I still have complete confidence that the United States, if given time, will resolve its problems. We have always been able to do that in the past, w… - Jimmy Carter

All of us have heard about the large oil fields on Alaska's North Slope. In a few years, when the North Slope is producing fully, its total output will be just about equal to 2 years' increase in our own Nation's energy demand. Each new inventory of world oil reserves has been more disturbing than the last. World oil production can probably keep going up for another 6 or 8 years. But sometime in the 1980's, it can't go up any more. Demand will overtake production. We have no choice about that. But we do have a choice about how we will spend the next few years. Each American uses the energy equivalent of 60 barrels of oil per person each year. Ours is the most wasteful nation on Earth. We waste more energy than we import. With about the same standard of living, we use twice as much energy per person as do other countries like Germany, Japan, and Sweden. One choice, of course, is to continue doing what we've been doing before. We can drift along for a few more years. Our consumption of oil would keep going up every year. Our cars would continue to be too large and inefficient. Three-quarters of them would carry only one person--the driver--while our public transportation system continues to decline. We can delay insulating our homes, and they will continue to lose about 50 percent of their heat in waste. We can continue using scarce oil and natural gas to generate electricity and continue wasting two-thirds of their fuel value in the process.

Yes, I think the Humphrey-Hawkins bill, if passed—and I think it has a good chance to be passed—would provide enhanced job opportunities for college graduates as well as others. It would set a goal of a 4-percent unemployment rate, and it would permit me to judge when this was in conflict with a control of inflation. It would also bring into being a much closer coordination of effort between the President, the Federal Reserve Banks, the Congress, and others in the Government and in private industry to work together. It would require me to submit to the Congress an economic plan over several years, 4 or 5 years, that would ultimately lead to the realization of those goals. So, I think the planning concept, the involvement of all the elements who determine the outcome of our economic goals, would be a step in the right direction itself, and it would put a heavy emphasis on the reduction of unemployment.

Ultimately, the basic issue is whether America will provide global leadership that springs from the unity and the integrity of the American people, or whether extremist doctrines, the manipulation of the truth, will define America's role in the world. At stake is nothing less than our nation's soul.