United States Conference of Mayors Remarks to Mayors Attending the Conference's Winter Meeting.

I have seen the time that I didn't look forward to meeting with mayors- [laughter] —but—I think we've come a long way in the last 3 years.

Moon Landrieu, behind me on the stage, I think is typical of what our administration is trying to do. He not only has done a good job in the few short weeks that he has been here but showed even when he was mayor of New Orleans that he understood the basic problems that all of you have to face. He left his beautiful city at that time and went throughout the Nation, as you know, speaking up for New York City—when it was certainly not popular for a southerner to do that—but pointed out in a most perceptive fashion that the cities of our country were in danger. And the Nation listened, and eventually, as you know, the Congress acted.

I know that you have such a vast accumulation of experience and a vast accumulation of problems that you've had to face, challenges for the future, that there's no way for me to describe them all. But I would like to take a few minutes this morning to outline to you the entire situation as best I can from my own perspective as President, and then, following that, of course, you'll have a chance to question those others on the stage here about details of the programs that I might mention.

When I campaigned throughout the Nation in 1975 and 1976, there was a sense of pessimism bordering on despair about the viability of our major cities. I think this feeling was based on circumstances as they then existed, and I was impressed not only as I observed the circumstances and also talked to people on the street, and particularly talked to civic leaders, and especially mayors, that if I became President that this would be a major responsibility of mine. I didn't know the answers—to the major questions even. But as we went into the problem of trying to resolve those difficulties, it became obvious to me that the answers lay not in the White House but among you.

One of the things that we've tried to do in every circumstance, and I hope we have not failed, is to bring the mayors into the White House and into every department of Government and even in the process to open up a better relationship, at least in some cases, between the mayors and State officials, including Governors. We've not put forward to the Congress any major legislation or any significant legislation that affected you without having consulted with you first. You've not had to go to the Hill or the Congress and undo mistakes that were made by us because you were not involved in the drafting of legislation, quite often even in the details of it. And I know there were times when you worked literally for months, you and your leaders, elected by you, to help us evolve the programs.

I've also been pleased that Jack Watson, my top Administrative Assistant, could work closely with you on a continuing basis to provide an avenue so that you don't have to search among the multitude of agencies that still exist in the Federal Government to find the answer to a question or the source of a corrective action that might repair some lack of service to your community. We don't have an unlimited fund with which to pay for all the needs that you face; we don't claim that, we never will. We ought not to have. And we don't have magic answers to deal with problems that have been building in this country for generations. But I think there's been a substantial restoration of the spirit and the vitality and the growth and the self-confidence among our major communities that was lacking in the past. We've tried to give you some of the tools to do it.

Economic development funds have been multiplied in the last 3 years, 40 times over, an increase of 4,000 percent; and the money is being spent wisely. We've also had a 100-percent increase in the CETA program, which is extremely valuable to most of you represented here. We are still moving, I think successfully, to bring in not only mayors, county officials, other municipal officials and State officials but, perhaps most importantly of all, representatives of the private sector.

The UDAG program, I think, has been remarkably successful, hammered out by you and implemented by us, working with you. It's a program with minimum turnaround time. We don't keep you waiting to know whether an application is going to be acceptable or not. It has a tremendous magnification factor built into it. With a small amount of taxpayers' money, there's a tremendous amount of benefit. And then when the project is finished, it's one that engenders within itself a great deal of self-pride: This is something we did. I don't think any community that has a successful UDAG program says "This is something the Federal Government did for me." And I don't think that the private investors in your community feel that "This is something that the city government did for me." There's a genuine sense of accomplishment on the part of people that ought to be directly involved in the rejuvenation of deteriorating areas of our Nation, in the metropolitan areas.

And that is what has been accomplished. But the private sector has an increasing role to play, and we have tried to put them not only into the UDAG program but also into every other element of societal benefit in our country—jobs, transportation, along with housing and other programs that are partially financed or supported by the Federal Government.

In 1975 or 1976, if I could ask any group like this, "What is your most serious problem?", the answer would have been, "Unemployment." Obviously, we haven't solved the unemployment problem. But we have added a net of 9 million new jobs in this Nation, never before done in wartime or peacetime. And I think a lot of those jobs are solid; they are not artificially created jobs that are kind of the froth on our Nation's structure. They are solid. And I think a lot of that has been proven in the last 15 or 17 months by the fact that the unemployment rate, in spite of very serious economic problems that exist worldwide, those jobs have held firmly. We've had a steady increase of literally hundreds of thousands of jobs every month, so that with an increasing labor force, we have not had the unemployment rate going up.

Every projection in the future shows that we will not continue that good result, but at least we've had a very good solid basis for assessing how to resolve a difficulty of that kind together. We've now got some problems in the Congress, potentially, unless we work in harmony. I've recommended, as you know, to the Congress a 5-year extension of general revenue sharing. It's going to require a lot of work on the part of all of us to protect that proposal.

One of the things that will be in the new revenue sharing legislation that we've proposed is a mandate that in all 50 States there be established a commission to work with you to inventory the fiscal needs of local communities in their entirety, not only from your own sometimes tightly constrained revenue base where State legislators have the final voice on what you can do, but the State contribution and the Federal contribution and what might even come from the private sector. So, I think that we'll have in the revenue sharing bill a very good mandate—it's not option—for the States to coordinate, not to tell you what to do, but to inventory what needs to be done to fulfill the requirements of the urban centers.

