Remarks to State Legislators Attending the National Legislative Conference

Ladies and gentlemen:

I am interrupting the briefing simply to greet you, perhaps to make a couple of points that may put in perspective some of the things you are going to hear from the experts here, and also to thank you for coming to Washington on this occasion to give us the opportunity to talk to some future Members of the House and Senate of the United States.

I am not recommending it, necessarily-[laughter]--and I won't be here perhaps-let me see, unless you run next time.

First, I wanted to come by this meeting this morning to pay my respects to the State legislators. I have had the opportunity to talk to only two State legislatures, Iowa and South Carolina. I have had a few invitations to others, and I hope that during the balance of the 4 years I am here, I may be able to address some of the State legislatures.

While you are here I do want to thank many of the State legislators. There are several who passed resolutions either in one house or the other of the State legislature, and some concurrent resolutions, indicating support and appreciation for the peace agreement that we had reached on Vietnam. I think in that respect that while this is a group, as with all groups in this country, of Democrats and Republicans, we are all grateful that as I meet with you today, for the first time in 12 years there are no Americans stationed in Vietnam, and our POW's are all on the way back, and we have peace with honor.

Now last night I addressed some of these subjects in a national television broadcast. The details will be covered this morning. I will say only one thing about the Federal budget. It is a very big one, the largest in history. As far as the programs for domestic purposes, the total amount is twice the amount that I first submitted 4 years ago, so it is not a niggardly budget.

There is a reasonable disagreement and an honest disagreement among Members of the House and Senate; Republicans as well as Democrats in many areas feel that we ought to ask more. That is not unusual; that is always the case. You will hear the case for why we are asking for the amount that we are, overall $268 billion, and why going over that amount would lead to either a tax increase or a price increase or both, and why, therefore, we have to hold the line and hold it firmly in these areas.

Enough of that particular point with regard to the overall amount. If you get into specific items, naturally you can question the expert here about this program or that one to see whether or not you think we are adequately funding them. You can also go into the matter of priorities. But one very significant point about this budget that has not gotten through yet adequately is in the area of what is called special revenue sharing.

It is a bad term--a bad term because many have gotten the impression that special revenue sharing is really somewhat the same as general revenue sharing. And consequently, the impression has gotten around that we are suggesting in this Administration that some of those areas where we have not gone forward with old programs that have not worked-and the Congress wants us to go forward-that we are saying to the States and the counties and the cities that supported general revenue sharing, "Look here, if you want to continue some of these programs that we think on the merits should not be continued, you can take it out Of general revenue sharing."

Let me say one thing very clearly: We pledged to the States, and to the counties, and to the cities that general revenue sharing was new money. That pledge is being kept, and we are not suggesting to you that as far as any programs that we are discussing here today, if you want to take them despite the fact that we feel they should be discontinued or sharply cut back for reasons on the merits, that you should therefore take it out of general revenue sharing.

The special revenue sharing, of course, is something else again. It is rather, it seemed to me, appropriate for me to talk about it briefly in this room which is so full of history.

The first President to live in this house, as you know, was not George Washington, but John Adams, and the plaque back here is about John Adams, and it might be interesting to read it because most of you who are here perhaps don't get on the guided tours, and when you are on the guided tours they usually keep people away from anything they can pick up and carry away. [Laughter]

What it says is that, "I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house, and all that shall [hereafter] inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof."

That was, incidentally, an inscription that was suggested by Mrs. Adams in the letter to John Adams, and it is the one that is in this historic State Dining Room where so many important people have been entertained over the years since that time.

Now, I mention John Adams because as we think of him, the second President, and all of those that have followed and lived in this house, we get a sense of how we began. We get a sense of the Federal-State system, and we also understand how far we have come away from it. It doesn't make any difference whether you take Adams, the Federalist, or Jefferson, the man who was the Democrat, or, as a matter of fact, he was first called a Republican, which shows you how things have changed. But, in any event, Jefferson or Andrew Jackson or John Quincy Adams, those deadly rivals, or up through the years even to the beginning of the 20th century, you will find that there was a deep belief in the federal system. There was a deep confidence in the responsibility and also the ability of State and local governments.

Up until the 20th century, there was a feeling that Washington should respect that responsibility. We have gotten far away from it. I do not mean that that has all been wrong. I am not one that thinks that everything that happened in the thirties, during a time the United States was going through a traumatic experience economically, that everything that happened in the forties and the fifties and the sixties was wrong.

