President John F. Kennedy's 51st News Conference, March 6, 1963

THE PRESIDENT: Good morning.

Important steps are being taken in the Congress this week with respect to three major parts of the Administration's program and I want to take this opportunity to stress their importance to every American family.

First, hearings are being completed in both Houses on the Youth Employment Opportunities Bill, and I hope this measure can be enacted before the Easter recess. One million of our youth are out of school and out of work, creating an explosive social situation in nearly every community. This bill would put their hands to work, and minds, in our parks and forests, manning our hospitals and juvenile centers, and developing skills and work experience which will help them in later life.

Secondly, hearings have been completed in the House on our bill to train more physicians and dentists, to expand our medical colleges, and to provide loans to deserving students with our population increasing every year. With the number of doctors and dentists in relation to that population increase deteriorating, it really seems a waste of our most valuable resources, which are our skills, to turn deserving young men and women away from our medical schools because they can't afford to go. We need them and we need their talents, and I hope this bill will pass.

Third, hearings begin in the Senate this week on our bills to combat mental illness and mental retardation. Almost every American family at some stage will experience or has experienced a case of mental affliction, and we have to offer something more than crowded custodial care in our state institutions. Our task is to prevent these conditions. Our next is to treat them more effectively and sympathetically, in the patient's own community. I hope the Congress will act on this bill.

QUESTION: Mr. President, is it fair to assume from the language you used before the American Bankers Symposium that, if necessary, if all else fails in Congress, you would accept a $13-1/2 billion tax cut without any reforms at all?

THE PRESIDENT: No, that isn't what I said. The program which we have sent up is the fairest and most equitable program, and the most fiscally responsible program. It provides for a combination of tax reduction and tax reform, and I think that a good many of the reforms make more equitable the tax reductions and more equitable the burdens which the great mass of our taxpayers carry. So I think that the best program is the one we set up which provides for 13.5 billion dollars in tax reduction and 3-1/4 billion dollars revenue in tax reform. I think that is the best combination. What we will do will depend of course on what kind of bill the Congress enacts but my judgment is that they will enact a tax reduction bill which will include important element of the reforms that we set up.

QUESTION: Mr. President, can you say whether the four Americans who died in the Bay of Pigs invasion were employees of the government or the CIA?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, I would say that there are a good many Americans the last 15 years who have served their country in a good many different ways, a good many abroad, some of them have lost their lives. The United States Government has not felt that it was helpful to our interest and particularly in the struggle against this armed doctrine with which we are in struggle all around the world to go into great detail.

Let me say just about these four men: They were serving their country. The flight that cost them their lives was a volunteer flight and while because of the nature of their work it has not been a matter of public record, as it might be in the case of soldiers or sailors, I can say that they were serving their country. As I say, their work was volunteer.