Richard Nixon

I hereby declare that this was a successful mission, a great mission on behalf of your country.

You did not reach the moon but you reached the hearts of millions of people on earth by what you did.

It is my proud honor on behalf of a grateful and proud nation to welcome you and your colleagues back to the United States of America.

I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby designate Sunday, April 19, 1970, as a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving.

I urge my fellow Americans and all the peoples of the world to join with me in offering another prayer, one of deep thanks, for the safe return of the crew of Apollo 13.

Laws do not move the mail, nor do dollars.

It is my hope and expectation that your Soviet colleagues will carry into the Vienna meetings the same determination to bring about a mutually acceptable agreement.

The House has done its duty.

Neither better pay nor better organization will, in and of itself, guarantee better mail service.

The poor and the helpless-- and the taxpayer--need welfare reform now.

The effort to limit strategic armaments remains an integral part of our work for a lasting peace, a peace from which all peoples will benefit.

This is a battle won in a crusade for reform that we cannot afford to lose.

There is no proposal I have sent to the Congress more central to my own philosophy of fairness and progress for all the American people.

I urge that it be given prompt and favorable consideration.

I propose that the new United States Postal Service be empowered to engage in collective bargaining with recognized employee organizations over wages, hours, and working conditions generally, with negotiating impasses being finally…

You know of my firm commitment to the search for an early, equitable, verifiable agreement.

It offers new fairness to the working poor, by helping them to lift themselves out of poverty.

We all know how the present welfare system breaks up families, demeans human dignity, and condemns poor people to a lifetime on the dole.

It combines realism with idealism.

The new establishment would be organized in a way designed to make it at least as free from partisan political pressure as are such presently existing independent establishments as the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the…

I propose an additional pay increase of 8% for postal employees, effective immediately upon enactment of the reorganization law, with prompt collective bargaining over pay schedules under which the time required for rank and file postal…

The family assistance plan offers new hope to the helpless by providing help equally to every dependent family in every State.

I propose that the Post Office Department be reorganized as an independent establishment known as 'The United States Postal Service.'

I want to commend the House for the responsible, forward-looking action it took today in approving the family assistance plan which I proposed last summer.

I am confident, with the action the House has taken today, that the present welfare program, which has been so destructive to millions of American families, is on the way out and that family assistance will take its place.