just peace.
Only through the strengthening of the spiritual, intellectual, economic
and defensive resources of the Free World can we, in confidence, make
progress toward this goal.
Second, we note that recent Soviet deportment and pronouncements suggest
the possible opening of a somewhat less strained period in the
relationships between the Soviet Union and the Free World. If these
Pronouncements be genuine, there is brighter hope of diminishing the
intensity of past rivalry and eventually of substituting persuasion for
coercion. Whether this is to become an era of lasting promise remains to
be tested by actions.
Third, we now stand in the vestibule of a vast new technological age-one
that, despite its capacity for human destruction, has an equal capacity
to make poverty and human misery obsolete. If our efforts are wisely
directed--and if our unremitting efforts for dependable peace begin to
attain some success--we can surely become participants in creating an
age characterized by justice and rising levels of human well-being.
Over the past year the Soviet Union has expressed an interest in
measures to reduce the common peril of war.
While neither we nor any other Free World nation can permit ourselves to
be misled by pleasant promises until they are tested by performance, yet
we approach this apparently new opportunity with the utmost seriousness.
We must strive to break the calamitous cycle of frustrations and crises
which, if unchecked, could spiral into nuclear disaster; the ultimate
insanity.
Though the need for dependable agreements to assure against resort to
force in settling disputes is apparent to both sides yet as in other
issues dividing men and nations, we cannot expect sudden and
revolutionary results. But we must find some place to begin.
One obvious road on which to make a useful start is in the widening of
communication between our two peoples. In this field there are, both
sides willing, countless opportunities--most of them well known to us
all--for developing mutual understanding, the true foundation of peace.
Another avenue may be through the reopening, on January twelfth, of
negotiations looking to a controlled ban on the testing of nuclear
weapons. Unfortunately, the closing statement from the Soviet scientists
who met with our scientists at Geneva in an unsuccessful effort to
develop an agreed basis for a test ban, gives the clear impression that
their conclusions have been politically guided. Those of the British and
American scientific representatives are their own freely-formed,
individual and collective opinion. I am hopeful that as new negotiations
begin, truth--not political opportunism--will be the guiding light of
the deliberations.
Still another avenue may be found in the field of disarmament, in which
the Soviets have professed a readiness to negotiate seriously. They have
not, however, made clear the plans they may have, if any, for mutual
inspection and verification--the essential condition for any extensive
measure of disarmament.
There is one instance where our initiative for peace has recently been
successful. A multi-lateral treaty signed last month provides for the
exclusively peaceful use of Antarctica, assured by a system of
inspection. It provides for free and cooperative scientific research in
that continent, and prohibits nuclear explosions there pending general
international agreement on the subject. The Treaty is a significant
contribution toward peace, international cooperation, and the
advancement of science. I shall transmit its text to the Senate for
consideration and approval in the near future.
The United States is always ready to participate with the Soviet Union
in serious discussion of these or any other subjects that may lead to
peace with justice.
Certainly it is not necessary to repeat that the United States has no
intention of interfering in the internal affairs of any nation; likewise
we reject any attempt to impose its system on us or on other peoples by
force or subversion.
This concern for the freedom of other peoples is the intellectual and
spiritual cement which has allied us with more than forty other nations
in a common defense effort. Not for a moment do we forget that our own
fate is firmly fastened to that of these countries; we will not act in
any way which would jeopardize our solemn commitments to them.
We and our friends are, of course, concerned with self-defense. Growing
out of this concern is the realization that all people of the Free World
have a great stake in the progress, in freedom, of the uncommitted and
newly emerging nations. These peoples, desperately hoping to lift
themselves to decent levels of living must not, by our neglect, be
forced to seek help from, and finally become virtual satellites of,
those who proclaim their hostility to freedom.
Their natural desire for a better life must not be frustrated by
withholding from them necessary technical and investment assistance.
This is a problem to be solved not by America alone, but also by every
nation cherishing the same ideals and in position to provide help.
In recent years America’s partners and friends in Western Europe and
Japan have made great economic progress. Their newly found economic
strength is eloquent testimony to the striking success of the policies
of economic cooperation which we and they have pursued.
The international economy of 1960 is markedly different from that of the
early postwar years. No longer is the United States the only major
industrial country capable of providing substantial amounts of the
resources so urgently needed in the newly-developing countries.
To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations must extend
the kind of cooperation to the less fortunate members that will inspire
hope, confidence and progress. A rich nation can for a time, without
noticeable damage to itself, pursue a course of self-indulgence, making
its single goal the material ease and comfort of its own citizens-thus
repudiating its own spiritual and material stake in a peaceful and
prosperous society of nations. But the enmities it will incur, the
isolation into which it will descend, and the internal moral and
physical softness that will be engendered, will, in the long term, bring
it to disaster.
America did not become great through softness and self-indulgence. Her
miraculous progress and achievements flow from other qualities far more
worthy and substantial--
--adherence to principles and methods consonant with our religious
philosophy
--a satisfaction in hard work
--the readiness to sacrifice for worthwhile causes
--the courage to meet every challenge to her progress
--the intellectual honesty and capacity to recognize the true path of
her own best interests.
To us and to every nation of the Free World, rich or poor, these
qualities are necessary today as never before if we are to march
together to greater security, prosperity and peace.
I believe the industrial countries are ready to participate actively in
supplementing the efforts of the developing countries to achieve
progress.
The immediate need for this kind of cooperation is underscored by the
strain in our international balance of payments. Our surplus from
foreign business transactions has in recent years fallen substantially
short of the expenditures we make abroad to maintain our military
establishments overseas, to finance private investment, and to provide
assistance to the less developed nations. In 1959 our deficit in balance
of payments approached $4 billion.
Continuing deficits of anything like this magnitude would, over time,
impair our own economic growth and check the forward progress of the
Free World.
We must meet this situation by promoting a rising volume of exports and
world trade. Further, we must induce all industrialized nations of the
Free World to work together in a new cooperative endeavor to help lift
the scourge of poverty from less fortunate nations. This will provide
for better sharing of this burden and for still further profitable
trade.
New nations, and others struggling with the problems of development,
will progress only if they demonstrate faith in their own destiny and
possess the will and use their own resources to fulfill it. Moreover,
progress in a national transformation can be only gradually earned;
there is no easy and quick way to follow from the oxcart to the jet
plane. But, just as we drew on Europe for assistance in our earlier
years, so now do those new and emerging nations that have this faith and
determination deserve help.
Over the last fifteen years, twenty nations have gained political
independence. Others are doing so each year. Most of them are woefully
lacking in technical capacity and in investment capital; without Free
World support in these matters they cannot effectively progress in
freedom.
Respecting their need, one of the major focal points of our concern is
the South Asian region. Here, in two nations alone, are almost five
hundred million people, all working, and working hard, to raise their
standards, and in doing so, to make of themselves a strong bulwark
against the spread of an ideology that would destroy liberty.
I cannot express to you the depth of my conviction that, in our own and
Free World interests, we must cooperate with others to help these people
achieve their legitimate ambitions, as expressed in their different
multi-year plans. Through the World Bank and other instrumentalities, as
well as through individual action by every nation in position to help,
we must squarely face this titanic challenge.
All of us must realize, of course, that development in freedom by the
newly emerging nations, is no mere matter of obtaining outside financial
assistance. An indispensable element in this process is a strong and
continuing determination on the part of these nations to exercise the
national discipline necessary for any sustained development period.
These qualities of determination are particularly essential because of
the fact that the process of improvement will necessarily be gradual and
laborious rather than revolutionary. Moreover, everyone should be aware
that the development process is no short term phenomenon. Many years are
required for even the most favorably situated countries.
I shall continue to urge the American people, in the interests of their
own security, prosperity and peace, to make sure that their own part of
this great project be amply and cheerfully supported. Free World
decisions in this matter may spell the difference between world disaster
and world progress in freedom.
