Remarks on Greeting Participants in the National Teen-Age Republican Leadership Conference.

LET ME welcome all of you in the Rose Garden here at the White House. I am very impressed with the 200, or thereabouts, representatives of the TAR's.

I like that enthusiasm that comes from some 8,000 chapters or groups, and all of you representing about 130,000 members. I hope that this week in Washington has been a good learning experience.

With all of the Congressional talent that you have listened to from both the House and the Senate, I am certain that you will very definitely go from Washington with a lot of fresh ideas and various suggestions and campaign ideas that you will have for the 1976 program.

But this learning experience reminds me somewhat of a learning experience our 19-year-old son, Steve, has had. This past week, he has been out in California taking some instruction from one of the great bronco riders and learning a bit about how to handle a bronco. We talked to him a couple times, and I can assure you he has had quite an experience, a real learning experience.

Now, there may not appear to you to be too much of a connection between your learning experience here and what Steve is going through out in California. But, I think a bronco is something that kicks and bucks, twists and turns, and very seldom goes in one direction very long. We have one of those things here in Washington. It is called the Congress. [Laughter]

Let me say to all of you that the 13 times that I ran for Congress in the Fifth Congressional District of Michigan, I repeatedly relied on the TAR's in many, many areas--for example, in helping to organize a political function, in helping to make those political functions work and work effectively.

I know the TAR's have done a lot of babysitting while voters went to the polls and cast their ballot. I know that the TAR's have made a massive effort in many, many cases, getting people to the polls in one way or another, so they could exercise their franchise to pick and choose the person or persons that they wanted to support.

In addition, the TAR's have done a first-class job, from my personal experience, in trying to show concern for the sick, the elderly, and those who were going through one hardship or another.

TAR's have shown a great concern for our problems in the field of energy, for the environment. TAR's have had a very effective effort in dealing on a person-to-person basis with people in their part of the country or in their particular community.

And this person-to-person relationship, young people to older people, is one way of convincing voters in America that the Republican Party has a concern, has a relationship to them and what is good for our country.

We have some serious problems. We have the problem of trying to maintain fiscal responsibility in the Federal Government. The Republican Party is trying to put a lid on irresponsible spending by the Congress. The Republican Party is trying to develop an energy program that will be meaningful in conserving energy and stimulating new domestic production in this country.

The Republican Party is submitting to the Congress today a very important crime proposal, with an emphasis on returning domestic tranquillity to our society in all 50 States. The crime message, which I am sending to the Congress today, will have a primary emphasis on the victims of crime and the potential victims of crime. We should be concerned about them, and in order to do that, we have to deal strongly with the people that commit crimes.

The Republican Party has a good program, a fine foreign policy, a good domestic policy that will be effective in the 1976 elections.

I know this is the seventh annual get-together of a TAR group. I hope you will have an even bigger get-together in 1976, because this group--TAR's from all over the country--can make a very meaningful effort in winning the election in 1976.

I thank you.