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Remarks of the President to the White House Conference, El Cortez Hotel [Ford Speech or Statement]
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Remarks of the President to the White House Conference, El Cortez Hotel [Ford Speech or Statement]
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Digitized from Box 9 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APRIL 3, 1975
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
(San Diego, California)
THE WHITE HOUSE
REMARKS OF THE PRESIDENT
TO THE WHITE HOUSE CONFERENCE
EL CORTEZ HOTEL
5:07 P.M. PDT
Congressman Bergener, Congressman Van Deerlin,
Congressman Bell, Mayor Pete Wilson, Mr. Cox of the San
Diego Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Henning of the AFL-CIO,
heads of the many other co-sponsoring organizations
that have made this possible, ladies and gentlemen:
It is really a great privilege and honor for
me to have the opportunity of joining in this obviously
very successful conference.
I am especially delighted to be here again on
the beautiful shores of San Diego Bay -- can I say this,
I mean it -- America's cleanest bay in terms of size
and traffic.
I am especially pleased because this is a show-
case of what Americans can do on a local level to solve
problems and to respond to the future with creativity
and with confidence.
San Diego has demonstrated, Mayor Wilson, that
environmental quality is good business, and I commend
your carefully managed residential growth. San Diego,
as I see it, is truly a city on which others could be
modeled.
I am especially proud, however, of the role the
United States Navy as a good citizen in San Diego -- I
am proud of that role and I am proud of the contributions
that the Navy makes. Obviously, all of you know that the
Naval installations here are among the greatest in our total
Navy complex. I pledge to you today, as one who once
sailed from here in World War II, that I remain committed
to a Navy second to none in readiness, capability,
and dedication to our Nation's highest ideals.
MORE
Page 2
I know, of course, that the concerns of this
area go far beyond your vital Navy installations. Too many
Americans are without employment. Prices and taxes are
far too high. New sources of energy are absolutely
essential.
I also know that local problems are best solved
by local people. This Administration responded to your
pioneering of growth management strategy to preserve the
residential environment.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development
has just approved San Diego's application for $9.1 million
under the historic new community development block grant
legislation, and an hour or so ago I gave Mayor Pete
Wilson the actual documents to know that he has got it
in hand.
I don't know what he has done with it, but he
had it. (Laughter)
This confirms upon San Diego the distinction of
being one of the very first major cities to receive such
assistance. Your able Mayor, my good friend, Pete Wilson,
tells me that one of the ways that this grant will be
used is to speed economic development by attracting new
businesses and industries into the San Diego area.
Funds from this new block grant approach are
available for the first time to prepare sites and, together
with on-the-job training programs of the Department of
Labor, offer an extra inducement for new enterprises to
locate in your healthy, world-reknowned climate.
This kind of local initiative and planning, as
well, proves we are on the right track with block grants
instead of trying to run everything from Washington, and
demonstrates my firm conviction that the best features
of community development should neither be sacrificed
in the current economic climate, nor stifled by Federal
red tape.
San Diego, I know from my many conversations
with your several Members of the Congress, as well as by
numerous visits to this great area -- San Diego is a
showcase of the good neighbor policy.
The nearby Mexican border is the busiest inter-
national crossing in the world, making this a gateway
city with a unique challenge. San Diego and Tijuana
share the same air and water and seek joint efforts, joint
solutions to problems that cross national boundaries.
MORE
Page 3
I commend Fronteras 1976, the San Diego
community's bicentennial project, jointly sponsored
by the city and University of California at San Diego.
This project that I have looked at and heard about will
advance regional and international understanding,
demonstrating to the world, as I think we must, the
potential of creative cooperation and interdependence
among sovereign nations.
Serious problems confront the American people
at home. Yet, unemployment and the growth of the
economy, as well as our national security, are directly
related to the relations with the rest of the world.
In recent weeks we witnessed, unfortunately,
discouraging and tragic events in the Middle East, on
which we depend far too much for our energy needs.
These developments dramatized the urgency of moving
ahead in San Diego and throughout America with con-
structive action to make this Nation independent of
foreign sources of energy.
Today, in the presence of three of my former
colleagues, I renew the challenge to the Congress to
enact before May 1 of this year a comprehensive energy
program. It is essential to our national security, and
it is more essential today than it was in January, when
I proposed it.
The facts are, we can afford no more delays.
I am an optimist. I think the Congress will do it. I
would not be frank and honest with you if I were to ignore
the serious setbacks we have suffered in very recent
weeks in our quest for peace in the Middle East and
more recently and more dramatically in Southeast Asia.
Even as I speak, the dimensions of the human
catastrophy in Southeast Asia increase. Whether from
your evening news shows or morning headlines, or from
my top secret reports, which I receive on a daily
basis, it is impossible not to be moved and shaken by
the sudden and tragic developments in South Vietnam.
All Americans, regardless of how they may have
felt in months or years in the past, are shocked and
saddened and wondering what we can do.
