Remarks to Top Personnel at the Department of the Treasury.

THE PRESIDENT. Secretary Kennedy just told me that this was historic. He doesn't think a President has ever been in here like this before. I think Presidents have been here before to get their checks, though. [Turning to Secretary Kennedy.] You send them over, don't you?

SECRETARY KENNEDY. We'll send them over. [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. I am delighted to have the opportunity to come here in this way. As a matter of fact, as I look around the room I see many of you that I have met on previous occasions.

Not only Presidents, but even Vice Presidents, you will find, have occasions to come to talk to the Secretary of the Treasury and the Under Secretary, because when you consider this Department and what really makes it distinctive is that it really serves the whole Government.

I have just come from HEW. Next week I will be in Interior. And of course I have been to Defense, Agriculture, and many other departments. All of them have a special mission and special assignment vitally important to the success of any administration.

But without leadership at the Treasury, nothing else is going to work. I know that. You know that.

I think that is one of the reasons why there has always been a special spirit in the Treasury. I would say this whether this happened to be the administration which I presently head or a previous administration or the next one---a special spirit. Because here in the Treasury the policies have to be developed not just short-range but long-range; long-range for the financial stability of this country, long-range for purposes of trying to maintain the incentives through our tax system and other systems which will keep the country growing, and also long-range, as we all know, in more recent years in terms of the international position of the United States.

I found, for example, that as I prepare for a trip to Europe that I am going to be taking beginning next week, a week from Sunday, that high on the list of papers that I will have to read will be a paper from the Treasury Department on such subjects as balance of payments and controls and the like.

As far as that is concerned, that perhaps has always been a problem that a President would have in taking a trip abroad, but simply looking back only a period of 8 to 10 years, the problem is far more significant today than it was then.

I give you this background only because I want you to know that as one who is your closest neighbor--and the Treasury happens to be the closest neighbor of all the departments, the closest to the White House--that I am aware of the vital importance of your work. I appreciate that importance. I appreciate that that work must be completely beyond any partisan considerations.

I appreciate the fact that that work must have a sense of continuity that perhaps is more apparent here and more needed here than in any other department of Government. I think that sense of continuity is demonstrated by the fact that the three top men that I, as the new President, have appointed, the Secretary of the Treasury and the two Under Secretaries, all have had service in the Department of the Treasury at one time or another. And this is as it should be.

It is in that spirit that I want to work with this Department, with the Secretary, and the other officials of the Department.

The other point that I would like to make is with regard to some of the immediate missions that you have ahead. I know that many department officials, Cabinet officers, have been somewhat concerned by the number of directives¹ they have been receiving from the White House with dates on them as to "Have this back within a week to 2 weeks." I see a few smiles in the room and I know that many weekends have been spent trying to get those directives adhered to in order to meet the dates that we have set.

¹See Appendix C.

The purpose, of course, is to provide for the new administration the well thought-out programs that we can present to the Congress. For that reason, we will appreciate your cooperation and we will appreciate and we thank you for all that midnight oil and those extra hours without double-time pay that you are going to put in. At least at this level you don't get any double-time pay, I am sure of that.

But I think, too, that as we look at the Treasury Department, and having spoken of this sense of continuity, perhaps at no time in the history of the country has this Department faced a period when there is a greater need for and a greater prospect for new initiatives and for new approaches in several fields.

I am going to speak very carefully now, because I realize that when a Secretary of the Treasury, let alone a President of the United States, says something about tax programs or international monetary matters that it can have the effect of changing the price of gold or, for that matter, changing the price of stocks, and so forth and so on.

What I am suggesting here now is that there will be, that the time come-these things run in great cycles--the time has come in the history of this country when we must reexamine our whole tax policy. There will be significant recommendations made by the new administration, based on the advice we get from this Department, with regard to tax reform this year. There will be significant recommendations from a longer range standpoint made at a later time. This is the time when the events call for change in this field.

It doesn't mean that in advocating change that we are throwing out all of the approaches of the past. But it does mean that a tax system which has to a certain extent grown like Topsy, and not because this Department was responsible for those decisions, but it has grown like Topsy by necessity. It now needs reevaluation.

I have told the Secretary of the Treasury, and I have been very delighted to learn that he and his top associates share this view, that I want them to think in completely new terms with regard to our tax system. That doesn't mean that we don't retain many of the procedures, many of the approaches of the past. But it does mean that the Congress now, I think, is receptive to significant change.

And what we must do, rather than to be controlled by change, is to help direct the change and the people in this room, those particularly that have responsibility in the tax field. From the wealth of your experience and your background can come the advice that will see to it that in making changes we do not destroy what is good about what we presently have. That, of course, is the great secret of Government, to have change without destruction. It is, of course, the secret of life.

