Remarks to the Members of the United States Jaycees Governmental Affairs Seminar.

President Bill Suttle and distinguished young guests:

It is a great pleasure for me to welcome you--even though tardily--to the White House.

I am quite interested in your dedication to public service. I am especially interested that you chose for your seminar this year the subject of the city and your future.

I don't think there is a subject in America that is more appropriate or more important at this time. So your decision has been a good one.

What do we have to do about it? What are we going to do about it? Is it another resolution? Is it another designation?

I hope not. Our principal responsibility now is to catch up and to make up for years of urban neglect in this country. We have tolerated and endured slums and unlivable conditions in our cities that must now be eliminated. Urban blight must be corrected.

As I said yesterday in my message to the Congress and to the country--I would hope that some of you might have a chance to read it and digest it--we have to end pollution. And, as I will say before many weeks go by, we must try to do everything we can to arrest crime in this country and to stop violence in our streets.

We all know--and no one knows more than the President--that these things cannot be done by the Federal Government alone. Sometimes even when we attempt to enlist assistance, we irritate those whom we want to enlist.

We know that you young people, who have come here on your own volition today, are among the natural leaders of the United States of America and among our most important, because the majority of our population is going to be in your age group.

We know that you have great influence, if you want to use it, on your local government, as well as your National Government. That is one reason why I am so happy that you would manifest an interest in urban problems.

Many of our legislative actions of the last few years have had too little local interest. We have been searching, ever since I have been President, to find some way to provide incentives, to stimulate interest, and do something about our housing problem in our cities, and we are experimenting.

But in our rent supplement legislation, the Government got off to a very poor start, because the general theme was that "you think the Government ought to pay your rent for you."

That wasn't it at all, but instead of Government going out and building public housing, that they already had limitations on, what new plan could we work out where a head of a large family could take what he was supposed to put for rent. Most of them think 20 percent is enough. We say 25 percent. This is where you pay a fourth of what you make for rent and then if your rent is much more than that, how can you make up the difference to take care of eight or ten children and let them live in a place where the rats won't bite on their ears at night.

And how can you get private industry to build these places? Well, we pulled them all together under rent supplement. We are trying to see if that won't work. If it doesn't, it will only involve a few million dollars, $15, $20, $30, $50 million. If it does work, it will be one of the solutions to one of the biggest problems we have of housing of our people in the urban centers of America.

The same thing is true with our model cities program. We submitted a $5 billion program over a few years, but Congress cut it to $2 billion. We had only a few million dollars for our planning. But in the budget this year, we have $400 million. Admittedly, you have to learn to crawl before you walk, and walk before you can run.

There are people who think we could spend $500 billion to remake our cities. We could and someday we should. We can't do it all at once. What we are trying to do is ask for $400 million.

We have a budget that is far above $100 billion. It is $135 billion and we are spending $400 million.

That program only carried by four or five votes--before the election. That is why it is important. If you are interested in urban problems and if you want to do something about them, if you could visualize the day when you and your children may be growing up in a rat-infested tenement and you want to do some planning, renovating, cleaning up, and have some model cities--now is the time to do it.

These are very small steps. You are still crawling. But if you will, you can crawl right up to that Capitol and help us pass that appropriation bill this year. There are a lot of people who would like to kill it. That means we stay right where we are for a while longer.

I hope you will go back home and give serious thought to how we can get more effective business involvement in such activities as the war on slums and the war on poverty that is trying so much to rid us of our poor.

We have made progress. We are going to take several million out of the poverty level with our social security bill this year, our older American legislation this year, our help for veterans--the message I sent up today.

But it is going to take years to ever have the kind of a society that we want. I would ask you to set up your study teams in your local chapters, analyze what is being done, and then tell us how it can be done better. With your help I think we can do this job. I think we can do it more easily. I think we can do it cheaper. I think we can do it more quickly.

Our needs are very great, but look at our resources. We are the richest nation in the world. We have more people employed at better wages. We are doing better than we ever were. If we can't face up to these kinds of problems in this kind of prosperity, it is unthinkable to think what would happen if we went back to the early thirties.

The real problem is to bring the leadership of this Nation together. I think the experience and talent to do that exists right here in this room. So keep your hand at a business whose profits are measured in human health, human happiness, and human dignity.

I have just been talking to a Senator about the 500,000 men in the submarines, in the air, in the marshes, in the rice paddies of Southeast Asia, in the Navy ships and carriers. Every one of those men are willing to give an arm or a leg or their life for you and your freedom.

While they are doing it out there, what are you going to do here at home? You can feel sorry for yourself. You can think you are mistreated. You can become worried and frustrated and cry about conditions, or you can do the job for them here that they are doing for you there.

I don't know a greater group in America to do it than the young members of the Junior Chamber of Commerce. So get with it. You are a go-go outfit.