Richard Nixon Quotes

I want to say this to the television audience. I made my mistakes, but in all of my years of public life, I have never profited, never profited from public service. I have earned every cent. And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice. And I think, too, that I can say that in my years of public life, that I welcome this kind of examination because people have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got.

This I pledge to you tonight: The nation that went to the moon in peace for all mankind is ready, ready to share its technology in peace with its nearest neighbors. Tonight, I have discussed with you a new concept of partnership. I have made a commitment to act. I have been trying to give some examples of actions we are prepared to take. But as anyone familiar with government knows, commitment alone is not enough. There has to be the machinery to assure an effective follow-through. Therefore, I am also directing a major reorganization and upgrading of the United States Government structure for dealing with Western Hemisphere affairs. As a key element of this--and this is one of those areas where the President cannot do it, he needs the approval of the Congress--but as a key element of this, I have ordered preparation of a legislative request, which I will submit to the Congress, raising the rank of the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs to Under Secretary--thus giving the hemisphere special representation. I know that many in this room, 15 years ago urged that upon me, and I see Mr. Pedro Beltran here particularly applauding. He urged it upon me just a few years ago, too. I trust that we will be able, through the new Under Secretary of State, to do a more effective job with regard to the problems of the hemisphere, and the new Under Secretary will be given authority to coordinate all United States Government activities in the hemisphere, so that there will be one window for all those activities.

Sixteen years have passed since the Chief Justice assumed his present position. These 16 years, without doubt, will be described by historians as years of greater change in America than any in our history. And that brings us to think of the mystery of government in this country, and for that matter in the world, the secret of how government can survive for free men. And we think of the terms "change" and "continuity." Change without continuity can be anarchy. Change with continuity can mean progress. And continuity without change can mean no progress.

But by God, there are exceptions. But Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on us.

Let me now turn to the third criteria for troop withdrawals--the level of enemy activity. In several areas since December, that level has substantially increased. In recent months Hanoi has sent thousands more of their soldiers to launch new offensives in neutral Laos in violation of the Geneva Accords of 1969 to which they were signatories. South of Laos, almost 40,000 Communist troops are now conducting overt aggression against Cambodia, a small neutralist country that the Communists have used for years as a base for attack upon South Vietnam in violation of the Geneva Accords of 1954 to which they were also signatories. This follows the consistent pattern of North Vietnamese aggression in Indochina. During the past 8 years they have sent tens of thousands of troops into all three countries of the peninsula and across every single common border. Men and supplies continue to pour down the Ho Chi Minh Trail; and in the past 2 weeks, the Communists have stepped up their attacks upon allied forces in South Vietnam. However, despite this new enemy activity, there has been an overall decline in enemy force levels in South Vietnam since December. As the enemy force levels have declined and as the South Vietnamese have assumed more of the burden of battle, American casualties have declined. I am glad to be able to report tonight that in the first 3 months of 1970, the number of Americans killed in action dropped to the lowest first quarter level in 5 years.

Present subsidized housing programs are marked by inconsistencies and inequities. Many families pay the same rent despite wide differences in income. A small increase in earnings may force the family to move, losing much more housing assistance than is gained in income. We have proposed a solution to many of these problems in the Housing Act of 1970. Rents would vary directly with income. A family would not be forced to move at some arbitrary income limit. We will offer this provision of the Housing Act to the Senate Finance Committee for its consideration.

In all the decisions I have made in my public life, I have always tried to do what was best for the Nation. Throughout the long and difficult period of Watergate, I have felt it was my duty to persevere, to make every possible effort to complete the term of office to which you elected me. In the past few days, however, it has become evident to me that I no longer have a strong enough political base in the Congress to justify continuing that effort. As long as there was such a base, I felt strongly that it was necessary to see the constitutional process through to its conclusion, that to do otherwise would be unfaithful to the spirit of that deliberately difficult process and a dangerously destabilizing precedent for the future. But with the disappearance of that base, I now believe that the constitutional purpose has been served, and there is no longer a need for the process to be prolonged. I would have preferred to carry through to the finish whatever the personal agony it would have involved, and my family unanimously urged me to do so. But the interest of the Nation must always come before any personal considerations.

In many respects, the purposes of the two organizations have been related if not identical. Some of the programs sponsored by the Plans for Progress organization, such as their Vocational Guidance Institutes, have now consciously been established in many of the 125 cities in which the National Alliance of Businessmen is organized. Both organizations represented an attempt by the American corporate and financial community to contribute in efforts to break the cycle of unemployment and dependency. Both represent efforts to reduce the barriers to employment opportunities which for so long stood in the way of many simply because of their accident of birth.

