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Title: State of the Union Addresses of Lyndon B. Johnson
Author: Lyndon B. Johnson
Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5042] [Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on April 11, 2002] [Date last updated: December 16, 2004]
Edition: 11
Language: English
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OF ADDRESSES BY LYNDON B. JOHNSON ***
This eBook was produced by James Linden.
The addresses are separated by three asterisks: ***
Dates of addresses by Lyndon B. Johnson in this eBook: January 8, 1964 January 4, 1965 January 12, 1966 January 10, 1967 January 17, 1968 January 14, 1969
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 8, 1964
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House and Senate, my fellow
Americans:
I will be brief, for our time is necessarily short and our agenda is already long.
Last year's congressional session was the longest in peacetime history. With that foundation, let us work together to make this year's session the best in the Nation's history.
Let this session of Congress be known as the session which did more for civil rights than the last hundred sessions combined; as the session which enacted the most far-reaching tax cut of our time; as the session which declared all-out war on human poverty and unemployment in these United States; as the session which finally recognized the health needs of all our older citizens; as the session which reformed our tangled transportation and transit policies; as the session which achieved the most effective, efficient foreign aid program ever; and as the session which helped to build more homes, more schools, more libraries, and more hospitals than any single session of Congress in the history of our Republic.
All this and more can and must be done. It can be done by this summer, and it can be done without any increase in spending. In fact, under the budget that I shall shortly submit, it can be done with an actual reduction in Federal expenditures and Federal employment.
We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation—to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our purpose and our competence.
If we fail, if we fritter and fumble away our opportunity in needless, senseless quarrels between Democrats and Republicans, or between the House and the Senate, or between the South and North, or between the Congress and the administration, then history will rightfully judge us harshly. But if we succeed, if we can achieve these goals by forging in this country a greater sense of union, then, and only then, can we take full satisfaction in the State of the Union. II.
Here in the Congress you can demonstrate effective legislative leadership by discharging the public business with clarity and dispatch, voting each important proposal up, or voting it down, but at least bringing it to a fair and a final vote.
Let us carry forward the plans and programs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy—not because of our sorrow or sympathy, but because they are right.
In his memory today, I especially ask all members of my own political faith, in this election year, to put your country ahead of your party, and to always debate principles; never debate personalities.
For my part, I pledge a progressive administration which is efficient, and honest and frugal. The budget to be submitted to the Congress shortly is in full accord with this pledge.
It will cut our deficit in half—from $10 billion to $4,900 million. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951.
It will call for a substantial reduction in Federal employment, a feat accomplished only once before in the last 10 years. While maintaining the full strength of our combat defenses, it will call for the lowest number of civilian personnel in the Department of Defense since 1950.
It will call for total expenditures of $97,900 million—compared to $98,400 million for the current year, a reduction of more than $500 million. It will call for new obligational authority of $103,800 million—a reduction of more than $4 billion below last year's request of $107,900 million.
But it is not a standstill budget, for America cannot afford to stand still. Our population is growing. Our economy is more complex. Our people's needs are expanding.
But by closing down obsolete installations, by curtailing less urgent programs, by cutting back where cutting back seems to be wise, by insisting on a dollar's worth for a dollar spent, I am able to recommend in this reduced budget the most Federal support in history for education, for health, for retraining the unemployed, and for helping the economically and the physically handicapped.
This budget, and this year's legislative program, are designed to help each and every American citizen fulfill his basic hopes—his hopes for a fair chance to make good; his hopes for fair play from the law; his hopes for a full-time job on full-time pay; his hopes for a decent home for his family in a decent community; his hopes for a good school for his children with good teachers; and his hopes for security when faced with sickness or unemployment or old age. III.
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of theft color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.
This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America. I urge this Congress and all Americans to join with me in that effort.
It will not be a short or easy struggle, no single weapon or strategy will suffice, but we shall not rest until that war is won. The richest Nation on earth can afford to win it. We cannot afford to lose it. One thousand dollars invested in salvaging an unemployable youth today can return $40,000 or more in his lifetime.
Poverty is a national problem, requiring improved national organization and support. But this attack, to be effective, must also be organized at the State and the local level and must be supported and directed by State and local efforts.
For the war against poverty will not be won here in Washington. It must be won in the field, in every private home, in every public office, from the courthouse to the White House.
The program I shall propose will emphasize this cooperative approach to help that one-fifth of all American families with incomes too small to even meet their basic needs.
Our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will be better schools, and better health, and better homes, and better training, and better job opportunities to help more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens help to carry them.
Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.
But whatever the cause, our joint Federal-local effort must pursue poverty, pursue it wherever it exists—in city slums and small towns, in sharecropper shacks or in migrant worker camps, on Indian Reservations, among whites as well as Negroes, among the young as well as the aged, in the boom towns and in the depressed areas.
Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it. No single piece of legislation, however, is going to suffice.
We will launch a special effort in the chronically distressed areas of
Appalachia.
We must expand our small but our successful area redevelopment program.
We must enact youth employment legislation to put jobless, aimless, hopeless youngsters to work on useful projects.
We must distribute more food to the needy through a broader food stamp program.
We must create a National Service Corps to help the economically handicapped of our own country as the Peace Corps now helps those abroad.
We must modernize our unemployment insurance and establish a high-level commission on automation. If we have the brain power to invent these machines, we have the brain power to make certain that they are a boon and not a bane to humanity.
We must extend the coverage of our minimum wage laws to more than 2 million workers now lacking this basic protection of purchasing power.
We must, by including special school aid funds as part of our education program, improve the quality of teaching, training, and counseling in our hardest hit areas.
We must build more libraries in every area and more hospitals and nursing homes under the Hill-Burton Act, and train more nurses to staff them.
We must provide hospital insurance for our older citizens financed by every worker and his employer under Social Security, contributing no more than $1 a month during the employee's working career to protect him in his old age in a dignified manner without cost to the Treasury, against the devastating hardship of prolonged or repeated illness.
We must, as a part of a revised housing and urban renewal program, give more help to those displaced by slum clearance, provide more housing for our poor and our elderly, and seek as our ultimate goal in our free enterprise system a decent home for every American family.
We must help obtain more modern mass transit within our communities as well as low-cost transportation between them.
Above all, we must release $11 billion of tax reduction into the private spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land. IV.
These programs are obviously not for the poor or the underprivileged alone. Every American will benefit by the extension of social security to cover the hospital costs of their aged parents. Every American community will benefit from the construction or modernization of schools, libraries, hospitals, and nursing homes, from the training of more nurses and from the improvement of urban renewal in public transit. And every individual American taxpayer and every corporate taxpayer will benefit from the earliest possible passage of the pending tax bill from both the new investment it will bring and the new jobs that it will create.
That tax bill has been thoroughly discussed for a year. Now we need action. The new budget clearly allows it. Our taxpayers surely deserve it. Our economy strongly demands it. And every month of delay dilutes its benefits in 1964 for consumption, for investment, and for employment.
For until the bill is signed, its investment incentives cannot be deemed certain, and the withholding rate cannot be reduced—and the most damaging and devastating thing you can do to any businessman in America is to keep him in doubt and to keep him guessing on what our tax policy is. And I say that we should now reduce to 14 percent instead of 15 percent our withholding rate.
I therefore urge the Congress to take final action on this bill by the first of February, if at all possible. For however proud we may be of the unprecedented progress of our free enterprise economy over the last 3 years, we should not and we cannot permit it to pause.
In 1963, for the first time in history, we crossed the 70 million job mark, but we will soon need more than 75 million jobs. In 1963 our gross national product reached the $600 billion level—$100 billion higher than when we took office. But it easily could and it should be still $30 billion higher today than it is.
Wages and profits and family income are also at their highest levels in history—but I would remind you that 4 million workers and 13 percent of our industrial capacity are still idle today.
We need a tax cut now to keep this country moving. V.
For our goal is not merely to spread the work. Our goal is to create more jobs. I believe the enactment of a 35-hour week would sharply increase costs, would invite inflation, would impair our ability to compete, and merely share instead of creating employment. But I am equally opposed to the 45- or 50-hour week in those industries where consistently excessive use of overtime causes increased unemployment.
So, therefore, I recommend legislation authorizing the creation of a tripartite industry committee to determine on an industry-by-industry basis as to where a higher penalty rate for overtime would increase job openings without unduly increasing costs, and authorizing the establishment of such higher rates. VI.
Let me make one principle of this administration abundantly clear: All of these increased opportunities—in employment, in education, in housing, and in every field—must be open to Americans of every color. As far as the writ of Federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination. For this is not merely an economic issue, or a social, political, or international issue. It is a moral issue, and it must be met by the passage this session of the bill now pending in the House.
All members of the public should have equal access to facilities open to the public. All members of the public should be equally eligible for Federal benefits that are financed by the public. All members of the public should have an equal chance to vote for public officials and to send their children to good public schools and to contribute their talents to the public good.
Today, Americans of all races stand side by side in Berlin and in Viet Nam. They died side by side in Korea. Surely they can work and eat and travel side by side in their own country. VII.
We must also lift by legislation the bars of discrimination against those who seek entry into our country, particularly those who have much needed skills and those joining their families.
In establishing preferences, a nation that was built by the immigrants of all lands can ask those who now seek admission: "What can you do for our country?" But we should not be asking: "In what country were you born?" VIII.
For our ultimate goal is a world without war, a world made safe for diversity, in which all men, goods, and ideas can freely move across every border and every boundary.
We must advance toward this goal in 1964 in at least 10 different ways, not as partisans, but as patriots.
First, we must maintain—and our reduced defense budget will maintain—that margin of military safety and superiority obtained through 3 years of steadily increasing both the quality and the quantity of our strategic, our conventional, and our antiguerilla forces. In 1964 we will be better prepared than ever before to defend the cause of freedom, whether it is threatened by outright aggression or by the infiltration practiced by those in Hanoi and Havana, who ship arms and men across international borders to foment insurrection. And we must continue to use that strength as John Kennedy used it in the Cuban crisis and for the test ban treaty—to demonstrate both the futility of nuclear war and the possibilities of lasting peace.
Second, we must take new steps—and we shall make new proposals at Geneva—toward the control and the eventual abolition of arms. Even in the absence of agreement, we must not stockpile arms beyond our needs or seek an excess of military power that could be provocative as well as wasteful.
It is in this spirit that in this fiscal year we are cutting back our production of enriched uranium by 25 percent. We are shutting down four plutonium piles. We are closing many nonessential military installations. And it is in this spirit that we today call on our adversaries to do the same.
Third, we must make increased use of our food as an instrument of peace—making it available by sale or trade or loan or donation—to hungry people in all nations which tell us of their needs and accept proper conditions of distribution.
Fourth, we must assure our pre-eminence in the peaceful exploration of outer space, focusing on an expedition to the moon in this decade—in cooperation with other powers if possible, alone if necessary.
Fifth, we must expand world trade. Having recognized in the Act of 1962 that we must buy as well as sell, we now expect our trading partners to recognize that we must sell as well as buy. We are willing to give them competitive access to our market, asking only that they do the same for us.
Sixth, we must continue, through such measures as the interest equalization tax, as well as the cooperation of other nations, our recent progress toward balancing our international accounts.
This administration must and will preserve the present gold value of the dollar.
Seventh, we must become better neighbors with the free states of the Americas, working with the councils of the OAS, with a stronger Alliance for Progress, and with all the men and women of this hemisphere who really believe in liberty and justice for all.
Eighth, we must strengthen the ability of free nations everywhere to develop their independence and raise their standard of living, and thereby frustrate those who prey on poverty and chaos. To do this, the rich must help the poor—and we must do our part. We must achieve a more rigorous administration of our development assistance, with larger roles for private investors, for other industrialized nations, and for international agencies and for the recipient nations themselves.
Ninth, we must strengthen our Atlantic and Pacific partnerships, maintain our alliances and make the United Nations a more effective instrument for national independence and international order.
Tenth, and finally, we must develop with our allies new means of bridging the gap between the East and the West, facing danger boldly wherever danger exists, but being equally bold in our search for new agreements which can enlarge the hopes of all, while violating the interests of none.
In short, I would say to the Congress that we must be constantly prepared for the worst, and constantly acting for the best. We must be strong enough to win any war, and we must be wise enough to prevent one.
We shall neither act as aggressors nor tolerate acts of aggression. We intend to bury no one, and we do not intend to be buried.
We can fight, if we must, as we have fought before, but we pray that we will never have to fight again. IX.
My good friends and my fellow Americans: In these last 7 sorrowful weeks, we have learned anew that nothing is so enduring as faith, and nothing is so degrading as hate.
John Kennedy was a victim of hate, but he was also a great builder of faith—faith in our fellow Americans, whatever their creed or their color or their station in life; faith in the future of man, whatever his divisions and differences.
This faith was echoed in all parts of the world. On every continent and in every land to which Mrs. Johnson and I traveled, we found faith and hope and love toward this land of America and toward our people.
So I ask you now in the Congress and in the country to join with me in expressing and fulfilling that faith in working for a nation, a nation that is free from want and a world that is free from hate—a world of peace and justice, and freedom and abundance, for our time and for all time to come.
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 4, 1965
On this Hill which was my home, I am stirred by old friendships.
Though total agreement between the Executive and the Congress is impossible, total respect is important.
I am proud to be among my colleagues of the Congress whose legacy to their trust is their loyalty to their Nation.
I am not unaware of the inner emotions of the new Members of this body tonight.
Twenty-eight years ago, I felt as you do now. You will soon learn that you are among men whose first love is their country, men who try each day to do as best they can what they believe is right.
We are entering the third century of the pursuit of American union.
Two hundred years ago, in 1765, nine assembled colonies first joined together to demand freedom from arbitrary power.
For the first century we struggled to hold together the first continental union of democracy in the history of man. One hundred years ago, in 1865, following a terrible test of blood and fire, the compact of union was finally sealed.
For a second century we labored to establish a unity of purpose and interest among the many groups which make up the American community.
