Interview With the President Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session With Members of the National Association of Farm Broadcasting.

THE PRESIDENT. Good afternoon, everybody. Sorry to interrupt your meeting. [Laughter]

ADMINISTRATION POLICIES

I was just looking over yesterday's Washington Post. And my staff had counted 13 articles in one newspaper about fraud or corruption or misspent public funds. And this is one of the challenges that we've accepted since I've been President, is to try to root out this kind of legitimate concern that American people have about government.

We will have legislation very shortly establishing the firmest possible restraint on major public officials in the Congress and my administration concerning ethics. We're setting up 12 inspectors general, who will supervise independently the proper performance within the major agencies.

We've now embarked, as you know, on a very difficult task of correcting some of the deficiencies that have existed for decades, really, in the General Services Administration. I think the civil service reform, which is likely to pass very shortly, will mean that public employees who are overwhelmingly excellent, honest, dedicated, competent, will be given a chance to be rewarded for that kind of performance. And we are encouraging the protection of the so-called whistleblowers, and in the process of civil service reform, we have a special counsel who again is independent of me or anyone else who can investigate allegations of improper performance.

This is an ongoing process. It's not an abrupt crusade. It's something we've been doing for a long time. But I hope it'll pay dividends, because every time we do have a revelation of a bad performance or improper spending of funds or even just mismanagement, certainly corruption and fraud, it creates a very bad core problem in government that we'd like to root out.

I think I might outline just in a couple of minutes a few of the things that we are working on now in the last stages of the congressional session, and just briefly cover some foreign affairs, and then let you ask me questions that are of concern to you.

I think we have now a good chance to pass the major portion of the natural gas and other energy policy bills. And we'll get four bills passed, maybe half of another bill, which would include everything except the crude oil equalization tax—that would be carried over till next year—a few other smaller items.

Civil service reform is something we've struggled with now for 20 months. The conference committee concluded its work yesterday in a spirit of harmony. I think that will be concluded now.

Airline deregulation, which has been hung up because it's tied to an airline noise bill, has now been separated. I met with the key conferees yesterday, and they are prepared to move on that.

We have many other items that are important. The full employment bill, of course, is important; the equal rights amendment extension is important to over half the American people. And we have in addition a wide range of mandatory bills, appropriations bills and authorization bills which must be presented to me in a fiscally responsible way, otherwise they'll face disapproval here in the White House.

We've now had almost exactly a year of experience with the 1977 farm act, which was perhaps the most far-reaching legislation that was passed in 1977. I think the results have been good. We are making remarkable progress in improving the net farm income. We've made good progress in increasing farm exports; last year set an all-time record in spite of very low unit prices. This year we expect to improve upon that.

We still are trying to assess any needs for change. We're going to have good crops, I think, this year in some of the basic commodity items, and the set-aside programs we're trying to orient and also to describe so that they'll be constructive. We're trying to increase the quality of our farm products, both at the shipping points and all kinds of grains. And, of course, we're trying to leave the bottom four leaves of tobacco plants-do different things that the farmers can do on their own that might cut down the volume when that volume is comprised of marginal quality of portion of shipments for sales.

In foreign affairs, we are progressing slowly, sometimes haltingly, but I think in a good spirit, with the Soviet Union in concluding a SALT agreement, hopefully this year. I'll meet tomorrow morning with Foreign Minister Gromyko, who's been meeting the last 2 days in New York with Secretary Vance on that and a comprehensive test ban.

We've had good success, as you know, well-publicized effort at Camp David in trying to make a major stride toward peace in the Middle East. Yesterday, I spoke by telephone both to President Sadat and to Prime Minister Begin. They're both pleased with the Knesset vote. And I see really no difficult problems to be resolved in concluding a peace treaty between Egypt and Israel. The only holdup in an immediate commitment to negotiations is just the technicalities of getting the delegations chosen, determining a site, and there are holy days or important national days both in Egypt and Israel which will be concluded about 2 weeks from now.

So, I don't see any problems there. I'd be surprised if some insurmountable problem did arise. I won't go into other details on foreign and domestic policy. I'd rather spend my time with you answering your questions.

QUESTIONS BEEF IMPORTS

Q. Mr. Carter, would you sign the Bentsen bill on the countercyclical cattle imports if it got to your desk?

THE PRESIDENT. No, I wouldn't approve the Bentsen bill as it was drafted. I've let Lloyd and others know about my own concerns on details. I think it will certainly be modified as it goes to the House, and then to the conference committee.

We now have a level of beef imports that I don't intend to increase this year. But I think I ought to have some flexibility there, because quite often there is a legitimate need for increased beef imports. The fact is, in the past this has worked fairly well.

