Miami Beach, Florida Remarks at the Annual Convention of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers of America.

Thank you very much, Leon Sullivan. It's an honor to be introduced by a man who, along with you, has done so much for hundreds of thousands of Americans and given us all a better life. Thank you very much. I can't think of another fellow Baptist— [laughter] —who's done so much to take literally the song "We'll Work 'Til Jesus Comes." Right? [Laughter]

Not too long ago Leon Sullivan came into the White House, into the Oval Office, and he never walks in the Oval Office unless he walks out with something- [laughter] —never for himself, but always for others. One thing he wanted was for me to come down to be with you, and that's a favor he did for me. And another proposition he had to make was that he and I join forces as partners, the Federal Government and OIC, to try to put additional tens of thousands of Americans to work, and I'll tell you about it in just a few minutes.

But I'm delighted to be here at the 16th annual convention of the Opportunities Industrialization Centers. I congratulate you and I thank all of you in OEC.

AUDIENCE MEMBERS. OIC!

THE PRESIDENT. OIC. OIC. And I thank all of you in OIC for 16 years of great achievement.

All of us are meeting in a time of great importance in our Nation's history. They are still hard times, as you well know, for millions of Americans. These times challenge our minds and our courage, our commitment, our unity, and these times demand our concern and our compassion.

The inflation and the unemployment figures show that the almost inevitable recession has finally arrived, later than most economists had predicted, but with sharper increases in our unemployment rate than had been expected. The damaging effect of explosive OPEC oil prices and the sustained high interest rates and high inflation must be met by all of us together as we struggle to provide jobs for America, which is your commitment, and it's my commitment, too.

I'm well aware of the anxieties that exist, the uncertainty for hard-working, struggling families, and the discouragement of young people who are looking for their first job. There is nothing so damaging to a young person as to arrive at the adult working age, having talent and ability having been given by God, and not feeling a part of society; not being able to support oneself with one's own work; not being able to form a family of stability and achievement. We must not let them down, and we will not let them down.

Just as we've taken effective steps recently to reduce inflation, I want you to know, I want the country to know, that we have the existing proposals and the new programs to cushion the effects of this recession and that we are also fighting to care for the poor and the elderly and the afflicted. We cannot lose sight of our fundamental obligation to share what God has given us with those less fortunate than we are, even if it means sacrifice on the part of all. This is the reason I'm determined to maintain and to strengthen existing programs in the Federal Government and in the private sector that are in danger. And even during a period of stringent budget limitations, designed to hold down inflation, interest rates, we have new programs that we are pushing which are making good progress, and with your help we will not fail.

We've had to face many severe problems in the last few months. We've had to make difficult decisions. Not one of those decisions has been easy, but I've kept foremost my own determination, and I'm sure you agree, that we will not solve the problems of energy, inflation, and economic stagnation by imposing sacrifices on the poor.

Just last week, I notified the Congress that we must exercise constraint in controlling inflation and that I wanted a budget that is balanced, but one which is fair to the poor, to the cities, to the jobless, and to those who look for government, of necessity, to alleviate the deprivation and the discrimination that's in their lives, particularly in hard times.

I sent to the Congress a budget that is restrained, but is filled with compassion. We did not advocate and we do not advocate any spending cuts for the elderly, we've had substantial increases; for the disabled, substantial increases; and for our dependent children, again substantial increases. The 1981 budget, for instance, includes spending for women, infants, and children six times greater than it was 3 1/2 years ago when I took the oath of office as President. I've set up a full food stamp program, and you need to help me protect it, after working with the Congress to eliminate the purchase requirement.

Housing: This year, 1980, which ends October 1, we've got 240,000 Federal-assisted housing being built, homes primarily for the poor and the middle-income persons—240,000. We expect to have another 160,000—almost double-in the 1981 budget.

These compassionate programs are being tested in Congress, but they are working, they're doing the job, and we will keep on doing this kind of job as long as I am President. And we must expand these programs, and the Congress is cooperating on many of them.

Our fight to bring down inflation must not be abandoned, because it will help everyone. It particularly eliminates a cruel burden on the poor, on the elderly who live on fixed incomes, on those who can least protect themselves, even the poor who sometimes must choose between a warm meal and a warm home, for the young people who need jobs and a career with a future. Inflation has steadily robbed these people for the last 12 years, and we must put an end to that.

I call on you today to keep the faith. We will not waver in our struggle to build an economy that sustains the hopes and the dreams of the forgotten people of this country.

As Leon Sullivan points out at every chance he gets, as is stated with facts and • action in every OIC office, we must continue to create jobs, permanent jobs; some in government, yes, but most in the private sector. And as we control the wage and price spiral, we can build a permanent energy base that will make it impossible for unfriendly oil-producing countries to manipulate our economy and to decide our destiny.

I'm with you today to call for redoubled efforts to attack the root causes of economic misery. It's good for us not to forget the causes of our problems. We must improve an aging industrial base. At the present time the productivity of American workers is the highest in the world, but other countries are increasing how much their workers can produce faster than we are. We must maintain a proper balance between controlling inflation on the one hand, and providing full employment. And we must realize that when we cut down on inflation and cut down interest rates we let people buy refrigerators and stoves and sewing machines and automobiles and homes, which have to be produced, and therefore provide jobs.

