I am going to be here for a while. Well, it is wonderful to be in Alaska. And I look forward to spending some quality time here. And I have gotten such a wonderful welcome all across the State, so I want to thank all of you. I want to acknowledge the presence of our Lieutenant Governor here-thank you so much, Byron Mallott. Sometimes, you get some hecklers. I did have my team look into what other Presidents have done when they visited Alaska. I am not the first President to come to Alaska. Warren Harding spent more than 2 weeks here, which I would love to do. But I cannot leave Congress alone that long. When FDR visited-Franklin Delano Roosevelt-his opponents started a rumor that he left his dog Fala on the Aleutian Islands and spent 20 million taxpayer dollars to send a destroyer to pick him up. Now, I am astonished that anybody would make something up about a President. But FDR did not take it lying down. I do not resent attacks, and my family does not resent attacks. But Fala does resent attacks. President Carter did some fishing when he visited. And I would not mind coming back to Alaska to do some fly fishing someday. You cannot see Alaska in 3 days. I may not be President anymore, but hopefully, I still get a pretty good reception. I am going to-the. And just in case, I will bring Michelle, who I know will get a good reception. In fact, on Monday, Governor Walker and Byron personally gave me a fishing license. But there is one thing no American President has done before, and that is travel above the Arctic Circle. So I could not be prouder to be the first and to spend some time with all of you. Before I begin my remarks, I want to thank our veterans who are in the audience, because we have so many Alaska Natives who serve our country and defend us. And in fact, I have met some World War II vets and Korean war vets. And we want to make sure that they know how much we appreciate everything that they have done on our behalf. So we appreciate them very much. And I want to thank everybody in Kotzebue for something else, which is taking such good care of my team over the past week. I know that when I come to town there are a lot of people who come first, and it is a big footprint.

Remarks at Kotzebue Middle High School in Kotzebue, Alaska


But all of them have told me incredible stories of your kindness. I heard that you stuffed them full of all kinds of meat at Cariboufest. John Baker, who was the winner of the 2011 Iditarod, let them play with his Husky puppies. I heard about offers to go berry picking on the tundra, last night's cultural night. And I heard that you are even teaching them some Iupiaq. They are probably a little better than me. But the teams that advance my trip, they spend a lot of time far away from home. They do great work. Most of them are really young people. So I just want to say thank you to all of you for making them feel so at home even when they are 4,000 miles away. So I have had a great week here in Alaska. the Great One, Denali. We restored its Alaska Native name. I know that it is been a long time coming for Alaskans. I have had a chance to sit in the cockpit of a floatplane. But the Secret Service did not let me fly it. I still enjoyed it. We had a chance to hike to the Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. I went out on Resurrection Bay and saw dolphins and a humpback whale and otters and puffins. And in Dillingham, just earlier today, I watched Alaska Native fishermen bring in their salmon catch and a tribal elder prepare it in the traditional way. I had a chance to visit a middle school where Alaska Native youth performed a traditional Yup'ik dance. It is on video. So the warmth and hospitality has been incredible, and I am so grateful for it. We talk a lot about the pioneering, independent spirit of America. It is something that we are very proud of as Americans. But what is clear is that, up here, it is not just a spirit, it is not just a slogan, it is a way of life. The-and it is out of necessity. You cannot just drive down to the shopping mall to get what you need. Help, if you need it, is a long way away. This far north, everybody has to look out for each other. And even with all those efforts, there is still isolation, and there is poverty, and it can be harsh. And that means that you depend on each other. Now, I grew up in Hawaii, which obviously, the weather is a little different.


And I know you have the same spirit here, the notion that we are all in this together. And that is all the more profound in a place above the Arctic Circle. We know that Alaska is big, and sometimes, I have to describe for people in the lower 48, if you dropped it on the lower 48, it would stretch from Florida to California, from the Dakotas to Texas. So the people of Alaska can be just as different as all the differences that exist across America. But even though we all look different and come from different places and believe in different things, we all stand united around some similar values. We all want a chance at opportunity. We all want to be able to pass down our traditions and our culture and our language to our kids. We all want the same chance at the American Dream as everybody else. We believe that every community deserves access to great jobs. And that is why, to boost commerce in the Arctic and to maintain America's status as an Arctic power, we have called for the accelerated replacement of the Coast Guard's heavy-duty icebreaker, and we are planning for construction of more icebreakers. And I am urging Congress to make sure we have got the resources to do this. To boost tourism, I am asking Congress to speed up maintenance and modernization of our national parks in time for the centennial next year, including right here in Alaska. We believe every child deserves a shot at a great education. One of the initiatives I am proudest of is something we call ConnectEd, and it is a program we started to close the technology gaps in our schools and connect 99 percent of America's students to high-speed Internet by the year 2018. And if you want to see the difference this can make in a child's life, look at Nanwalek, on Alaska's southern coast. Like a lot of Alaskan communities, you can only get there by boat or by plane. But today, with the help of Apple, all 80 of its students, most of whom are Native-Alaska Natives, now learn in classrooms with fast Internet and iPads and digital content. Most of these kids do not have Internet at home. But in the classroom, they have got the tools to compete with any child around the world. And I know you are taking advantage of this program here in Kotzebue, with wireless Internet and 3-D printing. And that is great, because that is what we want for all these kids.


We want nothing less than the best. And as President, one of the reasons I am here is to tell you that I am behind those efforts. I want to make sure these young people know we care about them and we are fighting for them. We believe every American deserves access to quality, affordable health care. And since I signed the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare--we signed it 5 years ago-since then, 16 million Americans have gotten covered. More than 18,000 Alaskans have been able to purchase private plans through healthcare.gov. Thanks to the leadership of Governor Walker and Lieutenant Governor Mallott, another 17,000 are projected to gain access to health insurance under Medicaid next year. So we appreciate that. And that means more Alaskans can get things like mammograms and physicals. It will save this State an estimated $20 million in costs of care for people who cannot afford to pay for it. So it is going to make a difference. We also believe in being good stewards of our land and our planet for the next generation. And that is what I want to spend the rest of my time talking about. One of the reasons I came up here is to really focus on what is probably the biggest challenge our planet faces. If there is one thing that threatens opportunity and prosperity for everybody, wherever we live, it is the threat of a changing climate. I do not need to tell people here in Alaska what is happening. And over the past few years, I have been trying to make the rest of the country more aware of a changing climate, but you are already living it. You have got longer, more dangerous fire seasons in Alaska, thawing permafrost that threatens homes and infrastructure. Melting sea ice that contributes to some of the fastest coastal erosion in the world. I met Alaska Natives whose way of life that they have practiced for centuries is in danger of slipping away. On Monday, one Alaska Native woman told me she does not want her way of life to go on the endangered species list. And I have talked with folks whose villages are literally in danger of slipping away. So on my way here, I flew over the island of Kivalina, which is already receding into the ocean. That is what Millie was talking about. Waves sweep across the entire island at times, from one side clear across the other.


And for many of those Alaskans, it is no longer a question of if they are going to relocate, but when. If another country threatened to wipe out an American town, we'd do everything in our power to protect it. Well, climate change poses the same threat right now. And that is why I care so deeply about this. If we do nothing, temperatures in Alaska are projected to rise between 6 and 12 degrees by the end of the century. That means more melting, more fires, more erosion, more thawing of the permafrost, more warming after that. And it threatens all of us with hardship, not just people up north. There are not many other places in America that have to deal with those questions right now. And that is why, over the past 6 years, we have been working to do something about it. We are the number-one producer of oil and gas. But we are transitioning away from energy that creates the carbon that is warming the planet and threatening our health and our environment, and we are going all in on clean, renewable energy sources like wind and solar. And Alaska has the natural resources to be a global leader in this effort. America right now harnesses three times as much electricity from the wind and 20 times as much from the sun as we did back in 2008. That is how much progress we have already made. And Alaskans now lead the world in the development of hybrid wind energy systems for remote grids, which help, obviously, villages that are not hooked up to a big power grid. And you are expanding your solar and biomass resources. So Kodiak Island, for example, recently achieved 99.7 percent of its electricity from renewable sources. Its wind power alone displaces more than 2 million gallons of diesel fuel every year. So people are saving money and helping the environment. And today Kodiak Island announced a $3 million public-private partnership that will make the island the first in the world to adopt new technology that lets it stabilize and store the energy it generates from the wind. And I know you guys have started putting up solar panels and wind turbines around Kotzebue. And because energy costs are pretty severe up here, for remote Alaskan communities, one of the biggest problems is high energy costs. So we are going to deploy more new clean energy projects on Native lands, and that is going to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, promote new jobs and new growth in your communities.