We have found that as this country has grown, as its problems have become bigger, that many of these problems can't be handled by State legislatures in acting independently. Sometimes we have to act as a nation, not simply in questions of war and peace but in many questions that had to do with government.

This we understand. Republicans believe in this, Democrats believe in it. This does not divide us on party lines.

But, on the other hand, as the pendulum sometimes swings too far in one direction, it can swing too far in another direction. What I think has happened is that as a result of the concentration of power in Washington, D.C.---concentration that was necessary to solve what appeared to be insurmountable national problems--we have found government and government getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and government in the State level, whereas it may be bigger dollar-wise, having less and less responsibility. We are trying to turn that around.

In trying to turn that around, we are not turning away from the problems. We are turning to a better solution for the problems, and that gets to you.

The really gut issue here on the special revenue sharing legislation that we are sending to Congress is not the amount, because as the experts will tell you, generally speaking, no State or local government will get less, and as a matter of fact, most will get more under the special revenue sharing legislation included in our budget than you got previously for the amounts that are covered.

But the real gut issue is who makes the decisions. Are they made by the Congress, are they made by the President, are they made by people 3,000 miles away or--if you live in Alaska--6,000 miles away from where you live, or are they made in the States and the counties and the cities?

Now what we say is that those decisions with regard to the priorities on domestic programs should be made by the local governments, by the State governments.

I have oversimplified. You can ask the question, but let me say the reasons that we believe this are several: First, we have confidence in State and local governments. Oh, if you read the editorials in some of our newspapers here, particularly in the East, you will find there is very little confidence in State and local governments. Believe me, you are the biggest crooks and incompetents that were ever in this room, if you were to read what some of them said.

It depends though--there are plenty of crooks and incompetents, they say, in the Congress, or whatever the case might be---it depends on what you happen to be doing at that particular time.

Let me say I never served in a State legislature--Cap Weinberger has--but I have known many State legislators. They are honest, decent men and women, trying to do an honest and decent job. I know that. We have confidence in you. We believe that you ought to have more responsibility rather than less, and let me say one other thing: When you make a mistake nationally, it is a beaut, because it covers the whole country. Now, when you make a mistake even in a State as big as New York or California, let alone a State like Nevada, or Wyoming, or Alaska, or Hawaii, or Iowa for that matter, it can still be very big, but it affects only that particular State. And then we can see whether or not in our trial and error system we want to try it in other areas.

So, what I simply am saying here is, first, we believe in State and local responsibility. We have confidence in State legislatures and in State governments, and we believe the way to raise not only the quality, which all of you, of course, would like to do, but also to raise the confidence and the respect of the people in their State and local governments, is to give them not more money to spend, which you are going to get and will continue to get, whoever is going to be in Washington here, but more decisions to make.

You just simply don't want to be the errand boys or the people down the line who will take the Federal grants and pass them out, just not the channels of communication, but you ought to and you should have the responsibility and the right to make decisions as to how the sources of money that come from Washington-and we, of course, should collect it, because we can collect it better at the national level. That is one thing the Federal Government can do better than State governments. [Laughter] We have ways to get it that the State governments can't use.

But on the other hand, we feel that as far as the decisions are concerned, you ought to have the chance.

Just let me close that section of my remarks by saying very simply this: Have your differences, and, I am sure, some of you will have specific items in this budget as to whether this program or that one or the other one should be funded at certain amounts. But make no mistake about the fundamental, revolutionary recommendation we have made with regard to special revenue sharing. It has to do with our whole federal system and, as we approach the 200th birthday of this country, which comes in 1976, it seems to me that is a pretty good time to go back to fundamental principles where those fundamental principles are still relevant to the problems we have today.

I believe that the more men and women you can get in the process, making decisions, not simply people down the line who look to somebody up here in Washington to make all of the decisions and they just carry out the order--the more we can get more people making the decisions, the better it is going to be for this country. That is what we believe. It is a matter of philosophy; it is a profound belief. It is not a Democratic belief or Republican belief, it is an American principle, and it is that which I wish you to consider in your meeting today.

My final point has to do with one that I covered last night in my remarks, but it has to do with priorities in the budget and particularly on defense.

The easy way to talk about a budget is to say, "Look, my program is a good one, but that other fellow's, take it out of his." And particularly right now, there are those that say that, after all, we have had the trip to China, and we have had the agreements with the Russians, and the limitation of armaments, and we have ended the war in Vietnam. As many have suggested, this is perhaps a year of the greatest progress in reducing tensions in the world and working toward a world of peace that we have had since the end of World War II. In view of all of that progress, why don't we cut the defense budget? And then with $10 or $15 or $20 billion we can get out of the defense budget, put it into the problems of the States and the problems of our cities and our problems at home.