We must call up the compassion on the one hand and the realism on the other which groups like OIC have always shown. There is no better place to continue this struggle than within the OIC's of America, for your concern has meant a hand up and not a handout. And Leon, if anybody asks you what my administration thinks about the OIC's, tell them about the $120 million in national and local CETA funds going to your centers this year. We're putting our money where it counts: in the OIC offices around this country.

On the way down here on the plane I was talking with Ernie Green, who heads up a $10 billion program in CETA, and he said, "Mr. President, there is no way that we can better spend limited job funds than with the OIC, because they do such a good job."

I told you a few minutes ago that when Leon Sullivan came in the Oval Office, he took something out with him. We've agreed with the OIC to mount a common effort to place 100,000 more young people in jobs in the coming year. It'll be a close partnership arrangement with 10,000 of these jobs being placed in Federal agencies, and the other 90,000, with Federal help, along with your help, in the private sector. And I'm directing the Department of Labor and the Office of Personnel Management to work with OIC, and I'm asking also the business community—and I will be meeting in a few minutes with some of the top business leaders of the Miami area—to cooperate fully in this joint effort.

This is an unprecedented commitment. This is the largest single job placement effort ever undertaken in the history of this Nation by a community organization.

Let me quickly point out that I look upon this not as the Federal Government doing OIC a favor, but I look on it as OIC continuing to do this Nation a favor and the Federal Government providing help for you. That illustrates the kind of confidence I have in you, and it also illustrates the reason that I wanted to come to Miami to be at this convocation of this assembly to speak to you.

When Leon Sullivan spoke last fall before the youth employment task force, he said some powerful things, which I'm sure does not surprise any of you. And I'd like to quote him: He said, "We need an all-out effort. We need to declare war on joblessness, hopelessness, racial prejudice, and despair that are all part of the mounting unemployment youth tragedy, and we need, as Americans, to do it together."

I listened very carefully. He sounded like a good partner to me. And not long after that, with the help of my staff and Leon and many others on this podium with me, I announced a new jobs and training program that will add $2 billion to the $4 billion we're already spending for young people.

This will ultimately mean 500,000 youth jobs in our country, with a close working relationship between the new Department of Education, young people in the junior and senior years of high school, and private employers who will provide the jobs and part of the training while the schools do the rest. Now, I want to make sure that you understand that this is above and beyond the million summer jobs that we'll have this year and next year, and the 424,000 youth employment jobs that are already in place this year. It's nearly three times the amount being spent on youth employment and training when I took office 3 1/2 years ago. You see, it pays to listen to Leon, because the country benefits from it.

This is a record that I'm very proud to relate. I might say that this new youth employment bill is making good progress in the House, and also the amount of money for it has already been approved in the House and Senate budget committee. So, it's got an excellent prospect of passing.

The number one domestic priority in my budget to Congress was to put young people to work. This commitment was emphasized before the recession came, and I'm fighting to keep it in place at every step in its progress through the Congress. Three years ago, with the help of Ernie Green, Leon, and others, we took over a CETA program that scattered its resources everywhere, and we made it into a concentrated effort against hardcore unemployment. Now CETA not only is twice the size that it was 3 years ago, but it reaches four times the number of disadvantaged Americans. We have concentrated on Americans who are out of work, who needs it most, and now 95 percent of all the CETA jobs go to the disadvantaged. And I've made sure that CETA is placing people in the private job sector in career jobs, in permanent jobs, and that's the way CETA's going to continue to be run, with your help.

We've made some progress, but I don't want to overemphasize it, because we all know that too many people are still out of work. We never like that. But we also have to look beyond the percentages to the number of real jobs that have been added. We've had the largest growth in jobs in this country of any President's administration in history, and a million of those new jobs, a net increase of a million of those new jobs, have gone to black workers. About a million have gone to workers who speak Spanish. We have more minorities, more women, more young workers on the job than ever before in the history of this country.

Minority teenage employment has gone up 17 percent. As these young people and women and minority citizens got jobs, when they had previously given up hope, their neighbors and their friends saw them with new employment. And now we have hundreds of thousands of more Americans coming forward whose names have never been on the unemployment rolls, saying, "I want a job, too." That's good, because what we want is to put Americans to work. Everybody who's able to work ought to have a job.

We have made good progress, and we'll make more. But let me refer one more time in closing to the root causes of our economic problems, because you need to understand it in its entirety. The recession that we face is the inevitable result of inflation that has been fueled by a huge surge upward in OPEC oil prices. For more than a year, the world price of oil has gone up an average of 10 percent a month, and it's driven up the cost of everything else.

This year, we will spend in foreign countries $90 billion to buy their oil. That's a lot of money. It amounts to $1,500 for every family in this country-more than $400 for every man, woman, and child in this country sent out of our Nation to buy foreign oil. That's about nine times more than the total CETA program.