But I studied the Bentsen bill fairly thoroughly when it was first passed through the Senate and expressed some concerns about it, through Bob Bergland, to the House and to the conferees. I don't remember the details of all the items that I didn't like. But there's a good basic philosophy behind it which has been, I think, effectively used by most Presidents. But I think that the President needs flexibility in controlling beef imports.

AGRICULTURE LEGISLATION

Q. Mr. President, Charlie Rankin from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. We've been apprised this morning of the situation concerning your veto of water projects. Have you had a chance to look at the agricultural appropriations bill and contemplate vetoing any of the porkbarreling projects in there, trying to work out something? [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. From what I know about the agriculture bill, it's reasonably acceptable. The bill has 'not gotten to my desk. My staff has not thoroughly assessed it, but my first hearing about it is favorable.

AMERICAN FARMING

Q. Mr. President, I'm Jack Crowner from Kentucky. What is your opinion now of the mood of the American farmer-with a big production in the Government program that we had for set-asides, apparently did not take too well advantage of.

THE PRESIDENT. I think that will probably be determined more accurately on November 7, when you see the results of the campaigns.

Compared to a year ago, the life of the American farm family and also, I think, the attitude of the American farm family has improved dramatically. I hear this in my own travels through the farm regions, from my own home area, which suffered badly last year. And the statistics prove that the farmers should basically be satisfied.

I think the increase—in addition to what I've already described on exports and net farm income—you have an increased right of farm families to control their own basic marketing procedures, with a dramatic growth in on-farm storage. And we are also trying to set up export offices in different key regions of the world, which will help. I think this combination will let the farmers have a much more aggressive sales policy overseas.

We are now getting some orders for grain from countries that didn't formerly trade with us. The People's Republic of China is one, and there's a large possible market there. Bob Strauss is trying to protect the American farmer, too, in his negotiations on trade agreements. I think in general the attitude is good now.

LOCK AND DAM PROJECT IN ILLINOIS

Q. Mr. President, my name is Chuck Lilligren from Minneapolis. If there were proper user fees along with it, would you approve of new construction of Lock and Dam 26 in Alton, Illinois?

THE PRESIDENT. This has been a matter of great debate. My inclination is to approve it, provided the water use fees are compatible with what guidelines I laid down for Senator Long and others in the Senate debate.

INDICTMENTS OF GSA PERSONNEL

I just got a memo here that a Federal grand jury Friday indicted 18 persons on charges stemming from the Government's investigation of the scandal at the General Services Administration. Where is that, Jody?

PRESS SECRETARY POWELL. That's in Baltimore. That's a Baltimore indictment.

THE PRESIDENT. That's the first indictment. Well, I hope we can get it straightened out.

PREDATOR CONTROL

Q. Mr. President, would you consider rescinding or at least modifying the stringency of Mr. Nixon's Presidential order that banned the use of 1080 in the control of coyotes? Sheep ranchers and goat ranchers in Texas—I'm from Texas, my name is Peeples—are suffering ruinous losses. I know of them going out of business, and it's because of an animal that is not endangered. You have it within your power with the sweep of a pen to do something about it.

THE PRESIDENT. I don't know how to answer that question. I've never discussed it with Cecil Andrus or Bob Bergland. But my present inclination would be to leave the Executive order intact. I've not made a study of it, but that's my present thought.

COTTON DUST REGULATION

Q. Mr. President, Ernie Houdashell, from Amarillo, Texas. Recently the Occupational Safety and Health Administration released the long-awaited cotton dust standards. And in doing so, they put an economic bind, a tremendous bind on some segments of the cotton industry, possibly, that's going to dose down some sesments of the cotton industry. Are you ever going to do anything about OSHA as far as the people, these regulations? They're running without control, so to speak, and they are endangering industries like the cotton industry. These cotton dust standards, they're not well founded according to some experts.

THE PRESIDENT. I doubt if there's any regulation that's been issued within the last 12 months that I put more time on personally than I did the standards on cotton dust. You're talking about cotton dust in textile mills, right?

Q. Right.

THE PRESIDENT. Previously, the Republican administration had advocated standards and a method for enforcing them that would have cost the industry an estimated $7 billion, if I remember correctly. I think that's an accurate figure.

After quite a deep study by my Council of Economic Advisers, also by my group that controls inflation and tries to prevent extraordinary burdens being placed on producers and then consumers, and meeting with the director of OSHA, who I consider to be one of the best administrators in the Government, and also Ray Marshall, we modified those standards considerably and cut that cost, I would say, to a fourth of what it was previously.

