Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
7339821
label
Exchange of Remarks between the President and Gregory L. Rose, Member, National Society of YMCA Youth Governors [Ford Speech or Statement]
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
7339821
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
Exchange of Remarks between the President and Gregory L. Rose, Member, National Society of YMCA Youth Governors [Ford Speech or Statement]
citationUrl
collections
White House Press Releases (Ford Administration)
Press Releases
largeImageUrl
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
7339821
levelOfDescription
item
productionDates
day
26
logicalDate
1975-06-26
month
6
year
1975
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
f7c0ef0e99b939df
ocrText
Digitized from Box 12 of the White House Press Releases at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 26, 1975
OFFICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY
THE WHITE HOUSE
EXCHANGE OF REMARKS
BETWEEN THE PRESIDENT
AND
GREGORY L. ROSE
MEMBER, NATIONAL SOCIETY
OF YMCA YOUTH GOVERNORS
THE CABINET ROOM
10:53 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Let me congratulate all of you
Governors. I wish we could get the same applause from
the duly elected Governors when they come down to the
White House.
I don't mean to be critical of them because
they have been very helpful in many ways, but I am very
grateful for your very warm reception, and I wish to
congratulate you on your election, your selection, and also
the activities in which you are participating.
I think it is appropriate, also, to say that I
believe the Reader's Digest does a fine job in making this
program possible. Their support of it makes it feasible
for all of you to come down and get firsthand some insight
into the Government here, to get to know the people that
are representing you in both the House and the Senate,
and to talk firsthand with individuals in the Executive
Branch of the Government.
The net result is in due time, and I hope soon,
all of you can become an active participant in the
Government in your respective areas, whether it is local,
whether it is Statewide or whether it is on the Federal
level.
Let me say parenthetically, I am confident with
your educational background, the experiences that you have,
and will have, and your interest that all of you will do
an infinitely better job when you start running things
than we have.
So, get prepared and be active because it is
important for the country, as well as yourselves, that
when the time comes you can do that job, which is so
important.
Let me just make an observation or two because,
as you have talked to many, you have maybe gotten one
side of the coin and not entirely the other, and I am not
going to speak in a partisan way.
MORE
Page 2
But, there is something that I think all of you
ought to understand. You know, we have a Judicial
Branch, an Executive Branch and a Legislative Branch,
and they all perform a very important function.
Our forefathers so wisely decided they didn't
want one person or one group in our society dominating
all of the rest, and so they established this system of
checks and balances -- the Executive being checked by
the Judiciary, and by the Legislative, and vice versa.
This system has ended up giving us a
tremendously effective Government protecting our
individual rights, and also giving us the flexibility
to meet our problems.
You may have read, and you may have heard, there
is a confrontation between the Executive Branch on the
one hand and the Legislative Branch on the other, probably
best exemplified by the four vetoes that I have exercised
where, on the reconsideration by the Congress, the House of
Representatives has sustained in each case the four vetoes.
Some people are alleging that we have a stalemate,
that we are not making headway. Let me convince you other-
wise.
First, let me explain what the function is of a
veto.
The Constitution says that a President can
exercise a veto and that if it is to be overridden and
the legislation is to become law, two-thirds of the
House and the Senate must override.
Now, in the case of the four vetoes where the
Congress has sustained by vetoes, we have not been dead-
locked into no action.
The facts are that in two of the cases, the
fact that I vetoed what I think is bad legislation
and where there has been a sustaining of the veto, the
Congress has come back after reconsideration and actually
submitted -- or is in the process of submitting --
legislation that is good legislation, or infinitely
better legislation than that which was vetoed.
MORE
Page 3
So the exercise of the veto has kept the
country from having a bad law on the statute books
because the Congress has then understood that they
had to do a better job.
In the case of housing, I think we will have
that result. We will get a good housing bill.
In the case of the appropriation bill where
they increased my recommendation by $3 billion, where
they added to my proposal for a summer youth employment
program, and where they added money over and above
the public service program that I recommended, added
$3 billion with a whole raft of goodies that could
not be justified economically, they have now done what?