That struggle has often brought pain and violence. It is not yet over. But we have achieved a unity of interest among our people that is unmatched in the history of freedom.
And so tonight, now, in 1965, we begin a new quest for union. We seek the unity of man with the world that he has built—with the knowledge that can save or destroy him—with the cities which can stimulate or stifle him—with the wealth and the machines which can enrich or menace his spirit.
We seek to establish a harmony between man and society which will allow each of us to enlarge the meaning of his life and all of us to elevate the quality of our civilization. This is the search that we begin tonight.
But the unity we seek cannot realize its full promise in isolation. For today the state of the Union depends, in large measure, upon the state of the world.
Our concern and interest, compassion and vigilance, extend to every corner of a dwindling planet.
Yet, it is not merely our concern but the concern of all free men. We will not, and we should not, assume that it is the task of Americans alone to settle all the conflicts of a torn and troubled world.
Let the foes of freedom take no comfort from this. For in concert with other nations, we shall help men defend their freedom.
Our first aim remains the safety and the well-being of our own country.
We are prepared to live as good neighbors with all, but we cannot be indifferent to acts designed to injure our interests, or our citizens, or our establishments abroad. The community of nations requires mutual respect. We shall extend it—and we shall expect it.
In our relations with the world we shall follow the example of Andrew Jackson who said: "I intend to ask for nothing that is not clearly right and to submit to nothing that is wrong." And he promised, that "the honor of my country shall never be stained by an apology from me for the statement of truth or for the performance of duty." That was this Nation's policy in the 1830's and that is this Nation's policy in the 1960's.
Our own freedom and growth have never been the final goal of the American dream.
We were never meant to be an oasis of liberty and abundance in a worldwide desert of disappointed dreams. Our Nation was created to help strike away the chains of ignorance and misery and tyranny wherever they keep man less than God means him to be.
We are moving toward that destiny, never more rapidly than we have moved in the last 4 years.
In this period we have built a military power strong enough to meet any threat and destroy any adversary. And that superiority will continue to grow so long as this office is mine—and you sit on Capitol Hill.
In this period no new nation has become Communist, and the unity of the
Communist empire has begun to crumble.
In this period we have resolved in friendship our disputes with our neighbors of the hemisphere, and joined in an Alliance for Progress toward economic growth and political democracy.
In this period we have taken more steps toward peace—including the test ban treaty—than at any time since the cold war began.
In this period we have relentlessly pursued our advances toward the conquest of space.
Most important of all, in this period, the United States has reemerged into the fullness of its self-confidence and purpose. No longer are we called upon to get America moving. We are moving. No longer do we doubt our strength or resolution. We are strong and we have proven our resolve.
No longer can anyone wonder whether we are in the grip of historical decay. We know that history is ours to make. And if there is great danger, there is now also the excitement of great expectations.
Yet we still live in a troubled and perilous world. There is no longer a single threat. There are many. They differ in intensity and in danger. They require different attitudes and different answers.
With the Soviet Union we seek peaceful understandings that can lessen the danger to freedom.
Last fall I asked the American people to choose that course. I will carry forward their command.
If we are to live together in peace, we must come to know each other better.
I am sure that the American people would welcome a chance to listen to the Soviet leaders on our television—as I would like the Soviet people to hear our leaders on theirs.
I hope the new Soviet leaders can visit America so they can learn about our country at firsthand.
In Eastern Europe restless nations are slowly beginning to assert their identity. Your Government, assisted by the leaders in American labor and business, is now exploring ways to increase peaceful trade with these countries and with the Soviet Union. I will report our conclusions to the Congress.
In Asia, communism wears a more aggressive face. We see that in Viet-Nam.
Why are we there?
We are there, first, because a friendly nation has asked us for help against the Communist aggression. Ten years ago our President pledged our help. Three Presidents have supported that pledge. We will not break it now.
Second, our own security is tied to the peace of Asia. Twice in one generation we have had to fight against aggression in the Far East. To ignore aggression now would only increase the danger of a much larger war.
Our goal is peace in southeast Asia. That will come only when aggressors leave their neighbors in peace.
What is at stake is the cause of freedom and in that cause America will never be found wanting.
But communism is not the only source of trouble and unrest. There are older and deeper sources—in the misery of nations and in man's irrepressible ambition for liberty and a better life.
With the free Republics of Latin America I have always felt—and my country has always felt—very special ties of interest and affection. It will be the purpose of my administration to strengthen these ties. Together we share and shape the destiny of the new world. In the coming year I hope to pay a visit to Latin America. And I will steadily enlarge our commitment to the Alliance for Progress as the instrument of our war against poverty and injustice in this hemisphere.
In the Atlantic community we continue to pursue our goal of 20 years—a Europe that is growing in strength, unity, and cooperation with America. A great unfinished task is the reunification of Germany through self-determination.
This European policy is not based on any abstract design. It is based on the realities of common interests and common values, common dangers and common expectations. These realities will continue to have their way—especially, I think, in our expanding trade and especially in our common defense.
Free Americans have shaped the policies of the United States. And because we know these realities, those policies have been, and will be, in the interest of Europe.
Free Europeans must shape the course of Europe. And, for the same reasons, that course has been, and will be, in our interest and in the interest of freedom.
I found this truth confirmed in my talks with European leaders in the last year. I hope to repay these visits to some of our friends in Europe this year.
In Africa and Asia we are witnessing the turbulent unfolding of new nations and continents.
We welcome them to the society of nations.
We are committed to help those seeking to strengthen their own independence, and to work most closely with those governments dedicated to the welfare of all of their people.
We seek not fidelity to an iron faith, but a diversity of belief as varied as man himself. We seek not to extend the power of America but the progress of humanity. We seek not to dominate others but to strengthen the freedom of all people.
I will seek new ways to use our knowledge to help deal with the explosion in world population and the growing scarcity in world resources.
Finally, we renew our commitment to the continued growth and the effectiveness of the United Nations. The frustrations of the United Nations are a product of the world that we live in, and not of the institution which gives them voice. It is far better to throw these differences open to the assembly of nations than to permit them to fester in silent danger.
These are some of the goals of the American Nation in the world in which we live.
For ourselves we seek neither praise nor blame, neither gratitude nor obedience.
We seek peace.
We seek freedom.
We seek to enrich the life of man.
For that is the world in which we will flourish and that is the world that we mean for all men to ultimately have.
World affairs will continue to call upon our energy and our courage.
But today we can turn increased attention to the character of American life.
We are in the midst of the greatest upward surge of economic well-being in the history of any nation.
Our flourishing progress has been marked by price stability that is unequalled in the world. Our balance of payments deficit has declined and the soundness of our dollar is unquestioned. I pledge to keep it that way and I urge business and labor to cooperate to that end.
We worked for two centuries to climb this peak of prosperity. But we are only at the beginning of the road to the Great Society. Ahead now is a summit where freedom from the wants of the body can help fulfill the needs of the spirit.
We built this Nation to serve its people.
We want to grow and build and create, but we want progress to be the servant and not the master of man.
We do not intend to live in the midst of abundance, isolated from neighbors and nature, confined by blighted cities and bleak suburbs, stunted by a poverty of learning and an emptiness of leisure.
The Great Society asks not how much, but how good; not only how to create wealth but how to use it; not only how fast we are going, but where we are headed.
It proposes as the first test for a nation: the quality of its people.
This kind of society will not flower spontaneously from swelling riches and surging power.
It will not be the gift of government or the creation of presidents. It will require of every American, for many generations, both faith in the destination and the fortitude to make the journey.
And like freedom itself, it will always be challenge and not fulfillment.
And tonight we accept that challenge.
I propose that we begin a program in education to ensure every American child the fullest development of his mind and skills.
I propose that we begin a massive attack on crippling and killing diseases.
I propose that we launch a national effort to make the American city a better and a more stimulating place to live.
I propose that we increase the beauty of America and end the poisoning of our rivers and the air that we breathe.
I propose that we carry out a new program to develop regions of our country that are now suffering from distress and depression.
I propose that we make new efforts to control and prevent crime and delinquency.
I propose that we eliminate every remaining obstacle to the right and the opportunity to vote.
I propose that we honor and support the achievements of thought and the creations of art.
I propose that we make an all-out campaign against waste and inefficiency.
Our basic task is threefold:
First, to keep our economy growing;
—to open for all Americans the opportunity that is now enjoyed by most Americans;
—and to improve the quality of life for all.
In the next 6 weeks I will submit special messages with detailed proposals for national action in each of these areas.
Tonight I would like just briefly to explain some of my major recommendations in the three main areas of national need.
First, we must keep our Nation prosperous. We seek full employment opportunity for every American citizen. I will present a budget designed to move the economy forward. More money will be left in the hands of the consumer by a substantial cut in excise taxes. We will continue along the path toward a balanced budget in a balanced economy.
I confidently predict—what every economic sign tells us tonight—the continued flourishing of the American economy.
But we must remember that fear of a recession can contribute to the fact of a recession. The knowledge that our Government will, and can, move swiftly will strengthen the confidence of investors and business.
Congress can reinforce this confidence by insuring that its procedures permit rapid action on temporary income tax cuts. And special funds for job-creating public programs should be made available for immediate use if recession threatens.
Our continued prosperity demands continued price stability. Business, labor, and the consumer all have a high stake in keeping wages and prices within the framework of the guideposts that have already served the Nation so well.
Finding new markets abroad for our goods depends on the initiative of American business. But we stand ready—with credit and other help—to assist the flow of trade which will benefit the entire Nation.
Our economy owes much to the efficiency of our farmers. We must continue to assure them the opportunity to earn a fair reward. I have instructed the Secretary of Agriculture to lead a major effort to find new approaches to reduce the heavy cost of our farm programs and to direct more of our effort to the small farmer who needs the help the most.
We can help insure continued prosperity through:
—a regional recovery program to assist the development of stricken areas left behind by our national progress;
—further efforts to provide our workers with the skills demanded by modern technology, for the laboring-man is an indispensable force in the American system;
—the extension of the minimum wage to more than 2 million unprotected workers;
—the improvement and the modernization of the unemployment compensation system.
And as pledged in our 1960 and 1964 Democratic platforms, I will propose to
Congress changes in the Taft-Hartley Act including section 14(b). I will do
so hoping to reduce the conflicts that for several years have divided
Americans in various States of our Union.
In a country that spans a continent modern transportation is vital to continued growth.
I will recommend heavier reliance on competition in transportation and a new policy for our merchant marine.
I will ask for funds to study high-speed rail transportation between urban centers. We will begin with test projects between Washington and Boston. On high-speed trains, passengers could travel this distance in less than 4 hours.
Second, we must open opportunity to all our people.
Most Americans enjoy a good life. But far too many are still trapped in poverty and idleness and fear.
Let a just nation throw open to them the city of promise:
—to the elderly, by providing hospital care under social security and by raising benefit payments to those struggling to maintain the dignity of their later years;
—to the poor and the unfortunate, through doubling the war against poverty this year;
—to Negro Americans, through enforcement of the civil rights law and elimination of barriers to the right to vote;
—to those in other lands that are seeking the promise of America, through an immigration law based on the work a man can do and not where he was born or how he spells his name.
Our third goal is to improve the quality of
American life.
We begin with learning.
Every child must have the best education that this Nation can provide.
Thomas Jefferson said that no nation can be both ignorant and free. Today no nation can be both ignorant and great.
In addition to our existing programs, I will recommend a new program for schools and students with a first year authorization of $1,500 million.
It will help at every stage along the road to learning.
For the preschool years we will help needy children become aware of the excitement of learning.
For the primary and secondary school years we will aid public schools serving low-income families and assist students in both public and private schools.
For the college years we will provide scholarships to high school students of the greatest promise and the greatest need and we will guarantee low-interest loans to students continuing their college studies.
New laboratories and centers will help our schools—help them lift their standards of excellence and explore new methods of teaching. These centers will provide special training for those who need and those who deserve special treatment.
Greatness requires not only an educated people but a healthy people.
Our goal is to match the achievements of our medicine to the afflictions of our people.
We already carry on a large program in this country for research and health.
In addition, regional medical centers can provide the most advanced diagnosis and treatment for heart disease and cancer and stroke and other major diseases.
New support for medical and dental education will provide the trained people to apply our knowledge.
Community centers can help the mentally ill and improve health care for school-age children from poor families, including services for the mentally retarded.
The City
An educated and healthy people require surroundings in harmony with their hopes. In our urban areas the central problem today is to protect and restore man's satisfaction in belonging to a community where he can find security and significance.
The first step is to break old patterns—to begin to think and work and plan for the development of the entire metropolitan areas. We will take this step with new programs of help for the basic community facilities and for neighborhood centers of health and recreation.
New and existing programs will be open to those cities which work together to develop unified long-range policies for metropolitan areas.
We must also make some very important changes in our housing programs if we are to pursue these same basic goals.
So a Department of Housing and Urban Development will be needed to spearhead this effort in our cities.
Every citizen has the right to feel secure in his home and on the streets of his community.
To help control crime, we will recommend programs:
—to train local law enforcement officers;
—to put the best techniques of modern science at their disposal;
—to discover the causes of crime and better ways to prevent it.
I will soon assemble a panel of outstanding experts of this Nation to search out answers to the national problem of crime and delinquency, and I welcome the recommendations and the constructive efforts of the Congress. The Beauty of America
For over three centuries the beauty of America has sustained our spirit and has enlarged our vision. We must act now to protect this heritage. In a fruitful new partnership with the States and the cities the next decade should be a conservation milestone. We must make a massive effort to save the countryside and to establish—as a green legacy for tomorrow—more large and small parks, more seashores and open spaces than have been created during any other period in our national history.
A new and substantial effort must be made to landscape highways to provide places of relaxation and recreation wherever our roads run,
Within our cities imaginative programs are needed to landscape streets and to transform open areas into places of beauty and recreation.
We will seek legal power to prevent pollution of our air and water before it happens. We will step up our effort to control harmful wastes, giving first priority to the cleanup of our most contaminated rivers. We will increase research to learn much more about the control of pollution.