Other countries, some of which I visited last month, have similar needs.
A common meeting ground is desirable for those nations which are
prepared to assist in the development effort. During the past year I
have discussed this matter with the leaders of several Western Nations.
Because of its wealth of experience, the Organization for European
Economic Cooperation could help with initial studies. The goal is to
enlist all available economic resources in the industrialized Free
World-especially private investment capital. But I repeat that .this
help, no matter how great, can be lastingly effective only if it is used
as a supplement to the strength of spirit and will of the people of the
newly-developing nations.
By extending this help we hope to make possible the enthusiastic
enrollment of these nations under freedom’s banner. No more startling
contrast to a system of sullen satellites could be imagined.
If we grasp this opportunity to build an age of productive partnership
between the less fortunate nations and those that have already achieved
a high state of economic advancement, we will make brighter the outlook
for a world order based upon security, freedom and peace. Otherwise, the
outlook could be dark indeed. We face what may be a turning point in
history, and we must act decisively.
As a nation we can successfully pursue these objectives only from a
position of broadly based strength.
No matter how earnest is our quest for guaranteed peace, we must
maintain a high degree of military effectiveness at the same time we are
engaged in negotiating the issue of arms reduction. Until tangible and
mutually enforceable arms reduction measures are worked out, we will not
weaken the means of defending our institutions.
America possesses an enormous defense power. It is my studied conviction
that no nation will ever risk general war against us unless we should be
so foolish as to neglect the defense forces we now so powerfully
support. It is world-wide knowledge that any nation which might be
tempted today to attack the United States, even though our country might
sustain great losses, would itself promptly suffer a terrible
destruction. But I once again assure all peoples and all nations that
the United States, except in defense, will never turn loose this
destructive power.
During the past year, our long-range striking power, unmatched today in
manned bombers, has taken on new strength as the Atlas intercontinental
ballistic missile has entered the operational inventory. In fourteen
recent test launchings, at ranges of over 5,000 miles, Atlas has been
striking on an average within two miles of the target. This is less than
the length of a jet runway--well within the circle of total destruction.
Such performance is a great tribute to American scientists and
engineers, who in the past five years have had to telescope time and
technology to develop these long-range ballistic missiles, where America
had none before.
This year, moreover, growing numbers of nuclear-powered submarines will
enter our active forces, some to be armed with Polaris missiles. These
remarkable ships and weapons, ranging the oceans, will be capable of
accurate fire on targets virtually anywhere on earth. Impossible to
destroy by surprise attack, they will become one of our most effective
sentinels for peace.
To meet situations of less than general nuclear war, we continue to
maintain our carrier forces, our many service units abroad, our always
ready Army strategic forces and Marine Corps divisions, and the civilian
components. The continuing modernization of these forces is a costly but
necessary process, and is scheduled to go forward at a rate which will
steadily add to our strength.
The deployment of a portion of these forces beyond our shores, on land
and sea, is persuasive demonstration of our determination to stand
shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies for collective security. Moreover,
I have directed that steps be taken to program our military assistance
to these allies on a longer range basis. This is necessary for a sounder
collective defense system.
Next I refer to our effort in space exploration, which is often
mistakenly supposed to be an integral part of defense research and
development.
First, America has made great contributions in the past two years to the
world’s fund of knowledge of astrophysics and space science. These
discoveries are of present interest chiefly to the scientific community;
but they are important foundation-stones for more extensive exploration
of outer space for the ultimate benefit of all mankind.
Second, our military missile program, going forward so successfully,
does not suffer from our present lack of very large rocket engines,
which are so necessary in distant space exploration. I am assured by
experts that the thrust of our present missiles is fully adequate for
defense requirements.
Third, the United States is pressing forward in the development of large
rocket engines to place much heavier vehicles into space for exploration
purposes.
Fourth, in the meantime, it is necessary to remember that we have only
begun to probe the environment immediately surrounding the earth. Using
launch systems presently available, we are developing satellites to
scout the world’s weather; satellite relay stations to facilitate and
extend communications over the globe; for navigation aids to give
accurate bearings to ships and aircraft; and for perfecting instruments
to collect and transmit the data we seek. This is the area holding the
most promise for early and useful applications of space technology.
Fifth, we have just completed a year’s experience with our new space
law. I believe it deficient in certain particulars and suggested
improvements will be submitted shortly.
The accomplishment of the many tasks I have alluded to requires the
continuous strengthening of the spiritual, intellectual, and economic
sinews of American life. The steady purpose of our society is to assure
justice, before God, for every individual. We must be ever alert that
freedom does not wither through the careless amassing of restrictive
controls or the lack of courage to deal boldly with the giant issues of
the day.
A year ago, when I met with you, the nation was emerging from an
economic downturn, even though the signs of resurgent prosperity were
not then sufficiently convincing to the doubtful. Today our surging
strength is apparent to everyone. 1960 promises to be the most
prosperous year in our history.
Yet we continue to be afflicted by nagging disorders.
Among current problems that require solution are:
--the need to protect the public interest in situations of prolonged
labor-management stalemate;
--the persistent refusal to come to grips with a critical problem in one
sector of American agriculture;
--the continuing threat of inflation, together with the persisting
tendency toward fiscal irresponsibility;
--in certain instances the denial to some of our citizens of equal
protection of the law.
Every American was disturbed by the prolonged dispute in the steel
industry and the protracted delay in reaching a settlement.
We are all relieved that a settlement has at last been achieved in that
industry. Percentagewise, by this settlement the increase to the steel
companies in employment costs is lower than in any prior wage settlement
since World War II. It is also gratifying to note that despite the
increase in wages and benefits several of the major steel producers have
announced that there will be no increase in steel prices at this time.
The national interest demands that in the period of industrial peace
which has been assured by the new contract both management and labor
make every possible effort to increase efficiency and productivity in
the manufacture of steel so that price increases can be avoided.
One of the lessons of this story is that the potential danger to the
entire Nation of longer and greater strikes must be met. To insure
against such possibilities we must of course depend primarily upon the
good commonsense of the responsible individuals. It is my intention to
encourage regular discussions between management and labor outside the
bargaining table, to consider the interest of the public as well as
their mutual interest in the maintenance of industrial peace, price
stability and economic growth.
To me, it seems almost absurd for the United States to recognize the
need, and so earnestly to seek, for cooperation among the nations unless
we can achieve voluntary, dependable, abiding cooperation among the
important segments of our own free society.
Failure to face up to basic issues in areas other than those of
labor-management can cause serious strains on the firm freedom supports
of our society.
I refer to agriculture as one of these areas.
Our basic farm laws were written 27 years ago, in an emergency effort to
redress hardship caused by a world-wide depression. They were
continued--and their economic distortions intensified--during World War
II in order to provide incentives for production of food needed to
sustain a war-torn free world.
Today our farm problem is totally different. It is that of effectively
adjusting to the changes caused by a scientific revolution. When the
original farm laws were written, an hour’s farm labor produced only one
fourth as much wheat as at present. Farm legislation is woefully
out-of-date, ineffective, and expensive.
For years we have gone on with an outmoded system which not only has
failed to protect farm income, but also has produced soaring,
threatening surpluses. Our farms have been left producing for war while
America has long been at peace.
Once again I urge Congress to enact legislation that will gear
production more closely to markets, make costly surpluses more
manageable, provide greater freedom in farm operations, and steadily
achieve increased net farm incomes.
Another issue that we must meet squarely is that of living within our
means. This requires restraint in expenditure, constant reassessment of
priorities, and the maintenance of stable prices.
We must prevent inflation. Here is an opponent of so many guises that it
is sometimes difficult to recognize. But our clear need is to stop
continuous and general price rises--a need that all of us can see and
feel.