They have taken the summer youth program which I have
recommended, they added a few minor items, but basically
they appropriated the money that I proposed.
In the case of housing, it appears they are
going to more or less go along with the recommendations
that I made.
What I am saying is our forefathers gave
to a President a tool to get the Congress to think, to
reconsider and to come back with something that is
more acceptable to the Executive Branch of the Govern-
ment, a program that is a better program for the people
as a whole, and that is what we really want.
We don't want legislation that is indefensible;
we want legislation that financially and otherwise
is in the best interest of all the people.
Now, there is another problem that you may
have heard about; it is a little different. It is
traditional that a President recommends legislation.
This is the system, the way it works.
Usually it is recommended in what we call a
State of the Union message, given when Congress reconvenes,
but it can be done on other occasions -- like I am
sending up today a proposal for what we call a Uranium
Enrichment Program, which is of vital importance for
us to build facilities to supply our nuclear power,
and to supply to foreign customers the necessary ingredients.
But the point that I want to make here is in
January I submitted a very comprehensive energy program
that would, if enacted into law, get the American
people to conserve energy which is necessary; and
secondly, the program I have proposed would stimulate
domestic sources of energy because the United States today
is very vulnerable to the foreign oil producers.
MORE
Page 4
If we had an oil embargo today, we would be
worse off in gasoline, in fuel oil, in all crude oil
products, than we were in 1973.
How many of you can remember standing at the
gas station? You could not get gas unless you waited
a long time. How many of you can remember the other
inconveniences that you had to go through because
there was an oil embargo?
If we had an oil embargo today, we would be
worse off because Congress has not enacted, as I
recommended, or they have not enacted something that
they have proposed.
So in this case there has to be some push on the
Congress from me, from the American people, to get off
dead center and enact an energy program. Otherwise,
we will be more and more vulnerable to foreign sources,
and we cannot afford that from the point of view of
our country's national security, our country's economic
prosperity; and therefore, as you go back home_ and have
an opportunity to talk to others, please get your friends,
as well as yourselves, to get Congress to move ahead
in the field of energy, either on the program that I
have recommended or some program that they will put
together. We cannot condone a lack of action on the
part of the Congress in the field of energy.
This is a little different problem from the
veto problem that I discussed earlier, but it is all
part of how our Government works. In each case, what
is being done in the case of vetoes and better legislation,
that is part of our Constitution. In the case of no
action, that is the prerogative of the Congress.
I think it is wrong where they don't do anything,
but at least that is their prerogative, and the way
to get the Congress to move -- and I spent 25 years there
SO I know a little bit about how the Congress either
works or does not work, and I know that if people back
in their respective districts or respective States say,
"Move," the Members of Congress will act, and act, I think,
in most cases, responsibly.
Well, this is a great opportunity for me to
talk to not only leaders in your own right, but prospective
leaders in the future.
Good luck, and I am confident after most of us
who are here now are out of the picture, we can look and
say those young Governors that came down to Washington
in this program are doing a better job than we did.
Good luck, and the very best to you.
Thank you.
MORE
Page 5
MR. ROSE: Mr. President, it is my privilege
and honor, being Youth Governor from Michigan, to
present you at this time a current certificate of your
membership in the National Society of YMCA Youth
Governors, of which we are all members, of which
there are about 500 members, starting in 1962, through-
out the United States.
As a small symbol of our appreciation, I
would like to present you this book "Mankind and the
Turning Point," which we would appreciate your reading.
(Laughter)
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much, Gregory,
and thank all of you.
I never made it as a Governor (Laughter) so I
am glad to be a part of the Society of Governors.
I thank you for thinking of me, and I will
make an effort; I will do my best to try and read it.
Thank you, and good luck to you.
I congratulate the YMCA. I congratulate the
Reader's Digest. And most importantly, I congratulate
all of you.
The very best to you.
Thank you very, very much.
END
(AT 11:06 A.M. EDT)