Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, thos… - Jimmy Carter

Our national energy plan is based on 10 fundamental principles. The first principle is that we can have an effective and comprehensive energy policy only if the Government takes responsibility for it and if the people understand the seriousness of the challenge and are willing to make sacrifices. The second principle is that healthy economic growth must continue. Only by saving energy can we maintain our standard of living and keep our people at work. An effective conservation program will create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. The third principle is that we must protect the environment. Our energy problems have the same cause as our environmental problems-wasteful use of resources. Conservation helps us solve both problems at once. The fourth principle is that we must reduce our vulnerability to potentially devastating embargoes. We can protect ourselves from uncertain supplies by reducing our demand for oil, by making the most of our abundant resources such as coal, and by developing a strategic petroleum reserve. The fifth principle is that we must be fair. Our solutions must ask equal sacrifices from every region, every class of people, and every interest group. Industry will have to do its part to conserve just as consumers will. The energy. producers deserve fair treatment, but we will not let the oil companies profiteer. The sixth principle, and the cornerstone of our policy, is to reduce demand through conservation. Our emphasis on conservation is a clear difference between this plan and others which merely encouraged crash production efforts. Conservation is the quickest, cheapest, most practical source of energy. Conservation is the only way that we can buy a barrel of oil for about $2. It costs about $13 to waste it. The seventh principle is that prices should generally reflect the true replacement cost of energy. We are only cheating ourselves if we make energy artificially cheap and use more than we can really afford. The eighth principle is that Government policies must be predictable and certain. Both consumers and producers need policies they can count on so they can plan ahead. This is one reason that I'm working with the Congress to create a new Department of Energy to replace more than 50 different agencies that now have some control over energy. The ninth principle is that we must conserve the fuels that are scarcest and make the most of those that are plentiful. We can't continue to use oil and gas for 75 percent of our consumption, as we do now, when they only make up 7 percent of our domestic reserves. We need to shift to plentiful coal, while taking care to protect the environment, and to apply stricter safety standards to nuclear energy. The tenth and last principle is that we must start now to develop the new, unconventional sources of energy that we will rely on in the next century. Now, these 10 principles have guided the development of the policy that I will describe to you and the Congress on Wednesday night.

I wanted to mention tonight especially those two among many subjects that fall on my shoulders--agriculture and energy. The tests of political strength are severe; the responsibilities are great; the complexities are very difficult; the questions are hard to answer. But what gives me a sense of assurance and confidence is the degree with which I am close to you. When I base my opinion and my decision and my efforts on what I know you feel and what I know that you want, to that degree I feel that I represent you and our Nation well. I have a feeling that we are making good progress in correcting some of the deep concerns that we felt a year, 2 years, 3 years ago. The spirit of our country had been damaged severely by the Vietnam war. It had been damaged severely by the Watergate revelations, by the CIA investigations. There was a sense of concern about what our Nation stood for.

In the meantime, a very important and necessary step has been taken and that is in the administration's proposed reform for the Food Stamp Program to limit the level of assistance based on income and to cash out the Food Stamp Program, or rather to eliminate the mandatory payment for food stamps. We hope the Congress will go ahead with this without delay. Some of the problems that have been apparent for many years are described on these charts on my left. The widely varying Federal contributions to welfare recipients around the Nation are illustrated very vividly here. There's a factor of 500 percent or more between the lowest payments in some of the States colored in green compared to the highest payments in the yellow colored States with dots on them. I don't know if you can read it from there, but the States with the yellow and black dots 'have an average Federal contribution of $1,125 to $1,688. The orange colored States have an average Federal contribution of $860 to $1,125. The blue cross-hatched States, $575 to $860; and the green States from $283 to $575.