US Presidency
1977

President, he said, I don't feel much like talking about energy and foreign policy. I am concerned about how I am going to live... I can't be too concerned about other things when I have a 10-year-old daughter to raise and I don't have a job and I am 56 years old. Well, I understand how he felt, but I must tell you the truth. And the truth is that you can not talk about economic problems now or in the future without talking about energy. Let me try to describe the size and the effect of the problem. Our farmers are the greatest agricultural exporters the world has ever known, but it now takes all the food and fiber that we export in 2 years just to pay for 1 year of imported oil, about $ 45 billion. This excessive importing of foreign oil is a tremendous and rapidly increasing drain on our national economy. It hurts every American family. It causes unemployment. Every $ 5 billion increase in oil imports costs us 200,000 American jobs.