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.