I think the present regulation is very reasonable, the one that we've issued now. And I'm sure that there are some who don't want to change the standards at all. But this has been a matter of concern to administrations long before I became President, and we've improved it greatly. I think the regulation we issued is

Q. It's being challenged in the courts now by the National Cotton Council. They are

THE PRESIDENT. I understand that, and that's their prerogative. But I think the courts, when they review it, will rule in our favor.

FARM SUPPORT FOR THE ADMINISTRATION

Q. Mark Oppold, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. We are glad to have your wife in our city today, visiting.

How concerned are you about capturing the farm vote in 1980, and what measures will the administration take to bring the vote to your side 2 years from now?

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I hope the Democratic nominee for President gets the farm vote in 1980, no matter who it might be. [Laughter]

I would rather my administration and the Democratic Congress be judged on its record. Farmers are responsible people. I think they make judgments by the degree of freedom they have to produce crops; the degree of control they have over their own destiny; the amount of detectable interest in their specific problems derived from an administration, including the Congress, on kind of a personal basis; the degree of increase in sale of their products, domestically and overseas; and the amount of net income that they realize, which is a bottom-line thing, after they've worked for a year on the farm.

I think on all these issues I've just described—and I could go on—our record has been good. But obviously we want to have an equally good record in the next 2 years. I'm willing to rely on the statistics and the facts and the actual achievements, not just on words or claims or goals that are set and sometimes not realized.

PEANUT LEGISLATION

Q. Mr. President, are you pleased with the way the new peanut bill is working?

THE PRESIDENT. That's one bill that I have deliberately not been involved in because of my family's deep involvement in peanuts.

When I was running for President, I promised the public that I would stay aloof from that particular legislation. And I issued a directive to Bob Bergland, and I asked Senator Talmadge and also Tom Foley to leave me out of that particular legislation. And I think, though, that it seems to be working. I don't have placards and tractors blocking my entrance to my home when I go home to Plains. [Laughter] So, I presume it's working well.

The general philosophy behind it—of course, I was thoroughly familiar with it before I was elected President. I was involved as one of the leaders in the peanut industry. But I think, there again, the trend has been toward decreasing Government involvement and the tight constraint on the peanut farmers' production and an increase in sales and promotion.

I think that the approach is one that's been good.

SUGAR PRICE SUPPORTS

Q. I'm Dave Bateman, from Fargo, North Dakota. And there are two things that concern us out there—obviously, as you know, water. We think we know how you feel about Garrison Dam. What about sugar? Will we have a sugar bill? We've got the largest contiguous acreage of sugar beets in the country, out there, and our farmers are rightly concerned whether we'll have a bill or not.

THE PRESIDENT. I would like to see a bill passed. There's a wide range of opinion about what the price level for sugar should be, all the way from 14 cents to 17 cents, and this involves an enormous amount of money.

I think the Ways and Means bill that came out of the House would be the maximum that I could accept on sugar prices.

Q. Is that 15 cents?

THE PRESIDENT. That's 15 cents, with no annual built-in increase.

Q. No escalator clause in there at all?

THE PRESIDENT. That's correct. That's what the Ways and Means Committee advocated.

In the Senate, as you know, the Church-Long bill calls for 17 cents. If something like that should prevail over my objection, this would really be the only agricultural product where you set the prevailing nationwide price to accommodate the highest cost of production anywhere in the Nation. Even sugarcane producers in Hawaii, you know, would find that the 17 cents to be excessive, for instance. And of course, sugar beets, you can produce sugar for probably less than 15 cents.

I've never promised any farm group, even when I was eagerly seeking their support in the campaign, that I would guarantee them a profit. And I think that this level that I've described is adequate.

FARMER PROTESTS

Q. Mr. President, Jerry Urdahl from Wisconsin. What's your opinion of the American Agriculture Movement?

THE PRESIDENT. I think it's all right. This is a movement that originated last year because of despair and a feeling that top Government officials and the general public did not understand the legitimate grievances and concerns—sometimes actual suffering—that existed in the farm families of our country.

Whether or not you would approve of blocking traffic with tractors—and I don't approve of that kind of law violations; that was a rare occurrence—I think the dramatization of the farmers' plight to the entire public, indeed the entire world, was a very constructive thing. It helped me to get from the Congress and helped many Congress Members to vote for an excellent 1977 farm bill. And I think it kept vividly in the minds of the American people that the farmers are a crucial element in our economic strength and need to be protected in the future.

So, whether you agree with specific occurrences that were highly publicized and exaggerated or not is beside the point. I think the American farm movement did a great service to agriculture and to the country.

TERRORISM

Q. Mr. President, getting away from agriculture, but since your meetings on world peace, there was a threat that there would be now terrorism brought to the United States. I'm Bob Miller from Ohio. In our highly populated area, there has been some concern on this. What do you visualize?

