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— Griffin Daily News Thursday, January 16,1975 Page 12 Transcript of Ford’s message WASHINGTON (UPI) - Transcript of President Ford’s State of the Union address Wednesday to Congress: vj>f . Twenty-six years ago, a freshman Congressman, a young fellow, with lots of idealism who was out to change the world, stood before Sam Rayburn in the well of this House and solemnly swore to the same oath that all of you ‘ took yesterday, an unforgetta ble experience, and I congratu late you all. Two days later, that same freshman stood at the back of this great chamber, over there someplace, as President Tru man, all charged up by his single-handed election victory, ROSCOE SMITH Has Opened A High Performance Speed Equipment Shop On High Falls Road 2 Miles On Right We Also Install Dune Buggy Bars And Sell Buggy Wheels And Etc. For All Your Racing Hobby Needs Come By Or Call 227-0778 JANUARY CLEARANCE I' • I ■ ’ ■ CONTINUES Ify fl linfaM Ii : W MR ■isl - ■•. •: Bagiar ■'wifl' fl flwa* <• fl - "i :• ‘ : fljfll SUITS 7a price Sport Coats 7s off CARDIGANS P ric ® I PAJAMAS-ROBES 7a off JACKETS Va price TIES SLACKS ‘1O“ TURTLENECKS ’s°° SPORT SHIRTS '7" KNIT SHIRTS ’7“ DRESS SHIRTS ’6“ DENIM JACKETS ’ll” GLOVES ’4” JEANS ’7“ FLANNEL SHIRTS ‘ 7 ’ o (oxfnrb sth & Solomon Spalding Square reported as the Constitution requires on the State of the Union. When the bipartisan applause stopped, President Truman said: “I am happy to report to this Eighty-First Congress that the State of the Union is good. Our Nation is better able than ever before to meet the needs of the American people and to give them their fair chance in the pursuit of happiness. It is foremost among the nations of the world in the search for peace.” Today, that freshman mem ber from Michigan stands where Mr. Truman stood and I must say to you that the State of the Union is not good. Millions of Americans are out of work. Recession and inflation are eroding the money of millions more. Prices are too high and sales are too slow. This year’s Federal deficit will be about S3O billion; next year’s probably $45 billion. The national debt will rise to over S6OO billion. Our plant capacity and productivity are not increasing fast enough. We depend on others for essential energy. Some people question their government’s ability to make hard decisions and stick with them. They expect Washington politics as usual. Yet, what President Truman said on January 5,1949, is even more true in 1975. We are better able to meet our peoples’ needs. All Americans do have a fairer chance to pursue hap piness. Not only are we still the foremost nation in pursuit of peace, but today’s prospects of attaining it are infinitely brighter. There were 59,000,000 Ameri cans employed at the start of 1949. Now there are more than 85,000,000 Americans who have jobs. In comparable dollars, the average income of the Ameri can family has doubled during the past 26 years. Now, I want to speak very bluntly. I’ve got bad news, and I don’t expect much, if any applause. The American people want action and it will take both the Congress and the President to give them what they want. Progress and solutions can be achieved. And they will be achieved. My message today is not intended to address all the complex needs of America. I will send separate messages making specific recommenda tions for domestic legislation, such as the extension of the General Revenue Sharing and the Voting Rights Act. The moment has come to move in a new direction. We can do this by fashioning a new partnership between the Con gress on the one hand, the White House on the other and the people we both represent. Let us mobilize the most powerful and creative industrial nation that ever existed on this earth to put all our people to work. The emphasis of our economic efforts must now shift from inflation to jobs. To bolster business and industry and to create new jobs, I propose a one-year tax reduction of sl6 billion. Three quarters would go to individu als and one-quarter to promote business investment. This cash rebate to individu als amounts to 12 per cent of 1974 tax payments —a total cut of sl2 billion, with a maximum of SI,OOO per return. I call on the Congress to act by April 1. If you do, and I hope you will, the Treasury can send the first check for half the rebate in May and the second by September. The other one-fourth of the cut, about $4 billion, will go to businesses, including farms, to promote expansion and create more jobs, the one-year reduc tion for businesses would be in the form of a liberalized investment tax credit increas ing the rate to 12 per cent for all businesses. This tax cut does not include the more fundamental reforms needed in our tax system. But it points us in the right direction —allowing us as taxpayers rather than the Government to spend our pay. Cutting taxes, now, is essen tial if we are to turn the economy around. A tax cut offers the best hope of creating more jobs. Unfortunately, it will increase the size of the budget deficit. Therefore, it is more important than ever that we take steps to control the growth of Federal expenditures. Part of our trouble is that we have been self-indulgent. For decades, we have been voting ever-increasing levels of Gov ernment benefits —and now the bill has come due. We have been adding so many new programs that the size and growth of the Federal budget has taken on a life of its own. One characteristic of these programs is that their cost increases automatically every year because the number of people eligible for most of the benefits increases every year. When these programs are enacted, there is no dollar amount set. No one knows what they will cost. All we know is that whatever they cost last year, they will cost more next year. It is a question of simple arithmetic. Unless we check the excessive growth of Federal expenditures or impose on ourselves matching increases in taxes, we will continue to run huge inflationary deficits in the Federal budget. If we project the current built-in momentum of Federal spending through the next 15 years, State, Federal, and local government expenditures could easily comprise half of our gross national product. This compares with less than a third in 1975. I have just concluded the process of preparing the budget