To prevent steadily rising costs and prices calls for stern
self-discipline by every citizen. No person, city, state, or organized
group can afford to evade the obligation to resist inflation, for every
American pays its crippling tax.
Inflation’s ravages do not end at the water’s edge. Increases in prices
of the goods we sell abroad threaten to drive us out of markets that
once were securely ours. Whether domestic prices, so high as to be
noncompetitive, result from demands for too-high profit margins or from
increased labor costs that outrun growth in productivity, the final
result is seriously damaging to the nation.
We must fight inflation as we would a fire that imperils our home. Only
by so doing can we prevent it from destroying our salaries, savings,
pensions and insurance, and from gnawing away the very roots of a free,
healthy economy and the nation’s security.
One major method by which the Federal government can counter inflation
and rising prices is to insure that its expenditures are below its
revenues. The debt with which we are now confronted is about 290 billion
dollars. With interest charges alone now costing taxpayers about 9 1/2
billions, it is clear that this debt growth must stop. You will be glad
to know that despite the unsettling influences of the recent steel
strike, we estimate that our accounts will show, on June 30, this year,
a favorable balance of approximately $200 million.
I shall present to the Congress for 1961 a balanced budget. In the area
of defense, expenditures continue at the record peace-time levels of the
last several years. With a single exception, expenditures in every major
category of Health, Education and Welfare will be equal or greater than
last year. In Space expenditures the amounts are practically doubled.
But the over-all guiding goal of this budget is national need-not
response to specific group, local or political insistence.
Expenditure increases, other than those I have indicated, are largely
accounted for by the increased cost of legislation previously
enacted.[1]
[Footnote 1: At this point the President interpolated the two paragraphs
shown in brackets.]
[I repeat, this budget will be a balanced one. Expenditures will be 79
billion 8 hundred million. The amount of income over outgo, described in
the budget as a Surplus, to be applied against our national debt, is 4
billion 2 hundred million. Personally, I do not feel that any amount can
be properly called a “Surplus” as long as the nation is in debt. I
prefer to think of such an item as “reduction on our children’s
inherited mortgage.” Once we have established such payments as normal
practice, we can profitably make improvements in our tax structure and
thereby truly reduce the heavy burdens of taxation.
[In any event, this one reduction will save taxpayers, each year,
approximately 2 hundred million dollars in interest costs.]
This budget will help ease pressures in our credit and capital markets.
It will enhance the confidence of people all over the world in the
strength of our economy and our currency and in our individual and
collective ability to be fiscally responsible.
In the management of the huge public debt the Treasury is unfortunately
not free of artificial barriers. Its ability to deal with the difficult
problems in this field has been weakened greatly by the unwillingness of
the Congress to remove archaic restrictions. The need for a freer hand
in debt management is even more urgent today because the costs of the
undesirable financing practices which the Treasury has been forced into
are mounting. Removal of this roadblock has high priority in my
legislative recommendations.
Still another issue relates to civil rights.
In all our hopes and plans for a better world we all recognize that
provincial and racial prejudices must be combatted. In the long
perspective of history, the right to vote has been one of the strongest
pillars of a free society. Our first duty is to protect this right
against all encroachment. In spite of constitutional guarantees, and
notwithstanding much progress of recent years, bias still deprives some
persons in this country of equal protection of the laws.
Early in your last session I recommended legislation which would help
eliminate several practices discriminating against the basic rights of
Americans. The Civil Rights Commission has developed additional
constructive recommendations. I hope that these will be among the
matters to be seriously considered in the current session. I trust that
Congress will thus signal to the world that our Government is striving
for equality under law for all our people.
Each year and in many ways our nation continues to undergo profound
change and growth.
In the past 18 months we have hailed the entry of two more States of the
Union--Alaska and Hawaii. We salute these two western stars proudly.
Our vigorous expansion, which we all welcome as a sign of health and
vitality, is many-sided. We are, for example, witnessing explosive
growth in metropolitan areas.
By 1975 the metropolitan areas of the United States will occupy twice
the territory they do today. The roster of urban problems with which
they must cope is staggering. They involve water supply, cleaning the
air, adjusting local tax systems, providing for essential educational,
cultural, and social services, and destroying those conditions which
breed delinquency and crime.
In meeting these, we must, if we value our historic freedoms, keep
within the traditional framework of our Federal system with powers
divided between the national and state governments. The uniqueness of
this system may confound the casual observer, but it has worked
effectively for nearly 200 years.
I do not doubt that our urban and other perplexing problems can be
solved in the traditional American method. In doing so we must realize
that nothing is really solved and ruinous tendencies are set in motion
by yielding to the deceptive bait of the “easy” Federal tax dollar.
Our educational system provides a ready example. All recognize the vital
necessity of having modern school plants, well-qualified and adequately
compensated teachers, and of using the best possible teaching techniques
and curricula.
We cannot be complacent about educating our youth.
But the route to better trained minds is not through the swift
administration of a Federal hypodermic or sustained financial
transfusion. The educational process, essentially a local and personal
responsibility, cannot be made to leap ahead by crash, centralized
governmental action.
The Administration has proposed a carefully reasoned program for helping
eliminate current deficiencies. It is designed to stimulate classroom
construction, not by substitution of Federal dollars for state and local
funds, but by incentives to extend and encourage state and local
efforts. This approach rejects the notion of Federal domination or
control. It is workable, and should appeal to every American interested
in advancement of our educational system in the traditional American
way. I urge the Congress to take action upon it.
There is one other subject concerning which I renew a recommendation I
made in my State of the Union Message last January. I then advised the
Congress of my purpose to intensify our efforts to replace force with a
rule of law among nations. From many discussions abroad, I am convinced
that purpose is widely and deeply shared by other peoples and nations of
the world.
In the same Message I stated that our efforts would include a
reexamination of our own relation to the International Court of Justice.
The Court was established by the United Nations to decide international
legal disputes between nations. In 1946 we accepted the Court’s
jurisdiction, but subject to a reservation of the right to determine
unilaterally whether a matter lies essentially within domestic
jurisdiction. There is pending before the Senate, a Resolution which
would repeal our present self-judging reservation. I support that
Resolution and urge its prompt passage. If this is done, I intend to
urge similar acceptance of the Court’s jurisdiction by every member of
the United Nations.
Here perhaps it is not amiss for me to say to the Members of the
Congress, in this my final year of office, a word about the institutions
we respectively represent and the meaning which the relationships
between our two branches has for the days ahead.
I am not unique as a President in having worked with a Congress
controlled by the opposition party--except that no other President ever
did it for quite so long! Yet in both personal and official
relationships we have weathered the storms of the past five years. For
this I am grateful.
My deep concern in the next twelve months, before my successor takes
office, is with our joint Congressional-Executive duty to our own and to
other nations. Acting upon the beliefs I have expressed here today, I
shall devote my full energies to the tasks at hand, whether these
involve travel for promoting greater world understanding, negotiations
to reduce international discord, or constant discussions and
communications with the Congress and the American people on issues both
domestic and foreign.
In pursuit of these objectives, I look forward to, and shall dedicate
myself to, a close and constructive association with the Congress.
Every minute spent in irrelevant interbranch wrangling is precious time
taken from the intelligent initiation and adoption of coherent policies
for our national survival and progress.
We seek a common goal--brighter opportunity for our own citizens and a
world peace with justice for all.
Before us and our friends is the challenge of an ideology which, for
more than four decades, has trumpeted abroad its purpose of gaining
ultimate victory over all forms of government at variance with its own.
We realize that however much we repudiate the tenets of imperialistic
Communism, it represents a gigantic enterprise grimly pursued by leaders
who compel its subjects to subordinate their freedom of action and
spirit and personal desires for some hoped-for advantage in the future.
