Remarks After a Meeting With Representatives of the American Bankers Association in Connection With the Student Loan Program.

Mr. Davis, Mr. Walker, Commissioner Howe, Mr. Muirhead, my friends, ladies and gentlemen:

I have just come from a very high level meeting behind closed doors with some of the country's leading bankers. But before the stock market begins to flutter, I want to reassure you that I am meeting with these bankers not because we have any grave problems, but because we do have a very great program.

These gentlemen here with me this morning represent financial institutions throughout this Nation. They have given very strong support to the guaranteed student loan program which is a vital feature of the Higher Education Act of 1965.

Today, they have told me of the plans that they have made and what they are doing to make this program an outstanding success.

Under this new loan program, families will finance college education for their children in the same way that they finance the purchase of a home: through long-term, federally guaranteed private loans.

For millions of families, the financial burden of college education will now be lifted; new opportunities will open for American students.

This program, I think, is one more example of creative federalism. Its success depends not so much on the guarantee by the Federal Government as it does on the imagination and the public spirit of the private lending institutions throughout this country.

The American Bankers Association has been working for months to guarantee the complete success of this program.

I have been delighted to meet with its leaders today--to discuss with them some of the details and some of their experiences, to review some of the material that they have assembled, some of the literature that they have produced, and some of the recommendations that they are making to their member banks in all the States of the Union.

I have received their report. It is encouraging. Their attitude is a fine one. And I think that as a result of this meeting and the work that they have already done, the legislation we have already passed, that not only will many thousands of young people be attending college who otherwise would not have been able to attend, but we will further strengthen our free enterprise system.

I pay tribute to the bankers of America who have given their Government a lending hand and have extended it also to those coming young men and women who need an education and who, when they get it, will reward us all with their increased knowledge and with their support of the finest governmental system in all the world.

I will leave these men with you now. I ask you to have mercy upon them.

Thank you.