Documents / Official release
This file from the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library holds press releases and statements that House Republican Leader Gerald R. Ford issued between January and April 1966. Most cover Vietnam policy, the war on poverty, inflation, foreign aid, the federal budget and changes in his press staff. An April 21, 1966 statement says the Air Force told Ford it would contract a university with no close Air Force ties to have scientists study unexplained UFO sightings and make the report public. According to Ford, his call for congressional hearings led to this study.
CONGRESSMAN GERALD R. FORD HOUSE REPUBLICAN LEADER STATEMZNT BY HOUSE MINORITY LEADER GERALD R. FORD, R-MICH. NEWS RELEASE FOR SATURDAY P. M. RELEASE MARCH 26, 1966 One of the selling points for the $1.5 billion anti-poverty program launched last year by the Johnson Administration was that it would take people off the welfare rolls and reduce welfare spending. Yet federal welfare officials have asked a House Appropriations subcommittee for an extra $381 million to pay welfare bills through June 30 of this year, and this requested $381 million would be added to the $3.2 billion Congress voted last year for fiscal 1965-66 welfare payments to the states. Testimony released Friday showed that subcommittee members were astonished by the Johnson Administration request. Now the House Ways and Means Committee is demanding to know why welfare spending is mounting during a period of low unemployment--low unemployment partially caused by the manpower needs of a wartime economy. I also am amazed by the request for more welfare funds, and I hope the hearings planned for this summer by the Ways and Means Committee will produce some answers for the American taxpayer. This request for more welfare money casts grave doubt on the Administration argument that the anti-poverty war will put welfare families back on their feet. It also reflects on the manner in which the anti-poverty war is being waged, I am talking now not only of political favoritism by the Democrats and obvious misuse of taxpayer money but of the overall strategy being employed in the war on poverty--a strategy that produces frustrating feuding at the local level and blunts or paralyzes an attack on the problem. # # 11
Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 55 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.