The Communists can present an array of material accomplishments over the
past fifteen years that lends a false persuasiveness to many of their
glittering promises to the uncommitted peoples.
The competition they provide is formidable.
But in our scale of values we place freedom first--our whole national
existence and development have been geared to that basic concept and are
responsible for the position of free world leadership to which we have
succeeded. It is the highest prize that any nation can possess; it is
one that Communism can never offer. And America’s record of material
accomplishment in freedom is written not only in the unparalleled
prosperity of our own nation, but in the many billions we have devoted
to the reconstruction of Free World economics wrecked by World War II
and in the effective help of many more billions we have given in saving
the independence of many others threatened by outside domination.
Assuredly we have the capacity for handling the problems in the new era
of the world’s history we are now entering.
But we must use that capacity intelligently and tirelessly, regardless
of personal sacrifice.
The fissure that divides our political planet is deep and wide.
We live, moreover, in a sea of semantic disorder in which old labels no
longer faithfully describe.
Police states are called “people’s democracies.”
Armed conquest of free people is called “liberation.”
Such slippery slogans make more difficult the problem of communicating
true faith, facts and beliefs.
We must make clear our peaceful intentions, our aspirations for a better
world. So doing, we must use language to enlighten the mind, not as the
instrument of the studied innuendo and distorter of truth.
And we must live by what we say.
On my recent visit to distant lands I found one statesman after another
eager to tell me of the elements of their government that had been
borrowed from our American Constitution, and from the indestructible
ideals set forth in our Declaration of Independence.
As a nation we take pride that our own constitutional system, and the
ideals which sustain it, have been long viewed as a fountainhead of
freedom.
By our every action we must strive to make ourselves worthy of this
trust, ever mindful that an accumulation of seemingly minor
encroachments upon freedom gradually could break down the entire fabric
of a free society.
So persuaded, we shall get on with the task before us.
So dedicated, and with faith in the Almighty, humanity shall one day
achieve the unity in freedom to which all men have aspired from the dawn
of time.
The Address as reported from the floor appears in the Congressional
Record of January 7, 1960 (vol. 106, p. 135).
***
State of the Union Address
Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 12, 1961
To the Congress of the United States:
Once again it is my Constitutional duty to assess the state of the
Union.
On each such previous occasion during these past eight years I have
outlined a forward course designed to achieve our mutual objective--a
better America in a world of peace. This time my function is different.
The American people, in free election, have selected new leadership
which soon will be entrusted with the management of our government. A
new President shortly will lay before you his proposals to shape the
future of our great land. To him, every citizen, whatever his political
beliefs, prayerfully extends best wishes for good health and for wisdom
and success in coping with the problems that confront our Nation.
For my part, I should like, first, to express to you of the Congress, my
appreciation of your devotion to the common good and your friendship
over these difficult years. I will carry with me pleasant memories of
this association in endeavors profoundly significant to all our people.
We have been through a lengthy period in which the control over the
executive and legislative branches of government has been divided
between our two great political parties. Differences, of course, we have
had, particularly in domestic affairs. But in a united determination to
keep this Nation strong and free and to utilize our vast resources for
the advancement of all mankind, we have carried America to unprecedented
heights.
For this cooperative achievement I thank the American people and those
in the Congress of both parties who have supported programs in the
interest of our country.
I should also like to give special thanks for the devoted service of my
associates in the Executive Branch and the hundreds of thousands of
career employees who have implemented our diverse government programs.
My second purpose is to review briefly the record of these past eight
years in the hope that, out of the sum of these experiences, lessons
will emerge that are useful to our Nation. Supporting this review are
detailed reports from the several agencies and departments, all of which
are now or will shortly be available to the Congress.
Throughout the world the years since 1953 have been a period of profound
change. The human problems in the world grow more acute hour by hour;
yet new gains in science and technology continually extend the promise
of a better life. People yearn to be free, to govern themselves; yet a
third of the people of the world have no freedom, do not govern
themselves. The world recognizes the catastrophic nature of nuclear war;
yet it sees the wondrous potential of nuclear peace.
During the period, the United States has forged ahead under a
constructive foreign policy. The continuing goal is peace, liberty, and
well-being--for others as well as ourselves. The aspirations of all
peoples are one--peace with justice in freedom. Peace can only be
attained collectively as peoples everywhere unite in their determination
that liberty and well-being come to all mankind.
Yet while we have worked to advance national aspirations for freedom, a
divisive force has been at work to divert that aspiration into dangerous
channels. The Communist movement throughout the world exploits the
natural striving of all to be free and attempts to subjugate men rather
than free them. These activities have caused and are continuing to cause
grave troubles in the world.
Here at home these have been times for careful adjustment of our economy
from the artificial impetus of a hot war to constructive growth in a
precarious peace. While building a new economic vitality without
inflation, we have also increased public expenditures to keep abreast of
the needs of a growing population and its attendant new problems, as
well as our added international responsibilities. We have worked toward
these ends in a context of shared responsibility--conscious of the need
for maximum scope to private effort and for State and local, as well as
Federal, governmental action.
Success in designing and executing national purposes, domestically and
abroad, can only come from a steadfast resolution that integrity in the
operation of government and in our relations with each other be fully
maintained. Only in this way could our spiritual goals be fully
advanced.
FOREIGN POLICY
On January 20, 1953, when I took office, the United States was at war.
Since the signing of the Korean Armistice in 1953, Americans have lived
in peace in highly troubled times.
During the 1956 Suez crisis, the United States government strongly
supported United Nations’ action--resulting in the ending of the
hostilities in Egypt.
Again in 1958, peace was preserved in the Middle East despite new
discord. Our government responded to the request of the friendly
Lebanese Government for military help, and promptly withdrew American
forces as soon as the situation was stabilized.
In 1958 our support of the Republic of China during the all-out
bombardment of Quemoy restrained the Communist Chinese from attempting
to invade the off-shore islands.
Although, unhappily, Communist penetration of Cuba is real and poses a
serious threat, Communist dominated regimes have been deposed in
Guatemala and Iran. The occupation of Austria has ended and the Trieste
question has been settled.
Despite constant threats to its integrity, West Berlin has remained
free.
Important advances have been made in building mutual security
arrangements--which lie at the heart of our hopes for future peace and
security in the world. The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization has been
established; the NATO alliance has been militarily strengthened; the
Organization of American States has been further developed as an
instrument of inter-American cooperation; the Anzus treaty has
strengthened ties with Australia and New Zealand, and a mutual security
treaty with Japan has been signed. In addition, the CENTO pact has been
concluded, and while we are not officially a member of this alliance we
have participated closely in its deliberations.
The “Atoms for Peace” proposal to the United Nations led to the creation
of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Our policy has been to push
for enforceable programs of inspection against surprise attack,
suspension of nuclear testing, arms reduction, and peaceful use of outer
space.
The United Nations has been vigorously supported in all of its actions,
including the condemnations of the wholesale murder of the people of
Tibet by the Chinese Communists and the brutal Soviet repression of the
people of Hungary, as well as the more recent UN actions in the Congo.
The United States took the initiative in negotiating the significant
treaty to guarantee the peaceful use of vast Antarctica.
The United States Information Agency has been transformed into a greatly
improved medium for explaining our policies and actions to audiences
overseas, answering the lies of communist propaganda, and projecting a
clearer image of American life and culture.
Cultural, technological and educational exchanges with the Soviet Union
have been encouraged, and a comprehensive agreement was made which
authorized, among other things, the distribution of our Russian language
magazine Amerika and the highly successful American Exhibition in
Moscow.
This country has continued to withhold recognition of Communist China
and to oppose vigorously the admission of this belligerent and
unrepentant nation into the United Nations. Red China has yet to
demonstrate that it deserves to be considered a “peace-loving” nation.