Another point that I would like to make is that in the international field it is no secret--I pick up the paper every week on a Sunday and read the Sunday review on the financial pages. I don't read it every day. Reading it on Sunday is bad enough. But in any event, I read the reviews.

As I was saying to the Secretary the other day when we were meeting in the National Security Council meeting on preparing our trip to Europe, there are indications that the problems affecting the international monetary system are very possibly going to be a subject not only of major discussion on this immediate trip but also they are going to be a subject of major concern in this next year and perhaps within the next 2 years.

Now is the time to examine our international monetary system to see where its strengths are, where its weaknesses are and then to provide the leadership, leadership which is responsible, not dictatorial, leadership which looks to the good judgment and the good advice that we can get from our friends abroad who will have a similar view about the necessity for a sound international monetary system.

But here in this very old Department with all of its great sense of continuity, a department which usually is thought of as the Department which says, "No, you can't do that because we don't have the money"--I mean you in the Budget Bureau. But it is somewhat the same, as you know--that here in this Department, I see you here at a fume that is very exciting, very exciting, because whether it is in the field of tax reform, whether it is in the field of international monetary policies, there is a need for new approaches.

I want you to know that I look forward to working with you, working of course with the Secretary, and the top people of this Department in attempting to develop those new approaches, approaches that will serve this Nation and in a broader sense will serve the whole world.

Now having said these things, I want to make one thing very clear at the conclusion of my remarks: that I realize that among the people that I have appointed in this Department, very few actually represent the new administration.

Most of the people here have---in this room even you who are the top people in the Department have served through administration after administration. You have given your lives to Government service.

I am deeply grateful for that. I just want all of those who have not been appointed by the new President upon the recommendation of the Secretary, those who have dedicated their lives to Government service, to know that as I stand here I look back on my own years in Government.

I am proud to have been in Government service in much of my adult life and I appreciate the fact that many have given their whole lives to that. And I wish you would convey that same sense right down the line.

As I walked through the halls here, I was really very touched by the fact that there were hundreds and hundreds of stenographers and others, I suppose secretaries and people that do filing or write form letters, all of the boring, some might call menial tasks, but I don't need to tell you as executives how vital they are to our success.

And sometimes I think we don't convey to them enough our own real appreciation for what they do. Every one of them not only matters, but without their doing a good job, the quality that we do at the top will not be what it should be.

I wish that you could convey as you go back to your offices up and down the line that the new President of the United States has worked at various levels of Government.

I was once a P-3 when they had that. Some of you will remember when they called it that. A P-3 lawyer in the OPA in 1942 was a very low form of life, I can assure you.

I remember then the task that I had of preparing form letters and also preparing congressional mail to be signed by the President of the United States on tire rationing.

It seemed to me to be a very boring job at times. But I do know that what made it mean something was that to me and to all of us who worked under very difficult circumstances in old Tempo-D down on Independence Avenue, since torn down--it should have been torn down even then, but it has been since torn down--what really made it mean something to us was that we felt that we were part of a bigger cause, that by what we did we were helping to make possible success at a very high level of programs that were vital to this country.

If we can just get the people in this Government--I am not referring just to the thousands in Treasury and in all of your departments---but in all the departments of Government, the millions working in the Federal Government, to get a sense of their own importance in a much larger cause, that they do matter, and that we do count on that, I think this can bring a new morale to those serving in Government, a new spirit, more productivity, of course, but more than that, a better life for all of them. And that is something we are interested in.

One final point I want to make--and I do want a chance to meet you before I go back across the street--I, in appointing the Secretary of the Treasury, had a long visit with him.

I met him on other occasions. But I had a long visit with him in the home of Herbert Brownell, an old friend, a mutual friend of ours, and in that discussion we talked about many things. But what really impressed me about him among many other things--I knew that he was a very successful banker. I knew of course of his background in the Treasury. I knew of his leadership in many activities outside simply of his banking experience.

But what impressed me was the fact that here was a man who knew all about money, who knew all about the great forces that determine the value of money and he at least had more than a passing acquaintance with these very sophisticated matters of international finance, taxes, and so forth and so on, but also a man of great heart, a man who understood the problems of our great cities and in understanding them recognized that it was necessary for us to think in imaginative and new terms about those problems.

I think that is the ideal combination for a man to head this great Department. It is the kind of spirit with which we are approaching the problems. We want a sound administration, one that will provide for a sound currency, one which is stable, one which can have growth without significant inflation.

But also we want an administration that will not be so inhibited in looking to its monetary problems that it cannot solve some of the other problems that confront the Nation, problems that are very serious abroad but also even more serious at home.

And I am delighted that our new Secretary and this whole team has that understanding.

So I simply want to say that I will of course listen when the Secretary says no, as he must from time to time. But I expect that he is going to find a way through the management of our debt, through the new tax reform, and through everything else, so that he can say yes just as often as we want him to say yes to some of the programs we have to deal with.

Thank you.