We hope to make the Potomac a model of beauty here in the Capital, and preserve unspoiled stretches of some of our waterways with a Wild Rivers bill.
More ideas for a beautiful America will emerge from a White House
Conference on Natural Beauty which I will soon call.
Art and Science
We must also recognize and encourage those who can be pathfinders for the Nation's imagination and understanding.
To help promote and honor creative achievements, I will propose a National
Foundation on the Arts.
To develop knowledge which will enrich our lives and ensure our progress, I will recommend programs to encourage basic science, particularly in the universities—and to bring closer the day when the oceans will supply our growing need for fresh water.
For government to serve these goals it must be modern in structure, efficient in action, and ready for any emergency.
I am busy, currently, reviewing the structure of the entire executive branch of this Government. I hope to reshape it and to reorganize it to meet more effectively the tasks of the 20th century.
Wherever waste is found, I will eliminate it.
Last year we saved almost $3,500 million by eliminating waste in the
National Government.
And I intend to do better this year.
And very soon I will report to you on our progress and on new economies that your Government plans to make.
Even the best of government is subject to the worst of hazards.
I will propose laws to insure the necessary continuity of leadership should the President become disabled or die.
In addition, I will propose reforms in the electoral college—leaving undisturbed the vote by States—but making sure that no elector can substitute his will for that of the people.
Last year, in a sad moment, I came here and I spoke to you after 33 years of public service, practically all of them here on this Hill.
This year I speak after 1 year as President of the United States.
Many of you in this Chamber are among my oldest friends. We have shared many happy moments and many hours of work, and we have watched many Presidents together. Yet, only in the White House can you finally know the full weight of this Office.
The greatest burden is not running the huge operations of government—or meeting daily troubles, large and small—or even working with the Congress.
A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.
Yet the Presidency brings no special gift of prophecy or foresight. You take an oath, you step into an office, and you must then help guide a great democracy.
The answer was waiting for me in the land where I was born.
It was once barren land. The angular hills were covered with scrub cedar and a few large live oaks. Little would grow in that harsh caliche soil of my country. And each spring the Pedernales River would flood our valley.
But men came and they worked and they endured and they built.
And tonight that country is abundant; abundant with fruit and cattle and goats and sheep, and there are pleasant homes and lakes and the floods are gone.
Why did men come to that once forbidding land?
Well, they were restless, of course, and they had to be moving on. But there was more than that. There was a dream—a dream of a place where a free man could build for himself, and raise his children to a better life—a dream of a continent to be conquered, a world to be won, a nation to be made.
Remembering this, I knew the answer.
A President does not shape a new and personal vision of America.
He collects it from the scattered hopes of the American past.
It existed when the first settlers saw the coast of a new world, and when the first pioneers moved westward.
It has guided us every step of the way.
It sustains every President. But it is also your inheritance and it belongs equally to all the people that we all serve.
It must be interpreted anew by each generation for its own needs; as I have tried, in part, to do tonight.
It shall lead us as we enter the third century of the search for a more perfect union?
This, then, is the state of the Union: Free and restless, growing and full of hope.
So it was in the beginning.
So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 12, 1966
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House and the Senate, my fellow
Americans:
I come before you tonight to report on the State of the Union for the third time.
I come here to thank you and to add my tribute, once more, to the Nation's gratitude for this, the 89th Congress. This Congress has already reserved for itself an honored chapter in the history of America.
Our Nation tonight is engaged in a brutal and bitter conflict in Vietnam. Later on I want to discuss that struggle in some detail with you. It just must be the center of our concerns.
But we will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This Nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home.
And that is what I have come here to ask of you tonight.
I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law last year.
I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on poverty.
I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to help those nations that are trying to control population growth.
I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United
States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in America.
I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire large river basins.
I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire Federal system from prevention to probation.
I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in Federal and State jury selection, by making it a serious Federal crime to obstruct public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.
I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the Federal Government by creating a new Cabinet level Department of Transportation and reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both required as well as rewarded.
I will ask you to make it possible for Members of the House of Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the Nation through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to 4 years, concurrent with that of the President. II.
Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it.
We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop the Great Society.
Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion.
Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year. Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion. Revenues next year will be $111 billion.
On a cash basis—which is the way that you and I keep our family budget—the Federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is to say, if we include all the money that your Government will take in and all the money that your Government will spend, your Government next year will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year 1967.
I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of the richest Nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies of life to all of your fellow Americans.
There are men who cry out: We must sacrifice. Well, let us rather ask them: Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our poor?
Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make them.
But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate here in a land of plenty.
I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam. But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of those that are most in need.
And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great Chamber. III.
The Great Society leads us along three roads—growth and justice and liberation.
I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already—in every city and countryside. This Nation is flourishing.
Workers are making more money than ever—with after-tax income in the past 5 years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent.
More people are working than ever before in our history—an increase last year of 2 1/2 million jobs.
Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the past 5 years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year alone they had a rise of 20 percent.
Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past 5 years it is up 40 percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.
I was informed this afternoon by the distinguished Secretary of the Treasury that his preliminary estimates indicate that our balance of payments deficit has been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1964 to $1.3 billion, or less, in 1965. This achievement has been made possible by the patriotic voluntary cooperation of businessmen and bankers working with your Government.
We must now work together with increased urgency to wipe out this balance of payments deficit altogether in the next year.
And as our economy surges toward new heights we must increase our vigilance against the inflation which raises the cost of living and which lowers the savings of every family in this land. It is essential, to prevent inflation, that we ask both labor and business to exercise price and wage restraint, and I do so again tonight.
I believe it desirable, because of increased military expenditures, that you temporarily restore the automobile and certain telephone excise tax reductions made effective only 12 days ago. Without raising taxes—or even increasing the total tax bill paid—we should move to improve our withholding system so that Americans can more realistically pay as they go, speed up the collection of corporate taxes, and make other necessary simplifications of the tax structure at an early date.
I hope these measures will be adequate. But if the necessities of Vietnam require it, I will not hesitate to return to the Congress for additional appropriations, or additional revenues if they are needed.
I propose legislation to establish unavoidable requirements for nondiscriminatory jury selection in Federal and State courts—and to give the Attorney General the power necessary to enforce those requirements.
I propose legislation to strengthen authority of Federal courts to try those who murder, attack, or intimidate either civil rights workers or others exercising their constitutional rights—and to increase penalties to a level equal to the nature of the crime.
Legislation, resting on the fullest constitutional authority of the Federal Government, to prohibit racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.
For that other nation within a Nation—the poor—whose distress has now captured the conscience of America, I will ask the Congress not only to continue, but to speed up the war on poverty. And in so doing, we will provide the added energy of achievement with the increased efficiency of experience.
To improve the life of our rural Americans and our farm population, we will plan for the future through the establishment of several new Community Development Districts, improved education through the use of Teacher Corps teams, better health measures, physical examinations, and adequate and available medical resources.
For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our States equal to the laws of the 31 States which do not have tonight right-to-work measures.
And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without improperly invading State and local authority, will enable us effectively to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national interest.
Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and which individual abundance alone will not overcome.
We can subdue and we can master these forces—bring increased meaning to our lives—if all of us, Government and citizens, are bold enough to change old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.
This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life.
Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our Armed Forces.
I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs already passed by the Senate—the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home rule for the District of Columbia.
In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to live the good life.
I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the growth of entire metropolitan areas.
Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air.
We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all of our people.
To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police forces.
Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their streets—and that right just must be secured.
Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our highways.
I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting tragedy.
We must also act to prevent the deception of the American consumer—requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their contents—all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed—and keeping harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores.
It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention. We must change to master change.
I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch, to modernize the relations between city and State and Nation.
A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our transportation activities. The present structure—35 Government agencies, spending $5 billion yearly—makes it almost impossible to serve either the growing demands of this great Nation or the needs of the industry, or the right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality.
I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of sound—in excess of 2,000 miles per hour.
I propose to examine our Federal system—the relation between city, State, Nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to fulfill the dreams of the American people.
As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life without being obligated to a few large contributors.
Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic restriction on contributions—to prohibit the endless proliferation of committees, bringing local and State committees under the act—to attach strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of contributions—and to broaden the participation of the people, through added tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the candidate of their choice.
To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide a 4-year term for Members of the House of Representatives—which should not begin before 1972.
The present 2-year term requires most Members of Congress to divert enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning—depriving this Nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom. Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of the highest quality to political life. The Nation, the principle of democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better served by a 4-year term for Members of the House. And I urge your swift action. IV.
Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have followed with strong consistency since World War II.
The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States—the welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass.
In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could bring decay and even disaster.
An America that is mighty beyond description—yet living in a hostile or despairing world—would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to liberate the spirit of man.
In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin.
In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the largest program of economic assistance in the world.
And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of social justice.
In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression—in Korea under President Truman—in the Formosa Straits under President Eisenhower—in Cuba under President Kennedy—and again in Vietnam.
Tonight Vietnam must hold the center of our attention, but across the world problems and opportunities crowd in on the American Nation. I will discuss them fully in the months to come, and I will follow the five continuing lines of policy that America has followed under its last four Presidents.
While special Vietnam expenditures for the next fiscal year are estimated to increase by $5.8 billion, I can tell you that all the other expenditures put together in the entire Federal budget will rise this coming year by only $.6 billion. This is true because of the stringent cost-conscious economy program inaugurated in the Defense Department, and followed by the other departments of Government.
We will vigorously pursue existing proposals—and seek new ones—to control arms and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
By strengthening the common defense, by stimulating world commerce, by meeting new hopes, these associations serve the cause of a flourishing world.
We will take new steps this year to help strengthen the Alliance for
Progress, the unity of Europe, the community of the Atlantic, the regional
organizations of developing continents, and that supreme association—the
United Nations.
We will work to strengthen economic cooperation, to reduce barriers to trade, and to improve international finance.
From the Marshall plan to this very moment tonight, that policy has rested on the claims of compassion, and the certain knowledge that only a people advancing in expectation will build secure and peaceful lands.
This year I propose major new directions in our program of foreign assistance to help those countries who will help themselves.
We will conduct a worldwide attack on the problems of hunger and disease and ignorance.
We will place the matchless skill and the resources of our own great America, in farming and in fertilizers, at the service of those countries committed to develop a modern agriculture.
We will aid those who educate the young in other lands, and we will give children in other continents the same head start that we are trying to give our own children. To advance these ends I will propose the International Education Act of 1966.
I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared-for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by increasing our research—and we will earmark funds to help their efforts.
In the next year, from our foreign aid sources, we propose to dedicate $1 billion to these efforts, and we call on all who have the means to join us in this work in the world.
For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks the way that it has chosen to walk for itself.
We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule.
We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility to the rule of the many by the few—or the oppression of one race by another.
We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West.
The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of today's world in which we live.
In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those who would subdue others to their ideas or their will.
It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire.
In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject them to the ambitions of mainland China.
History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or belief—unless force is used to make it so.
That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba—and tonight in Vietnam.
For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young
Americans die in a distant land.
Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of its freedom.
How many times—in my lifetime and in yours—have the American people gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and tell them of danger?
Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that the security and the freedom of this Nation required.
And they do again tonight in Vietnam. Not too many years ago Vietnam was a peaceful, if troubled, land. In the North was an independent Communist government. In the South a people struggled to build a nation, with the friendly help of the United States.
There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was dim. Then, little more than 6 years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest. And from that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from North to South in a swelling stream that is swallowing the remnants of revolution in aggression.
As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed.
And we will stay until aggression has stopped.
We will stay because a just nation cannot leave to the cruelties of its enemies a people who have staked their lives and independence on America's solemn pledge—a pledge which has grown through the commitments of three American Presidents.
We will stay because in Asia and around the world are countries whose independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we would have to fight in another—or abandon much of Asia to the domination of Communists.
And we do not intend to abandon Asia to conquest.
Last year the nature of the war in Vietnam changed again. Swiftly increasing numbers of armed men from the North crossed the borders to join forces that were already in the South. Attack and terror increased, spurred and encouraged by the belief that the United States lacked the will to continue and that their victory was near.
Despite our desire to limit conflict, it was necessary to act: to hold back the mounting aggression, to give courage to the people of the South, and to make our firmness clear to the North. Thus. we began limited air action against military targets in North Vietnam. We increased our fighting force to its present strength tonight of 190,000 men.
These moves have not ended the aggression but they have prevented its success. The aims of the enemy have been put out of reach by the skill and the bravery of Americans and their allies—and by the enduring courage of the South Vietnamese who, I can tell you, have lost eight men last year for every one of ours.
The enemy is no longer close to victory. Time is no longer on his side.
There is no cause to doubt the American commitment.
Our decision to stand firm has been matched by our desire for peace.
In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends and adversaries throughout the world.
Since Christmas your Government has labored again, with imagination and endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam.
Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all 113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace.
In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear.
We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination—that the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course, choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without fear.
The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question of reunification.
This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard.
We have also made it clear—from Hanoi to New York—that there are no arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any proposals—four points or fourteen or forty—and we will consider the views of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right to shape its own future.
We have said all this, and we have asked—and hoped—and we have waited for a response.
So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.
We have carried our quest for peace to many nations and peoples because we share this planet with others whose future, in large measure, is tied to our own action, and whose counsel is necessary to our own hopes.
We have found understanding and support. And we know they wait with us tonight for some response that could lead to peace.
I wish tonight that I could give you a blueprint for the course of this conflict over the coming months, but we just cannot know what the future may require. We may have to face long, hard combat or a long, hard conference, or even both at once.
Until peace comes, or if it does not come, our course is clear. We will act as we must to help protect the independence of the valiant people of South Vietnam. We will strive to limit the conflict, for we wish neither increased destruction nor do we want to invite increased danger.
But we will give our fighting men what they must have: every gun, and every dollar, and every decision—whatever the cost or whatever the challenge.
And we will continue to help the people of South Vietnam care for those that are ravaged by battle, create progress in the villages, and carry forward the healing hopes of peace as best they can amidst the uncertain terrors of war.