Let me say, there is nothing I would rather do more than to do that. There is nothing a President or a Governor dislikes more than to have to veto a spending ball. We know people like to get the dough. Why do we stop it?

The reason we stop it, of course, is that, as Harry Truman has in that desk of his, "The buck stops..."--where? The President's desk, the Governor's desk, and the rest.

I am not, incidentally, trying to get you in a fight with your Governors. That is your problem. But I am simply saying, as far as we are concerned, we have to remember that in this whole area of priorities--and this is the point that I wish to make--in this whole area of priorities, we have considered the defense budget and the domestic budget.

Let me simply say, our defense budget today, as far as its level of spending is concerned, takes the lowest percentage of our GNP in 20 years. Our defense budget today, insofar as the level of spending is concerned, is no higher than it was 4 years ago, when you take out the inflation factor.

However, as I indicated a few moments ago, our spending for domestic programs is double what it was 4 years ago. So, the priorities have been changed, and they should have been changed.

How were we able to change them? Why have we had success in our new dialog with the People's Republic of China, in our new relations with the Russians? I will tell you why. It isn't because Chou En-lai liked my handshake. And it isn't because I particularly liked vodka. I don't. I think it is a lousy drink. I don't like champagne either. There are other things I do like, but not those two.

The point I make is that it is simply because, when the President of the United States went to Peking, the government that rules one-fourth of all of the people in the world, when the President of the United States, for the first time, went to Moscow, the government that rules one of the most powerful nations the world has ever seen in terms of nuclear power and so forth, he was received there, he was able to negotiate because he represented a nation that was strong and a nation that was respected.

The day you send the President of the United States into the ring with a leader of any powerful country as the leader of the second strongest nation in the world, then you are in deep trouble.

Let me just put it quite directly in this way: A mutual reduction of arms in the world is our goal, whether it is a mutual reduction of forces in Europe or a mutual reduction--limitation first and then reduction--of nuclear arms. But any program in which we reduce and the others stay high is not our goal, because when the United States is weaker and they are stronger, then the threat to peace in the world and freedom in the world is infinitely increased.

How are you going to get a mutual reduction of arms? How are you going to get a mutual reduction of forces in Europe?

Well, as I said last night, in any negotiation you can't get something unless you have something to give. And so, rather than cutting our budget before we go into these historic negotiations this year, send the President of the United States there with an adequate defense budget, and then let us negotiate us both down.

Let me put it quite bluntly: Look at the world today. Consider what the world would be like if the United States were not the most powerful nation in the world. Oh, it would be mighty pleasant--we would have more money to spend in the cities and the States and many of the other programs that you would like. But, on the other hand, if we were not in this position of strength, it doesn't mean that nobody else would be in that position. And as you look at the free world, there is no other free-world nation, as there used to be, that could be in that position. The British can't do it; the French can't do it; the Germans can't do it; the Japanese can't do it---even though they are all economically powerful countries--for reasons that we are aware and for different reasons in most instances.

So you can see simply the proposition we are confronted with. What I have to do is to stand for an adequate strong defense budget, a budget which, as I say, is one that is a spare one and a lean one, but adequate to do the job.

In order to negotiate with the super powers of the world, the Soviet Union, the super power of today, and the PRC [People's Republic of China], which will be the super power of the world, a great super power, 20 years from now--to negotiate with them, the United States must be in a position of strength and not of weakness.

I will simply close by saying that the remarks that I have made have not intended to be directed against the Congress; they are not. They are not intended to be partisan in any sense of the word, because Democrats as well as Republicans think of the country first and certainly of their party second when these great issues of war and peace are involved.

But I will only say this: that, looking to the future, we need your support, not only for programs that will make government more responsive---and that is why special revenue sharing is important-that will improve its quality--that is why you are important in your listening to this briefing. But we also need, at this critical time, not to fool ourselves by saying, now that we have had a great year of progress in the areas of peace, we can cut back, we can relax, and then put the money into the domestic programs that we would all like to put it in.

Let me tell you, the day that I can tell the American people that we can safely cut our defense budget, believe me, I will be in the pack leading it. But I intend, as long as I am in this office, to maintain the strength of the United States until others bring their strength down too. When I leave this office, I want to leave it with respect for the President of the United States, whoever he is, for the Office of the Presidency, and respect for the strength of the United States undiminished, because it is that strength that is the world's best guardian of peace and freedom.