branch but in ourselves, in the Congress.
We cannot insist upon the power to control expenditures and then fail to do SO. If
we do not do the job, if we
continue to abdicate our Constitutional responsibility,
the powers of the
Government will have to be
recast so that it can be, done
elsewhere."
The quertion that is being posed is whether Congress is willing to change its
archaic procedures to make itself a modern institution able to
deal with the
complexities of today's world.
In no area are Congress's procedures more archaic than in the con sideration of
the budget the basic plan through which the Federal Covernment'sets its
prior
-2-
Not once does the Congress ever consider the budget as a whole. There are 15
major
appropriation bills.
None of these bills is considered in relationship
to another. There is no setting of priorities, except in the President's budget.
Congress consider Is each money bill as though it were the only appropriation bill to
be dealt with
all year, tugging and pulling at it in response
to
the
influence
of lobbying groups. Incidentally, one of the strongest lobbies is the education lobby.
$25
This fiscal year the Federal deficit is
expected to be
billion, a
fact which the
liberal Democrats in Congress blithely ignored
Our national debt is now approximately $444 billion, and the interest on that debt is
$23.1 billion a year.
It would not be necessary for the Fresident to impound funds if the Congress were
more reponsible in its handling of the
taxpayer's dollar.
A major
confrontation over constitutional powers would be avoided if
Congre SS would reform its own procedure to insure that appropriations are considered
responsibly and with a broad overview of national needs and priorities I personally
ple dge myself to support that kind of reform.
In the closing hours of the 92nd Congress, Congress created a Joint Committee to
recommend procedures for improving Congressional control over the budget. The committee
is supposied to complete its work by Feb. 15. That is proving impossible. The committee
will submit an interim report to Congress, and the life of the committee probably will
be extended.
The committee's task will be to formulate answers to weighty questions concerning
the budget. How do we divide an overall figure among the various maj or priorities and
programs? Who will exercise a degree of control over expenditure: proposed in
legislation?
There is being developed a unified computerized system for the Federal Government
which may be helpful. This system will permit classifying various programs and
expenditures of the Government so that the Executive Branch and the Congress will know
how much is being spent for a particular purpose. This knowledge is ssenti al if we
are
to
achieve
ffective control
over Federal expenditures on the basis of
a system of priorities.
Returning to the matter of Presidential impoundment of
funds appropriated
by the Congres let ne emphasize that Fresident Nixon is not the first President to
have taken such action. As a matter of
fact, Presidents have been impounding
appropriated funds ever since the days of Thomas Jefferson. Members of Congress have
complained. There have been threats of action against the Executive. But there has
never been a court decision on the legality of Presidential impoundment, Currently,
there is a legal challenge to funds impoundment by Nixon pending in the courts.