And let me be absolutely clear: The days may become months, and the months may become years, but we will stay as long as aggression commands us to battle.
There may be some who do not want peace, whose ambitions stretch so far that war in Vietnam is but a welcome and convenient episode in an immense design to subdue history to their will. But for others it must now be clear—the choice is not between peace and victory, it lies between peace and the ravages of a conflict from which they can only lose.
The people of Vietnam, North and South, seek the same things: the shared needs of man, the needs for food and shelter and education—the chance to build and work and till the soil, free from the arbitrary horrors of battle—the desire to walk in the dignity of those who master their own destiny. For many painful years, in war and revolution and infrequent peace, they have struggled to fulfill those needs.
It is a crime against mankind that so much courage, and so much will, and so many dreams, must be flung on the fires of war and death.
To all of those caught up in this conflict we therefore say again tonight: Let us choose peace, and with it the wondrous works of peace, and beyond that, the time when hope reaches toward consummation, and life is the servant of life.
In this work, we plan to discharge our duty to the people whom we serve.
V.
This is the State of the Union.
But over it all—wealth, and promise, and expectation—lies our troubling awareness of American men at war tonight.
How many men who listen to me tonight have served their Nation in other wars? How very many are not here to listen?
The war in Vietnam is not like these other wars. Yet, finally, war is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate.
Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in this world.
Many of you share the burden of this knowledge tonight with me. But there is a difference. For finally I must be the one to order our guns to fire, against all the most inward pulls of my desire. For we have children to teach, and we have sick to be cured, and we have men to be freed. There are poor to be lifted up, and there are cities to be built, and there is a world to be helped.
Yet we do what we must.
I am hopeful, and I will try as best I can, with everything I have got, to end this battle and to return our sons to their desires.
Yet as long as others will challenge America's security and test the clearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, then we must stand or see the promise of two centuries tremble. I believe tonight that you do not want me to try that risk. And from that belief your President summons his strength for the trials that lie ahead in the days to come.
The work must be our work now. Scarred by the weaknesses of man, with whatever guidance God may offer us, we must nevertheless and alone with our mortality, strive to ennoble the life of man on earth.
Thank you, and goodnight.
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 10, 1967
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, distinguished Members of the Congress:
I share with all of you the grief that you feel at the death today of one of the most beloved, respected, and effective Members of this body, the distinguished Representative from Rhode Island, Mr. Fogarty.
I have come here tonight to report to you that this is a time of testing for our Nation.
At home, the question is whether we will continue working for better opportunities for all Americans, when most Americans are already living better than any people in history.
Abroad, the question is whether we have the staying power to fight a very costly war, when the objective is limited and the danger to us is seemingly remote.
So our test is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when the dangers to us are obvious and dose at hand, but, rather, whether we carry on when they seem obscure and distant—and some think that it is safe to lay down our burdens.
I have come tonight to ask this Congress and this Nation to resolve that issue: to meet our commitments at home and abroad—to continue to build a better America—and to reaffirm this Nation's allegiance to freedom.
As President Abraham Lincoln said, "We must ask where we are, and whither we are tending." I.
The last 3 years bear witness to our determination to make this a better country.
We have struck down legal barriers to equality.
We have improved the education of 7 million deprived children and this year alone we have enabled almost 1 million students to go to college.
We have brought medical care to older people who were unable to afford it.
Three and one-half million Americans have already received treatment under
Medicare since July.
We have built a strong economy that has put almost 3 million more Americans on the payrolls in the last year alone.
We have included more than 9 million new workers under a higher minimum wage.
We have launched new training programs to provide job skills for almost 1 million Americans.
We have helped more than a thousand local communities to attack poverty in the neighborhoods of the poor. We have set out to rebuild our cities on a scale that has never been attempted before. We have begun to rescue our waters from the menace of pollution and to restore the beauty of our land and our countryside, our cities and our towns.
We have given 1 million young Americans a chance to earn through the
Neighborhood Youth Corps—or through Head Start, a chance to learn.
So together we have tried to meet the needs of our people. And, we have succeeded in creating a better life for the many as well as the few. Now we must answer whether our gains shall be the foundations of further progress, or whether they shall be only monuments to what might have been—abandoned now by a people who lacked the will to see their great work through.
I believe that our people do not want to quit—though the task is great, the work hard, often frustrating, and success is a matter not of days or months, but of years—and sometimes it may be even decades. II.
I have come here tonight to discuss with you five ways of carrying forward the progress of these last 3 years. These five ways concern programs, partnerships, priorities, prosperity, and peace.
First, programs. We must see to it, I think, that these new programs that we have passed work effectively and are administered in the best possible way.
Three years ago we set out to create these new instruments of social progress. This required trial and error—and it has produced both. But as we learn, through success and failure, we are changing our strategy and we are trying to improve our tactics. In the long run, these starts—some rewarding, others inadequate and disappointing—are crucial to SUCCESS.
One example is the struggle to make life better for the less fortunate among us.
On a similar occasion, at this rostrum in 1949, I heard a great American President, Harry S. Truman, declare this: "The American people have decided that poverty is just as wasteful and just as unnecessary as preventable disease."
Many listened to President Truman that day here in this Chamber, but few understood what was required and did anything about it. The executive branch and the Congress waited 15 long years before ever taking any action on that challenge, as it did on many other challenges that great President presented. And when, 3 years ago, you here in the Congress joined with me in a declaration of war on poverty, then I warned, "It will not be a short or easy struggle—no single weapon… will suffice—but we shall not rest until that war is won."
And I have come here to renew that pledge tonight.
I recommend that we intensify our efforts to give the poor a chance to enjoy and to join in this Nation's progress.
I shall propose certain administrative changes suggested by the Congress—as well as some that we have learned from our own trial and error.
I shall urge special methods and special funds to reach the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are now trapped in the ghettos of our big cities and, through Head Start, to try to reach out to our very young, little children. The chance to learn is their brightest hope and must command our full determination. For learning brings skills; and skills bring jobs; and jobs bring responsibility and dignity, as well as taxes.
This war—like the war in Vietnam—is not a simple one. There is no single battle-line which you can plot each day on a chart. The enemy is not easy to perceive, or to isolate, or to destroy. There are mistakes and there are setbacks. But we are moving, and our direction is forward.
This is true with other programs that are making and breaking new ground. Some do not yet have the capacity to absorb well or wisely all the money that could be put into them. Administrative skills and trained manpower are just as vital to their success as dollars. And I believe those skills will come. But it will take time and patience and hard work. Success cannot be forced at a single stroke. So we must continue to strengthen the administration of every program if that success is to come—as we know it must.
We have done much in the space of 2 short years, working together.
I have recommended, and you, the Congress, have approved, 10 different reorganization plans, combining and consolidating many bureaus of this Government, and creating two entirely new Cabinet departments.
I have come tonight to propose that we establish a new department—a
Department of Business and Labor.
By combining the Department of Commerce with the Department of Labor and other related agencies, I think we can create a more economical, efficient, and streamlined instrument that will better serve a growing nation.
This is our goal throughout the entire Federal Government. Every program will be thoroughly evaluated. Grant-in-aid programs will be improved and simplified as desired by many of our local administrators and our Governors.
Where there have been mistakes, we will try very hard to correct them.
Where there has been progress, we will try to build upon it.
Our second objective is partnership—to create an effective partnership at all levels of government. And I should treasure nothing more than to have that partnership begin between the executive and the Congress.
The 88th and the 89th Congresses passed more social and economic legislation than any two single Congresses in American history. Most of you who were Members of those Congresses voted to pass most of those measures. But your efforts will come to nothing unless it reaches the people.
Federal energy is essential. But it is not enough. Only a total working partnership among Federal, State, and local governments can succeed. The test of that partnership will be the concern of each public organization, each private institution, and each responsible citizen.
Each State, county, and city needs to examine its capacity for government in today's world, as we are examining ours in the executive department, and as I see you are examining yours. Some will need to reorganize and reshape their methods of administration—as we are doing. Others will need to revise their constitutions and their laws to bring them up to date—as we are doing. Above all, I think we must work together and find ways in which the multitudes of small jurisdictions can be brought together more efficiently.
During the past 3 years we have returned to State and local governments about $40 billion in grants-in-aid. This year alone, 70 percent of our Federal expenditures for domestic programs will be distributed through the State and local governments. With Federal assistance, State and local governments by 1970 will be spending close to $110 billion annually. These enormous sums must be used wisely, honestly, and effectively. We intend to work closely with the States and the localities to do exactly that.
Our third objective is priorities, to move ahead on the priorities that we have established within the resources that are available.
I wish, of course, that we could do all that should be done—and that we could do it now. But the Nation has many commitments and responsibilities which make heavy demands upon our total resources. No administration would more eagerly utilize for these programs all the resources they require than the administration that started them.
So let us resolve, now, to do all that we can, with what we have—knowing that it is far, far more than we have ever done before, and far, far less than our problems will ultimately require.
Let us create new opportunities for our children and our young Americans who need special help.
We should strengthen the Head Start program, begin it for children 3 years old, and maintain its educational momentum by following through in the early years.
We should try new methods of child development and care from the earliest years, before it is too late to correct.
And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.
Let us insure that older Americans, and neglected Americans, share in their
Nation's progress.
We should raise social security payments by an overall average of 20 percent. That will add $4 billion 100 million to social security payments in the first year. I will recommend that each of the 23 million Americans now receiving payments get an increase of at least 15 percent.
I will ask that you raise the minimum payments by 59 percent—from $44 to $70 a month, and to guarantee a minimum benefit of $100 a month for those with a total of 25 years of coverage. We must raise the limits that retired workers can earn without losing social security income.
We must eliminate by law unjust discrimination in employment because of age.
We should embark upon a major effort to provide self-help assistance to the forgotten in our midst—the American Indians and the migratory farm workers. And we should reach with the hand of understanding to help those who live in rural poverty.
And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.
So let us keep on improving the quality of life and enlarging the meaning of justice for all of our fellow Americans.
We should transform our decaying slums into places of decency through the landmark Model Cities program. I intend to seek for this effort, this year, the full amount that you in Congress authorized last year.
We should call upon the genius of private industry and the most advanced technology to help rebuild our great cities.
We should vastly expand the fight for dean air with a total attack on pollution at its sources, and—because air, like water, does not respect manmade boundaries—we should set up "regional airsheds" throughout this great land.
We should continue to carry to every corner of the Nation our campaign for a beautiful America—to dean up our towns, to make them more beautiful, our cities, our countryside, by creating more parks, and more seashores, and more open spaces for our children to play in, and for the generations that come after us to enjoy.
We should continue to seek equality and justice for each citizen—before a jury, in seeking a job, in exercising his civil rights. We should find a solution to fair housing, so that every American, regardless of color, has a decent home of his choice.
We should modernize our Selective Service System. The National Commission on Selective Service will shortly submit its report. I will send you new recommendations to meet our military manpower needs. But let us resolve that this is to be the Congress that made our draft laws as fair and as effective as possible.
We should protect what Justice Brandeis called the "right most valued by civilized men"—the right to privacy. We should outlaw all wiretapping—public and private—wherever and whenever it occurs, except when the security of this Nation itself is at stake—and only then with the strictest governmental safeguards. And we should exercise the full reach of our constitutional powers to outlaw electronic "bugging" and "snooping."
I hope this Congress will try to help me do more for the consumer. We should demand that the cost of credit be clearly and honestly expressed where average citizens can understand it. We should immediately take steps to prevent massive power failures, to safeguard the home against hazardous household products, and to assure safety in the pipelines that carry natural gas across our Nation.
We should extend Medicare benefits that are now denied to 1,300,000 permanently and totally disabled Americans under 65 years of age.
We should improve the process of democracy by passing our election reform and financing proposals, by tightening our laws regulating lobbying, and by restoring a reasonable franchise to Americans who move their residences.
We should develop educational television into a vital public resource to enrich our homes, educate our families, and to provide assistance in our classrooms. We should insist that the public interest be fully served through the public's airwaves.
And I will propose these measures to the 90th Congress.
Now we come to a question that weighs very heavily on all our minds—on yours and mine. This Nation must make an all-out effort to combat crime.
The 89th Congress gave us a new start in the attack on crime by passing the
Law Enforcement Assistance Act that I recommended. We appointed the
National Crime Commission to study crime in America and to recommend the
best ways to carry that attack forward.
And while we do not have all the answers, on the basis of its preliminary recommendations we are ready to move.
This is not a war that Washington alone can win. The idea of a national police force is repugnant to the American people. Crime must be rooted out in local communities by local authorities. Our policemen must be better trained, must be better paid, and must be better supported by the local citizens that they try to serve and to protect.
The National Government can and expects to help.
And so I will recommend to the 90th Congress the Safe Streets and Crime Control Act of 1967. It will enable us to assist those States and cities that try to make their streets and homes safer, their police forces better, their corrections systems more effective, and their courts more efficient.
When the Congress approves, the Federal Government will be able to provide a substantial percentage of the cost:
—90 percent of the cost of developing the State and local plans, master plans, to combat crime in their area;
—60 percent of the cost of training new tactical units, developing instant communications and special alarm systems, and introducing the latest equipment and techniques so that they can become weapons in the war on crime;
—50 percent of the cost of building crime laboratories and police academy-type centers so that our citizens can be protected by the best trained and served by the best equipped police to be found anywhere. We will also recommend new methods to prevent juvenile delinquents from becoming adult delinquents. We will seek new partnerships with States and cities in order to deal with this hideous narcotics problem. And we will recommend strict controls on the sale of firearms.
At the heart of this attack on crime must be the conviction that a free America—as Abraham Lincoln once said—must "let reverence for the laws . . . become the political religion of the Nation."
Our country's laws must be respected. Order must be maintained. And I will support—with all the constitutional powers the President possesses—our Nation's law enforcement officials in their attempt to control the crime and the violence that tear the fabric of our communities.
Many of these priority proposals will be built on foundations that have already been laid. Some will necessarily be small at first, but "every beginning is a consequence." If we postpone this urgent work now, it will simply have to be done later, and later we will pay a much higher price.