in our buildings, in our cars, our trucks, our homes, our appliances. And all that saves billions of dollars for consumers along the way. So more than 15,000 Alaska homeowners have cut their energy bills by 30 percent on average, and that saves folks here in Alaska more than $50 million a year. Anchorage became the first city in the world to replace more than a quarter of its roadway lighting with LED lighting, and that saves the city $260,000 a year, cuts its energy consumption from lighting by nearly 60 percent. In the town of Tok, the school district replaced its expensive diesel heating and power systems with one fueled by biomass; saved enough money to rehire the counselor, the music teacher, and the boiler operator. And last month, I announced the first set of nationwide standards to end the limitless carbon emissions from our power plants. And that is the most important step we have ever taken on climate change. So the good news is, we have made a lot of progress in the last 6 years. But I am here to tell you we have got to do more. And for the sake of our kids, we have got to keep going. America has to lead the world in transitioning to a clean energy economy. Now, as we make this transition, we have also got to take more seriously our obligation to help those communities that are already at risk so that they can become more resilient in the face of climate change. Because some of it we are not going to be able to avoid. And so communities are already going to be affected, and that is especially pressing here in Alaska. And that is why today I am announcing that the Denali Commission will serve as a central coordinator in building what we call climate resilience, helping people adapt. And this is going to cut through bureaucracy and redtape, frees up communities like yours to develop and implement solutions for events like coastal erosion and flooding, and permafrost degradation. And the Denali Commission is also committing $2 million to support voluntary relocation efforts for vulnerable rural communities. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is going to consult with Arctic coastal tribes, on a nation-to-nation basis, on your unique needs. And we are also going to help communities build more resilient infrastructure. We should see if we can invest in communities before the disaster strikes to prevent it.


So today we are announcing more than $17 million in USDA rural water grants for infrastructure projects in remote Alaskan communities, including one right here in Kotzebue. And we are launching a new competition to support cutting-edge energy efficiency solutions. So the Department of Energy is going to offer technical assistance and advice. If your communities come up with the best strategy for sustainable, efficient energy that is tailored for your community, you are going to get Federal support to make your plans a reality. And to help Alaskans better plan for sustainable development, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and the National Science Foundation are leading a public-private collaboration to create the first-ever publicly available, high-resolution, satellite-based elevation map of Alaska by next year and the entire Arctic by the year after that so that we know exactly what is taking place all across this great State. So before we came up here, we had a conference down in Anchorage, not just with Americans but from-leaders from around the world. And I told them that when it comes to climate change, there is such a thing as being too late. And you know this better than anybody. I want you to know, as your President, I am here to make sure that you get the support that you need. But we should be optimistic about what can be accomplished, because there is nothing that we cannot do if we work together. America is full of dreamers. We push new frontiers by choice. Whether we live in the Arctic Circle or on the Hawaiian Islands, whether we are in big cities or small towns, we are one people. And our future is only as good as the efforts that we put into it. But when people are determined and hopeful and generous, as the people here in Kotzebue are, it makes me optimistic. It tells me that this country's best days are still ahead. So I want to thank all of you. I especially want to thank the young people for being here today. God bless you. God bless the United States of America.


You have come here this afternoon for something more than a mere formality. This structure is worthy to rank among the foremost of the Capital's architectural achievements; and you and I have gathered here to pay tribute to the beauty and dignity of line and form wrought by those who conceived and executed this building. But we are conscious of a larger meaning in this brief ceremony, of the role that the Federal Reserve plays in the broad purpose which this Government must serve. That purpose is to gain for all of our people the greatest attainable measure of economic well-being, the largest degree of economic security and stability. It cannot be attained by that System alone, but neither can it be reached without the proper functioning of our monetary and credit machinery. That machinery must be steadily perfected and coordinated with all other instruments of Government in order to promote the most productive utilization of our human and material resources. Only in that way can we hope to achieve and maintain an enduring prosperity, free from the disastrous extremes of booms and depressions. Only in that way can our economic system and our democratic institutions endure hand in hand. Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since the Federal Reserve System was established. Its creation, out of the nation's banking experience from the beginning of the Republic, was due to the statesmanship of President Wilson, and to the courageous leadership in the Congress for which the Senior Senator from Virginia, Carter Glass, will always deserve the Nation's gratitude. It is fitting that President Wilson's portrait in bronze should have the place of honor in the main entrance to this building. And it is appropriate that the words inscribed under it should be taken from his first inaugural address. We shall deal with our economic system as it is and as it may be modified, not as it might be if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon; and step by step we shall make it what it should be. Those penetrating words admirably apply to our banking system, which must be constantly alert to changing conditions in order that it may be prepared to adapt itself to the growing and changing needs of our people in their daily life and work. The Federal Reserve System, as it was originally established, was adapted to the pre-war world and brought about a great improvement in the money system. Steps were taken in 1917 to adapt it to the urgent necessities of a war-ridden world.

Address at the Opening of the New Federal Reserve Building.


In mobilizing the country's gold reserves and in facilitating the Government's vast financing operations, the Reserve System performed a vital role in the winning of that war. It is clear now, in retrospect, that if further changes to meet post-war conditions had been made in our banking system in the 2920's, it would have been in a far better position to moderate the forces that brought about the great depression. But from the end of the war until we were in the midst of economic collapse a decade later, no changes were made in the banking structure to make it function more effectively in the public interest. Since that time the nation has done much to improve its banking system. It must continue step by step to make the banking system what it should be. We must not complacently suppose that we have achieved perfection. We have provided for the insurance of deposits for the benefit of the great mass of small depositors. By the Banking and Security Exchange Acts of 2933,1934 and 1935, the Federal Reserve System was given increased power to improve banking conditions and to aid the Government in combating practices which were evil in their results. Those powers have been concentrated to a greater degree than before in a single public body, so that they can be used promptly and effectively in accordance with the changing needs of the country. 1937 is not 1913; nor do we want to turn the hands of the clock back. The Federal Reserve System, tested by nearly. a quarter of a century of operation, is a public institution capable of adaptation to future, as it has been to past needs and conditions. It is a piece of machinery vital to the Nation's steady progress towards the goal of a sounder banking system capable of contributing its full share to lasting economic progress and well-being. The Board of Governors, whose building we are dedicating today, was reconstituted by the Banking Act of 1935. To this public body the Congress has entrusted broad powers which enable it to affect the volume and the cost of money, thus exerting a powerful influence upon the expansion and contraction in the flow of money through the channels of agriculture, trade and industry. In this way much can be done towards the maintenance of more stable employment. Much can be done to aid in achieving greater stability of the true value of the dollar. By their nature these important powers are of public concern and the responsibility for their exercise is properly vested in a public body.


I stand before you in this house, the seat of one of the world's greatest legislatures, with feelings of profound friendship and respect. I bring with me the warm greetings and good wishes of the people of the second largest democracy on Earth, the United States of America, to the people of the largest democracy, the Republic of India. Not long ago, both of our people's governments passed through grave crises. In different ways, the values for which so many have lived and died were threatened. In different ways, and on opposite sides of the world, these values have now been triumphant. It is sometimes argued that the modern industrial state with its materialism, its centralized bureaucracies, and the technological instruments of control available to those who hold power must inevitably lose sight of the democratic ideal. There are those who say that democracy is a kind of rich man's plaything, and that the poor are too pre occupied with survival to care about the luxury of freedom and the right to choose their own government. This argument is repeated all over the world mostly, I have noticed, by persons whose own bellies are full and who speak from positions of privilege and power in their own societies. Their argument reminds me of a statement made by a great President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln. He said, Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally. The evidence, both in India and in America, is plain. It is that there is more than one form of hunger, and neither the rich nor the poor will feel satisfied without being fed in body and in spirit. Is human freedom valued by all people? India has given her affirmative action and answer in a thunderous voice, a voice heard around the world. Something momentous happened here last March not because any party in particular won or lost, but rather, I think, because the largest electorate on Earth freely and wisely chose its leaders at the polls. In this sense, democracy itself was the victor in your country. Together, we understand that in the field of politics, freedom is the engine of progress. India and America share practical experience with democracy. We in the United States are proud of having achieved political union among a people whose ancestors come from all over the world. Our system strives to respect the rights of a great variety of minorities, including, by the way, a growing and productive group of families from your own country, India.

New Delhi, India Remarks Before the Indian Parliament.