With communist imperialism held in check, constructive actions were
undertaken to strengthen the economies of free world nations. The United
States government has given sturdy support to the economic and technical
assistance activities of the UN. This country stimulated a doubling of
the capital of the World Bank and a 50 percent capital increase in the
International Monetary Fund. The Development Loan Fund and the
International Development Association were established. The United
States also took the lead in creating the Inter-American Development
Bank.
Vice President Nixon, Secretaries of State Dulles and Herter and I
travelled extensively through the world for the purpose of strengthening
the cause of peace, freedom, and international understanding. So
rewarding were these visits that their very success became a significant
factor in causing the Soviet Union to wreck the planned Summit
Conference of 1960.
These vital programs must go on. New tactics will have to be developed,
of course, to meet new situations, but the underlying principles should
be constant. Our great moral and material commitments to collective
security, deterrence of force, international law, negotiations that lead
to self-enforcing agreements, and the economic interdependence of free
nations should remain the cornerstone of a foreign policy that will
ultimately bring permanent peace with justice in freedom to all mankind.
The continuing need of all free nations today is for each to recognize
clearly the essentiality of an unbreakable bond among themselves based
upon a complete dedication to the principles of collective security,
effective cooperation and peace with justice.
NATIONAL DEFENSE
For the first time in our nation’s history we have consistently
maintained in peacetime, military forces of a magnitude sufficient to
deter and if need be to destroy predatory forces in the world.
Tremendous advances in strategic weapons systems have been made in the
past eight years. Not until 1953 were expenditures on long-range
ballistic missile programs even as much as a million dollars a year;
today we spend ten times as much each day on these programs as was spent
in all of 1952.
No guided ballistic missiles were operational at the beginning of 1953.
Today many types give our armed forces unprecedented effectiveness. The
explosive power of our weapons systems for all purposes is almost
inconceivable.
Today the United States has operational ATLAS missiles which can strike
a target 5000 miles away in a half-hour. The POLARIS weapons system
became operational last fall and the TITAN is scheduled to become so
this year. Next year, more than a year ahead of schedule, a vastly
improved ICBM, the solid propellant MINUTEMAN, is expected to be ready.
Squadrons of accurate Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles are now
operational. The THOR and JUPITER IRBMs based in forward areas can hit
targets 1500 miles away in 18 minutes.
Aircraft which fly at speeds faster than sound were still in a
developmental stage eight years ago. Today American fighting planes go
twice the speed of sound. And either our B-58 Medium Range Jet Bomber or
our B-52 Long Range Jet Bomber can carry more explosive power than was
used by all combatants in World War II--Allies and Axis combined.
Eight years ago we had no nuclear-powered ships. Today 49 nuclear
warships have been authorized. Of these, 14 have been commissioned,
including three of the revolutionary POLARIS submarines. Our nuclear
submarines have cruised under the North Pole and circumnavigated the
earth while submerged. Sea warfare has been revolutionized, and the
United States is far and away the leader.
Our tactical air units overseas and our aircraft carriers are alert;
Army units, guarding the frontiers of freedom in Europe and the Far
East, are in the highest state of readiness in peacetime history; our
Marines, a third of whom are deployed in the Far East, are constantly
prepared for action; our Reserve establishment has maintained high
standards of proficiency, and the Ready Reserve now numbers over 2 1/2
million citizen-soldiers.
The Department of Defense, a young and still evolving organization, has
twice been improved and the line of command has been shortened in order
to meet the demands of modern warfare. These major reorganizations have
provided a more effective structure for unified planning and direction
of the vast defense establishment. Gradual improvements in its structure
and procedures are to be expected.
United States civil defense and nonmilitary defense capacity has been
greatly strengthened and these activities have been consolidated in one
Federal agency.
The defense forces of our Allies now number five million men, several
thousand combatant ships, and over 25,000 aircraft. Programs to
strengthen these allies have been consistently supported by the
Administration. U.S. military assistance goes almost exclusively to
friendly nations on the rim of the communist world. This American
contribution to nations who have the will to defend their freedom, but
insufficient means, should be vigorously continued. Combined with our
Allies, the free world now has a far stronger shield than we could
provide alone.
Since 1953, our defense policy has been based on the assumption that the
international situation would require heavy defense expenditures for an
indefinite period to come, probably for years. In this protracted
struggle, good management dictates that we resist overspending as
resolutely as we oppose under-spending. Every dollar uselessly spent on
military mechanisms decreases our total strength and, therefore, our
security. We must not return to the “crash-program” psychology of the
past when each new feint by the Communists was responded to in panic.
The “bomber gap” of several years ago was always a fiction, and the
“missile gap” shows every sign of being the same.
The nation can ill afford to abandon a national policy which provides
for a fully adequate and steady level of effort, designed for the long
pull; a fast adjustment to new scientific and technological advances; a
balanced force of such strength as to deter general war, to effectively
meet local situations and to retaliate to attack and destroy the
attacker; and a strengthened system of free world collective security.
THE ECONOMY
The expanding American economy passed the half-trillion dollar mark in
gross national product early in 1960. The Nation’s output of goods and
services is now nearly 25 percent higher than in 1952.
In 1959, the average American family had an income of $6,520, 15 percent
higher in dollars of constant buying power than in 1952, and the real
wages of American factory workers have risen 20 percent during the past
eight years. These facts reflect the rising standard of individual and
family well-being enjoyed by Americans.
Our Nation benefits also from a remarkable improvement in general
industrial peace through strengthened processes of free collective
bargaining. Time lost since 1952 because of strikes has been half that
lost in the eight years prior to that date. Legislation now requires
that union members have the opportunity for full participation in the
affairs of their unions. The Administration supported the
Landrum-Griffin Act, which I believe is greatly helpful to the vast bulk
of American Labor and its leaders, and also is a major step in getting
racketeers and gangsters out of labor-management affairs.
The economic security of working men and women has been strengthened by
an extension of unemployment insurance coverage to 2.5 million
ex-servicemen, 2.4 million Federal employees, and 1.2 million employees
of small businesses, and by a strengthening of the Railroad Unemployment
Insurance Act. States have been encouraged to improve their unemployment
compensation benefits, so that today average weekly benefits are 40
percent higher than in 1953.
Determined efforts have improved workers’ safety standards. Enforceable
safety standards have been established for longshoremen and ship repair
workers; Federal Safety Councils have been increased from 14 to over
100; safety awards have been initiated, and a national construction
safety program has been developed.
A major factor in strengthening our competitive enterprise system, and
promoting economic growth, has been the vigorous enforcement of
antitrust laws over the last eight years and a continuing effort to
reduce artificial restraints on competition and trade and enhance our
economic liberties. This purpose was also significantly advanced in 1953
when, as one of the first acts of this Administration, restrictive wage
and price controls were ended.
An additional measure to strengthen the American system of competitive
enterprise was the creation of the Small Business Administration in 1953
to assist existing small businesses and encourage new ones. This agency
has approved over $1 billion in loans, initiated a new program to
provide long-term capital for small businesses, aided in setting aside
$31/2 billion in government contracts for award to small business
concerns, and brought to the attention of individual businessmen,
through programs of information and education, new developments in
management and production techniques. Since 1952, important tax
revisions have been made to encourage small businesses.
Many major improvements in the Nation’s transportation system have been
made:
--After long years of debate, the dream of a great St. Lawrence Seaway,
opening the heartland of America to ocean commerce, has been fulfilled.
--The new Federal Aviation Agency is fostering greater safety in air
travel.
--The largest public construction program in history--the 41,000 mile
national system of Interstate and Defense highways--has been pushed
rapidly forward. Twenty-five percent of this system is now open to
traffic.