Our fourth objective is prosperity, to keep our economy moving ahead, moving ahead steadily and safely.
We have now enjoyed 6 years of unprecedented and rewarding prosperity. Last year, in 1966:
—Wages were the highest in history—and the unemployment rate, announced yesterday, reached the lowest point in 13 years;
—Total after-tax income of American families rose nearly 5 percent;
—Corporate profits after taxes rose a little more than 5 percent;
—Our gross national product advanced 5.5 percent, to about $740 billion;
—Income per farm went up 6 percent.
Now we have been greatly concerned because consumer prices rose 4.5 percent over the 18 months since we decided to send troops to Vietnam. This was more than we had expected—and the Government tried to do everything that we knew how to do to hold it down. Yet we were not as successful as we wished to be. In the 18 months after we entered World War II, prices rose not 4.5 percent, but 13.5 percent. In the first 18 months after Korea, after the conflict broke out there, prices rose not 4.5 percent, but 11 percent. During those two periods we had OPA price control that the Congress gave us and War Labor Board wage controls.
Since Vietnam we have not asked for those controls and we have tried to avoid imposing them. We believe that we have done better, but we make no pretense of having been successful or doing as well as we wished.
Our greatest disappointment in the economy during 1966 was the excessive rise in interest rates and the tightening of credit. They imposed very severe and very unfair burdens on our home buyers and on our home builders, and all those associated with the home industry.
Last January, and again last September, I recommended fiscal and moderate tax measures to try to restrain the unbalanced pace of economic expansion. Legislatively and administratively we took several billions out of the economy. With these measures, in both instances, the Congress approved most of the recommendations rather promptly.
As 1966 ended, price stability was seemingly being restored. Wholesale prices are lower tonight than they were in August. So are retail food prices. Monetary conditions are also easing. Most interest rates have retreated from their earlier peaks. More money now seems to be available.
Given the cooperation of the Federal Reserve System, which I so earnestly seek, I am confident that this movement can continue. I pledge the American people that I will do everything in a President's power to lower interest rates and to ease money in this country. The Federal Home Loan Bank Board tomorrow morning will announce that it will make immediately available to savings and loan associations an additional $1 billion, and will lower from 6 percent to 5 3/4 percent the interest rate charged on those loans.
We shall continue on a sensible course of fiscal and budgetary policy that we believe will keep our economy growing without new inflationary spirals; that will finance responsibly the needs of our men in Vietnam and the progress of our people at home; that will support a significant improvement in our export surplus, and will press forward toward easier credit and toward lower interest rates.
I recommend to the Congress a surcharge of 6 percent on both corporate and individual income taxes—to last for 2 years or for so long as the unusual expenditures associated with our efforts in Vietnam continue. I will promptly recommend an earlier termination date if a reduction in these expenditures permits it. This surcharge will raise revenues by some $4.5 billion in the first year. For example, a person whose tax payment, the tax he owes, is $1,000, will pay, under this proposal, an extra $60 over the 12-month period, or $5 a month. The overwhelming majority of Americans who pay taxes today are below that figure and they will pay substantially less than $5 a month. Married couples with two children, with incomes up to $5,000 per year, will be exempt from this tax—as will single people with an income of up to $1,900 a year.
Now if Americans today still paid the income and excise tax rates in effect when I came into the Presidency, in the year 1964, their annual taxes would have been over $20 billion more than at present tax rates. So this proposal is that while we have this problem and this emergency in Vietnam, while we are trying to meet the needs of our people at home, your Government asks for slightly more than one-fourth of that tax cut each year in order to try to hold our budget deficit in fiscal 1968 within prudent limits and to give our country and to give our fighting men the help they need in this hour of trial.
For fiscal 1967, we estimate the budget expenditures to be $126.7 billion and revenues of $117 billion. That will leave us a deficit this year of $9.7 billion.
For fiscal 1968, we estimate budget expenditures of $135 billion. And with the tax measures recommended, and a continuing strong economy, we estimate revenues will be $126.9 billion. The deficit then will be $8.1 billion.
I will very soon forward all of my recommendations to the Congress. Yours is the responsibility to discuss and to debate them—to approve or modify or reject them.
I welcome your views, as I have welcomed working with you for 30 years as a colleague and as Vice President and President.
I should like to say to the Members of the opposition—whose numbers, if I am not mistaken, seem to have increased somewhat—that the genius of the American political system has always been best expressed through creative debate that offers choices and reasonable alternatives. Throughout our history, great Republicans and Democrats have seemed to understand this. So let there be light and reason in our relations. That is the way to a responsible session and a responsive government.
Let us be remembered as a President and a Congress who tried to improve the quality of life for every American—not just the rich, not just the poor, but every man, woman, and child in this great Nation of ours.
We all go to school—to good schools or bad schools. We all take air into our lungs—clean air or polluted air. We all drink water—pure water or polluted water. We all face sickness someday, and some more often than we wish, and old age as well. We all have a stake in this Great Society—in its economic growth, in reduction of civil strife—a great stake in good government.
We just must not arrest the pace of progress we have established in this country in these years. Our children's children will pay the price if we are not wise enough, and courageous enough, and determined enough to stand up and meet the Nation's needs as well as we can in the time allotted us. III.
Abroad, as at home, there is also risk in change. But abroad, as at home, there is a greater risk in standing still. No part of our foreign policy is so sacred that it ever remains beyond review. We shall be flexible where conditions in the world change—and where man's efforts can change them for the better.
We are in the midst of a great transition—a transition from narrow nationalism to international partnership; from the harsh spirit of the cold war to the hopeful spirit of common humanity on a troubled and a threatened planet.
In Latin America, the American chiefs of state will be meeting very shortly to give our hemispheric policies new direction.
We have come a long way in this hemisphere since the inter-American effort in economic and social development was launched by the conference at Bogota in 1960 under the leadership of President Eisenhower. The Alliance for Progress moved dramatically forward under President Kennedy. There is new confidence that the voice of the people is being heard; that the dignity of the individual is stronger than ever in this hemisphere, and we are facing up to and meeting many of the hemispheric problems together. In this hemisphere that reform under democracy can be made to happen—because it has happened. So together, I think, we must now move to strike down the barriers to full cooperation among the American nations, and to free the energies and the resources of two great continents on behalf of all of our citizens.
Africa stands at an earlier stage of development than Latin America. It has yet to develop the transportation, communications, agriculture, and, above all, the trained men and women without which growth is impossible. There, too, the job will best be done if the nations and peoples of Africa cooperate on a regional basis. More and more our programs for Africa are going to be directed toward self-help.
The future of Africa is shadowed by unsolved racial conflicts. Our policy will continue to reflect our basic commitments as a people to support those who are prepared to work towards cooperation and harmony between races, and to help those who demand change but reject the fool's gold of violence.
In the Middle East the spirit of good will toward all, unfortunately, has not yet taken hold. An already tortured peace seems to be constantly threatened. We shall try to use our influence to increase the possibilities of improved relations among the nations of that region. We are working hard at that task.
In the great subcontinent of South Asia live more than a sixth of the earth's population. Over the years we—and others—have invested very heavily in capital and food for the economic development of India and Pakistan.
We are not prepared to see our assistance wasted, however, in conflict. It must strengthen their capacity to help themselves. It must help these two nations—both our friends—to overcome poverty, to emerge as self-reliant leaders, and find terms for reconciliation and cooperation.
In Western Europe we shall maintain in NATO an integrated common defense. But we also look forward to the time when greater security can be achieved through measures of arms control and disarmament, and through other forms of practical agreement.
We are shaping a new future of enlarged partnership in nuclear affairs, in economic and technical cooperation, in trade negotiations, in political consultation, and in working together with the governments and peoples of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The emerging spirit of confidence is precisely what we hoped to achieve when we went to work a generation ago to put our shoulder to the wheel and try to help rebuild Europe. We faced new challenges and opportunities then and there—and we faced also some dangers. But I believe that the peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as both sides of this Chamber, wanted to face them together.
Our relations with the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe are also in transition. We have avoided both the acts and the rhetoric of the cold war. When we have differed with the Soviet Union, or other nations, for that matter, I have tried to differ quietly and with courtesy, and without venom.
Our objective is not to continue the cold war, but to end it.
We have reached an agreement at the United Nations on the peaceful uses of outer space.
We have agreed to open direct air flights with the Soviet Union.
We have removed more than 400 nonstrategic items from export control.
We are determined that the Export-Import Bank can allow commercial credits to Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia, as well as to Romania and Yugoslavia.
We have entered into a cultural agreement with the Soviet Union for another 2 years.
We have agreed with Bulgaria and Hungary to upgrade our legations to embassies.
We have started discussions with international agencies on ways of increasing contacts with Eastern European countries.
This administration has taken these steps even as duty compelled us to fulfill and execute alliances and treaty obligations throughout the world that were entered into before I became President.
So tonight I now ask and urge this Congress to help our foreign and our commercial trade policies by passing an East-West trade bill and by approving our consular convention with the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union has in the past year increased its long-range missile capabilities. It has begun to place near Moscow a limited antimissile defense. My first responsibility to our people is to assure that no nation can ever find it rational to launch a nuclear attack or to use its nuclear power as a credible threat against us or against our allies.
I would emphasize that that is why an important link between Russia and the United States is in our common interest, in arms control and in disarmament. We have the solemn duty to slow down the arms race between us, if that is at all possible, in both conventional and nuclear weapons and defenses. I thought we were making some progress in that direction the first few months I was in office. I realize that any additional race would impose on our peoples, and on all mankind, for that matter, an additional waste of resources with no gain in security to either side.
I expect in the days ahead to closely consult and seek the advice of the Congress about the possibilities of international agreements bearing directly upon this problem.
Next to the pursuit of peace, the really greatest challenge to the human family is the race between food supply and population increase. That race tonight is being lost.
The time for rhetoric has clearly passed. The time for concerted action is here and we must get on with the job.
We believe that three principles must prevail if our policy is to succeed:
First, the developing nations must give highest priority to food production, including the use of technology and the capital of private enterprise.
Second, nations with food deficits must put more of their resources into voluntary family planning programs.
And third, the developed nations must all assist other nations to avoid starvation in the short run and to move rapidly towards the ability to feed themselves.
Every member of the world community now bears a direct responsibility to help bring our most basic human account into balance. IV.
I come now finally to Southeast Asia—and to Vietnam in particular. Soon I will submit to the Congress a detailed report on that situation. Tonight I want to just review the essential points as briefly as I can.
We are in Vietnam because the United States of America and our allies are committed by the SEATO Treaty to "act to meet the common danger" of aggression in Southeast Asia.
We are in Vietnam because an international agreement signed by the United States, North Vietnam, and others in 1962 is being systematically violated by the Communists. That violation threatens the independence of all the small nations in Southeast Asia, and threatens the peace of the entire region and perhaps the world.
We are there because the people of South Vietnam have as much right to remain non-Communist—if that is what they choose—as North Vietnam has to remain Communist.
We are there because the Congress has pledged by solemn vote to take all necessary measures to prevent further aggression.
No better words could describe our present course than those once spoken by the great Thomas Jefferson:
"It is the melancholy law of human societies to be compelled sometimes to choose a great evil in order to ward off a greater."
We have chosen to fight a limited war in Vietnam in an attempt to prevent a larger war—a war almost certain to follow, I believe, if the Communists succeed in overrunning and taking over South Vietnam by aggression and by force. I believe, and I am supported by some authority, that if they are not checked now the world can expect to pay a greater price to check them later.
That is what our statesmen said when they debated this treaty, and that is why it was ratified 82 to 1 by the Senate many years ago.
You will remember that we stood in Western Europe 20 years ago. Is there anyone in this Chamber tonight who doubts that the course of freedom was not changed for the better because of the courage of that stand?
Sixteen years ago we and others stopped another kind of aggression—this time it was in Korea. Imagine how different Asia might be today if we had failed to act when the Communist army of North Korea marched south. The Asia of tomorrow will be far different because we have said in Vietnam, as we said 16 years ago in Korea: "This far and no further."
I think I reveal no secret when I tell you that we are dealing with a stubborn adversary who is committed to the use of force and terror to settle political questions.
I wish I could report to you that the conflict is almost over. This I cannot do. We face more cost, more loss, and more agony. For the end is not yet. I cannot promise you that it will come this year—or come next year. Our adversary still believes, I think, tonight, that he can go on fighting longer than we can, and longer than we and our allies will be prepared to stand up and resist.
Our men in that area—there are nearly 500,000 now—have borne well "the burden and the heat of the day." Their efforts have deprived the Communist enemy of the victory that he sought and that he expected a year ago. We have steadily frustrated his main forces. General Westmoreland reports that the enemy can no longer succeed on the battlefield.
So I must say to you that our pressure must be sustained—and will be sustained—until he realizes that the war he started is costing him more than he can ever gain.
I know of no strategy more likely to attain that end than the strategy of "accumulating slowly, but inexorably, every kind of material resource"—of "laboriously teaching troops the very elements of their trade." That, and patience—and I mean a great deal of patience.
Our South Vietnamese allies are also being tested tonight. Because they must provide real security to the people living in the countryside. And this means reducing the terrorism and the armed attacks which kidnaped and killed 26,900 civilians in the last 32 months, to levels where they can be successfully controlled by the regular South Vietnamese security forces. It means bringing to the villagers an effective civilian government that they can respect, and that they can rely upon and that they can participate in, and that they can have a personal stake in. We hope that government is now beginning to emerge.
While I cannot report the desired progress in the pacification effort, the very distinguished and able Ambassador, Henry Cabot Lodge, reports that South Vietnam is turning to this task with a new sense of urgency. We can help, but only they can win this part of the war. Their task is to build and protect a new life in each rural province.
One result of our stand in Vietnam is already clear.
It is this: The peoples of Asia now know that the door to independence is not going to be slammed shut. They know that it is possible for them to choose their own national destinies—without coercion.