But the challenge of political union is even greater here in your own country. In the diversity of languages, religions, political opinions, and racial and cultural groups, India is comparable to the continent of Europe, which has a total population about the same size as your own. Yet India has forged her vast mosaic of humanity into a single great nation that has weathered many challenges to survival both as a nation and as a democracy. This is surely one of the greatest political achievements of this century or any other century. India and the United States are at one in recognizing the right of free speech-which Mahatma Gandhi called the foundation-stone of Swaraj or self-government and the rights of academic freedom, trade union organization, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion. All these rights are recognized in international covenants. There are few governments which do not at least pay lip service to them. And yet, to quote Gandhi once more, No principle exists in the abstract. Without its concrete application it has no meaning. In India, as in the United States, these rights do have concrete application, and they have real meaning, too. It is to preserve these rights that both our nations have chosen similar political paths to the development of our resources and to the betterment of the life of our people. There are differences between us in the degree to which economic growth is pursued through public enterprise on one hand and private enterprise on the other hand. But more important than these differences is our shared belief that the political structure in which development takes place should be democratic and should respect the human rights of each and every citizen in our countries. Our two nations also agree that human needs are inseparable from human rights; that while civil and political liberties are good in themselves, they are much more useful and much more meaningful in the lives of people to whom physical survival is not a matter of daily anxiety. To meet these ends orderly economic growth is crucial. And if the benefits of growth are to reach those whose need is greatest, social justice is critical as well. India is succeeding in this historic task. Your economic challenges are no secret, and their seriousness is well understood in the West. But what is far less well understood is the degree to which Indian social and economic policy has been such a success. In the single generation since your independence was gained, extraordinary progress has been made. Your economy ranks among the 10 largest in the whole world.


You are virtually self-assured and self-sufficient in consumer goods and in a wide variety of other products, such as iron and steel. There have been notable increases in production in nearly every important sector of your economy increases which reflect an economy of great technological sophistication. This kind of growth is doubly important to try to reduce trade barriers and to promote both bilateral trade and mutual responsibility for the whole world's trading system. But most important are the advances in human welfare that have touched the lives of ordinary Indians. Life expectancy has increased by 20 years since your independence. The threat of major epidemics has receded. The literacy rate in your country has doubled. While only a third of Indian children went to school in the years just after independence,. nearly 90 percent of primary-age Indian children now receive schooling. Nine times as many students go to universities as they did before. I mention these gains that we tend to overlook in our preoccupation with the problems that quite properly face and engage our attention. India's difficulties, which we often experience ourselves and which are typical of the problems faced in the developing world, remind us of the task which lie ahead. But India's successes are just as important, because they decisively refute the theory that in order to achieve economic and social progress, a developing country must accept an authoritarian or a totalitarian government, with all the damage to the health of the human spirit which comes with it. We are eager to join with you in maintaining and improving our valuable and mature partnership of political and economic cooperation. It is a sobering fact, for instance, that in a nation of so many hundreds of millions of people, only a few American business leaders are now involved, on a daily basis, in the economic and commercial life of your country. We need to identify more areas where we can work together for mutual benefit and, indeed, for the benefit of the whole world. In the area of development, I am deeply impressed with the creative direction that the Government of India has taken in the new economic statement. You have committed your nation unequivocally to rural improvement and the creation of rural employment. This policy now faces a test of implementation and, especially, the test of bringing its benefits to the very poorest areas of your rural population. The seriousness and the determination, however, of your commitment is a cause for optimism. We want to learn from you and to work with you however we can.


In agriculture, there are also exciting new areas of technology on which we can work together. After a decade of importing grain, India now stands with a surplus of nearly 20 million tons. This is a tribute to the growing productivity of your agriculture and the competence, also, of your administrative services. We applaud the grain reserve program that you have begun, and we would welcome the opportunity to share with you our resources and our experience in dealing with storage problems that surpluses bring with them. Our countries must be in the forefront of the effort to bring into existence the international food reserve that would mitigate the fear of famine in the rest of the world. At the same time, we must recognize that today's surpluses are likely to be a temporary phenomenon. The best estimates indicate that unless new productive capacity is developed, the whole world with its rapidly growing population may be facing large food shortages in the mid-1980's. The greatest opportunities to increase agricultural productivity exist here in India and elsewhere in the developing world. These opportunities must be seized not just so that Indians can eat better, but so that India can remain self-sufficient and, perhaps, even continue to export food to countries with less agricultural potential than you have. In the past, America and India have scored monumental achievements in working together in the agricultural field. I would like to see an intensified agricultural research program aimed both at improving productivity in India and at developing processes that could then be used elsewhere. This program could be based in the agricultural universities of our two countries, but would also extend across the whole frontier of research. And beyond research, I would like to identify joint development projects where research can be tested and put to work. Perhaps Prime Minister Desai and I may now instruct our governments to focus on these matters and to come up with specific proposals within the next few months. One of the most promising areas for international cooperation, which I have already discussed with your Prime Minister, is in the regions of eastern India and Bangladesh, where alternating periods of drought and flood cut cruelly into food production. Several hundred million people live in this area. They happen to be citizens of India, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Great progress has already been made between your nations in resolving questions concerning water.


And we are prepared to give our support when the regional states request a study that will define how the international community, in cooperation with the nations of South Asia, can help the peoples of this area use water from the rivers and the mountains to achieve the productivity that is inherent in the land and the people. Sustained economic growth requires a strong base in energy as well as in agriculture. Energy is a serious problem in both our countries, for both of us import oil at levels that can threaten our economic health and expose us, even, to danger if supplies are interrupted. American firms are already working with Indians in developing the oil-producing area off the shores of India, near Bombay. We also have a long record of cooperation in the development of nuclear power, another important element of India's energy plans. Our work together will continue in this field, as well. But Prime Minister Desai and I had warm and productive discussions about this field. We have notified him that shipments of nuclear fuel will be made for the Tarapur reactor. And because of an accident that did occur in your heavy water production plant, we will make available to India, also, supplies from our reserves of heavy water. Additionally, we stand ready to work with you in developing renewable energy resources, especially solar energy. And the lack of a massive, existing infrastructure tied to fossil fuel use will make the application of solar and solar-related energy vastly easier here than it will be in my own country, where we are so heavily dependent upon other sources of energy. However, the inherently decentralized nature of solar energy makes it ideal as a complement to your government's stress on developing self-reliant villages and communities. The silent void of space may seem remote from these challenges. But the intricate electronics of a space satellite can be as useful to earthbound farmers as a new plow. The Indian and American Governments will tomorrow exchange diplomatic notes confirming that the United States will program its Landsat Earth resources satellite to transmit data directly to a ground receiving station that India will own and operate. This satellite service will provide India with comprehensive topographic and minerals information and timely data on the ever-changing condition of weather, agricultural, water, and other natural resources. Under the terms of the agreement, India will make available to neighboring countries any information that affects them. Also, India has already reserved space on board the American space shuttle in 1981 to initiate a domestic communications satellite system, using a satellite designed to Indian specifications.


We are very pleased that our space technology, together with India's superb space communications capability, will serve the cause of practical progress in your country. Our scholarly exchanges have already enriched the lives of Americans who participated in them. And I hope the same has been true of Indian participants. In matters of culture and the arts, we know how much we have to gain. Not only India but also the rest of Asia and Africa and the Middle East have much to offer us. I hope to expand the opportunities for our own citizens to appreciate and to enjoy the strong and varied culture in the nations of your part of the world. In global politics, history has cast our countries in different roles. The United States is one of the so-called super powers; India is the largest of the nonaligned countries. But each of us respects the other's conception of its international responsibilities, and the values that we do share provide a basis for cooperation in attacking the great global problems of economic justice, human rights, and the prevention of war. This pursuit of justice and peace and the building of a new economic order must be undertaken in ways that promote constructive development rather than fruitless confrontation. Because India is both a developing country and also an industrial power, you are in a unique position to promote constructive international discussion about trade, energy, investment, balance of payments, technology, and other questions. I welcome your playing this worldwide leadership role. I know that there will be times when we will disagree on specific issues and even on general approaches to larger problems. But I hope and believe that our shared interests and our common devotion to democratic values will help us to move toward agreement on important global and bilateral issues. But neither of us seeks to align with the other except in the pursuit of peace and justice. We can even help each other to alleviate differences which might exist between ourselves and other nations. Our two countries are part of a democratic world that includes nations in all stages of development, from Sweden and Japan to Sri Lanka and Costa Rica. We share many common problems. But we also share an obligation to advance human rights not by interfering in the affairs of other nations, not by trying to deny other nations the right to choose their own political and social system, but by speaking the truth as we see it and by providing an admirable example of what democracy can mean and what it can accomplish.


