The rhetoric and demands from all sides may be harsh, but there are obvious areas of agreement that can provide a basis for progress. Private discuss… - Jimmy Carter

I know how much I love my own children. Just a few minutes ago, Amy and I were out in the front yard of the White House designing a tree house that's going to be built for Amy, and it is one of those many instances that I have to be close to her. And I know that when she does get ill in the future, I want her to have good health care. But I'm just as interested in a child who lives in the oldest and most dilapidated apartment house in the District of Columbia. And I'm also interested in the children that live in Atlanta, Georgia, Detroit, or who live in other parts of our country. So, I'm here to represent the Government, which quite often makes mistakes, but which I hope always retains a heart, attuned to loving care for those who are able to care for themselves, yes, but for primarily those whose care would be neglected if those who do occupy major political positions in the Congress and in the White House didn't care for everyone. This is a good day for us. And I hope that everyone who serves in this hospital or who comes here for treatment or whose family uses this facility will be blessed by it and will be inspired with a sense of compassion and understanding and brotherhood and love, to keep illness away from our children and to correct those who are afflicted with disease.

In the first place, I have not decided on any specifics of a tax reform package at all. I've certainly not decided on eliminating credits for interest paid on homes or property taxes paid for homes. During the political campaign, I promised that there would not be a reduction in the stimulus for American families to own their own homes, and if there should be any change it would be compatible with that commitment of mine. Now, I have some doubt about whether this same level of interest rate deduction should be applicable to a $500,000 home or a second or third or fourth home for very wealthy families, as contrasted with the average American working family who's trying to pay for one home in which they live. Also, you have to remember that if the credit is on a percentage basis, then a family that has a $15,000 income, if given a certain amount of credit for interest, only gets, say, 20 percent of that interest payment credited on their tax. But if you're in the 70-percent bracket, you get 70 percent of any interest that you pay on your home. So, equalizing those homeownership credit incentives is part of the package. But it will not hurt the average family in trying to purchase or pay for their own dwelling place.

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.