Richard Nixon

I am also renewing my request that the Senate give its advice and consent on the two new international conventions on oil spills and the pending amendments to the 1954 Oil Spills Convention.

I propose that $6 billion in Federal funds be authorized and appropriated over the next three years to provide the full Federal share of a $12 billion program of waste treatment facilities.

I have requested in my 1972 budget $2.45 billion for the programs of the Environmental Protection Agency.

During 1970, two new organizations were established to provide Federal leadership for the Nation's campaign to improve the environment.

For example, one department which was not touched by the Ash Council's proposals, the Department of Transportation, will be included in the reorganization legislation I will send to the Congress because I believe that the principles which…

Our nationwide campaign against crime is far from won, but the tide is beginning to turn.

The Congress and the American people, in my view, should have the benefit of the relevant studies of the Advisory Council on Executive Organization in order that they may better evaluate the legislation I will be proposing.

Our Nation's Capital also has shown a significant downward trend in crime.

I am in basic agreement with the principles of government organization expressed in these memoranda.

A positive decline in the number of serious crimes has occurred in twenty-three cities of more than 100,000 population.

I applaud the sponsors of National Crime Prevention Week, and urge all Americans to respond to the challenges it offers.

It is particularly important that the rationale supporting the basic departmental structure I will recommend be well understood.

The results of these efforts have begun to show.

I join with all Americans in wishing the astronauts well as they carry out their mission on the moon and wish them Godspeed for a safe and successful return to earth.

I congratulate the astronauts and also the thousands of other dedicated people who helped make this awesome achievement possible.

I have a very great privilege in addressing you this morning, in welcoming you to Washington and to wish you well on the occasion of this meeting, your 20th meeting of this type.

What I am saying very simply is this: That as we look, as we do now, at how we do a better job with regard to the quantity of medical care, let's not destroy the quality of medical care in the United States of America.

I know that we will have your cooperation.

We want your advice because, as I said in the State of the Union, we have one great goal.

I believe we must face up to this problem, and face up to it now, before events overtake us and while reasoned consideration is still possible.

I urge that this time we not wait for the next emergency, but rather join together in acting upon it now.

The urgency of this matter should require no new emphasis by anyone; the critical nature of it should be clear to all.

Time and again, as the nation has suffered major disruptions from a transportation shutdown, voices have been raised on all sides declaring emphatically that this must not happen again.

So nothing has been done, and emergency has followed emergency, at incalculable cost to millions of innocent bystanders and to the nation itself.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this 2nd day of February, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-fifth.