The performance of our men in Vietnam—backed by the American people—has created a feeling of confidence and unity among the independent nations of Asia and the Pacific. I saw it in their faces in the 19 days that I spent in their homes and in their countries. Fear of external Communist conquest in many Asian nations is already subsiding—and with this, the spirit of hope is rising. For the first time in history, a common outlook and common institutions are already emerging.
This forward movement is rooted in the ambitions and the interests of Asian nations themselves. It was precisely this movement that we hoped to accelerate when I spoke at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in April 1965, and I pledged "a much more massive effort to improve the life of man" in that part of the world, in the hope that we could take some of the funds that we were spending on bullets and bombs and spend it on schools and production.
Twenty months later our efforts have produced a new reality: The doors of the billion dollar Asian Development Bank that I recommended to the Congress, and you endorsed almost unanimously, I am proud to tell you are already open. Asians are engaged tonight in regional efforts in a dozen new directions. Their hopes are high. Their faith is strong. Their confidence is deep.
And even as the war continues, we shall play our part in carrying forward this constructive historic development. As recommended by the Eugene Black mission, and if other nations will join us, I will seek a special authorization from the Congress of $200 million for East Asian regional programs.
We are eager to turn our resources to peace. Our efforts in behalf of humanity I think need not be restricted by any parallel or by any boundary line. The moment that peace comes, as I pledged in Baltimore, I will ask the Congress for funds to join in an international program of reconstruction and development for all the people of Vietnam—and their deserving neighbors who wish our help.
We shall continue to hope for a reconciliation between the people of
Mainland China and the world community—including working together in all
the tasks of arms control, security, and progress on which the fate of the
Chinese people, like their fellow men elsewhere, depends.
We would be the first to welcome a China which decided to respect her neighbors' rights. We would be the first to applaud her were she to apply her great energies and intelligence to improving the welfare of her people. And we have no intention of trying to deny her legitimate needs for security and friendly relations with her neighboring countries.
Our hope that all of this will someday happen rests on the conviction that we, the American people and our allies, will and are going to see Vietnam through to an honorable peace.
We will support all appropriate initiatives by the United Nations, and others, which can bring the several parties together for unconditional discussions of peace—anywhere, any time. And we will continue to take every possible initiative ourselves to constantly probe for peace.
Until such efforts succeed, or until the infiltration ceases, or until the conflict subsides, I think the course of wisdom for this country is that we just must firmly pursue our present course. We will stand firm in Vietnam.
I think you know that our fighting men there tonight bear the heaviest burden of all. With their lives they serve their Nation. We must give them nothing less than our full support—and we have given them that—nothing less than the determination that Americans have always given their fighting men. Whatever our sacrifice here, even if it is more than $5 a month, it is small compared to their own.
How long it will take I cannot prophesy. I only know that the will of the
American people, I think, is tonight being tested.
Whether we can fight a war of limited objectives over a period of time, and keep alive the hope of independence and stability for people other than ourselves; whether we can continue to act with restraint when the temptation to "get it over with" is inviting but dangerous; whether we can accept the necessity of choosing "a great evil in order to ward off a greater"; whether we can do these without arousing the hatreds and the passions that are ordinarily loosed in time of war—on all these questions so much turns.
The answers will determine not only where we are, but "whither we are tending."
A time of testing—yes. And a time of transition. The transition is sometimes slow; sometimes unpopular; almost always very painful; and often quite dangerous.
But we have lived with danger for a long time before, and we shall live with it for a long time yet to come. We know that "man is born unto trouble." We also know that this Nation was not forged and did not survive and grow and prosper without a great deal of sacrifice from a great many men.
For all the disorders that we must deal with, and all the frustrations that concern us, and all the anxieties that we are called upon to resolve, for all the issues we must face with the agony that attends them, let us remember that "those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it."
But let us also count not only our burdens but our blessings—for they are many.
And let us give thanks to the One who governs us all.
Let us draw encouragement from the signs of hope—for they, too, are many.
Let us remember that we have been tested before and America has never been found wanting.
So with your understanding, I would hope your confidence, and your support, we are going to persist—and we are going to succeed.
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 17, 1968
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress, and my fellow
Americans:
I was thinking as I was walking down the aisle tonight of what Sam Rayburn told me many years ago: The Congress always extends a very warm welcome to the President—as he comes in.
Thank all of you very, very much.
I have come once again to this Chamber—the home of our democracy—to give you, as the Constitution requires, "Information of the State of the Union."
I report to you that our country is challenged, at home and abroad:
—that it is our will that is being tried, not our strength; our sense of purpose, not our ability to achieve a better America;
—that we have the strength to meet our every challenge; the physical strength to hold the course of decency and compassion at home; and the moral strength to support the cause of peace in the world.
And I report to you that I believe, with abiding conviction, that this people—nurtured by their deep faith, tutored by their hard lessons, moved by their high aspirations—have the will to meet the trials that these times impose.
Since I reported to you last January:
—Three elections have been held in Vietnam—in the midst of war and under the constant threat of violence.
—A President, a Vice President, a House and Senate, and village officials have been chosen by popular, contested ballot.
—The enemy has been defeated in battle after battle.
—The number of South Vietnamese living in areas under Government protection tonight has grown by more than a million since January of last year.
These are all marks of progress. Yet:
—The enemy continues to pour men and material across frontiers and into battle, despite his continuous heavy losses.
—He continues to hope that America's will to persevere can be broken. Well—he is wrong. America will persevere. Our patience and our perseverance will match our power. Aggression will never prevail.
But our goal is peace—and peace at the earliest possible moment.
Right now we are exploring the meaning of Hanoi's recent statement. There is no mystery about the questions which must be answered before the bombing is stopped.
We believe that any talks should follow the San Antonio formula that I stated last September, which said:
—The bombing would stop immediately if talks would take place promptly and with reasonable hopes that they would be productive.
—And the other side must not take advantage of our restraint as they have in the past. This Nation simply cannot accept anything less without jeopardizing the lives of our men and of our allies.
If a basis for peace talks can be established on the San Antonio foundations—and it is my hope and my prayer that they can—we would consult with our allies and with the other side to see if a complete cessation of hostilities—a really true cease-fire—could be made the first order of business. I will report at the earliest possible moment the results of these explorations to the American people.
I have just recently returned from a very fruitful visit and talks with His Holiness the Pope and I share his hope—as he expressed it earlier today—that both sides will extend themselves in an effort to bring an end to the war in Vietnam. I have today assured him that we and our allies will do our full part to bring this about.
Since I spoke to you last January, other events have occurred that have major consequences for world peace.
—The Kennedy Round achieved the greatest reduction in tariff barriers in all the history of trade negotiations.
—The nations of Latin America at Punta del Este resolved to move toward economic integration.
—In Asia, the nations from Korea and Japan to Indonesia and Singapore worked behind America's shield to strengthen their economies and to broaden their political cooperation.
—In Africa, from which the distinguished Vice President has just returned, he reports to me that there is a spirit of regional cooperation that is beginning to take hold in very practical ways.
These events we all welcomed. Yet since I last reported to you, we and the world have been confronted by a number of crises:
—During the Arab-Israeli war last June, the hot line between Washington and Moscow was used for the first time in our history. A cease-fire was achieved without a major power confrontation.
Now the nations of the Middle East have the opportunity to cooperate with Ambassador Jarring's U.N. mission and they have the responsibility to find the terms of living together in stable peace and dignity, and we shall do all in our power to help them achieve that result.
—Not far from this scene of conflict, a crisis flared on Cyprus involving two peoples who are America's friends: Greece and Turkey. Our very able representative, Mr. Cyrus Vance, and others helped to ease this tension.
—Turmoil continues on the mainland of China after a year of violent disruption. The radical extremism of their Government has isolated the Chinese people behind their own borders. The United States, however, remains willing to permit the travel of journalists to both our countries; to undertake cultural and educational exchanges; and to talk about the exchange of basic food crop materials.
Since I spoke to you last, the United States and the Soviet Union have taken several important steps toward the goal of international cooperation.
As you will remember, I met with Chairman Kosygin at Glassboro and we achieved if not accord, at least a clearer understanding of our respective positions after 2 days of meeting.
Because we believe the nuclear danger must be narrowed, we have worked with the Soviet Union and with other nations to reach an agreement that will halt the spread of nuclear weapons. On the basis of communications from Ambassador Fisher in Geneva this afternoon, I am encouraged to believe that a draft treaty can be laid before the conference in Geneva in the very near future. I hope to be able to present that treaty to the Senate this year for the Senate's approval.
We achieved, in 1967, a consular treaty with the Soviets, the first commercial air agreement between the two countries, and a treaty banning weapons in outer space. We shall sign, and submit to the Senate shortly, a new treaty with the Soviets and with others for the protection of astronauts.
Serious differences still remain between us, yet in these relations, we have made some progress since Vienna, the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban missile crisis.
But despite this progress, we must maintain a military force that is capable of deterring any threat to this Nation's security, whatever the mode of aggression. Our choices must not be confined to total war—or to total acquiescence.
We have such a military force today. We shall maintain it.
I wish—with all of my heart—that the expenditures that are necessary to build and to protect our power could all be devoted to the programs of peace. But until world conditions permit, and until peace is assured, America's might—and America's bravest sons who wear our Nation's uniform—must continue to stand guard for all of us—as they gallantly do tonight in Vietnam and other places in the world.
Yet neither great weapons nor individual courage can provide the conditions of peace.
For two decades America has committed itself against the tyranny of want and ignorance in the world that threatens the peace. We shall sustain that commitment. This year I shall propose:
—That we launch, with other nations, an exploration of the ocean depths to tap its wealth, and its energy, and its abundance.
—That we contribute our fair share to a major expansion of the
International Development Association, and to increase the resources of the
Asian Development Bank.
—That we adopt a prudent aid program, rooted in the principle of self-help.
—That we renew and extend the food for freedom program.
Our food programs have already helped millions avoid the horrors of famine.
But unless the rapid growth of population in developing countries is slowed, the gap between rich and poor will widen steadily.
Governments in the developing countries must take such facts into consideration. We in the United States are prepared to help assist them in those efforts.
But we must also improve the lives of children already born in the villages and towns and cities on this earth. They can be taught by great teachers through space communications and the miracle of satellite television—and we are going to bring to bear every resource of mind and technology to help make this dream come true.
Let me speak now about some matters here at home.
Tonight our Nation is accomplishing more for its people than has ever been accomplished before. Americans are prosperous as men have never been in recorded history. Yet there is in the land a certain restlessness—a questioning.
The total of our Nation's annual production is now above $800 billion. For 83 months this Nation has been on a steady upward trend of growth.
All about them, most American families can see the evidence of growing abundance: higher paychecks, humming factories, new cars moving down new highways. More and more families own their own homes, equipped with more than 70 million television sets.
A new college is founded every week. Today more than half of the high school graduates go on to college.
There are hundreds of thousands of fathers and mothers who never completed grammar school—who will see their children graduate from college.
Why, then, this restlessness?
Because when a great ship cuts through the sea, the waters are always stirred and troubled.
And our ship is moving. It is moving through troubled and new waters; it is moving toward new and better shores.
We ask now, not how can we achieve abundance?—but how shall we use our abundance? Not, is there abundance enough for all?—but, how can all share in our abundance?
While we have accomplished much, much remains for us to meet and much remains for us to master.
—In some areas, the jobless rate is still three or four times the national average.
—Violence has shown its face in some of our cities.
—Crime increases on our streets.
—Income for farm workers remains far behind that for urban workers; and parity for our farmers who produce our food is still just a hope—not an achievement.
—New housing construction is far less than we need—to assure decent shelter for every family.
—Hospital and medical costs are high, and they are rising.
—Many rivers—and the air in many cities—remain badly polluted. And our citizens suffer from breathing that air.
We have lived with conditions like these for many, many years. But much that we once accepted as inevitable, we now find absolutely intolerable.
In our cities last summer, we saw how wide is the gulf for some Americans between the promise and the reality of our society.
We know that we cannot change all of this in a day. It represents the bitter consequences of more than three centuries.
But the issue is not whether we can change this; the issue is whether we will change this.
Well, I know we can. And I believe we will.
This then is the work we should do in the months that are ahead of us in this Congress.
The first essential is more jobs, useful jobs for tens of thousands who can become productive and can pay their own way.
Our economy has created 7 1/2 million new jobs in the past 4 years. It is adding more than a million and a half new jobs this year.
Through programs passed by the Congress, job training is being given tonight to more than a million Americans in this country.
This year, the time has come when we must get to those who are last in line—the hard-core unemployed—the hardest to reach.
Employment officials estimate that 500,000 of these persons are now unemployed in the major cities of America. Our objective is to place these 500,000 in private industry jobs within the next 3 years.
To do this, I propose a $2. 1 billion manpower program in the coming fiscal year—a 25 percent increase over the current year. Most of this increase will be used to start a new partnership between government and private industry to train and to hire the hard-core unemployed persons. I know of no task before us of more importance to us, to the country, or to our future.
Another essential is to rebuild our cities.
Last year the Congress authorized $662 million for the Model Cities program. I requested the full amount of that authorization to help meet the crisis in the cities of America. But the Congress appropriated only $312 million—less than half.
This year I urge the Congress to honor my request for model cities funds to rebuild the centers of American cities by granting us the full amount that you in the Congress authorized—$1 billion.
The next essential is more housing—and more housing now.
Surely a nation that can go to the moon can place a decent home within the reach of its families.
Therefore we must call together the resources of industry and labor, to start building 300,000 housing units for low- and middle-income families next year—that is three times more than this year. We must make it possible for thousands of families to become homeowners, not rent-payers.
I propose, for the consideration of this Congress, a 10-year campaign to build 6 million new housing units for low and middle-income families. Six million units in the next 10 years. We have built 530,000 the last 10 years.
Better health for our children—all of our children—is essential if we are to have a better America.
Last year, Medicare, Medicaid, and other new programs that you passed in the Congress brought better health to more than 25 million Americans.
