Remarks in Response to a Task Force Report on the Balance of Payments Problem.

Ladies and gentlemen:

I have a great deal of pleasure this morning in receiving the task force that was appointed to promote increased foreign investment in United States corporate securities and increased foreign financing for United States corporations abroad. President Kennedy appointed and charged this task force with examining ways and means of promoting increased foreign investment and securities of private companies and increased foreign financing for U.S. business operating abroad.

We have a number of recommendations from this group of very able men headed by Mr. Henry Fowler, the chairman, Mr. Robert McKinney, the executive officer, made up of Mr. Charles Coombs, Mr. Fredrick Eaton, Mr. G. Keith Funston, Mr. George F. James, Mr. George J. Leness, Mr. Andre Meyer, Mr. Dorsey Richardson, Mr. Arthur Watson, Mr. Walter Wriston, Mr. John Young, and Mr. Ralph Young.

To give you an illustration of the content of the report, I will just read Recommendation 25 out of a list of 28 specific recommendations that they made that require immediate implementing. Recommendation 25 says, "U.S.-based international corporations should instruct their senior officers and policy groups to keep foreign financial operations under constant review, examining as standard procedure all proposals for new financing from the standpoint of the effect of their actions on the U.S. balance of payments."

We have been very concerned with our balance-of-payment situation. We have had the best minds in this Nation working on it, public and private. While no one can judge the other quarters of the year by the first quarter, and the others generally are not nearly so good, we do have encouraging words about the first quarter, as nearly as we can estimate it at this time. That doesn't mean that we are not going to be deeply concerned about what happens from the first quarter on, but it does stimulate us to be concerned.

There are a good many people in private life that have been working with the best minds we had in public life on this balance-of-payments problem. I doubt that anything we will do will be more helpful to us than what these men have done. They have left their homes and sacrificed their business interests and spent their leisure time and some of their company's time trying to make sound and solid recommendations to us for our country's welfare.

As I have said in the Cabinet frequently, we have eight or nine spenders and just one or two auditors or savers. And in this country we have a lot of people that know how to get rid of money and to get it away from our shores, but not many that really know how to get it back. What these men have been working on is trying to improve that balance-of-payments situation, than which there is no higher responsibility, nor no more important measure.

We are concerned with our money problems. We hear every day about the dangers of inflation. We have no truck with the soft dollar. We want to maintain the value of our dollar. We look back and see what it cost us to build a house a few years ago and what it costs us to build one now and we see the effect it has not only on the man who is building the house in private enterprise, but the man who is buying it who may be a day laborer.

So, as goes the money problem, so goes the Nation in a great many respects. And these men have made an outstanding contribution, very unselfishly, men representing both 'parties. I started to call them fellow Democrats, but when I heard the names listed, I didn't know whether I could pick out more than one or two that would qualify, at least not now. But I can say, with a great deal of pride and pleasure, that they are my fellow Americans and that is much more important than what party you belong to.

To you who have given so freely and so fully to your Nation's welfare, your President commends you and salutes you and thanks you. We will immediately take your recommendations and try to implement them and put them into effect, we trust, with the results that you anticipate.

One of our great public servants is Mr. Henry Fowler, the Under Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Fowler was chairman of this group. He has taken a great deal of pride in their work. He has been responsible for a good deal of it. He is kind of in the same position as Walter Heller. He is a money man, an expert in that field, but both of them are having to leave the Government, because they don't know how to make a living in the Government. They have got to get out to make more money and that is another good argument for the pay bill.

I wish all you men that pay your executives three or four times as much as men with the same ability as Henry Fowler and others would come back here and help us get a pay bill passed that would give us efficient Government management and top capable people. I have on my desk now I guess a dozen resignations of some of the real workhorses and able men in the Government and they are leaving just because they have been waiting to get a little pay increase and they are trying to keep their children in college. They can't do it and they are having to leave on that account. The wisest move that any of you could make would be to try to contribute what you can to helping us get a pay bill that would give us efficient management in Government.

I want to present Mr. Fowler for any observations that he has to make about the report.

[At this point Mr. Fowler stated that the task force had sought to develop recommendations that would promote increased purchases by foreigners of the securities of U.S. corporations and would increase the availability of foreign financing for U.S. companies operating abroad...He added that the task force had attempted to identify those activities and restrictions, public or private, here or abroad, which hamper the citizens of other countries in any desires they might have to purchase U.S. securities. The President then resumed speaking.]

I want to thank the very able Under Secretary of the Treasury and particularly the Secretary of the Treasury for the fine job this group has done and the only reward they get, if it is a reward, is to get their picture in the paper or maybe get some of you newspaper people that have been working on me for a few weeks to give them a nice word.

But I want to present to you a newspaper publisher now, that all of you ought to be interested in, who has been the executive director of this task force and who is responsible for a good deal of the fine work that it has done, Mr. Robert McKinney, the publisher of the Sante Fe New Mexican. Mr. McKinney, would you say a word.

[At this point Mr. McKinney pointed out that of the 13 task force members 9 were drawn from the private sector and 4 from the Government. He added that subcommittees represented every major activity and that there was a complete cross section of all elements interested in solving the balance of payments problem. The President then resumed speaking. ]

So now we appreciate your hearing us and I doubt that we will receive many reports that will have a more comprehensive effect upon the future of this year than the one that I hold in my hand. We will take it and put it in the hands of the proper Government officials and try to get it implemented and the recommendations carried out as soon as possible.

George Reedy will have a copy of it for you for your financial editors, if you have too many stories to use yourselves. If not, we will be glad for you to take a look at it, because it means something to every American home.

Thank you very much.