Just think, if we could cut down that oil import and quit sending our money overseas, how many new jobs we could create with investments, and a dynamic life and a better quality of life for all Americans. That's why it is so important that we save energy to start with, and produce more energy here at home. Twice in the last 6 years, we've seen OPEC price increases first bring on sky-high inflation, like it did this year and in 1974, and then an inevitable recession, and it may happen again unless we are able to free ourselves from our excessive dependence on foreign oil.

Finally, after a long period of time, there is some hope for energy security for our country. After 3 years of working with Congress, we are putting together now a national energy program. Oil imports are already on the way down. In previous years they'd been going up, up, up, every year. Last year we reduced our oil consumption by 5 percent, and so far this year, the first 5 months of 1980, we have cut down our oil imports 12 percent, which amounts to a million barrels of oil every day. That's a good savings.

In addition to that, the other side of it is to produce more. The only way you can cut down on what you import from overseas is to save energy, don't waste it, and produce more at home. There's no other way.

We have a new program, financed by a tax on the oil companies, that is going to be bigger than the space program, the Marshall plan that rebuilt Europe, and all the cost of the Interstate Highway System put together. And that's going to create a new industry in our Nation-very large, very complex, broad based, almost every community—to derive energy from not only oil and gas but from coal and shale and growing crops and directly from the Sun.

So, ahead of us is a time of hope and challenge and excitement and a better life, and we have no reason in this country to be afraid. We can now get off that economic roller coaster that the OPEC oil nations have put us on. We've turned the tide on our energy problem, and we are beginning to turn the tide on inflation. It has been a very difficult question. Interest rates, as you well know, are down sharply. The prime interest rate charged by the banks has been dropping about 1 percent per week for the last month and a half or two. Price increases are also coming down. We will have good inflation news this summer. These favorable trends can build up consumer purchasing power and leave us more money in our pockets to buy things that have to be produced by Americans on the job.

The seeds of a lasting recovery in the falling interest rates and falling rates of inflation are encouraging, but we face some difficult weeks immediately ahead.

The programs that we've improved together are now in place to ease the harmful effects on families that are damaged by temporary or permanent disappointment, unemployment. We've got to protect those programs. And next we must turn our American production machine loose for the future, to increase productivity, to have new plants, new factories, new construction, new opportunities for us all. This is a great economic challenge for the 1980's. It can be exciting; it can be gratifying; it can be stimulating, as we face the future together.

A determined America, a united America can turn the economic tide and rebuild an economy in which people need not fight with one another to divide a shrinking pie. Our workers need more new and efficient tools. We need a better transportation system. We need new technology to tap our resources; better schools, better training. We need permanent and productive jobs for the millions of Americans who are in need of work. I have high ambitions for this country in the coming years, and I want to complete the job we've started together.

Three years ago I set out to extend the benefits of equal justice and equal opportunity. We've not yet in this country been fully successful in guaranteeing people equal justice, but we have come further than we've ever come before, because I've asked people like Pat Harris, Andy Young, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Drew Days, Clifford Alexander, Ernie Green, and many others to help me; people who are familiar with what OIC does and familiar with the challenge that we face together.

We're enforcing civil rights laws to the letter. We're making affirmative action work. We're enhancing human rights at home and abroad. In just a short 3 1/2 years I've been able to triple the number of black Federal judges. As a matter of fact, I've been lucky enough to appoint more black Federal judges than all the other Presidents who ever lived and served in this country. This will help to ensure justice in our courts.

And together we brought close to enactment the Fair Housing Act amendments. This vital legislation, which can be the most significant civil rights legislation of this decade, will be coming to the House floor for a vote in Washington, probably on Wednesday. If every person who's up here with me on this stage would contact key Members of Congress, we'll have a good chance to pass this legislation, to make sure that we wipe out once and for all discrimination in housing, which was guaranteed in 1968, but which has never been enforced.

Despite the progress we've made, the recent tragedy in Miami is a reminder that we still have a long way to go. I'm determined that our system of justice be simply that—the same justice for all with no regard for race or color or creed or ethnic background or how rich a person might be. I'm also very saddened that those most hurt by the rioting here in Miami are those who already had the least. Burning down a business cannot create any jobs. Violence cannot breed justice. Hate can only poison and ultimately destroy our hopes for the future.

Our Constitution calls on the National Government to establish justice, including economic justice and social justice, but it also calls on us to ensure domestic tranquillity, and I'm committed along with you to doing both.

Martin Luther King, Jr., who knew how to accomplish great things without violence, said, "Man is not mere flotsam and jetsam in the river of life, but he's a child of God." All of us know that truth, and we know our responsibility to one another, and particularly to those less fortunate than we who would never think of sitting in a big ballroom like this in the Fontainebleau Hotel.

The staff of the OIC's, the board members, the business leaders who've taken part, all of you have made a great difference in the lives of others. Before you and me lies the rest of the job, and I ask you to join me in getting it done with renewed hope and renewed commitment and renewed courage and renewed determination. If we work together—and I'm determined that we shall—then we will not fail.

Thank you very much.