Remarks to Principal Field Officers of the Internal Revenue Service.

Commissioner, gentlemen:

It is a pleasure to welcome you again here to the East Room of the White House. I am one man who is always glad to see the tax collectors; at least, I am today in my official capacity.

Taxes are never popular. No one ever enjoys paying them. But as your President, I see everyday what those taxes accomplish for this country. If it were not for the American taxpayer, the forces of aggression would have a free hand today not only in Vietnam, but elsewhere in the world; we would be slaves instead of free men.

The taxes that you collect and that we pay have resulted in our building the greatest highways in all the world. The taxes that you collect give us the greatest park system to be found anywhere in the world. The taxes you collect are going to be used to rebuild the cities of America in a manner in which we can take great pride. They are rapidly making us the best educated and healthiest people in all the world.

There was a time not many years ago when a man seriously injured had very little chance of survival. There was a time not many years ago when 2 1/2 to 3 percent of the men wounded in the Korean war died. But because of the taxes you collect and the medical services they provide, less than 1 percent of the men wounded in Vietnam die.

When I talked to you last year I asked you to do three things: first, give the taxpayers better service; second, to attract more good people into the Internal Revenue Service; and third, to make sure that your doors are always open only to honest men and women.

I suggested that you adopt a broader recruitment program. I am pleased to learn from Sheldon Cohen that you have made important beginnings in enlisting qualified Negroes and qualified women for some of the top jobs in the Internal Revenue Service. I hope this is just a beginning.

You have had a good year since I spoke to you last March. Your gross revenue collections reached $118 billion. That is a rise of 5 ½ percent while we were cutting taxes. You collected all of this money while making savings of $13 million through improved management practices.

I was also impressed by one other statistic. Last year, by carefully checking, you refunded $239 million to taxpayers who had made mistakes on their own. You haven't forgotten that a good tax collector is not only efficient, but a good collector also ought to be fair and just--and he should treat the other fellow as he would like to be treated if he were on the other side of the desk.

As a taxpayer, I recently received one of your new form 1040's in the mail. You have made things a little easier for our taxpayers, and that is something that we must always try to do. We must also remember that a little courtesy and a little understanding can go a long way in making the job of tax collection less painful and make people more willing to enjoy what they are doing.

I have not asked any of you whether you are Republicans or Democrats, men or women, black, brown, or white. Sometimes I don't know what you are.

There are two criteria that I want you to never overlook: First, I want you to do what is right. That is the difficult one. Nearly every decision that gets to me is like this. It can go either way. I try to always resolve the doubt with understanding, and with understanding of my fellow man. So you do what is right according to your own training, your own teachings, your own environment, your own judgment, your own experiences--and the law.

Do what is right according to your own judgment and according to your own conscience. That is what I try to do--it is the best I can do.

Then always be sure that you do it within the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day discussing a case involving the constitutionality of the poll tax. In presenting the case to Congress, it was argued that no one could prove this State discriminated against the Negro because a higher percentage of Negroes had poll taxes than the white people did. So it was difficult to establish discrimination, he claimed. They said it doesn't exist because more Negro people have it than white people.

But we can establish this: that we have free speech in this country and we are entitled to speak our minds. Who would ever think of charging a man so much per word for what he had to say?

We do have a free press in our country, but who would ever say to an editorial writer, "I am going to put a tax on each word that you put in that piece"?

We have the right to worship God in accordance with the dictates of our conscience, but who would ever say, "I am going to charge you so much to sit in a certain pew in a certain church on a certain Sunday"?

The court ruled: "It is just as ridiculous to charge a man to vote, and therefore, on that basis, it is in violation of the Constitution. Not because we discriminate against the Negro, but because we do not have a law that charges a man to vote or speak or write or go to church." They ruled the poll tax unconstitutional. And we must always ask: "Is what we are doing constitutional?"

Second, be compassionate in your understanding. Say, "Except for the grace of God, I might be in that man's position." Obey the law of the land, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the United States, and act with compassion in the administration of that law.

Our people, I think, have come to expect something close to perfection from your Service. So it is very difficult for you to live up to their expectations.

I want you to know that the reason I asked you to come here this morning is because I want you to know that you have my strong support. You have my pledge that the Internal Revenue Service, as long as I am President, is going to be a blue ribbon organization. It will be protected from the unconstitutional, improper, political, religious, and bigoted views of those who seek to exploit it.

So I want to say you are serving your country well, and with distinction. You are serving it patriotically, and you have the gratitude of your President for what you are doing. I am grateful for what you have accomplished.

You estimate that you are going to bring in untold sums in the next budget. I hope that is right. I am confident that you are going to keep up your good work. Just remember that you are responsible to your own God, your own conscience, and to your own Constitution.

Thank you very much.