THE PRESIDENT. There's always a threat of terrorism. And I don't know yet what the Mideast peace proposal will do toward the trend.

But, in recent months, in the last 6 or 9 months—I've forgotten the exact period of time—the incidence of terrorism worldwide had dropped. And this was especially true of the incidence of terrorism against Americans and American installations throughout the world.

There are deep feelings about the Mideast, as you know, on both sides. And I've seen threats that the oil fields in Saudi Arabia would be attacked or that American installations around the world would be attacked because of the Camp David accords. We'll continue to be vigilant about it.

One of the major conclusions that was reached at Bonn at the summit conference which was not highly publicized was that the seven nations agreed for the first time that if airplanes were hijacked, for instance, that we would exert the most stringent economic sanctions, through the right to land and take off airplanes, to have air service, against any country that harbored terrorists or hijackers or who kept captured planes in their territory.

We've since contacted every nation in the world which has commercial air serv- ice—and that's almost all of them—and urged other nations to join in with us. And a substantial portion of them—I couldn't tell you the exact percentage today—have also combined with us in means by which terrorism could be constrained. I hope that downward trend, accelerated by the airline hijacking concurrence among the world's leaders, will continue. But if it should turn around, we will obviously just do the best we can to restrain it.

I think many people in the Mideast, even in other confrontation states, don't feel as deeply against the major move toward peace as some of the leaders indicate.

Most people were amazed a year ago, or less than a year ago, at the overwhelming roadside response of Israelis toward President Sadat and of the Egyptians toward the Prime Minister of Israel, Begin, and his negotiating team. They thought there would be some animosity. But there was an overwhelming sense of appreciation that "you've finally brought peace to us."

I think some of the other nations would find this to be true, when and if their leaders show the same courage that has been exhibited by Begin and Sadat. I think the people out there want peace.

So, I think the threat of terrorism is probably exaggerated. But if it should occur, attempts, I think we are prepared to meet it.

RELATIONS WITH THE FARM PRESS

Q. Mr. President, do you feel that you and your administration have been treated fairly by the farm broadcasters and telecasters and the farm press?

THE PRESIDENT. I think so; yes, sir.

In general, I think the press has been very fair to us. The only thing that has concerned me about the press has been that all the time we were trying to work on very broad-ranging problems, that we were criticized because we didn't have instant success. And a lot of people took the campaign promises that I made over a 2-year period and, at the end of my first year, said, "Carter has not kept his campaign promises, because he hasn't done all these things he promised."

This includes an energy policy. Nobody had had the temerity or foolhardiness as President before to try to bring about that accomplishment. Civil service reform in a hundred years, nobody had tackled it; government reorganization, these sorts of things. With that one exception, which is predictable and understandable, I think the press has been very fair.

And now that I have had some success-I'd say notably the Camp David meetings and, I think recently, accomplishments in the Congress—there's probably been too much credit. So, I think if you balanced it out over a 20-month period, 18-month period— [laughter] —the excessive criticism for a while and now the excessive credit would pretty well balance out. [Laughter]

FARM INCOME

Q. Larry Steckline from Kansas. The figures we get indicate quite a difference between farm and nonfarm income. Are you happy today with farm income?

THE PRESIDENT. No. I think we still see that farm income is—I started to say the lowest—among the lowest in the Nation per capita, and also certainly the lowest in the Nation per person, compared to the tremendous capital investment required, even in a fairly prosperous State like Wisconsin.

I remember when I was running for President and campaigned in Wisconsin, I got some figures on the dairy industry from the University of Wisconsin and others. And if I remember right, the average dairy farm at that time, which was '76, had a capital investment of $180,000. The average net income for the family was $7,000. The average size of the family was, I think, five people, which is an extremely low per capita income. And the fact was that the dairy farmer could very well have sold his farm and invested it at 5-percent interest and made $9,000 income without having to work at all.

So, I don't think the general public yet realizes how low farm income is, compared to other farm income, for laborers, and certainly they don't for a farm family that has a tremendous capital investment. There's still a wide disparity there that I hope to help close.

MR. WURFEL. Thank you, sir.

FARM PRICE CONTROLS

Q. Mr. President, Ken Root from Oklahoma City.

THE PRESIDENT. Well, I'll get this one, and then we'll—

Q. Do you have, following this question, in case farm prices started up, say, like they did in 1973, would there be any chance that you would cut it off at the other end by imposing any price controls if a situation like that reoccurred?

THE PRESIDENT. Absolutely not; I would never do that.

I need to go. I have another appointment. But if you don't object, I would like for you to come by and let me get an individual photograph with you before you leave. I don't have time for other questions as you come by, just a handshake and a photograph, and then we'll send them to you after you get home.