Efforts to help every American build a better life have included also a
vigorous program for expanding our trade with other nations. A 4-year
renewal of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act was passed in 1958, and a
continuing and rewarding effort has been made to persuade other
countries to remove restrictions against our exports. A new export
expansion program was launched in 1960, inaugurating improvement of
export credit insurance and broadening research and information programs
to awaken Americans to business opportunities overseas. These actions
and generally prosperous conditions abroad have helped push America’s
export trade to a level of $20 billion in 1960.
Although intermittent declines in economic activity persist as a problem
in our enterprise system, recent downturns have been moderate and of
short duration. There is, however, little room for complacency.
Currently our economy is operating at high levels, but unemployment
rates are higher than any of us would like, and chronic pockets of high
unemployment persist. Clearly, continued sound and broadly shared
economic growth remains a major national objective toward which we must
strive through joint private and public efforts.
If government continues to work to assure every American the fullest
opportunity to develop and utilize his ability and talent, it will be
performing one of its most vital functions, that of advancing the
welfare and protecting the dignity, rights, and freedom of all
Americans.
GOVERNMENT FINANCE AND ADMINISTRATION
In January 1953, the consumer’s dollar was worth only 52 cents in terms
of the food, clothing, shelter and other items it would buy compared to
1939. Today, the inflationary spiral which had raised the cost of living
by 36 percent between 1946 and 1952 has all but ceased and the value of
the dollar virtually stabilized.
In 1954 we had the largest tax cut in history, amounting to $7.4 billion
annually, of which over 62 percent went to individuals mostly in the
small income brackets.
This Administration has directed constant efforts toward fiscal
responsibility. Balanced budgets have been sought when the economy was
advancing, and a rigorous evaluation of spending programs has been
maintained at all times. Resort to deficit financing in prosperous times
could easily erode international confidence in the dollar and contribute
to inflation at home. In this belief, I shall submit a balanced budget
for fiscal 1962 to the Congress next week.
There has been a firm policy of reducing government competition with
private enterprise. This has resulted in the discontinuance of some
2,000 commercial industrial installations and in addition the
curtailment of approximately 550 industrial installations operated
directly by government agencies.
Also an aggressive surplus disposal program has been carried on to
Identify and dispose of unneeded government-owned real property. This
has resulted in the addition of a substantial number of valuable
properties to local tax rolls, and a significant monetary return to the
government.
Earnest and persistent attempts have been made to strengthen the
position of State and local governments and thereby to stop the
dangerous drift toward centralization of governmental power in
Washington.
Significant strides have been made in increasing the effectiveness of
government. Important new agencies have been established, such as the
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, the Federal Aviation
Agency, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The
Council of Economic Advisers was reconstituted.
The operation of our postal system has been modernized to get better and
more efficient service. Modernized handling of local mail now brings
next-day delivery to 168 million people in our population centers,
expanded carrier service now accommodates 9.3 million families in the
growing suburbs, and 1.4 million families have been added to the rural
delivery service. Common sense dictates that the Postal Service should
be on a self-financing basis.
The concept of a trained and dedicated government career service has
been strengthened by the provision of life and health insurance
benefits, a vastly improved retirement system, a new merit promotion
program, and the first effective incentive awards program. With no
sacrifice in efficiency, Federal civilian employment since 1953 has been
reduced by over a quarter of a million persons.
I am deeply gratified that it was under the urging of this
Administration that Alaska and Hawaii became our 49th and 50th States.
AGRICULTURE
Despite the difficulties of administering Congressional programs which
apply outmoded prescriptions and which aggravate rather than solve
problems, the past eight years brought notable advances in agriculture.
Total agricultural assets are approximately $200 billion--up $36 billion
in eight years.
Farm owner equities are at the near record high of $174 billion.
Farm ownership is at a record high with fewer farmers in a tenant and
sharecropper status than at any time in our nation’s history.
The “Food-for-Peace” program has demonstrated how surplus of American
food and fiber can be effectively used to feed and clothe the needy
abroad. Aided by this humanitarian program, total agricultural exports
have grown from $2.8 billion in 1953 to an average of about $4 billion
annually for the past three years. For 1960, exports are estimated at
$4.5 billion, the highest volume on record. Under the Food-for-Peace
program, the largest wheat transaction in history was consummated with
India in 1960.
The problems of low-income farm families received systematic attention
for the first time in the Rural Development Program. This program has
gone forward in 39 States, yielding higher incomes and a better living
for rural people most in need.
The Rural Electrification Administration has helped meet the growing
demand for power and telephones in agricultural areas. Ninety-seven
percent of all farms now have central station electric power. Dependence
upon Federal financing should no longer be necessary.
The Farm Credit Administration has been made an independent agency more
responsive to the farmer’s needs.
The search for new uses for our farm abundance and to develop new crops
for current needs has made major progress. Agricultural research
appropriations have increased by 171 percent since 1953.
Farmers are being saved approximately $80 million a year by the repeal
in 1956 of Federal taxes on gasoline used in tractors and other
machinery.
Since 1953, appropriations have been doubled for county agents, home
agents and the Extension Service.
Eligibility for Social Security benefits has been extended to farmers
and their families.
Yet in certain aspects our agricultural surplus situation is
increasingly grave. For example, our wheat stocks now total 1.3 billion
bushels. If we did not harvest one bushel of wheat in this coming year,
we would still have all we could eat, all we could sell abroad, all we
could give away, and still have a substantial carryover. Extraordinary
costs are involved just in management and disposal of this burdensome
surplus. Obviously important adjustments must still come. Congress must
enact additional legislation to permit wheat and other farm commodities
to move into regular marketing channels in an orderly manner and at the
same time afford the needed price protection to the farmer. Only then
will agriculture again be free, sound, and profitable.
NATURAL RESOURCES
New emphasis has been placed on the care of our national parks. A ten
year development program of our National Park System--Mission 66--was
initiated and 633,000 acres of park land have been added since 1953.
Appropriations for fish and wildlife operations have more than doubled.
Thirty-five new refuges, containing 11,342,000 acres, have been added to
the national wildlife management system.
Our Nation’s forests have been improved at the most rapid rate in
history.
The largest sustained effort in water resources development in our
history has taken place. In the field of reclamation alone, over 50 new
projects, or project units, have been authorized since 1953--including
the billion dollar Colorado River Storage Project. When all these
projects have been completed they will have a storage capacity of nearly
43 million acre-feet--an increase of 50 percent over the Bureau of
Reclamation’s storage capacity in mid-1953. In addition, since 1953 over
450 new navigation flood control and multiple purpose projects of the
Corps of Engineers have been started, costing nearly 6 billion dollars.
Soil and water conservation has been advanced as never before. One
hundred forty-one projects are now being constructed under the Watershed
Protection Program.
Hydroelectric power has been impressively developed through a policy
which recognizes that the job to be done requires comprehensive
development by Federal, State, and local governments and private
enterprise. Teamwork is essential to achieve this objective.
The Federal Columbia River power system has grown from two multipurpose
dams with a 2.6 million kilowatt capacity to 17 multipurpose projects
completed or under construction with an ultimate installed capacity of
8.1 million kilowatts. After years of negotiation, a Columbia River
Storage Development agreement with Canada now opens the way for early
realization of unparalleled power, flood control and resource
conservation benefits for the Pacific Northwest. A treaty implementing
this agreement will shortly be submitted to the Senate.
A farsighted and highly successful program for meeting urgent water
needs is being carded out by converting salt water to fresh water. A 75
percent reduction in the cost of this process has already been realized.
Continuous resource development is essential for our expanding economy.
We must continue vigorous, combined Federal, State and private programs,
at the same time preserving to the maximum extent possible our natural
and scenic heritage for future generations.
EDUCATION, SCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY
The National Defense Education Act of 1958 is already a milestone in the
history of American education. It provides broad opportunities for the
intellectual development of all children by strengthening courses of
study in science, mathematics, and foreign languages, by developing new
graduate programs to train additional teachers, and by providing loans
for young people who need financial help to go to college.