submissions for fiscal year 1976. In that budget, I will propose legislation to restrain the growth of a number of existing programs. I have also concluded that no new spending programs can be initiated this year, except for energy. Fur ther, I will not hesitate to veto any new spending programs adopted by the Congress. As an additional step toward putting the Federal govern ment’s house in order, I recommend a five per cent limit on Federal pay increases in 1975. In all Government programs tied to the consumer price index —including social security, civil service and military retirement pay, and food stamps —I also propose a one-year maximum increase of 5 per cent. None of these recommended ceiling limitations, over which the Congress has final au thority, are easy to propose, because in most cases they involve anticipated payments to many, many deserving people. Nonetheless, it must be done. I must emphasize that I am not asking to eliminate, reduce or freeze these payments. I am merely recommending that we slow down the rate at which these payments increase and these programs grow. Only a reduction in the growth, the growth of spending can keep Federal borrowing down and reduce the damage to the private sector from high interest rates. Only a reduction in spending can make it possible for the Federal Re serve System to avoid an inflationary growth in the money supply and thus restore balance to our economy. A major reduction in the growth of Federal spending can help dispel the uncertainty that so many feel about our economy, and put us on the way to curing our economic ills. If we don’t act to slow down the rate of increase in Federal spending the United States Treasury will be legally obligat ed to spend more than $360 billion in Fiscal Year 1976 — even if no new programs are enacted. These are not matters of conjecture or prediction, but again a matter of simple arithmetic. The size of these numbers and their implications for our everyday life and the health of our economic system are shocking. I submitted to the last Congress a list of budget deferrals and recisions. There will be more cuts recommended in the budget I’ll submit. Even so, the level of outlayws for fiscal year 1976 is still much, much too high. Not only is it too high for this year but the NEW INVESTMENT CERTIFICATES PAY 77 2 % Commercial Bank And Trust Company’s new 6 year Investment Certificates pay 7%%, the highest rate an insured bank can pay. They can be purchased for a minimum deposit of SIOOO and interest can be paid regularly or left to accumulate. The new 772% rate is guaranteed as long as you hold the certificate. Federal Law And Regulation Require A Substantial Penalty On Early Withdrawal. All Certificates Will Be Paid Interest At The Regular Passbook Rate, Less Three Months Interest These new investment certificates head the list of safe, secure, high interest savings plans, available for you at Commercial Bank, Main Office, Mclntosh Road and Spalding Square. "T 1 / O/ 6 Year Investment Certificates " fG (SIOOO Minimum) 7 Vd. % Year Savings Certificates (SIOOO Minimum) 67 2 272 Year Savings Certificates 6 % 1 Year Savings Certificates £IA <V 90 Day Certificates ' 2 ZO Investor's Passbook Savings 5 % Regular Passbook Savings COMMERCIAL BANK 8 TRUST COMPANY Griffin, Georgia CHARTERED 1889 MEMBER F.D.LC. decisions we make now will inevitably have a major and growing impact on expenditure levels in future years. I think this is a fundamental issue we, the Congress and I, must jointly solve. The economic disruption we and others are experiencing stems in part from the fact that the world price of petroleum has quadrupled in the last year. But, in all honesty, we cannot put all of the blame on the oil exporting nations. We, the United States, are not blame less. Our growing dependence upon foreign sources has been adding to our vulnerability for years and years and we did nothing to prepare ourselves for an event such as the embargo of 1973. During the 19605, this country had a surplus capacity of crude oil, which we were able to make available to our trading partners whenever there was a disruption of supply. This surplus capacity enabled us to influence both supplies and prices of crude oil throughout the world. Our excess capacity neutralized any effort at establishing an effective cartel, and thus the rest of the world was assured of adequate supplies of oil at reasonable prices. By 1970, our capacity, our surplus capacity vanished and, as a consequence, the latent power of the oil cartel could emerge in full force. Europe and Japan, both heavily de pendent on imported oil, now struggle to keep their econom ics or economies in balance. Even the United States, which is far more self-sufficient than most other industrial countries, has been put under serious pressure. I am proposing a program which will begin to restore our r BMW® Ford makes state report. country’s surplus capacity in total energy. In this way, we will be able assure ourselves reliable and adequate energy and help foster a new world energy stability for other major consuming nations. But this Nation and, in fact, the world must face the prospect of energy difficulties between now and 1985. This program will impose burdens on all of us with the aim of reducing our consumption of energy and increasing produc tion. Great attention has been paid to the considerations of fairness and I can assure you that the burdens will not fall more harshly on those less able to bear them. I am recommending a plan to make us invulnerable to cut offs of foreign oil. It will require sacrifices. But it, and this is most important, it will work. I have set the following national energy goals to assure that our future is as secure and productive as our past: —First, we must reduce oil imports by 1 million barrels per day by the end of this year and by 2 million barrels per day by the end of 1977. —Second, we must end vulnerability to economic dis ruption by foreign suppliers by 1985. —Third, we must develop our energy technology and re sources so that the United States has the ability to supply a significant share of the energy needs of the Free World by the end of this century. To attain these objectives, we need immediate action to cut imports. Unfortunately, in the short-term there are only a limited number of actions Continued P. 13