American medicine—with the very strong support and cooperation of public resources—has produced a phenomenal decline in the death rate from many of the dread diseases.
But it is a shocking fact that, in saving the lives of babies, America ranks 15th among the nations of the world. And among children, crippling defects are often discovered too late for any corrective action. This is a tragedy that Americans can, and Americans should, prevent.
I shall, therefore, propose to the Congress a child health program to provide, over the next 5 years, for families unable to afford it—access to health services from prenatal care of the mother through the child's first year.
When we do that you will find it is the best investment we ever made because we will get these diseases in their infancy and we will find a cure in a great many instances that we can never find by overcrowding our hospitals when they are grown.
Now when we act to advance the consumer's cause I think we help every
American.
Last year, with very little fanfare the Congress and the executive branch moved in that field.
We enacted the Wholesome Meat Act, the Flammable Fabrics Act, the Product
Safety Commission, and a law to improve clinical laboratories.
And now, I think, the time has come to complete our unfinished work. The Senate has already passed the truth-in-lending bill, the fire safety bill, and the pipeline safety laws.
Tonight I plead with the House to immediately act upon these measures and I hope take favorable action upon all of them. I call upon the Congress to enact, without delay, the remainder of the 12 vital consumer protection laws that I submitted to the Congress last year.
I also urge final action on a measure that is already passed by the House to guard against fraud and manipulation in the Nation's commodity exchange market.
These measures are a pledge to our people—to keep them safe in their homes and at work, and to give them a fair deal in the marketplace.
And I think we must do more. I propose:
—New powers for the Federal Trade Commission to stop those who defraud and who swindle our public.
—New safeguards to insure the quality of fish and poultry, and the safety of our community water supplies.
—A major study of automobile insurance.
—Protection against hazardous radiation from television sets and other electronic equipment.
And to give the consumer a stronger voice, I plan to appoint a consumer counsel in the Justice Department—a lawyer for the American consumer—to work directly under the Attorney General, to serve the President's Special Assistant for Consumer Affairs, and to serve the consumers of this land.
This Congress—Democrats and Republicans—can earn the thanks of history.
We can make this truly a new day for the American consumer, and by giving
him this protection we can live in history as the consumer-conscious
Congress.
So let us get on with the work. Let us act soon.
We, at every level of the government, State, local, Federal, know that the American people have had enough of rising crime and lawlessness in this country.
They recognize that law enforcement is first the duty of local police and local government.
They recognize that the frontline headquarters against crime is in the home, the church, the city hall and the county courthouse and the statehouse—not in the far-removed National Capital of Washington.
But the people also recognize that the National Government can and the
National Government should help the cities and the States in their war on
crime to the full extent of its resources and its constitutional authority.
And this we shall do.
This does not mean a national police force. It does mean help and financial support:
—to develop State and local master plans to combat crime,
—to provide better training and better pay for police, and
—to bring the most advanced technology to the war on crime in every city and every county in America.
There is no more urgent business before this Congress than to pass the Safe Streets Act this year that I proposed last year. That law will provide these required funds. They are so critically needed that I have doubled my request under this act to $100 million in fiscal 1969.
And I urge the Congress to stop the trade in mail-order murder, to stop it this year by adopting a proper gun control law.
This year, I will propose a Drug Control Act to provide stricter penalties for those who traffic in LSD and other dangerous drugs with our people.
I will ask for more vigorous enforcement of all of our drug laws by increasing the number of Federal drug and narcotics control officials by more than 30 percent. The time has come to stop the sale of slavery to the young. I also request you to give us funds to add immediately 100 assistant United States attorneys throughout the land to help prosecute our criminal laws. We have increased our judiciary by 40 percent and we have increased our prosecutors by 16 percent. The dockets are full of cases because we don't have assistant district attorneys to go before the Federal judge and handle them. We start these young lawyers at $8,200 a year. And the docket is clogged because we don't have authority to hire more of them.
I ask the Congress for authority to hire 100 more. These young men will give special attention to this drug abuse, too.
Finally, I ask you to add 100 FBI agents to strengthen law enforcement in the Nation and to protect the individual rights of every citizen.
A moment ago I spoke of despair and frustrated hopes in the cities where the fires of disorder burned last summer. We can—and in time we will—change that despair into confidence, and change those frustrations into achievements. But violence will never bring progress.
We can make progress only by attacking the causes of violence and only where there is civil order founded on justice.
Today we are helping local officials improve their capacity to deal promptly with disorders.
Those who preach disorder and those who preach violence must know that local authorities are able to resist them swiftly, to resist them sternly, and to resist them decisively.
I shall recommend other actions:
—To raise the farmers' income by establishing a security commodity reserve that will protect the market from price-depressing stocks and protect the consumer from food scarcity.
—I shall recommend programs to help farmers bargain more effectively for fair prices.
—I shall recommend programs for new air safety measures.
—Measures to stem the rising costs of medical care.
—Legislation to encourage our returning veterans to devote themselves to careers in community service such as teaching, and being firemen, and joining our police force, and our law enforcement officials.
—I shall recommend programs to strengthen and finance our anti-pollution efforts.
—Fully funding all of the $2.18 billion poverty program that you in the Congress had just authorized in order to bring opportunity to those who have been left far behind.
—I shall recommend an Educational Opportunity Act to speed up our drive to break down the financial barriers that are separating our young people from college.
I shall also urge the Congress to act on several other vital pending bills—especially the civil rights measures—fair jury trials, protection of Federal rights, enforcement of equal employment opportunity, and fair housing.
The unfinished work of the first session must be completed—the Higher Education Act, the Juvenile Delinquency Act, conservation measures to save the redwoods of California, and to preserve the wonders of our scenic rivers, the Highway Beautification Act—and all the other measures for a cleaner, and for a better, and for a more beautiful America.
Next month we'll begin our 8th year of uninterrupted prosperity. The economic outlook for this year is one of steady growth—if we are vigilant.
True, there are some clouds on the horizon. Prices are rising. Interest rates have passed the peak of 1966; and if there is continued inaction on the tax bill, they will climb even higher.
I warn the Congress and the Nation tonight that this failure to act on the tax bill will sweep us into an accelerating spiral of price increases, a slump in homebuilding, and a continuing erosion of the American dollar.
This would be a tragedy for every American family. And I predict that if this happens, they will all let us know about it.
We—those of us in the executive branch, in the Congress, and the leaders of labor and business—must do everything we can to prevent that kind of misfortune.
Under the new budget, the expenditures for 1969 will increase by $10.4 billion. Receipts will increase by $22.3 billion including the added tax revenues. Virtually all of this expenditure increase represents the mandatory cost of our defense efforts, $3 billion; increased interest, almost $1 billion; or mandatory payments under laws passed by Congress—such as those provided in the Social Security Act that you passed in 1967, and to Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, veterans, and farmers, of about $4 1/2 billion; and the additional $1 billion 600 million next year for the pay increases that you passed in military and civilian pay. That makes up the $10 billion that is added to the budget. With few exceptions, very few, we are holding the fiscal 1969 budget to last year's level, outside of those mandatory and required increases.
A Presidential commission composed of distinguished congressional fiscal leaders and other prominent Americans recommended this year that we adopt a new budget approach. I am carrying out their recommendations in this year's budget. This budget, therefore, for the first time accurately covers all Federal expenditures and all Federal receipts, including for the first time in one budget $47 billion from the social security, Medicare, highway, and other trust funds.
The fiscal 1969 budget has expenditures of approximately $186 billion, with total estimated revenues, including the tax bill, of about $178 billion.
If the Congress enacts the tax increase, we will reduce the budget deficit by some $12 billion. The war in Vietnam is costing us about $25 billion and we are asking for about $12 billion in taxes—and if we get that $12 billion tax bill we will reduce the deficit from about $20 billion in 1968 to about $8 billion in 1969.
Now, this is a tight budget. It follows the reduction that I made in cooperation with the Congress—a reduction made after you had reviewed every appropriations bill and reduced the appropriations by some $5 or $6 billion and expenditures by $1.5 billion. We conferred together and I recommended to the Congress and you subsequently approved taking 2 percent from payrolls and 10 percent from controllable expenditures. We therefore reduced appropriations almost $10 billion last session and expenditures over $4 billion. Now, that was in the budget last year.
I ask the Congress to recognize that there are certain selected programs that meet the Nation's most urgent needs and they have increased. We have insisted that decreases in very desirable but less urgent programs be made before we would approve any increases. So I ask the Congress tonight:
—to hold its appropriations to the budget requests, and
—to act responsibly early this year by enacting the tax surcharge which for the average American individual amounts to about a penny out of each dollar's income.
This tax increase would yield about half of the $23 billion per year that we returned to the people in the tax reduction bills of 1964 and 1965.
This must be a temporary measure, which expires in less than 2 years. Congress can repeal it sooner if the need has passed. But Congress can never repeal inflation.
The leaders of American business and the leaders of American labor—those who really have power over wages and prices—must act responsibly, and in their Nation's interest by keeping increases in line with productivity. If our recognized leaders do not do this, they and those for whom they speak and all of us are going to suffer very serious consequences.
On January 1st, I outlined a program to reduce our balance of payments deficit sharply this year. We will ask the Congress to help carry out those parts of the program which require legislation. We must restore equilibrium to our balance of payments.
We must also strengthen the international monetary system. We have assured the world that America's full gold stock stands behind our commitment to maintain the price of gold at $35 an ounce. We must back this commitment by legislating now to free our gold reserves.
Americans, traveling more than any other people in history, took $4 billion out of their country last year in travel costs. We must try to reduce the travel deficit that we have of more than $2 billion. We are hoping that we can reduce it by $500 million—without unduly penalizing the travel of teachers, students, business people who have essential and necessary travel, or people who have relatives abroad whom they want to see. Even with this reduction of $500 million, the American people will still be traveling more overseas than they did in 1967, 1966, or 1965 or any other year in their history.
If we act together as I hope we can, I believe we can continue our economic expansion which has already broken all past records. And I hope that we can continue that expansion in the days ahead.
Each of these questions I have discussed with you tonight is a question of policy for our people. Therefore, each of them should be—and doubtless will be—debated by candidates for public office this year.
I hope those debates will be marked by new proposals and by a seriousness that matches the gravity of the questions themselves.
These are not appropriate subjects for narrow partisan oratory. They go to the heart of what we Americans are all about—all of us, Democrats and Republicans.
Tonight I have spoken of some of the goals I should like to see America reach. Many of them can be achieved this year—others by the time we celebrate our Nation's 200th birthday—the bicentennial of our independence.
Several of these goals are going to be very hard to reach. But the State of our Union will be much stronger 8 years from now on our 200th birthday if we resolve to reach these goals now. They are more important—much more important—than the identity of the party or the President who will then be in office.
These goals are what the fighting and our alliances are really meant to protect.
Can we achieve these goals?
Of course we can—if we will.
If ever there was a people who sought more than mere abundance, it is our people.
If ever there was a nation that was capable of solving its problems, it is this Nation.
If ever there were a time to know the pride and the excitement and the hope of being an American—it is this time.
So this, my friends, is the State of our Union: seeking, building, tested many times in this past year—and always equal to the test.
Thank you and good night.
***
State of the Union Address
Lyndon B. Johnson
January 14, 1969
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the Congress and my fellow
Americans:
For the sixth and the last time, I present to the Congress my assessment of the State of the Union.
I shall speak to you tonight about challenge and opportunity—and about the commitments that all of us have made together that will, if we carry them out, give America our best chance to achieve the kind of great society that we all want. Every President lives, not only with what is, but with what has been and what could be.
Most of the great events in his Presidency are part of a larger sequence extending back through several years and extending back through several other administrations.
Urban unrest, poverty, pressures on welfare, education of our people, law enforcement and law and order, the continuing crisis in the Middle East, the conflict in Vietnam, the dangers of nuclear war, the great difficulties of dealing with the Communist powers, all have this much in common: They and their causes—the causes that gave rise to them—all of these have existed with us for many years. Several Presidents have already sought to try to deal with them. One or more Presidents will try to resolve them or try to contain them in the years that are ahead of us.
But if the Nation's problems are continuing, so are this great Nation's assets:
—our economy,
—the democratic system,
—our sense of exploration, symbolized most recently by the wonderful flight of the Apollo 8, in which all Americans took great pride,
—the good commonsense and sound judgment of the American people, and
—their essential love of justice.
We must not ignore our problems. But .neither should we ignore our strengths. Those strengths are available to sustain a President of either party—to support his progressive efforts both at home and overseas.
Unfortunately, the departure of an administration does not mean the end of the problems that this administration has faced. The effort to meet the problems must go on, year after year, if the momentum that we have all mounted together in these past years is not to be lost.
Although the struggle for progressive change is continuous, there are times when a watershed is reached—when there is—if not really a break with the past—at least the fulfillment of many of its oldest hopes, and a stepping forth into a new environment, to seek new goals. I think the past 5 years have been such a time.
We have finished a major part of the old agenda.
Some of the laws that we wrote have already, in front of our eyes, taken on the flesh of achievement.
Medicare that we were unable to pass for so many years is now a part of
American life.
Voting rights and the voting booth that we debated so long back in the riffles, and the doors to public service, are open at last to all Americans regardless of their color.
Schools and school children all over America tonight are receiving Federal assistance to go to good schools.
Preschool education—Head Start—is already here to stay and, I think, so are the Federal programs that tonight are keeping more than a million and a half of the cream of our young people in the colleges and the universities of this country.
Five million Americans have been trained for jobs in new Federal programs.
I think it is most important that we all realize tonight that this Nation is close to full employment—with less unemployment than we have had at any time in almost 20 years. That is not in theory; that is in fact. Tonight, the unemployment rate is down to 3.3 percent. The number of jobs has grown more than 8 1/2 million in the last 5 years. That is more than in all the preceding 12 years.
These achievements completed the full cycle, from idea to enactment and, finally, to a place in the lives of citizens all across this country.
I wish it were possible to say that everything that this Congress and the administration achieved during this period had already completed that cycle. But a great deal of what we have committed needs additional funding to become a tangible realization.
