What we had done was to seek out, in our chosen home community, those things that were the most meaningful to us. We realized that it is all too easy… - Jimmy Carter

This afternoon I have an explanation to make concerning a basic undertaking that we assumed shortly after I became President. I announced that a comprehensive reform of the Nation's welfare system would be one of our first priorities. Under the general leadership of Secretary of HEW Califano, we've worked with other private and Government agencies during the last 3 months to assess the present welfare system and to propose improvements to it. It's much worse than we hand anticipated. And although we've conducted hundreds of meetings around the country, and prepared documents and studies that are quite voluminous--and Joe has a briefcase full of them that he will exhibit in a few minutes--we've found that the complexity of the system demands a detailed analysis through computer models and working with Governors and with congressional leaders as well.

God is not my personal valet. God does not build a protective fence around my life, keep me from trouble, fulfill my personal desires, or guarantee my success. However, through prayer God offers me comfort, reassurance, satisfaction, courage, hope, and peace.

In international affairs, Cy Vance arrived this morning in Cairo. He's just attended a NATO conference with all the European foreign ministers. He'll be going from Cairo to Jerusalem, and then he'll be going from there to visit the other Middle Eastern leaders. We're trying to hold together as best we can a commitment that presently exists in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and Israel to have a comprehensive peace settlement. I personally believe that the Sadat visit to Jerusalem has broken through what seemed to be insurmountable obstacles and has greatly clarified the issues that have to be still addressed. I believe that Sadat showed a great deal of courage. And my hope and my expectation is that the Israelis will respond accordingly. We are trying to keep the door open so that the Syrians can come into the negotiations later on, the Jordanians the same, and also the Lebanese. And we hope that the Saudis, who are not part of the negotiations, will continue their constructive support of Egypt and give their tacit support, at least, to the initiatives that President Sadat has taken. We have good and substantive talks going on with the Soviet Union on a comprehensive approach to prohibiting the testing of nuclear explosives, a comprehensive test ban, for the first time. We had fairly good progress on that recently. The SALT negotiations--we are proceeding on three levels. One is a 3-year protocol which would temporarily take action. At the end of 3 years, we'd assess that action to see if we want to renew it or to modify it in some degree. A longer agreement, it would go for about 8 years, and then we would initiate an outline of what SALT III would comprise.