The Administration proposed on numerous occasions a broad new five-year
program of Federal aid to help overcome the classroom shortage in public
elementary and secondary schools. Recommendations were also made to give
assistance to colleges and universities for the construction of academic
and residential buildings to meet future enrollment increases.
This Administration greatly expanded Federal loans for building
dormitories for students, teachers, and nurses training, a program
assisting in the construction of approximately 200,000 living
accommodations during the past 8 years.
There has been a vigorous acceleration of health, resource and education
programs designed to advance the role of the American Indian in our
society. Last fall, for example, 91 percent of the Indian children
between the ages of 6 and 18 on reservations were enrolled in school.
This is a rise of 12 percent since 1953.
In the field of science and technology, startling strides have been made
by the new National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In little more
than two years, NASA has successfully launched meteorological
satellites, such as Tiros I and Tiros II, that promise to revolutionize
methods of weather forecasting; demonstrated the feasibility of
satellites for global communications by the successful launching of Echo
I; produced an enormous amount of valuable scientific data, such as the
discovery of the Van Allen Radiation Belt; successfully launched
deep-space probes that maintained communication over the greatest range
man has ever tracked; and made real progress toward the goal of manned
space flights.
These achievements unquestionably make us preeminent today in space
exploration for the betterment of mankind. I believe the present
organizational arrangements in this area, with the revisions proposed
last year, are completely adequate for the tasks ahead.
Americans can look forward to new achievements in space exploration. The
near future will hold such wonders as the orbital flight of an
astronaut, the landing of instruments on the moon, the launching of the
powerful giant Saturn rocket vehicles, and the reconnaissance of Mars
and Venus by unmanned vehicles.
The application of atomic energy to industry, agriculture, and medicine
has progressed from hope and experiment to reality. American industry
and agriculture are making increasing use of radioisotopes to improve
manufacturing, testing, and crop-raising. Atomic energy has improved the
ability of the healing professions to combat disease, and holds promise
for an eventual increase in man’s life span.
Education, science, technology and balanced programs of every kind-these
are the roadways to progress. With appropriate Federal support, the
States and localities can assure opportunities for achieving excellence
at all levels of the educational system; and with the Federal government
continuing to give wholehearted support to basic scientific research and
technology, we can expect to maintain our position of leadership in the
world.
CIVIL RIGHTS
The first consequential Federal Civil Rights legislation in 85 years was
enacted by Congress on recommendation of the Administration in 1957 and
1960.
A new Civil Rights Division in the Department of Justice has already
moved to enforce constitutional rights in such areas as voting and the
elimination of Jim Crow laws.
Greater equality of job opportunity in Federal employment and employment
with Federal contractors has been effectively provided through the
President’s Committees on Government Contracts and Government Employment
Practices.
The Civil Rights Commission has undertaken important surveys in the
fields of housing, voting, and education.
Segregation has been abolished in the Armed Forces, in Veterans’
Hospitals, in all Federal employment, and throughout the District of
Columbia--administratively accomplished progress in this field that is
unmatched in America’s recent history.
This pioneering work in civil rights must go on. Not only because
discrimination is morally wrong, but also because its impact is more
than national--it is world-wide.
HEALTH AND WELFARE
Federal medical research expenditures have increased more than fourfold
since 1954.
A vast variety of the approaches known to medical science has been
explored to find better methods of treatment and prevention of major
diseases, particularly heart diseases, cancer, and mental illness.
The control of air and water pollution has been greatly strengthened.
Americans now have greater protection against harmful, unclean, or
misrepresented foods, drugs, or cosmetics through a strengthened Food
and Drug Administration and by new legislation which requires that food
additives be proved safe for human consumption before use.
A newly established Federal Radiation Council, along with the Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare, analyzes and coordinates information
regarding radiological activities which affect the public health.
Medical manpower has been increased by Federal grants for teaching and
research.
Construction of new medical facilities has been stepped up and extended
to include nursing homes, diagnostic and treatment centers, and
rehabilitation facilities.
The vocational rehabilitation program has been significantly expanded.
About 90,000 handicapped people are now being rehabilitated annually so
they are again able to earn their own living with self-respect and
dignity.
New legislation provides for better medical care for the needy aged,
including those older persons, who, while otherwise self-sufficient,
need help in meeting their health care costs. The Administration
recommended a major expansion of this effort.
The coverage of the Social Security Act has been broadened since 1953 to
make 11 million additional people eligible for retirement, disability or
survivor benefits for themselves or their dependents, and the Social
Security benefits have been substantially improved.
Grants to the States for maternal and child welfare services have been
increased.
The States, aided by Federal grants, now assist some 6 million needy
people through the programs of Old Age Assistance, Aid to Dependent
Children, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to the Totally and Permanently
Disabled.
HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT
More houses have been built during the past eight years--over nine
million--than during any previous eight years in history.
An historic new approach--Urban Renewal--now replaces piecemeal thrusts
at slum pockets and urban blight. Communities engaged in urban renewal
have doubled and renewal projects have more than tripled since 1953. An
estimated 68 projects in 50 cities will be completed by the end of the
current fiscal year; another 577 projects will be underway, and planning
for 310 more will be in process. A total of $2 billion in Federal grants
will ultimately be required to finance these 955 projects.
New programs have been initiated to provide more and better housing for
elderly people. Approximately 25,000 units especially designed for the
elderly have been built, started, or approved in the past three years.
For the first time, because of Federal help and .encouragement, 90
metropolitan areas and urban regions and 1140 smaller towns throughout
the country are making comprehensive development plans for their future
growth and development.
American communities have been helped to plan water and sanitation
systems and schools through planning advances for 1600 public works
projects with a construction cost of nearly $2 billion.
Mortgage insurance on individual homes has been greatly expanded. During
the past eight years, the Federal Housing Administration alone insured
over 21/2 million home mortgages valued at $27 billion, and in addition,
insured more than ten million property improvement loans.
The Federal government must continue to provide leadership in order to
make our cities and communities better places in which to live, work,
and raise families, but without usurping rightful local authority,
replacing individual responsibility, or stifling private initiative.
IMMIGRATION
Over 32,000 victims of Communist tyranny in Hungary were brought to our
shores, and at this time our country is working to assist refugees from
tyranny in Cuba.
Since 1953, the waiting period for naturalization applicants has been
reduced from 18 months to 45 days.
The Administration also has made legislative recommendations to
liberalize existing restrictions upon immigration while still
safeguarding the national interest. It is imperative that our
immigration policy be in the finest American tradition of providing a
haven for oppressed peoples and fully in accord with our obligation as a
leader of the free world.
VETERANS
In discharging the nation’s obligation to our veterans, during the past
eight years there have been:
The readjustment of World War II veterans was completed, and the five
million Korean conflict veterans were assisted in achieving successful
readjustment to civilian life;
Increases in compensation benefits for all eligible veterans with
service connected disabilities;
Higher non-service connected pension benefits for needy veterans;
Greatly improved benefits to survivors of veterans dying in or as a
result of service;
Authorization, by Presidential directive, of an increase in the number
of beds available for sick and disabled veterans;
Development of a 12-year, $900 million construction program to modernize
and improve our veterans hospitals;
New modern techniques brought into the administration of Veterans
Affairs to provide the highest quality service possible to those who
have defended us.
CONCLUSION
In concluding my final message to the Congress, it is fitting to look
back to my first--to the aims and ideals I set forth on February 2,
1953: To use America’s influence in world affairs to advance the cause
of peace and justice, to conduct the affairs of the Executive Branch
with integrity and efficiency, to encourage creative initiative in our
economy, and to work toward the attainment of the well-being and
equality of opportunity of all citizens.