The danger of war threatens everyone, and the United States is trying to help reduce that danger in the SALT negotiations with the Soviet Union, in talks aimed at a comprehensive ban of the testing of all nuclear explosives anywhere on Earth, and in our own policy of restraint on conventional arms transfers. We are also working hard to restrict the proliferation of nuclear explosives. We are seeking to help the process of peace in Africa and the Middle East. And we are taking steps to forestall, along with the Soviets, great power rivalry and the escalation of military presence in your own Indian Ocean. India is pledged to peaceful cooperation with your neighbors, and India is an important part of almost any United Nations peacekeeping force. India is a present and frequent member of the Security Council and has been in the forefront of campaigns against colonialism and against apartheid. The motto of my country is In God We Trust; India's is Satyameva Jayte- Truth Alone Prevails. I believe that such is the commonality of our fundamental values that your motto could be ours, and perhaps our motto could also be yours. Our nations share the goals of peace in the world and human development in our own societies. And we share, as well, the conviction that the means that we employ to reach these goals must be as much in keeping with the principles of freedom and human dignity and social justice as are the goals themselves. This affinity of belief is as strong a tie as there can be between any two nations on Earth. The values that Americans and Indians share have deeply affected my own life. I come to you as a national leader, yes, in the hope that my visit will mark a new and a higher stage in the steadily improving relations between our two countries. But in a more personal sense a sense that is very close to my own heart I come also as a pilgrim. This morning I had the honor of laying a wreath on the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi. In that sacred place, so simple and so serene, I recalled anew the ways in which Gandhi's teachings have touched the lives of so many millions of people in my own country. When I was growing up on a farm in the State of Georgia, in the heart of the Southern United States, an invisible wall of racial segregation stood between me and my black classmates, schoolmates, playmates, when we were old enough to know what segregation was. But it seemed then as if that wall between us would exist forever.


And though the rubble has not yet been completely removed, it no longer separates us from one another, blighting the lives of those on both sides of it. Among the many who marched and suffered and bore witness against the evil of racial prejudice, the greatest was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was a son of Georgia and a spiritual son of Mahatma Gandhi. The most important influence in the life and work of Dr. King, apart from his own religious faith, was the life and work of Gandhi. Martin Luther King took Gandhi's concepts of nonviolence and truth-force and put them to work in the American South. Like Gandhi, King believed that truth and love are the strongest forces in the universe. Like Gandhi, he knew that ordinary people, armed only with courage and faith, could overcome injustice by appealing to the spark of good in the heart, even, of the evil-doer. Like Gandhi, we all learned that a system of oppression damages those at the top as surely as it does those at the bottom. And for Martin Luther King, like Mahatma Gandhi, nonviolence was not only a political method, it was a way of life and a spiritual path to union with the ultimate. These men set a standard of courage and idealism that few of us can meet, but from which all of us can draw inspiration and sustenance. The nonviolent movement for racial justice in the United States, a movement inspired in large measure by the teachings and examples of Gandhi and other Indian leaders some of whom are here today changed and enriched my own life and the lives of many millions of my countrymen. I am sure you will forgive me for speaking about this at some length. I do so because I want you all to understand that when I speak of friendship between the United States and India, I speak from the heart as well as the head. I speak from a deep, firsthand knowledge of what the relationship between our two countries has meant in the past and how much more, even, it can mean for all of us in the future. how our political and spiritual values can provide the basis for dealing with the social and economic strains to which they will unquestionably be subjected. The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent, and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity. We share that experience with you, and we draw strength from it.


We are about to mark an important anniversary, but it'll be no cause for celebration. Eight years ago tomorrow, the Sandinista Communists came to power in the Central American country of Nicaragua. It may be hard to remember now, the great hopes with which their revolution was first greeted. The hated dictator Anastasio Somoza had been toppled, and the world looked forward to a bright future for Nicaragua. Little did we think then that the future the Sandinistas were planning for Nicaragua would be darker than anything that suffering country had ever before experienced. The Sandinistas spelled out their plans for subversion and aggression throughout Central America in the secret, but now notorious, 72-Hour Document, and it was not long before they started carrying them out. Arms shipments began flowing to the Communist guerrillas throughout Latin America-in El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, and other countries. closing churches and extinguishing the free press . The ranks of political prisoners swelled into the thousands, and beatings, torture, and official murder became the order of the day. Meanwhile, the Sandinistas began a campaign of slaughter against the peaceful Miskito Indians. One in every ten Nicaraguans is now a refugee-leaving home, family, and friends to escape the oppression inside that country. If the Sandinistas get their way, the torment of that sad country will soon spread throughout the entire region, engulfing the young democracies that surround Nicaragua. As I said in New York a few months ago, the democratic aspirations of millions in Central America now hang in the balance. The elected leaders of neighboring Central American countries know that until democracy comes to Nicaragua their own democracies will never be safe. free, fair, and regularly scheduled elections in Nicaragua, the establishment of a genuinely democratic system and all the freedoms such a system depends on and encourages-freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of worship. This is what the Nicaraguan freedom fighters are fighting for, and this is why we must support them. We have worked in many ways to counter the spread of communism in Central America and those nations I have mentioned that are threatened by Nicaragua. We have instituted economic assistance to the region, military assistance to threatened democracies, and, together with our Central American allies, vigorous efforts to negotiate a peaceful and democratic outcome. But we know from experience that the Sandinistas will never negotiate seriously unless they see that the freedom fighters are a force to be reckoned with.

Radio Address to the Nation on United States Assistance for the Nicaraguan Democratic Resistance


Gee, it is really great to be back in New Hampshire and particularly in Keene, and I thank you all very, very much. Let me assure you that New Hampshire is vitally important, and you can put us on the road to victory next Tuesday. Actually, the purpose of my visit can be summed up in just a very, very few words. I believe very strongly in a strong and prosperous American automobile industry, but I am here to say that this year there is absolutely no reason to trade in your Ford on a new model. Some of those new models might be mighty expensive. Actually, I am looking forward to your questions, but first let me make just a very few brief remarks. I have been ENTITY now for almost 19 months. When I took office in August of 1974, America was faced with some of its most pressing and serious problems in our country's history. Our economy had gone haywire with prices going up at an annual rate of more than 12 percent and everything else slowing down. Our national resolve to meet our international commitments was being called into question by both our allies and our adversaries. Underlying these serious problems was a crisis of confidence in our Government, a crisis of the spirit among our American people. With the understanding of the American people, with your prayers and your support and your help, I set about to do what I could to meet those challenges, to put America at peace with itself and throughout the world. The past 19 months have seen many of these efforts succeed. I believe my policy of common sense and a realistic approach to America's problems has helped restore confidence in our great Government. As I said on my first day as ENTITY, truth is the glue that holds government together, and as long as I am ENTITY, I intend to be forthright, candid, frank with all of the American people and make this system work the way it should work. The inflation rate that was over 12 percent has been cut almost in half. That is still not good enough, but that is progress by any standard and we are going to keep making that kind of progress in the months ahead with the right kind of policies that we are pursuing right now. We have recovered 2,100,000 jobs since last March. That is 96 percent of all the jobs that we lost during the recession. Unemployment is still too high, but we are headed in the right direction.

Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at a Public Forum in Keene.


The Commerce Department announced just yesterday that personal income has risen by 9.2 percent in the past year, well above the current inflation rate. That means real earnings, real purchasing power is climbing; that is good news for every American. We are on the attack, and we will stay on the attack and win this important victory over inflation and unemployment and every other economic enemy of the American people. In foreign affairs, we have pursued a policy of peace through strength. That policy has been successful, so successful that tonight we can say that America is at peace with every nation on Earth, and we will keep it that way in the future. We will keep it that way by keeping our defenses strong. As long as I am ENTITY, America's defenses will be strong and ready without equal in the world in which we live. Our strength makes it possible for us to negotiate with other great powers of the world from a position that commands their respect and invites their cooperation. We are now negotiating with the Soviet Union for a further reduction in the level of strategic nuclear arms, a reduction in the potential terror and destruction that each nation can inflict upon each other. We have entered these negotiations with our eyes open, our guard up, and our powder dry. Yankee traders have always known the score, and we continue in that great tradition in 1976. With our military strength we can strengthen peace and not return to the cold war. One way to reduce the dangers to peace in the world is to have a reliable, responsible, and effective intelligence-gathering capability. I have taken steps, as I am sure you know, to reorganize and reform America's intelligence community, to make it an instrument of peace and an object of pride for the American people. ability by destroying it, as some would like to (to. I have no intention of seeing the intelligence community dismantled, and I know you do not want it dismantled either. The irresponsible release of classified information by people who should know better must cease. The abuses of the past must be corrected and never, never repeated. I have made concrete recommendations to ensure that the intelligence community keeps out of politics and out of people's private lives. As ENTITY, I intend to see that the Federal Government is under the people's control and not the other way around. We must never forget that a government big enough to give us everything we want is a government big enough to take from us everything we have.


