That task must begin at home. For if we cannot fulfill our own ideals here,
we cannot expect others to accept them. And when the youngest child alive
today has grown to the cares of manhood, our position in the world will
be determined first of all by what provisions we make today--for his
education, his health, and his opportunities for a good home and a good
job and a good life.
At home, we began the year in the valley of recession--we completed it on
the high road of recovery and growth. With the help of new Congressionally
approved or Administratively increased stimulants to our economy, the
number of major surplus labor areas has declined from 101 to 60;
non-agricultural employment has increased by more than a million jobs; and
the average factory work-week has risen to well over 40 hours. At year's
end the economy which Mr. Khrushchev once called a "stumbling horse" was
racing to new records in consumer spending, labor income, and industrial
production.
We are gratified--but we are not satisfied. Too many unemployed are still
looking for the blessings of prosperity. As those who leave our schools and
farms demand new jobs, automation takes old jobs away. To expand our growth
and job opportunities, I urge on the Congress three measures:
(1) First, the Manpower Training and Development Act, to stop the waste of
able-bodied men and women who want to work, but whose only skill has been
replaced by a machine, or moved with a mill, or shut down with a mine;
(2) Second, the Youth Employment Opportunities Act, to help train and place
not only the one million young Americans who are both out of school and out
of work, but the twenty-six million young Americans entering the labor
market in this decade; and
(3) Third, the 8 percent tax credit for investment in machinery and
equipment, which, combined with planned revisions of depreciation
allowances, will spur our modernization, our growth, and our ability to
compete abroad.
Moreover--pleasant as it may be to bask in the warmth of recovery--let us
not forget that we have suffered three recessions in the last 7 years. The
time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining--by filling three basic
gaps in our anti-recession protection. We need:
(1) First, Presidential stand-by authority, subject to Congressional veto,
to adjust personal income tax rates downward within a specified range and
time, to slow down an economic decline before it has dragged us all down;
(2) Second, Presidential stand-by authority, upon a given rise in the rate
of unemployment, to accelerate Federal and federally-aided capital
improvement programs; and
(3) Third, a permanent strengthening of our unemployment compensation
system--to maintain for our fellow citizens searching for a job who cannot
find it, their purchasing power and their living standards without constant
resort--as we have seen in recent years by the Congress and the
Administrations--to temporary supplements.
If we enact this six-part program, we can show the whole world that a free
economy need not be an unstable economy--that a free system need not leave
men unemployed--and that a free society is not only the most productive but
the most stable form of organization yet fashioned by man.