Yet the very existence of these commitments—these promises to the American people, made by this Congress and by the executive branch of the Government—are achievements in themselves, and failure to carry through on our commitments would be a tragedy for this Nation.
This much is certain: No one man or group of men made these commitments alone. Congress and the executive branch, with their checks and balances, reasoned together and finally wrote them into the law of the land. They now have all the moral force that the American political system can summon when it acts as one.
They express America's common determination to achieve goals. They imply action.
In most cases, you have already begun that action—but it is not fully completed, of course.
Let me speak for a moment about these commitments. I am going to speak in the language which the Congress itself spoke when it passed these measures. I am going to quote from your words.
In 1966, Congress declared that "improving the quality of urban life is the most critical domestic problem facing the United States." Two years later it affirmed the historic goal of "a decent home . . . for every American family." That is your language.
Now to meet these commitments, we must increase our support for the model cities program, where blueprints of change are already being prepared in more than 150 American cities.
To achieve the goals of the Housing Act of 1968 that you have already passed, we should begin this year more than 500,000 homes for needy families in the coming fiscal year. Funds are provided in the new budget to do just this. This is almost 10 times—10 times—the average rate of the past 10 years.
Our cities and our towns are being pressed for funds to meet the needs of their growing populations. So I believe an urban development bank should be created by the Congress. This bank could obtain resources through the issuance of taxable bonds and it could then lend these resources at reduced rates to the communities throughout the land for schools, hospitals, parks, and other public facilities.
Since we enacted the Social Security Act back in 1935, Congress has recognized the necessity to "make more adequate provision for aged persons . . . through maternal and child welfare . . . and public health." Those are the words of the Congress—"more adequate."
The time has come, I think, to make it more adequate. I believe we should increase social security benefits, and I am so recommending tonight.
I am suggesting that there should be an overall increase in benefits of at least 13 percent. Those who receive only the minimum of $55 should get $80 a month.
Our Nation, too, is rightfully proud of our medical advances. But we should remember that our country ranks 15th among the nations of the world in its infant mortality rate.
I think we should assure decent medical care for every expectant mother and for their children during the first year of their life in the United States of America.
I think we should protect our children and their families from the costs of catastrophic illness.
As we pass on from medicine, I think nothing is clearer to the Congress than the commitment that the Congress made to end poverty. Congress expressed it well, I think, in 1964, when they said: "It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the paradox of poverty in the midst of plenty in this nation."
This is the richest nation in the world. The antipoverty program has had many achievements. It also has some failures. But we must not cripple it after only 3 years of trying to solve the human problems that have been with us and have been building up among us for generations.
I believe the Congress this year will want to improve the administration of the poverty program by reorganizing portions of it and transferring them to other agencies. I believe, though, it will want to continue, until we have broken the back of poverty, the efforts we are now making throughout this land.
I believe, and I hope the next administration—I believe they believe—that the key to success in this effort is jobs. It is work for people who want to work.
In the budget for fiscal 1970, I shall recommend a total of $3.5 billion for our job training program, and that is five times as much as we spent in 1964 trying to prepare Americans where they can work to earn their own living.
The Nation's commitment in the field of civil rights began with the Declaration of Independence. They were extended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments. They have been powerfully strengthened by the enactment of three far-reaching civil rights laws within the past 5 years, that this Congress, in its wisdom, passed.
On January 1 of this year, the Fair Housing Act of 1968 covered over 20 million American homes and apartments. The prohibition against racial discrimination in that act should be remembered and it should be vigorously enforced throughout this land.
I believe we should also extend the vital provisions of the Voting Rights
Act for another 5 years.
In the Safe Streets Act of 1968, Congress determined "To assist state and local governments in reducing the incidence of crime."
This year I am proposing that the Congress provide the full $300 million that the Congress last year authorized to do just that.
I hope the Congress will put the money where the authorization is.
I believe this is an essential contribution to justice and to public order in the United States. I hope these grants can be made to the States and they can be used effectively to reduce the crime rate in this country.
But all of this is only a small part of the total effort that must be made—I think chiefly by the local governments throughout the Nation—if we expect to reduce the toll of crime that we all detest.
Frankly, as I leave the Office of the Presidency, one of my greatest disappointments is our failure to secure passage of a licensing and registration act for firearms. I think if we had passed that act, it would have reduced the incidence of crime. I believe that the Congress should adopt such a law, and I hope that it will at a not too distant date.
In order to meet our long-standing commitment to make government as efficient as possible, I believe that we should reorganize our postal system along the lines of the Kappel[1] report.
[Footnote 1: Frederick R. Kappel, Chairman of the Commission on Executive,
Legislative and Judicial Salaries.]
I hope we can all agree that public service should never impose an unreasonable financial sacrifice on able men and women who want to serve their country.
I believe that the recommendations of the Commission on Executive, Legislative and Judicial Salaries are generally sound. Later this week, I shall submit a special message which I reviewed with the leadership this evening containing a proposal that has been reduced and has modified the Commission's recommendation to some extent on the congressional salaries.
For Members of Congress, I will recommend the basic compensation not of the $50,000 unanimously recommended by the Kappel Commission and the other distinguished Members, but I shall reduce that $50,000 to $42,500. I will suggest that Congress appropriate a very small additional allowance for official expenses, so that Members will not be required to use their salary increase for essential official business.
I would have submitted the Commission's recommendations, except the advice that I received from the leadership—and you usually are consulted about matters that affect the Congress—was that the Congress would not accept the $50,000 recommendation, and if I expected my recommendation to be seriously considered, I should make substantial reductions. That is the only reason I didn't go along with the Kappel report.
In 1967 I recommended to the Congress a fair and impartial random selection system for the draft. I submit it again tonight for your most respectful consideration.
I know that all of us recognize that most of the things we do to meet all of these commitments I talk about will cost money. If we maintain the strong rate of growth that we have had in this country for the past 8 years, I think we shall generate the resources that we need to meet these commitments.
We have already been able to increase our support for major social programs—although we have heard a lot about not being able to do anything on the home front because of Vietnam; but we have been able in the last 5 years to increase our commitments for such things as health and education from $30 billion in 1964 to $68 billion in the coming fiscal year. That is more than double. That is more than it has ever been increased in the 188 years of this Republic, notwithstanding Vietnam.
We must continue to budget our resources and budget them responsibly in a way that will preserve our prosperity and will strengthen our dollar.
Greater revenues and the reduced Federal spending required by Congress last year have changed the budgetary picture dramatically since last January when we made our estimates. At that time, you will remember that we estimated we would have a deficit of $8 billion. Well, I am glad to report to you tonight that the fiscal year ending June 30, 1969, this June, we are going to have not a deficit, but we are going to have a $2.4 billion surplus.
You will receive the budget tomorrow. The budget for the next fiscal year, that begins July 1—which you will want to examine very carefully in the days ahead—will provide a $3.4 billion surplus.
This budget anticipates the extension of the surtax that Congress enacted last year. I have communicated with the President-elect, Mr. Nixon, in connection with this policy of continuing the surtax for the time being.
I want to tell you that both of us want to see it removed just as soon as circumstances will permit, but the President-elect has told me that he has concluded that until his administration, and this Congress, can examine the appropriation bills, and each item in the budget, and can ascertain that the facts justify permitting the surtax to expire or to be reduced, he, Mr. Nixon, will support my recommendation that the surtax be continued.
Americans, I believe, are united in the hope that the Paris talks will bring an early peace to Vietnam. And if our hopes for an early settlement of the war are realized, then our military expenditures can be reduced and very substantial savings can be made to be used for other desirable purposes, as the Congress may determine.
In any event, I think it is imperative that we do all that we responsibly can to resist inflation while maintaining our prosperity. I think all Americans know that our prosperity is broad and it is deep, and it has brought record profits, the highest in our history, and record wages.
Our gross national product has grown more in the last 5 years than any other period in our Nation's history. Our wages have been the highest. Our profits have been the best. This prosperity has enabled millions to escape the poverty that they would have otherwise had the last few years.
I think also you will be very glad to hear that the Secretary of the Treasury informs me tonight that in 1968 in our balance of payments we have achieved a surplus. It appears that we have, in fact, done better this year than we have done in any year in this regard since the year 1957.
The quest for a durable peace, I think, has absorbed every administration since the end of World War II. It has required us to seek a limitation of arms races not only among the superpowers, but among the smaller nations as well. We have joined in the test ban treaty of 1963, the outer space treaty of 1967, and the treaty against the spread of nuclear weapons in 1968.
This latter agreement—the nonproliferation treaty—is now pending in the Senate and it has been pending there since last July. In my opinion, delay in ratifying it is not going to be helpful to the cause of peace. America took the lead in negotiating this treaty and America should now take steps to have it approved at the earliest possible date.
Until a way can be found to scale down the level of arms among the superpowers, mankind cannot view the future without fear and great apprehension. So, I believe that we should resume the talks with the Soviet Union about limiting offensive and defensive missile systems. I think they would already have been resumed except for Czechoslovakia and our election this year.
It was more than 20 years ago that we embarked on a program of trying to aid the developing nations. We knew then that we could not live in good conscience as a rich enclave on an earth that was seething in misery.
During these years there have been great advances made under our program, particularly against want and hunger, although we are disappointed at the appropriations last year. We thought they were woefully inadequate. This year I am asking for adequate funds for economic assistance in the hope that we can further peace throughout the world.
I think we must continue to support efforts in regional cooperation. Among those efforts, that of Western Europe has a very special place in America's concern.
The only course that is going to permit Europe to play the great world role that its resources permit is to go forward to unity. I think America remains ready to work with a united Europe, to work as a partner on the basis of equality.
For the future, the quest for peace, I believe, requires:
—that we maintain the liberal trade policies that have helped us become the leading nation in world trade,
—that we strengthen the international monetary system as an instrument of world prosperity, and
—that we seek areas of agreement with the Soviet Union where the interests of both nations and the interests of world peace are properly served.
The strained relationship between us and the world's leading Communist power has not ended—especially in the light of the brutal invasion of Czechoslovakia. But totalitarianism is no less odious to us because we are able to reach some accommodation that reduces the danger of world catastrophe.
What we do, we do in the interest of peace in the world. We earnestly hope that time will bring a Russia that is less afraid of diversity and individual freedom.
The quest for peace tonight continues in Vietnam, and in the Paris talks.
I regret more than any of you know that it has not been possible to restore peace to South Vietnam.
The prospects, I think, for peace are better today than at any time since North Vietnam began its invasion with its regular forces more than 4 years ago.
The free nations of Asia know what they were not sure of at that time: that America cares about their freedom, and it also cares about America's own vital interests in Asia and throughout the Pacific.
The North Vietnamese know that they cannot achieve their aggressive purposes by force. There may be hard fighting before a settlement is reached; but, I can assure you, it will yield no victory to the Communist cause.
I cannot speak to you tonight about Vietnam without paying a very personal tribute to the men who have carried the battle out there for all of us. I have been honored to be their Commander in Chief. The Nation owes them its unstinting support while the battle continues—and its enduring gratitude when their service is done.
Finally, the quest for stable peace in the Middle East goes on in many capitals tonight. America fully supports the unanimous resolution of the U.N. Security Council which points the way. There must be a settlement of the armed hostility that exists in that region of the world today. It is a threat not only to Israel and to all the Arab States, but it is a threat to every one of us and to the entire world as well.
Now, my friends in Congress, I want to conclude with a few very personal words to you.
I rejected and rejected and then finally accepted the congressional leadership's invitation to come here to speak this farewell to you in person tonight.
I did that for two reasons. One was philosophical. I wanted to give you my judgment, as I saw it, on some of the issues before our Nation, as I view them, before I leave.
The other was just pure sentimental. Most all of my life as a public official has been spent here in this building. For 38 years—since I worked on that gallery as a doorkeeper in the House of Representatives—I have known these halls, and I have known most of the men pretty well who walked them.
I know the questions that you face. I know the conflicts that you endure. I know the ideals that you seek to serve.
I left here first to become Vice President, and then to become, in a moment of tragedy, the President of the United States.
My term of office has been marked by a series of challenges, both at home and throughout the world.
In meeting some of these challenges, the Nation has found a new confidence.
In meeting others, it knew turbulence and doubt, and fear and hate.
Throughout this time, I have been sustained by my faith in representative democracy—a faith that I had learned here in this Capitol Building as an employee and as a Congressman and as a Senator.
I believe deeply in the ultimate purposes of this Nation—described by the Constitution, tempered by history, embodied in progressive laws, and given life by men and women that have been elected to serve their fellow citizens.
Now for 5 most demanding years in the White House, I have been strengthened by the counsel and the cooperation of two great former Presidents, Harry S. Truman and Dwight David Eisenhower. I have been guided by the memory of my pleasant and close association with the beloved John F. Kennedy, and with our greatest modern legislator, Speaker Sam Rayburn.
I have been assisted by my friend every step of the way, Vice President Hubert Humphrey. I am so grateful that I have been supported daily by the loyalty of Speaker McCormack and Majority Leader Albert.
I have benefited from the wisdom of Senator Mike Mansfield, and I am sure that I have avoided many dangerous pitfalls by the good commonsense counsel of the President Pro Tem of the Senate, Senator Richard Brevard Russell.
I have received the most generous cooperation from the leaders of the
Republican Party in the Congress of the United States, Senator Dirksen and
Congressman Gerald Ford, the Minority Leader.
No President should ask for more, although I did upon occasions. But few
Presidents have ever been blessed with so much.
President-elect Nixon, in the days ahead, is going to need your understanding, just as I did. And he is entitled to have it. I hope every Member will remember that the burdens he will bear as our President, will be borne for all of us. Each of us should try not to increase these burdens for the sake of narrow personal or partisan advantage.
Now, it is time to leave. I hope it may be said, a hundred years from now, that by working together we helped to make our country more just, more just for all of its people, as well as to insure and guarantee the blessings of liberty for all of our posterity.
That is what I hope. But I believe that at least it will be said that we tried.
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