But the American people know that it is not enough to talk about the evils of big government. They know that it just is not realistic nor is it wise to turn back the clock and undo all the progress we have made with the help of responsible and constructive government programs. It is easy to say we ought to cut $90 billion or so from the Federal budget. It is easy to say we ought to toss a lot of very worthwhile programs into the laps of the individual States and let them administer those programs if the local taxpayers will assume the extra burden. It is easy to say that people who do not like the way the programs are administered in one State can just Vote with their feet and move to another State. I have always believed that Americans, Democrat or Republican, vote with their heads and not with their feet. Oh, it is easy to say that the Social Security Trust Fund upon which 32 million Americans---older and disabled in our society--that that trust fund should be invested in the stock market, making the Federal Government a major stockholder in most American businesses, but that is the best blueprint for back door socialism that I ever heard. I want to improve the social security system, not cripple it. I want to make sure that program is strong, sound, and certain, not only for the present generation of beneficiaries but for every generation of working men and women, and that is what I intend to do. I want to improve the Medicare system. I want better and more comprehensive medical coverage for our older citizens. There is absolutely no reason why older Americans or their loved ones should have to go broke just to get well or stay well in the United States of America. We have to be realistic about what the Government can do and what it cannot do, but we must also recognize that there are certain things that Government must do and do better if we are to continue the progress we have made in the past. We have a great, great country, and I am proud to be an American, and I am proud of America as you are. We have our problems, and we are not afraid to admit them. But I think it is high time people stopped running America down. We should brag about America. I think it is time we remembered that we are the most richly blessed nation in the history of the world. We have special gifts, special resources, and special responsibilities greater than any nation on Earth.


Governor Shapp, I am deeply grateful for your very kind and generous remarks. The Sun always shines in Pennsylvania. They came here in the snows of winter over a trail marked with the blood of their rag-bound feet. The iron forge that gave this place its name had been destroyed by the British when General Washington and his ragged Continental ENTITY encamped here exhausted, outnumbered, and short of everything except faith. We gather here today, the 200th anniversary of our independence, to commemorate their sacrifices even before we celebrate the glorious Declaration. Americans will remember the name of Valley Forge as long as the spirit of sacrifice lives within their hearts. Here the vein of iron in our national character was forged. In the 18th century the colonial American was far more free and far more prosperous than his European cousin. Englishmen regarded us with some envy as appropriate subjects to share their grinding tax burdens. After Concord Bridge and Breed's Hill, the British generals were impressed with our marksmanship and fighting spirit, but they still dismissed Washington's militiamen as a rabble of arms. Many years later, when he was 91, a veteran of Concord was interviewed and asked why he took up his rifle against his King. Well, then, what did all the fighting mean? We had always governed ourselves, and we always meant to. Without Jefferson's eloquence, those are the words of the American people's Declaration of Independence. That was the straight talk that brought some 11,000 ordinary Americans farmers, workers, tradesmen, and shopkeepers-into this valley of sacrifice in the bitter winter of 1777. They did not die amid the banners and the fearful sounds of battle. They weakened slowly and quietly succumbed to cold, sickness, and starvation. Yet their courage and suffering those who survived as well as those who fell-were no less meaningful than the sacrifices of those who manned the battlements of Boston and scaled the parapets of Yorktown. In the battle against despair, Washington and his men kept freedom's lonely vigil. The leader and the led drew strength and hope from one another. Around the winter campfires that dotted these fields, the flame of liberty was somehow kept burning. Something happened at Valley Forge. That ragged, starving ENTITY here emerged and changed in a way that can be sensed but never fully described. They suffered, they trained, they toughened, they buried their dead, and they stayed. They stuck it out.

Remarks in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania


When spring melted the snows and green returned to this beautiful countryside, a proud and disciplined fighting force marched out of this valley to victory, into the pages of history, unaware of the greatness they had done and oblivious of our gratitude. As Abraham Lincoln noted long afterwards at another sacred site in Pennsylvania, nothing we can say here today can further consecrate or hallow this ground. But we can rededicate ourselves to the spirit of sacrifice shown at Valley Forge, Gettysburg, the Argonne Forest, Anzio Beach, and Iwo Jima. Not all sacrifices are made in war. The sturdy wagon trains that have returned here, the wonderful people who drove them, and those along the way who rededicated themselves to the great principles of the Declaration of Independence offer heartwarming proof that our American adventure has just begun. Our Bicentennial is the happy birthday of all 50 States, a commonwealth, and self-governing territories. It is not just a celebration for the original Thirteen Colonies. Americans are one people, and we can still hear them saying, We have always governed ourselves, and we always mean to. The earliest English settlers carried the Bible and Blackstone's Commentary across the Atlantic among their few cherished possessions and established their own stir-governments on a strange and hostile coast. American families in prairie schooners like these took with them on the overland trails the principles of equality and the God-given rights of the Declaration of Independence. Their restless search for a better life was begun in the spirit of adventure, but it was the spirit of sacrifice that sustained them. They suffered cruel winters, savage attacks, blazing deserts, and bloody feet. Many were buried beside the trail, but many stuck it out, dug in, and built permanent settlements where women stood the same sentry duty as the men. In the West, the Declaration's promise of legal and political equality for women was first broadened. The American pioneers knew that in their wilderness homes they could not be colonials ruled by a distant government. They had assurance that in due course they could govern themselves as full citizens of equal States. Their children and future generations would have all the rights of Washington, Jackson, and Lincoln. Though prosperity is a good thing, though compassionate charity is a good thing, though institutional reform is a good thing, a nation survives only so long as the spirit of sacrifice and self-discipline is strong within its people. Freedom is always worth fighting for, and liberty ultimately belongs to those willing to suffer for it.

Remarks in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania


This meeting, insofar as it involves a talk from me, is sort of an added number on my schedule. I have no text, and I think I have no particularly brilliant ideas. But I must say that the great pleasure of meeting with a group of people that you know to be friendly, who wish well to you and to the cause for which you struggle, is a very warm feeling. And this inspires me to tell you a little bit of what we are trying to do, how truly simple it is, and therefore, to see whether we may not draw even a little closer together because of the simplicity of these ideas and, I think, the fact that we see all right-thinking Americans should be for, in general this kind of thing. Carter Glass once went to a great university. He was to receive an honorary degree of doctor of laws; and the dean of the law school, in presenting him to the president of the university, read a long citation. This citation had to deal largely, almost exclusively, with the long record of Carter Glass's integrity, his absolute unimpeachable honesty as a public servant throughout his life. It dwelt on this theme in numerous ways and I think even quoted examples. My friends, I think I should decline to receive this decoration, because if the time has come when the American people and their great institutions of learning find it proper or necessary or desirable to decorate a man and give him awards because he is honest in the public service, then I despair of the Republic. This, he said, is something you can demand of your public servants; you do not .have to reward them for it. You can demand it through the proper use of your authority as an American citizen, through the ballot box, and you can see that you get good men--honest men and women in government. ' ' We are very apt, when we speak about government in Washington, to think of some rather amorphous, distant, bewildering, comprehensive, complex thing. We do not really know what we mean when we say government. We realize there is a President up there, and a few leaders in the Senate and the House, and we sort of have them visualized; and the rest of it is just a bunch of bureaucrats. government is nothing in the world but men and women that you select and send to fill the several offices.

Remarks at the Breakfast in Los Angeles Given by Republican Groups of Southern California


Now of course, there is an organization roughly outlined by a Constitution, and more crystallized through our laws as the decades have gone on. But the only thing that comprises government is men and women. Now those men and women, therefore, must be the people that you carefully select. Frankly, that is all that the administration that you people have sent to Washington is trying to do. what is the good of 160 million people? That must be, of course, the purpose in their hearts, but take a look at their heads. You have to send people who are, by their reputations in their own localities, fitted to tackle such complex jobs as now plague a government. They have to be men that have established some success. And you have got to work out in your own mind, What kind of man do I believe is a good Senator, a good Congressman, a good Governor? Incidentally, may I pause to say, you have so many good ones in California, you seem to know more about this, maybe, than I do. we must not have doctrinaires. We outlined, through our forefathers, a great set of principles in the Constitution, and that Constitution--through our Supreme Courts, through actions of the Congress and the Chief Executive down through the years--has been molded and modeled to our needs. It is just as senseless, today, to talk about the social security of today in the same terms we would have talked about social security when there were free lands everywhere, and this country was a debtor country with great assets and resources yet to be explored, as it is to talk about taking off here and flying to the moon, instead of waiting for the 50 years that it is going to take for the scientists to show how to do it. It is just that silly, to talk about going back to that kind of thing. Now, how do we get a man that is that flexible, that adjustable? We want men that can take and listen to facts, who are not so doctrinaire that every fact that is brought in front of them, if it does not agree with their preconceptions, it is just thrown out in the woodpile. And I want to assure you that in the last 20 months I have watched some very great people making up the executive department--I have watched them work.


