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."