First, we are taking all the humanitarian
measures we can to relieve the innocent civilian refugees
in South Vietnam, whose plight touches the heart of all
Americans. At the same time, we are providing for the
safety of all Americans who, from a deep sense of duty,
might be endangered by swift changes in the battle zone.
MORE
Page 4
Second, as the Congress returns next Monday
and I have an opportunity to address them, I will ask
the Members of Congress for a firm American commitment to
humanitarian assistance for the helpless victims of
North Vietnamese aggression in flagrant violation of
the Paris accords which sought to end the suffering
and bloodshed on a civilized basis.
Finally, I must say with all of the certainty
of which I am capable, no adversary or potential enemies
of the United States of America should imagine that
America can be safely challenged and no allies or time-
tested friends of the United States should worry or fear
that our commitments to them will not be honored.
The unfortunate confusion and changing situation
in Southeast Asia should not give encouragement to
our adversaries nor apprehension to our friends. We stand
ready to defend ourselves and support our allies as
surely as we always have.
As it always has, adversity is creating a new
sense of national unity among Americans in these sad
and troubled times. I will not engage in recriminations
or attempt to assess the blame, nor should any of us. Not
all of the facts are known. When they are, the American
people will be the jury for the present and historians
will write the story for the future.
What is essential now is that we keep our
nerve and our essential unity as a powerful, but peace-
loving Nation.
As President and Commander-in-Chief, it is my
sworn duty to maintain and strengthen the power for peace
which the United States possesses, both at home and abroad.
The military strength of this Nation depends, as it always
has, on its economic strength and the willpower and self-
discipline of all of its people.
The credibility of the United States, our credi-
bility throughout the world, both among our allies and our
adversaries, depends upon their assessment of our moral,
economic and military strength and staying power. All
of these elements are extremely essential.
Let me consider briefly the problems of insuring
and increasing our economic strength. In this, the obvious
priority is to get out of the recession we have been
experiencing, and particularly to increase employment
and to get the jobless back into productive jobs. That
is our highest priority.
But along with that urgent goal goes another
priority, less obvious to some, which is to end the
recession without adding unnecessarily to the inflationary
pressures which have plagued us for many years prior to
the recession and which, quite frankly, helped to bring it
on. We must make more jobs and reverse the recession without
recklessly inviting a new round of double-digit inflation,
rising interest rates and higher prices which we all know,
in the long run, would cancel out whatever stimulus and
expansionary incentive we can apply to the economy in the
short-run.
MORE
Page 5
That is why I am personally determined to
hold the line on all massive Federal spending programs
which are in various stages moving through the
Congress. That is why I have drawn the line at a
maximum budget deficit of $60 billion, which is where
we stand at the present time, and it is as far as we
dare to go without endangering economic recovery.
I am gratified that many of the responsible
Members of the Congress, House and Senate, on both sides
of the political aisle, have spoken out publicly of the
danger of more massive Federal deficits.
Not merely the Administration, but the
country, needs their help, and will need their votes
when the showdowns come. But, I have no wish to wage
a veto war with the Congress. Quite frankly, we have
enough real wars and rumors of wars without getting into
one of those.
What I would prefer is for the Congress to
exercise its constitutional power of the purse with the
responsibility and prudence that the people expect of
it.
Congress must cut rather than spend. It must
reduce existing programs, instead of creating new ones.
As I look at the horrendous figures, I just cannot go on
giving away more and more government benefits without
considering how to pay for them and the damage that will
be done by borrowing to pay for them.
When the American people individually and
collectively -- all over the country -- are tightening
their belts to get through the worse recession of recent
times, because in large part by decades of deficits and
ever-growing governmental programs, the Congress should
not ask them to suffer consequences of more of the same
fiscal folly.
I would like the Congress to fix an absolute
ceiling on Federal spending for the coming year, the
ceiling where I drew the line. To do this effectively
and with meaning, the Congress must go one step further.
Here is my suggestion: You have three Members
of Congress here. Put the already enacted procedures of
the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Act of 1974 into
effect a whole year ahead of schedule, starting this
July 1.
Under the current circumstances, when the legis-
lation was passed last year, it was expected that it would
not go into effect until fiscal year 1977, and that during
this interval, between last year and a year and one-half
from now, there would be sort of a practice run.
MORE
Page 6
I think the urgency of Congressional action to
establish a ceiling and to orient priorities requires
that Congress do it this year. We don't need a practice
session. We need full participation in the ball game,
and I hope and trust that Congress will do that. That
will be the best evidence that I know of, their total
dedication to handling your tax money or the government's
borrowing in a responsible way.
In the face of a huge deficit that could reach
$100 billion, if my budget is overridden, it is hard for
me to see how the Congress can refuse to move up the
implementation date of the Budget and Impoundment Act
of 1974. Excessive Federal spending for years has fueled
the fires of inflation and imposed the unfairest tax of
all on the American people, robbing retired people of
their pensions, the elderly of their Social Security,
the hard-working majority of their paychecks, full
value in the supermarket.
Runaway inflation can ruin the productive growth
and essential strength of the free enterprise system
and cripple our entire American economy.
That is why my economic policy recommendations
contain two elements, each one of them essential to its
success.