I do not know of a single one who comes in with the theory--into the Cabinet meeting, or anywhere else--and with this theory fixed in the back of his mind forces everything to conform to it. On the contrary, every one of them is supported by his own selected group of associates, of advisers throughout this country--from trade associations, from every kind of professional group, from businessmen--everywhere. Those people are the ones that come in and help formulate the policies that this group then tries to translate into recommendations for the legislature to consider. that throughout the ten governmental departments, through the heads of agencies, of the FOA, and the Office of Defense Mobilization, and everything else, there is a very earnest attempt on the part of these people to get the opinion of the United States. There is a very great conviction there that the commonsense of the United States--if we avoid both extremes, and take the commonsense judgment of the United States, you have got a pretty good guide as to where we should move in legislation and in programs. I commend, therefore, the kind of man whom you know to be absolutely unimpeachable in his honesty, who has shown by his standing in the community that he deserves the respect of that community, and who has been something of a success, either as a young man or at any stage of life. And finally, a man who has got the flexibility of brain, in this day and time, to try to adjust the basic principles in which we believe, the liberty of the individual and his rights, and adjust to the problems that face us every day, whether it be in Indochina, Formosa, or whether it be right here in your great city of Los Angeles. That is the kind of people that we need so desperately in Washington. And I think that you people who helped to send this administration there, if you will look at the character and types of people now occupying the executive positions, all the way from the Secretary of State on down to the newest appointee, that you can take some pride in the people that have been selected. And largely, after the Cabinet is selected, remember, all these other people are selected by those Cabinet officers. This same applies, of course, in the Congress, by their very nature being so representative.


Our leaders--particularly Senator Knowland and his senior associates in the Senate, Joe Martin and the great Charlie Halleck, a very great lieutenant, their associates in the House--are really doing a remarkable job. So, as we face this coming election, recognizing as we do that if you are going ahead with a positive program--and I am not going to take up your time this morning to outline this program again; it has been recited time and again in the newspapers, it has been on the television. As a matter of fact, some of you may know I made a little speech about it last night. Now, of course, none of us is in detail going to agree entirely with that program, because no program, if it is made up as I have been trying to describe to you, is reflective of any single person's complete ideas. But if it follows the general purpose, the good of 160 million people, if it is supported by honest men and women who want nothing in the world but the good of those people, and if it has been intelligently, broadly based, then I think we have got something that we ought to be able to sell. One of the troubles, of course, is that anyone who takes something of that kind to carry to the people is robbed, really, of the drama of the extremes. It is much easier, you know, to get up and say everybody is a so-and-so except my little gang and me, than it is to go out and sell a really constructive truth, because we tend to take it for granted. Well, I think that the Administration, probably, is not capable of telling anybody how to dramatize these truths, these programs, and carry them out so that people will overwhelmingly accept them. I believe that if you carry the truth to the people, that there will be only one decision from the mass of 160 million Americans. I am going to end this little talk with a little story. Not long ago, I went out to Illinois to the State Fair, and on the way I happened to pick up a paper that was on my airplane. And Paul Hoffman had had a little trouble there at Studebaker--you remember he had asked his union to take a lower wage, a wage they agreed was in conformity with the average. Studebaker had been well above it, I understood, so he asked them to go to two dollars-and-something an hour.


I WANTED to take this opportunity, as we arrive here, to say just a few words of greeting to all of you because it will not be possible for me to do what both Mrs. Nixon and I would particularly like to do, and that is to greet every one of you personally. In coming before you, I first want you to know that because this platform is so small, we could only get the men on the platform. I am very proud to be here in Montana, and I will introduce these people. You know them all so well, but I think you all want to welcome your people from Montana, as they are here. Now, all of you will have noted that this is a totally bipartisan group. And that is the spirit in which this visit has been arranged. I want to say first that I have many pleasant memories of visits to this State. I have been to a number of cities. I recall visits to Butte and Billings and to Great Falls and to Bozeman and also, of course, to the State capital, to Helena. I am very proud that this is the first time I have had a chance to visit Montana as ENTITY of the United States. I am also equally proud that Mike Mansfield arranged that this is the first time I have had any chance ever to come to Kalispell in this area. I am glad to be here in this beautiful part of the country. Now, as you have probably noted, the Majority Leader of the Senate and ENTITY of the United States have regular meetings, usually at breakfast, in addition to the meetings that we have in the Cabinet Room, concerning legislation. I am sure that many of you wonder what those meetings concern. Well, obviously they concern the affairs of state. They naturally involve matters on which we sometimes disagree, disagree not as partisans, but disagree because there are areas where different people, working toward the same goal, might want to take different roads. But I think you will all be glad to know that there is one subject on which we have no disagreement whatever. That is on the beauty of the Big Sky Country. I want to say something about your representatives, both the Republican as well as the two Democrats, in the Congress of the United States from Montana. Many people ,who come to Washington-they get Potomac fever, and that means they really get so taken with Washington they.

Remarks on Arrival at Kalispell, Montana.


I have never yet met a Senator or a Congressman from Montana who did not love Montana most of all, and that is true of yours, I can assure you. I think I can tell you why. There is a story--I do not know whether it is true or not; I could not believe it when I saw it in my notes, and I was not able to check it with Mike or Dick or Congressman Melcher on the way put--there is a story about a big wind that came up in Helena, the State capital, so big, as a matter of fact, that it turned the Goddess of Liberty statue around so that it was facing away from the city. There were those, not from Montana, of course, and not from Helena, who said that what really was happening was that the Goddess of Liberty was turning her back on the city. I think what the Goddess of Liberty was really doing was turning out so that she could really see this beautiful country. This is a beautiful country, and you can be very proud to live in it. And as I speak of this country, I think it is particularly appropriate that it is the Big Sky Country. There is still lots of ground out here, lots of beautiful territory for people to see, for people to visit, for people to live in. That brings me to a point on which here is total agreement among all of us on this platform, although we might have different ways to achieve that goal. We want an open country, we want open cities, and we also want an open world. At the present time we are ending the longest war in the history of the United States. a whole generation of peace. I think that is what Americans want most of all. When I noticed the high school students were here, the various bands that have been playing, when I see so many young people, and when I see your parents, I know that is what you want. As you know, from here we are going on to Portland and then up to Alaska to welcome the Emperor of Japan. Later, I will have the opportunity to visit Mainland China, the People's Republic of China. Let me just tell you what these visits have to do with this generation of peace. They are not going to solve all differences between nations, particularly with regard to those great differences that exist between the Government of the United States and the Government of the People's Republic of China, with which we do not have diplomatic relations at this time.


They do mean that a step has been taken toward a goal. When nations have differences, they can either talk about them and negotiate about them or they can fight about them. If 10 to 15 years from now the People's Republic of China is still isolated from the rest of the world, and particularly with no communication with the United States of America, there is a great danger that due to that isolation we might end in finding that our differences were ones that we could not talk about, and we might end up fighting about. I believe we have got to avoid that. I believe the time to start avoiding that is now, to make this an open world in which we negotiate rather than confront those who differ with us around the world. In that goal, let me say we have bipartisan support. I think we have the support of all generations. There is one other thing I would like to say before we have a chance to meet some of you. As we build this generation of peace, we also want a new prosperity that is based not on war, but on peace, in which production for peace provides the jobs that Americans need. It is something that we can build. It is something that this State can contribute to and that all of you can contribute to. Finally, let me say that in this Nation in these years ahead we want this Nation to continue to have not only those areas that can produce, as the great agricultural area of Montana produces, for making this the best fed, the best dressed nation in the world but also the beauty of this country, which this State has in such remarkable degrees. A couple of months ago, among the many visitors that stream through the Oval Office of the White House, was a tremendously interesting group of teenagers from the State of Washington. They had ridden bicycles clear across the country. They called themselves Cyclemates. As they rode across the country they stopped at various places. It, of course took them weeks to arrive in Washington. I said, Now, you tell me you have been to the parks, you have been to all the States, what was the most beautiful place you saw? And they said, Glacier Park, of all the the places in the United States. Not only did they like that place but they also liked the people. So, I say, as we meet you here, and with this little California rain falling right now, that I am glad to be here. Nixon is glad to be here to receive such a warm welcome.


