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THE PRESIDENT: Well, it should be, I think it's simple. Congress is in
session and there are a numberof bills that are important before the
Congress. If they should come at an awkward time for me, and I felt that
they should be vetoed -- now, I have quite a tough time schedule because any
important bill that requires a veto, not only requires the most, the deepest
study in the departments concerned, but it demands daily consultation with
me because I am the one that has got to be convinced that this is a bad bill or
a good bill and therefore you cannot do this if these, as I say, if these bill e
are important, from a distance.
Now, the only reason that I happen to have said this in this particular case,
we don't know how long this Summit meeting is going to be.
rather -- a pretty good understanding of the number of days.
In 1955 we hada
Everybody
agreed that this time it should go as long as it was felt necessary, so since
I am leaving on the 14th and had to fix a date for my visit to Portugal on
Sunday, I took the 23rd, the 23rd to the 24th. This is getting along ata
rather long period. So I said if domestic requirements did bring me back,
I would have to ask Mr, Nixon to serve for me.
Now, as the head of the
delegation. This doesn't mean that I expect him to be there, but I was -simply put the warning.
© Mr. President, May Craig, Press Herald, Portland, Maine. For more
years than you have been in the White House, the pitiful children of the West
Virginia unemployed coal miners have been starving for proper food. We do
give them whatever surpluses we have, While you and Congress talk about
helping the needy in foreign countries, isn't there something that you could
do for needy Americans in this rich America of our own?
THE PRESIDENT: Well, Mrs, Craig, you say they haven't been helped.
I thought they had. Now I'm not going to try to generalize here or make
any alibis., I will find out exactly what has happened because in talking to
the Secretary of Agriculture over the years, | assumed that for those people
that were really destitute, that there were methods for helping them so that
they got enough to eat,
-THE PRESIDENT: Well, I can't believe that it would, for this simple reason.
‘Ve are now scratching around to get money for such things as school
construction, a bill that I recommended a year ago. We are trying to build
cur roads before they become obsolete and have to get a new program to brin
taem around.
There are all sorts of things to be done in this country in the
vay of reclamation, and so on, that have to take over the years.
I see no
‘eason why the sums which now are going into these sterile, negative
‘nechanisms that we call war munitions shouldn't go into something positive.
REPRODUCED AT THE DWIGHTD.
EISENHOWER LIBRARY
Q Burd, Chicago Tribune. You and President de Gaulle agreed that
disarmament should have, be a priority subject at the Summit. If we
should have substantial disarmament somewhere along the line, do you
think it would send this economyinto a tailspin?
a.
wee
.
.
a"