One, a quick, one-time tax cut to stimulate
buying power and new development by business and job
producing expansion. The other, spending cuts and a
one-year moratorium on new spending by the government,
except for energy and emergency needs.
Federal tax cuts alone will not work without
simultaneous Federal spending restraints. I am deeply
concerned, quite frankly, that some elements of the
Congress will try to pay for additional spending programs
by dangerously stripping billions from the defense budget.
At a time like this, nothing could be more short-
sighted or devastating to our security. Individually,
many of the domestic spending programs proposed in the
Congress have most attractive aspects. They provide
help for some worthy group. It is hard for Members
of Congress to oppose those programs.
MORE
Page 7
It will be very, very hard for me to veto them,
if Congress enacts them. But, it is not the individual
programs that are unacceptable, but the sum total of
them, adding up easily to $30 billion or more to bring
the deficit into the $100 billion area.
Defense spending, on the other hand, provides
no benefits, except the most precious benefit of all --
the freedom of our country and the last hope for peace
in the world.
As President Eisenhower so wisely observed,
only the strong are free. Certainly we have ample reason
to believe this truth today. My budget recommendations
for national defense are the minimum, I believe, essential
for our safety. It is now a popular idea that because
Americans are not fighting anywhere, because we are
seeking to broaden every avenue of peace, that we can expand
social benefit programs and pay for them out of
defense cutbacks.
Simple arithmetic proves otherwise. I have
seen careful mathematical projections that show if
welfare and other transfer payments continue moving at
their present rate of growth, about 9 percent annually
for the past 20 years, half of the American people will be
living off the other half by the year 2000.
Except for vastly increasing taxes on those who
work, the only way such payments can be continued indefinitely
is to take them away from our national defense. Other
superpowers, I can assure you, are doing nothing of that
kind.
I pledge to you today that I will resist
stripping America's defense capability in every legal
way available to me. If the men and women you send to the
Congress fail to face up to these inescapable realities,
refuse to accept the balanced judgment of their own new
budget committee, which has been set up to enforce the
same overall limitations that I had to work with, then --
and this is hard to believe, but it mathematically works
out -- by simple arithmetic it will only be a few short
decades before our defenses will be down to a single
soldier with a single rifle with a single round of ammunition.
That is not good for America and freedom throughout
the world. Frankly, I don't think that is going to happen,
because I have more faith than that, that America won't
tolerate it, and I mean the 213 million Americans of all
faiths, all political parties, all backgrounds, and so forth.
My former colleagues in the Congress know I have
always been an optimist, and whenever I can get away from
Washington and see Americans as they really live and work
and play and plan for their children, my sense of what is
right with our country is recharged and reinforced.
I am very pleased to be here today in what I
found to be an optimistic atmosphere and problem-solving
climate of Southern California, and I am delighted to
be among people with great experience and great courage
in building a great part of our country.
MORE
Page 8
Many of the heroic POW's who were liberated
from North Vietnam are here in San Diego. They know
the need for an orderly and peaceful world. They
also know, as men who lived on the brink of doom, the
danger of pessimism. They know that the objective
facts are not as bad as a mood of frustration and
futility to which some of our countrymen are tempted
to succumb.
Today, I want to appeal to the common sense
and the courage of the American people. This is not
a moment for despair or for fatalism. Obviously, it
is not the time to dismantle our defense capability --
and I say with emphasis -- including our intelligence
capacities.
We will go on helping people to help themselves.
It is in keeping with our religious heritage, our
decency and our own self-interest. We will preserve
partnerships with people striving for freedom on a
global basis.
I reject the prophets of doom who see nothing
but depression at home and despair abroad. I will reject
any advice to pull down the Stars and Stripes and sail
home from the seas of the world to the safe anchorage
of San Diego.
If we do so, this anchorage will no longer be
safe. You know it and I know it. Under my Presidency,
we will neither furl the flag nor abandon hope. We
will maintain constancy and credibility of American
foreign policy, both at home as well as abroad.
We are living, obviously, in a complicated and
troubled time. Events are moving very rapidly but we
will not withdraw inward nor surrender to a state
of shock.
America, at this hour, is being put to a
test. It is not just a test of our moral authority in
the world. It is a test of our will to develop our own
energy resources, to reduce bureaucratic waste, to
preserve our dollar by guarding against non-essential
spending with the same vigilance with which we continue
the watchfulness and strength of our armed forces.
It is a test of our will, to provide for the
economic security of our families while reassuring the
military security of our Nation.
MORE
Page 9
We can meet this test only by reducing
vulnerability to weaknesses in our economy and energy
capacities. That is why an adequate security program
goes hand in hand with sound, economic policies and
prompt, effective energy legislation.
America has the will. America has the
resources. America has the knowhow, and America has
the faith.
I share, as I look around this room, your
belief in America. If you despaired of this Nation
and its future, you would not be here today. Together,
with the billions like you all over this great country,
we will build a new and better tomorrow.
Thank you very much.
END
(AT 5:37 P.M. PDT)