I think the record should show that this is one of those spontaneous things that we always arrange whenever the President comes in to speak, and it will be so reported in the press, and we do not mind, because they have to call it as they see it. But on our part, believe me, it is spontaneous. You are here to say goodby to us, and we do not have a good word for it in English the best is au revoir. We will see you again. to serve our next President as you have served me and previous Presidents because many of you have been here for many years with devotion and dedication, because this office, great as it is, can only be as great as the men and women who work for and with the President. This house, for example I was thinking of it as we walked down this hall, and I was comparing it to some of the great houses of the world that I have been in. Many, and most, in even smaller countries, are much bigger. Many in Europe, particularly, and in China, Asia, have paintings of great, great value, things that we just do not have here and, probably, will never have until we are 1,000 years old or older. It is the best house, because it has something far more important than numbers of people who serve, far more important than numbers of rooms or how big it is, far more important than numbers of magnificent pieces of art. This house has a great heart, and that heart comes from those who serve. We said goodby to them upstairs. And I recall after so many times I have made speeches, and some of them pretty tough, yet, I always come back, or after a hard day and my days usually have run rather long I would always get a lift from them, because I might be a little down but they always smiled. And so it is with you. I look around here, and I see so many on this staff that, you know, I should have been by your offices and shaken hands, and I would love to have talked to you and found out how to run the world everybody wants to tell the President what to do, and boy, he needs to be told many times but I just have not had the time. But I want you to know that each and every one of you, I know, is indispensable to this Government. I am proud of this Cabinet. I am proud of all the members who have served in our Cabinet.

Remarks on Departure From the White House


I am proud of our sub-Cabinet. I am proud of our White House Staff. As I pointed out last night, sure, we have done some things wrong in this Administration, and the top man always takes the responsibility, and I have never ducked it. We can be proud of it 5 1/2 years. No man or no woman came into this Administration and left it with more of this world's goods than when he came in. No man or no woman ever profited at the public expense or the public till. That tells something about you. You did what you believed in. And I only wish that I were a wealthy man-at the present time, I have got to find a way to pay my taxes and if I were, I would like to recompense you for the sacrifices that all of you have made to serve in government. But you are getting something in government-and I want you to tell this to your children, and I hope the Nation's children will hear it, too something in government service that is far more important than money. It is a cause bigger than yourself. It is the cause of making this the greatest nation in the world, the leader of the world, because without our leadership, the world will know nothing but war, possibly starvation or worse, in the years ahead. With our leadership it will know peace, it will know plenty. We have been generous, and we will be more generous in the future as we are able to. But most important, we must be strong here, strong in our hearts, strong in our souls, strong in our belief, and strong in our willingness to sacrifice, as you have been willing to sacrifice, in a pecuniary way, to serve in government. There is something else I would like for you to tell your young people. You know, people often come in and say, What will I tell my kids? They look at government and say, sort of a rugged life, and they see the mistakes that are made. They get the impression that everybody is here for the purpose of feathering his nest. That is why I made this earlier point not in this Administration, not one single man or woman. And I say to them, there are many fine careers. This country needs good farmers, good businessmen, good plumbers, good carpenters. I remember my old man. I think that they would have called him sort of a little man, common man.


He was a streetcar motorman first, and then he was a farmer, and then he had a lemon ranch. It was the poorest lemon ranch in California, I can assure you. He sold it before they found oil on it. But he was a great man, because he did his job, and every job counts up to the hilt, regardless of what happens. Nobody will ever write a book, probably, about my mother. Well, I guess all of you would say this about your mother-my mother was a saint. And I think of her, two boys dying of tuberculosis, nursing four others in order that she could take care of my older brother for 3 years in Arizona, and seeing each of them die, and when they died, it was like one of her own. Yes, she will have no books written about her. Now, however, we look to the future. I had a little quote in the speech last night from T.R. As you know, I kind of like to read books. I am not educated, but I do read books and the T.R. quote was a pretty good one. Here is another one I found as I was reading, my last night in the White House, and this quote is about a young man. He was a young lawyer in New York. He had married a beautiful girl, and they had a lovely daughter, and then suddenly she died, and this is what he wrote. This was in his diary. He said, She was beautiful in face and form and lovelier still in spirit. As a flower she grew and as a fair young flower she died. Her life had been always in the sunshine. None ever knew her who did not love and revere her for her bright and sunny temper and her saintly unselfishness. When she had just become a mother, when her life seemed to be just begun and when the years seemed so bright before her, then by a strange and terrible fate death came to her. And when my heart's dearest died, the light went from my life forever. That was T.R. in his twenties. He thought the light had gone from his life forever but he went on. And he not only became President but, as an ex-President, he served his country, always in the arena, tempestuous, strong, sometimes wrong, sometimes right, but he was a man.


And as I leave, let me say, that is an example I think all of us should remember. We think sometimes when things happen that do not go the right way; we think that when you do not pass the bar exam the first time I happened to, but I was just lucky; I mean, my writing was so poor the bar examiner said, We have just got to let the guy through. We think that when someone dear to us dies, we think that when we lose an election, we think that when we suffer a defeat that all is ended. We think, as T.R. said, that the light had left his life forever. The young must know it; the old must know it. It must always sustain us, because the greatness comes not when things go always good for you, but the greatness comes and you are really tested, when you take some knocks, some disappointments, when sadness comes, because only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. And so I say to you on this occasion, as we leave, we leave proud of the people who have stood by us and worked for us and served this country. We want you to be proud of what you have done. We want you to continue to serve in government, if that is your wish. Always give your best, never get discouraged, never be petty; always remember, others may hate you, but those who hate you do not win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself. And so, we leave with high hopes, in good spirit, and with deep humility, and with very much gratefulness in our hearts. I can only say to each and every one of you, we come from many faiths, we pray perhaps to different gods but really the same God in a sense but I want to say for each and every one of you, not only will we always remember you, not only will we always be grateful to you but always you will be in our hearts and you will be in our prayers.


Vice President, Secretary Riley, Secretary Herman, Deputy Secretary Thurm, all the Members of Congress who are here, and Mrs. Udall, thank you for coming. Ladies and gentlemen, before I make my remarks about this legislation that we have all worked on, I'd like to say a few words about yesterday's United Nations Security Council resolution on Iraq. Comply now with the U.N. resolutions and let the UNSCOM inspection team go back to work. Iraq's announcement this morning to expel the Americans from the inspection team is clearly unacceptable and a challenge to the international community. Let me remind you all again I will say this every time I discuss this issue these inspectors, in the last 6 years, have uncovered more weapons of mass destruction potential and destroyed it than was destroyed in the entire Gulf war. It is important to the safety of the world that they continue their work. I intend to pursue this matter in a very determined way. I think it is fair to say that this is one of those days in public service that these Members of Congress in both parties work for and live for and put up with a lot of the hassles of public life for. We have been on a journey for the last 5 years to a new century that is now just around the corner, driven by a vision to provide opportunity to everybody who is responsible enough to work for it, to continue to lead the world for peace and freedom and prosperity, and to bring our people together, across all the lines that divide us, into one America. And we are clearly making progress. Our economy is the strongest in a generation; crime, welfare, and unemployment are falling. I think all of us believe that the best way to sustain and build on that progress is to make sure that all of our people have a world-class education. In my State of the Union Address, I challenged our people to join me in a nonpartisan effort to make sure that every 8-yearold can read, every 12-year-old can log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old can go on to college, every adult can continue to learn for a lifetime. For the very first time, I feel that we are determined to finish that part of our journey. Congress and the United States of America have answered the call. When I sign this bill into law, I will have the privilege of signing into the record books what is plainly the best year for American education in more than a generation.

Remarks on Signing the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 1998


First, we are taking historic steps to make sure that every child in America can meet the high national standards of academic achievement that the Israels spoke about so that every children can master the basics. This bill represents a genuine breakthrough in what is now quite a long effort by many people to achieve national academic standards in the United States. For the first time, we will have workable and generally agreed-upon standards in math and reading. And for the very first time, Congress has voted to support the development of voluntary national tests to measure performance in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math. The tests will be created by an independent, bipartisan organization and will be piloted in schools next October. The importance of this cannot be overstated. Our children rise with the expectations we set for them. We know that every child can meet high standards if we set them and measure our progress against them. I want to especially thank Senator Bingaman and Representative Miller and everyone else who worked on this particular part of the legislation. This legislation also takes concrete steps to help our children meet the standards and, indeed, to achieve all our national education goals. It will help every 8-year-old in America read on his or her own by funding the America Reads challenge and expanding national service so that our AmeriCorps members can recruit trained literacy tutors for our schools. Already, over 800 colleges and universities and numerous other organizations are providing tens of thousands of volunteer tutors that are going into our schools every week to help make sure our children can read. We can give our children the extra attention and practice they need so that we can assure that they will be able to read independently by the end of the third grade if we continue to pursue this. Second, the bill takes significant steps to ensure that every 12-year-old can log on to the Internet. I must say, I had ambivalent feelings when I realized that Mr. Israel was logging on to the Internet and reading what was on the website about the exam. Some day somebody may figure out how to find the actual exam on the website. This measure nearly doubles nearly doubles our national investment in education technology. It puts us well on the way to connecting every classroom and library to the information superhighway by the year 2000, something the Vice President has made a particular commitment to. And I want to emphasize something else, because I met with a group of young people yesterday in their twenties who were hammering me on this.


