But more than our exchange of international payments is out of balance.
The current Federal budget for fiscal 1961 is almost certain to show a
net deficit. The budget already submitted for fiscal 1962 will remain in
balance only if the Congress enacts all the revenue measures requested--and
only if an earlier and sharper up-turn in the economy than my economic
advisers now think likely produces the tax revenues estimated.
Nevertheless, a new Administration must of necessity build on the spending
and revenue estimates already submitted. Within that framework, barring the
development of urgent national defense needs or a worsening of the economy,
it is my current intention to advocate a program of expenditures which,
including revenues from a stimulation of the economy, will not of and by
themselves unbalance the earlier Budget.
However, we will do what must be done. For our national household is
cluttered with unfinished and neglected tasks. Our cities are being
engulfed in squalor. Twelve long years after Congress declared our goal to
be "a decent home and a suitable environment for every American family," we
still have 25 million Americans living in substandard homes. A new housing
program under a new Housing and Urban Affairs Department will be needed
this year.
Our classrooms contain 2 million more children than they can properly have
room for, taught by 90,000 teachers not properly qualified to teach. One
third of our most promising high school graduates are financially unable to
continue the development of their talents. The war babies of the 1940's,
who overcrowded our schools in the 1950's, are now descending in 1960 upon
our colleges--with two college students for every one, ten years from
now--and our colleges are ill prepared. We lack the scientists, the
engineers and the teachers our world obligations require. We have neglected
oceanography, saline water conversion, and the basic research that lies at
the root of all progress. Federal grants for both higher and public school
education can no longer be delayed.
Medical research has achieved new wonders--but these wonders are too often
beyond the reach of too many people, owing to a lack of income
(particularly among the aged), a lack of hospital beds, a lack of nursing
homes and a lack of doctors and dentists. Measures to provide health care
for the aged under Social Security, and to increase the supply of both
facilities and personnel, must be undertaken this year.
Our supply of clean water is dwindling. Organized and juvenile crimes cost
the taxpayers millions of dollars each year, making it essential that we
have improved enforcement and new legislative safeguards. The denial of
constitutional rights to some of our fellow Americans on account of
race--at the ballot box and elsewhere--disturbs the national conscience,
and subjects us to the charge of world opinion that our democracy is not
equal to the high promise of our heritage. Morality in private business
has not been sufficiently spurred by morality in public business. A host
of problems and projects in all 50 States, though not possible to include
in this Message, deserves--and will receive--the attention of both the
Congress and the Executive Branch. On most of these matters, Messages will
be sent to the Congress within the next two weeks.