Statement About Congressional Spending and the Nation's Welfare

AT THE present time there are pending in Congress a number of huge spending proposals which, if enacted into law, would lead inevitably to a tax increase. The best way I can serve the American people is to stay in Washington, when I consider it necessary, to fight those proposals--to veto them if they are passed, and to enlist enough support in the Congress to sustain my vetoes.

What we must recognize is that a veto of a spending proposal which substantially exceeds the budget that I have submitted to Congress is, in effect, a veto of a tax increase. A vote for such a proposal is a vote for a tax increase.

It is considered to be good politics in a campaign to promise huge new spending programs for good causes like the environment, health, education, and welfare. But I believe it is known that I have recommended programs in these fields to the Congress which we can afford without increasing taxes.

I shall make no promises in this campaign for any spending programs--no matter how popular if such programs would lead to a tax increase.

Those who call for a redistribution of income and a confiscation of wealth are not speaking for the interests of people; they are speaking against the interests of people.

We can be proud of the fact that the United States has the most generous program for aid to the poor, the elderly, and others who need assistance, of any country in the world. We can afford these programs only because the 82 million Americans who work for a living and the businesses of this country produce the taxable income which can finance them.

Let us reject any program which makes it more profitable for a person to go on welfare than to go to work.

Let us reject any program which would discourage business from providing the new jobs that America needs if we were to have full employment without war and without inflation.

Massive redistribution of income is not the way to make the poor rich. It is a way to make everybody poor.

Many nations abroad have gone down the road to the welfare state and have lived to regret it. Let's not make the same mistake in the United States.