They said, What difference will it make if you connect every classroom in the country to the information superhighway if the teachers are not trained to use the technology, and the kids know more than they do? So I want to emphasize that a big part of this legislation provides investments to make sure that our teachers have the training they need to maximize the use of this new technology. Third, the bill, along with the college tuition tax credits I signed into law this summer and the improvements in the college loan program we have been implementing since 1993, will make it possible for every 18-year-old who is willing to work for it to go on to college. And it gives us the chance to make the 13th and 14th years of education as universal as a high school diploma is today. This measure includes the largest increase in Pell grant scholarships in two decades, raising the maximum grant, and serving an additional 220,000 students. I might add that the Congress and I thank the members of this committee who are here has added in the last two budgets another 300,000 work-study positions as well. The bill also promotes innovation and expands public school choice, helping parents, teachers, and community leaders to open some 500 new charter schools and clearing the way for 3,000 such schools by early in the next century. It recognizes that learning begins in the earliest years of life and significantly expands investment in Head Start. It challenges teachers to reach higher standards along with students and honors those who do by helping 100,000 more teachers seek certification for the National Board of Teacher Standards as master teachers. Let me emphasize the significance of the 100,000 figure. The year before last, there were only 500 teachers in the entire country who had been certified as master teachers. Because of the unique training and performance required to gain this certification, it is our firm belief and I know Secretary Riley believes this if we can get one master teacher certified in every school building in America, it will change the entire culture of teaching across the country and elevate the quality of education dramatically. The bill brings more to our efforts to build the discipline and order and safety and positive activity into the lives of our children, with $40 million to help schools stay open late, on the weekends, and in the summer, to help keep young people off the streets and out of trouble, along with job training for out-of-school youth. Now, let me emphasize the importance of this.


Most juvenile crime is committed between the hours of 3 in the afternoon and 7 at night. While the crime rate has dropped in America dramatically, it is only in the last 2 years that it is begun to level off among young people. But we ought to look at this in a positive way. This is an opportunity to take kids who otherwise do not have the institutional support they need, who are capable of getting a good education and being good, productive citizens, and giving them the institutional framework within which to do that. It also helps a lot of them whose parents have to work until later in the evening and cannot be at home. So it may sound like a little money, but a little money given to a school on a tight budget for this purpose can make all the difference in the world in the lives of a lot of our young people. So I am very pleased by that. And again, I want to thank all the Members who are here for what they have done. I hope now we will use this momentum in education to take some new steps, to pass finally a GI bill for America's workers that would enable us to give a certificate to any American who needs it to take to the nearest educational institution to learn new skills to reenter the workplace, and to meet the quiet crisis of crumbling and crowded school buildings across America. We have more children in our schools than at any time in our history, with serious overcrowding problems and serious building deterioration problems, which I believe we should help to address. Let me say, finally, that this bill continues our efforts to strengthen families on many other fronts. It expands educational opportunity for recent immigrants, children with disabilities, children growing up in our poorest neighborhoods. It significantly increases funding for biomedical research, from cancer to Parkinson's disease and we are particularly glad to have Mrs. Udall with us today to the astonishing human genome project. And I would like to thank Congressman Porter and Congressman Obey and Congressman Spratt for the work that they have done on this particular thing. And I would like to especially thank Congressman Upton for the work that he is done on the Parkinson's issue. This is a remarkable, remarkable bill with an astonishing bipartisan commitment to keep our country on the front ranks of medical research. Finally, it will help to make new, very powerful ENTITY therapies more available to needy patients.


Ladies and gentlemen, our overriding purpose here in Glasgow is to raise the ambitions of our commitments to keep within reach our goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. But setting ambitious targets is only half of the equation, as you all know. We also have to concrete-have concrete plans for how we are going to meet those goals and decarbonize our economies to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. To start, to state the obvious, we have to immediately scale up clean technologies that are already commercially available and cost-competitive, like wind and solar energy. In the United States, we have set a goal of deploying 30 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, creating tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs for American workers and meeting the power needs of almost 10,000 American homes every year. We can do this now. At the same time, we recognize that our current technology alone will not get us where we need to be. developing, demonstrating, and commercializing new clean energy technologies by 2030 so that we can-they can be widely deployed in time to meet our 2050 net-zero goals. We need to invest in breakthroughs, and I welcome the U.K.'s leadership on the Glasgow Breakthrough agenda. Innovation is the key to unlocking our future. That is why the United States is working to quadruple funding for clean energy research and development over the next 4 years. And we will lead a year of action in 2022 to advance clean technologies globally. Over the past 2 days, I have announced several U.S. Government-led initiatives to help develop and scale clean energy transmission, but we cannot achieve our goals through government action alone. I am looking at some of the men and women in front of me that can help accelerate and develop clean energy technologies. The United States and the World Economic Forum are launching the First Movers Coalition. The First Movers Coalition is starting with more than two dozen of the world's largest and most innovative companies. steel, shipping, aluminum, concrete, trucking, aviation, chemicals, and direct air capture. These companies will be critical partners in pushing for commercially viable alternatives to decarbonize the industrial-these industrial sectors and more, and while championing the U.S. innovation of good-paying jobs at the same time.

Remarks on Accelerating Clean Technology Innovation and Deployment at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, United Kingdom


And the U.S. Government is going to use our enormous market power as the world's largest buyer of goods and services-some $650 billion in acquisitions annually-to do the same. The Government purchases that much. Together, these policies, God-willing, will spur a wave of new and better products into the market, and new companies and projects that will create good-paying jobs. So we are attacking the challenge from both ends. We are sending the demand signal loud and clear, and investing in research and development to expand supply. We do not just want to innovate in the industrial sector; the agricultural sector also has a vital role to play. As stewards of the land, our farmers belong on the frontlines of the climate fight. And together with the United Arab Emirates, I am proud to announce the launch of the Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate, AIM for Climate. This is something we first proposed at my Leaders' Summit on Climate. Over the last 6 months, we have worked for more than-with more than 75 partners to catalyze public and private investment in climate-smart agriculture and food system innovation. Today, along with 75 partners, we are going to launch a $4 billion initial investment globally. And the United States is planning to mobilize a billion of that $4 billion over the next 5 years. And I invite all of you to join us in working to double the investment by the time we meet at COP27. As with every aspect of the climate crisis, no one can do this alone. We need all of us working together. And as we do, the United States will lead by example and share with the world our considerable powers of innovation. And, as my grandfather would say, with the grace of God and the good will of the neighbors and the creek not rising, we are going to make a lot of progress. All kidding aside, I think there is virtually nothing we are unable to do, particularly when we do it together. And, again, I want to thank all the private sector for their work.


It is a great pleasure to come back to a city where my accent is considered normal, and where they pronounce the words the way they are spelled ! I take especial satisfaction in this day. As the recipient of an honorary degree in 1956 from Boston College, and therefore an instant alumnus, I am particularly pleased to be with all of you on this most felicitous occasion. This university, or college, as Father Walsh has described, was founded in the darkest days of the Civil War, when this Nation was engaged in a climactic struggle to determine whether it would be half slave and half free or all free. And now, 100 years later, after the most intense century perhaps in human history, we are faced with the great question of whether this world will be half slave and half free, or whether it will be all one or the other. And on this occasion, as in 1863, the services of Boston College are still greatly needed. It is good also to participate in this ceremony which has honored three distinguished citizens of the free world--President Pusey, Father Bunn, and our friend from the world of freedom, Lady Jackson. Boston College is a hundred years old-old by the life span of men, but young by that of universities. In this week of observance, you have rightly celebrated the achievements of the past, and equally rightly you have turned in a series of discussions by outstanding scholars to the problems of the present and the future. Learned men have been talking here of the knowledge explosion, and in all that they have said I am sure they have implied the heavy present responsibility of institutions like this one. Yet today I want to say a word on the same theme, to impress upon you as urgently as I can the growing and insistent importance of universities in our national life. I speak of universities because that is what Boston College has long since become. But most of what I say applies to liberal arts colleges as well. My theme is not limited to any one class of universities, public or private, religious or secular. Our national tradition of variety in higher education shows no sign of weakening, and it remains the task of each of our institutions to shape its own role among its differing sisters. In this hope I am much encouraged by a reading in this last week of the remarkable encyclical, Pacem in Terris.

Address at the Boston College Centennial Ceremonies