President's Commission for a National Agenda for the Eighties Remarks on Receiving the Commission's Final Report.

CHAIRMAN McGILL. Mr. President, I have with me your Commission on a National Agenda for the Eighties. And it is my very great honor to be able to present to you on behalf of the Commission the first copy of our final report. But I'd like to say a word or two to you first if I may, sir.

THE PRESIDENT. Please do, yes.

CHAIRMAN MCGILL. The final report will be complemented by the reports of nine study panels into which we organized ourselves to carry out the broad tasks that you gave to us. Taken together, they amount to about 1,200 pages of print, about 5,000 hours of study, discussion, decisionmaking on the part of 45 commissioners and all of it accomplished in less than 14 months. The only report to have been reviewed by the entire Commission is the report that I'm giving you this morning. The panel reports were signed only by the commissioners who carried on the special work of each panel, and that would be sometimes six, sometimes nine commissioners together with appropriate staff. Accordingly, some of the recommendations of the panels appear in the final report. Others appear in altered form. And others don't appear at all. But, in general, the work proceeded in an atmosphere of harmony.

There are no simple nostrums. There are no magic formulas that will revitalize the American economy, achieve energy independence, or lubricate our political processes. We see a decade of hard decisions and rather crushing burdens for our political leaders. But the outlook of the Commission is not a grim one. We believe that we have identified a mix of policies which has a good prospect of seeing us through the eighties safely. We do not anticipate that they would be broadly acceptable to all. We don't believe they're entirely acceptable to you, sir. But we do feel that they form a basis for public debate that is likely to be an effective way to project the Commission's work into the future.

I'd like to say a few words of acknowledgement, sir. I owe a great debt to my colleagues, the commissioners. They produced an atmosphere in which we were able to address all of our differences—and they were legion—and to resolve most of them in a cordial way. We carried on our sensitive work during an election year without a single embarrassing headline, for which I think we all owe these men and women a debt, because that is the highest level of responsibility.

We owe a particular debt to the Executive Committee of the Commission, the chairpersons of the study panels. The final draft of our report is largely the work of the Executive Committee. They synthesized the nine study panel reports, structured the final report, and, I think unique among Presidential Commissions, about 50 percent of the prose is the work of the Executive Committee. We owe a very considerable debt to our professional staff who worked effectively and assiduously to get this job done on time.

And finally, sir, we owe, I think, the greatest debt of all to you. You set us free to do our work without any interference of any sort. You placed the resources of your administration fully at our disposal, and you yourself conducted yourself with dignity and honor in the midst of the greatest national difficulties. Every commissioner here knows the kinds of problems that you have confronted and what you sought to do, because our work has given us a unique perspective on the difficulties you face.

And so, we thank you, and I give you this report, sir, and ask respectfully that you discharge the Commission. Our work is done. [Laughter]

THE PRESIDENT. Chairman McGill has expressed my exact sentiments in the appreciation that he evoked for the work of the Commission members and for the Executive Committee. I would like to add an additional word of thanks to you as Chairman, to Hedley Donovan, who helped to evolve the idea, helped me to select the members of the Commission, and for having structured the overall concept from its very initial moments.

This is a worthwhile effort. Some of the public attention has been drawn to one or two controversial portions of the report. I'm glad that you have shared with me during the last few months an analysis of some of the kinds of issues that a President and the Government of our Nation will have to face along with the interrelationship between the private sector—of labor, management—and the other levels of government at the State and local, official level.

I don't agree with everything that I have heard about the summary of the report, and I think that's proven by the fact that some of this is a departure from the policies that I've set down. Whether or not we should proceed aggressively with the synthetic fuels program, for instance; the exact role for the PLO to play in the Mideast settlement; how to delineate between preventive health care, hospital cost containment, and a national health program—those are the kinds of questions that you have addressed. And in some instances you've come down with a little different analysis of what should be done than what I personally would prefer. In most of the report, however, as I understand it, your recommendations are compatible with what I myself would advocate, and this has strengthened my own belief that I've been correct in pursuing those ideas.

I think it's important for the American people to understand, as I tried to explain during the campaign months, that there are no simple or easy answers to very complicated problems, that they are not likely to go away, that there's no magic nostrum or magic formula for resolving these difficulties, and that the American people need not expect them. But, as I mentioned night before last in a television address, I think our Nation, above all other nations on Earth, is equipped to meet these problems successfully, not only to give our own people a better life of challenge and achievement and excitement but also to provide leadership for the rest of the world. And if we can lead toward peace or toward the husbanding of our natural resources or toward the conservation of our precious possessions or to the enhancement of liberty, to better education, to better health, to better work opportunities, to better accommodation for inevitable change in the movement of people from one part of a nation to another, then I think the rest of the world will continue to emulate what we have done ourselves. So, I believe in all those areas that the report will be very constructive, and those who shape our Nation's future I'm sure will refer to this report with interest and also with great benefit.

Finally, let me say that just the raising of these issues for public debate is an important end in itself, that the fact that the issue is addressed not just within the private circles of the Cabinet Room or the Congress, even, but through the news media and involving hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people will be constructive. I've always felt that the more intimately involved the vast number of Americans are in the resolution of a problem, the more sound their judgment was likely to be in the final analysis. And I'm very grateful for that as well.

I want to say in closing that you are dismissed, having done a superb job. And I'm deeply grateful to you, and so is a nation which will benefit from your work. Thank you.