Youth employment—if we have not succeeded in every aspect of improving our society's life, I would say that the one notable failure has been in the employment of young people. We've got too much unemployment among our young men and women, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 years old, and particularly among minority groups. The unemployment rate among some of them runs as high as 65 percent, and for a person to get out of the category of a statistic and change in our minds into a human being, the realization of that failure of America to let each life be meaningful, is very serious indeed.

We've got a limited budget. I'm working to keep down deficit spending. But we will have a massive program to put our young people to work, again emphasizing cooperative work and again emphasizing the private sector. I have served as a Governor and I've served as a local school board chairman. I was chairman of the University Committee in the Georgia State Senate. And I have been concerned all my public life about the incompatibility between the educational institutions of all kinds—the universities, the colleges, the vocational and technical schools, the high schools, and the graduates that they produce on the one hand, and the job needs and the job availabilities on the other.

There has never been an adequate way yet to mesh those two. Even establishing communication between them has been very difficult, particularly at the Federal level, because education has been buried under health and welfare. Now we will have a separate Department of Education, and Shirley Hufstedler and Ray Marshall are already working intimately on this problem so that young people at the junior high school age who cannot claim to have an educational ability adequate to hold a job can have remedial work done.

Too many of our high school graduates are still functional illiterates. And at the same time, we need to make sure that those who have dropped out of school have a chance to train themselves to hold a permanent job. And the program that we have evolved will, again, be of great benefit to you and those you represent.

Mass transit, public transportation—we have advocated as you know, an enormous increase in funds for this purpose, far beyond the progress that we have already made. And here again, in the youth employment and in mass transit, this is an opportunity for you and your communities to benefit.

Let me close by saying two more things. In my opinion, the most serious domestic issue is still inflation. We cannot ignore the fact that all the programs that I have described to you have been carefully devised, not with a cornucopia of Federal funds pouring out in a wasteful fashion, but they've been devised with an emphasis on the utmost efficiency. We haven't been stingy, but we've been careful and cautious. And you have helped us to do it.

I don't intend to waste any money, but I need your support to help me hold down the inflation rate because it's so difficult to do. There are some basic problems. One is to cut down the Federal deficit. We've already slashed it $50 billion since I've been President. We've reduced the Federal deficit 75 percent. As a portion of the gross national product, when I ran for President and was elected, it was about roughly 4 1/2 percent of the gross national product, was the Federal deficit. Now we've got it down to 6/10 of 1 percent, and I'm aiming for a balanced budget. And everything that I've described to you in the past, that we have done already, has been done within those severe budget restraints. And I think in the longrun it's much better for you to do it this way than for us to be overly generous in allocating additional Federal moneys. But I hope that you will help me to impress among the people that you represent that the holding of the inflation rate down is the most serious problem. It has not just come on us. It's been on us for 10 years. We're not going to get rid of it overnight. There are no ways to avoid disappointing particular constituency groups as we deal with the inflation rate.

We're trying to get Government regulation minimized—to get the Federal Government's nose out of the free enterprise system and off the backs of the private citizens of our country is a very important commitment. We've done it already in some areas. We've cut paperwork already 15 percent, which is an enormous amount of person-years required to fill out Federal forms. And we have also, as you know, deregulated the airline industry. We're trying now to do the same thing with trucking, rail, communication, finance.

If we are successful, the consumers of America will benefit greatly, and the inflationary results from excessive Government regulation will be reduced substantially. But I tell you that every one of those parts of our economic life that I am sure opposed regulation to begin with, now cling to it because they are getting an unwarranted benefit from Government protection at the expense of competition and at the expense of the consumers.

We obviously have a need for longrange correction of our lowering rate of increase of productivity. Our country is still, perhaps, the most productive nation on Earth, but the productivity hasn't been growing as much as it should; and longrange commitments to research and development are extremely important for us. Building up more savings is also important.

There is no way we can spend our way out of inflation, and there's no way we can wish our way out of inflation. There's no way we can complain our way out of inflation. The only way we can do it is to work our way out of it, and we can't expect an overnight miracle. There are no easy answers. The inflation pressures are on every single nation on Earth, very, very severe inflationary pressures on every nation on Earth. I'm not trying to lay the blame anywhere else, but I am going to do all I can to hold down the inflation rate, and I need for you to help me.

And the last point I want to ask you to do is to help me with the foreign policy of our country.

Our Nation has been through a time of extreme challenge and trial, and I think we have performed well. I've been extremely grateful at the spirit of commitment and unity and also the spirit of compassion and concern.

The capturing of 50 American hostages, innocent people, by terrorists or kidnapers has aroused the finest elements of the American spirit. America has been brought to its knees by this incident, not in submission but in prayer. And I've been impressed with the difference between our country and the Soviet Union. Just to think that 220 million Americans, blessed in every possible way, have become almost completely obsessed with concern and hope about just 50 people. It shows that our commitment to human rights is not just a theory and that we haven't lost the basic elements that make us proud of this country in which we live.

And not too far from Iran there's a little country named Afghanistan—proud, independent. They haven't been subjugated completely in 2,000 years; deeply religious. And they are being ground under an enormous military power with loss of life, executions, powerful Soviet troops fighting against the soldiers of Afghanistan, trying to stamp out freedom. It shows a vivid difference between our two countries.

In international affairs and in domestic affairs, I don't claim any infallibility. Everybody, including mayors even, don't claim and cannot claim to know all of the answers. But I think you all agree that with a spirit of common commitment and courage and tenacity and unity and high hopes and expectations and the maintenance of those standards of life that never change, we can prevail over the most difficult of obstacles. That's what makes me proud of you, and that's what makes me proud of this country.