Whether our values are maintained depends ultimately not on government, but on people. A nation can only be as great as the people want it to be. A nation can only be as free as its people insist that it be. A nation's laws are only as strong as the people's will to see them enforced. A nation's freedoms are only as secure as the people's determination to see them maintained. And a nation's values are only as lasting as the ability of each generation to pass them on to the next. We often have a tendency to turn away from the familiar because it is familiar, and turn to the new because it is new. To those intoxicated with the romance of violent revolution, the continuing revolution of democracy may sometimes seem quite unexciting. But no system has ever liberated the spirits of so many so fully. Nothing has ever "turned on" man's energies, his imagination, his unfettered creativity, the way the ideal of freedom has. We can be proud that we have that legacy and that we celebrate it today. Now there are some who see America's vast wealth and protest that this has made us materialistic. But we should not be apologetic about our abundance. We should not fall into the easy trap of confusing the production of things with the worship of things. We produce abundantly, but our values turn not on what we have but on what we believe. And what we believe very simply is this: We believe in liberty, in decency, and the process of freedom. On these beliefs we rest our pride as a nation. In these beliefs we rest our hopes for the future. And by our fidelity to the process of freedom we can assure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of freedom.

We have heard many voices from the Americas in these first months of our new administration--voices of hope, voices of concern, and some voices of frustration. We have listened. These voices have told us they wanted fewer promises and more action. They have told us that United States aid programs seemed to have helped the United States more than Latin America. They have told us that our trade policies were insensitive to the needs of other American nations. They have told us that if our partnership is to thrive or even to survive, we must recognize that the nations of the Americas must go forward in their own way, under their own leadership.

First, a word about Don Kernal. We have several things in common. We were both born in the West. We both played football. We both served in the Navy, and we both made President. He made it a little sooner than I did. The other thing, however, that I think we have in common is a deep concern about the problems that all of you have been considering during the course of these meetings, during yesterday and today. In speaking of those problems, I first want to congratulate this Alliance for what it has done. I know that when you first projected your goal, the number of jobs--100,000 by June of 1969--many skeptics wondered whether it could be reached. You have already reached that. Not only have you reached it before June 1969, but 80,000 of those for whom jobs have been found are still on the jobs, which is a truly remarkable record. I congratulate Henry Ford and all of those who have served so well in providing that kind of leadership for this very exciting project.

One of the areas most urgently in need of new policies is the area of trade. In my various trips to the Latin American countries and the other American countries, I have found that this has been uppermost on the minds of the leaders for many, many years. In order to finance their import needs and to achieve self-sustaining growth, the other American nations must expand their exports.

We are faced this year with the choice between the "work ethic" that built this Nation's character and the new "welfare ethic" that could cause that American character to weaken.

The most important proposal I make today is to reform the Medicaid program. Medicaid is plagued by serious faults. Costs are mounting beyond reason. Services vary considerably from State to State. Benefits are only remotely related to family resources. Eligibility may terminate abruptly as a family moves off often losing more in medical benefits than it gains in income. In short--just like the existing welfare system--Medicaid is inefficient, inequitably excludes the working poor, and often provides an incentive for people to stay on welfare. I will propose legislation at the beginning of the next Congress to establish a family health insurance program for all poor families with children. This insurance would provide a comprehensive package of health services, including both hospital and outpatient care. Final decisions on the specifications of the family health insurance proposal must await further review by the new Domestic Council. We are satisfied that the basic principles will work. This proposal will constitute the second legislative stage of the administration's income strategy against poverty.

I knew and you know that filling the post of Secretary of the Interior is not easy. It is not easy in any department, but perhaps in this one, as much as in any and in more than most, it is necessary to take positions at times that will not be agreed with by many very honest people who have reached a different conclusion because they start with different attitudes toward the problem. I could go down the list of issues in which people are divided as far as the Department of the Interior is concerned. I know, for example, going back to the time when I was a California Congressman and then a California Senator, how the States of California and Arizona had arguments about water. They are still having arguments about water. And how also with regard to the development of our resources, our oil resources, water resources, and others, that men and women very honestly taking a point of view were in sharp disagreement. Somebody had to make the decision. So when I picked the Secretary of the Interior, I knew that I would have to find a man, first, who had courage; second, who was an honest man; and, third, a man--and this was one of the things that attracted me to the new Secretary--who had a real love for the land in the deepest sense of the word.