Equally, we have honored our commitment to pursue and attain specific
objectives. Among them, as stated eight years ago: strengthening of the
mutual security program; development of world trade and commerce; ending
of hostilities in Korea; creation of a powerful deterrent force;
practicing fiscal responsibility; checking the menace of inflation;
reducing the tax burden; providing an effective internal security
program; developing and conserving our natural resources; reducing
governmental interference in the affairs of the farmer; strengthening
and improving services by the Department of Labor, and the vigilant
guarding of civil and social fights.
I do not close this message implying that all is well--that all problems
are solved. For progress implies both new and continuing problems and,
unlike Presidential administrations, problems rarely have terminal
dates.
Abroad, there is the continuing Communist threat to the freedom of
Berlin, an explosive situation in Laos, the problems caused by Communist
penetration of Cuba, as well as the many problems connected with the
development of the new nations in Africa. These areas, in particular,
call for delicate handling and constant review.
At home, several conspicuous problems remain: promoting higher levels of
employment, with special emphasis on areas in which heavy unemployment
has persisted; continuing to provide for steady economic growth and
preserving a sound currency; bringing our balance of payments into more
reasonable equilibrium and continuing a high level of confidence in our
national and international systems; eliminating heavily excessive
surpluses of a few farm commodities; and overcoming deficiencies in our
health and educational programs.
Our goal always has been to add to the spiritual, moral, and material
strength of our nation. I believe we have done this. But it is a process
that must never end. Let us pray that leaders of both the near and
distant future will be able to keep the nation strong and at peace, that
they will advance the well-being of all our people, that they will lead
us on to still higher moral standards, and that, in achieving these
goals, they will maintain a reasonable balance between private and
governmental responsibility.
***
State of the Union Address
John F. Kennedy
January 30, 1961
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the Congress:
It is a pleasure to return from whence I came. You are among my oldest
friends in Washington--and this House is my oldest home. It was here,
more than 14 years ago, that I first took the oath of Federal office. It
was here, for 14 years, that I gained both knowledge and inspiration
from members of both parties in both Houses--from your wise and generous
leaders--and from the pronouncements which I can vividly recall, sitting
where you now sit--including the programs of two great Presidents, the
undimmed eloquence of Churchill, the soaring idealism of Nehru, the
steadfast words of General de Gaulle. To speak from this same historic
rostrum is a sobering experience. To be back among so many friends is a
happy one.
I am confident that that friendship will continue. Our Constitution
wisely assigns both joint and separate roles to each branch of the
government; and a President and a Congress who hold each other in mutual
respect will neither permit nor attempt any trespass. For my part, I
shall withhold from neither the Congress nor the people any fact or
report, past, present, or future, which is necessary for an informed
judgment of our conduct and hazards. I shall neither shift the burden of
executive decisions to the Congress, nor avoid responsibility for the
outcome of those decisions.
I speak today in an hour of national peril and national opportunity.
Before my term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation
organized and governed such as ours can endure. The outcome is by no
means certain. The answers are by no means clear. All of us
together--this Administration, this Congress, this nation--must forge
those answers.
But today, were I to offer--after little more than a week in
office--detailed legislation to remedy every national ill, the Congress
would rightly wonder whether the desire for speed had replaced the duty
of responsibility.
My remarks, therefore, will be limited. But they will also be candid. To
state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the
past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies, and
gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of
trust. And, while the occasion does not call for another recital of our
blessings and assets, we do have no greater asset than the willingness
of a free and determined people, through its elected officials, to face
all problems frankly and meet all dangers free from panic or fear.
I.
The present state of our economy is disturbing. We take office in the
wake of seven months of recession, three and one-half years of slack,
seven years of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling
farm income.
Business bankruptcies have reached their highest level since the Great
Depression. Since 1951 farm income has been squeezed down by 25 percent.
Save for a brief period in 1958, insured unemployment is at the highest
peak in our history. Of some five and one-half million Americans who are
without jobs, more than one million have been searching for work for
more than four months. And during each month some 150,000 workers are
exhausting their already meager jobless benefit rights.
Nearly one-eighth of those who are without jobs live almost without hope
in nearly one hundred especially depressed and troubled areas. The rest
include new school graduates unable to use their talents, farmers forced
to give up their part-time jobs which helped balance their family
budgets, skilled and unskilled workers laid off in such important
industries as metals, machinery, automobiles and apparel.
Our recovery from the 1958 recession, moreover, was anemic and
incomplete. Our Gross National Product never regained its full
potential. Unemployment never returned to normal levels. Maximum use of
our national industrial capacity was never restored.
In short, the American economy is in trouble. The most resourceful
industrialized country on earth ranks among the last in the rate of
economic growth. Since last spring our economic growth rate has actually
receded. Business investment is in a decline. Profits have fallen below
predicted levels. Construction is off. A million unsold automobiles are
in inventory. Fewer people are working--and the average work week has
shrunk well below 40 hours. Yet prices have continued to rise--so that
now too many Americans have less to spend for items that cost more to
buy.
Economic prophecy is at best an uncertain art--as demonstrated by the
prediction one year ago from this same podium that 1960 would be, and I
quote, “the most prosperous year in our history.” Nevertheless,
forecasts of continued slack and only slightly reduced unemployment
through 1961 and 1962 have been made with alarming unanimity--and this
Administration does not intend to stand helplessly by.
We cannot afford to waste idle hours and empty plants while awaiting the
end of the recession. We must show the world what a free economy can
do--to reduce unemployment, to put unused capacity to work, to spur new
productivity, and to foster higher economic growth within a range of
sound fiscal policies and relative price stability.
I will propose to the Congress within the next 14 days measures to
improve unemployment compensation through temporary increases in
duration on a self-supporting basis--to provide more food for the
families of the unemployed, and to aid their needy children--to
redevelop our areas of chronic labor surplus--to expand the services of
the U.S. Employment Offices--to stimulate housing and construction--to
secure more purchasing power for our lowest paid workers by raising and
expanding the minimum wage--to offer tax incentives for sound plant
investment--to increase the development of our natural resources--to
encourage price stability--and to take other steps aimed at insuring a
prompt recovery and paving the way for increased long-range growth. This
is not a partisan program concentrating on our weaknesses--it is, I
hope, a national program to realize our national strength.
II.
Efficient expansion at home, stimulating the new plant and technology
that can make our goods more competitive, is also the key to the
international balance of payments problem. Laying aside all alarmist
talk and panicky solutions, let us put that knotty problem in its proper
perspective.
It is true that, since 1958, the gap between the dollars we spend or
invest abroad and the dollars returned to us has substantially widened.
This overall deficit in our balance of payments increased by nearly $11
billion in the 3 years--and holders of dollars abroad converted them to
gold in such a quantity as to cause a total outflow of nearly $5 billion
of gold from our reserve. The 1959 deficit was caused in large part by
the failure of our exports to penetrate foreign markets--the result both
of restrictions on our goods and our own uncompetitive prices. The 1960
deficit, on the other hand, was more the result of an increase in
private capital outflow seeking new opportunity, higher return or
speculative advantage abroad.
Meanwhile this country has continued to bear more than its share of the
West’s military and foreign aid obligations. Under existing policies,
another deficit of $2 billion is predicted for 1961--and individuals in
those countries whose dollar position once depended on these deficits
for improvement now wonder aloud whether our gold reserves will remain
sufficient to meet our own obligations.
All this is cause for concern--but it is not cause for panic. For our
monetary and financial position remains exceedingly strong. Including
our drawing rights in the International Monetary Fund and the gold
reserve held as backing for our currency and Federal Reserve deposits,
we have some $22 billion in total gold stocks and other international
monetary reserves available--and I now pledge that their full strength
stands behind the value of the dollar for use if needed.
Moreover, we hold large assets abroad--the total owed this nation far
exceeds the claims upon our reserves--and our exports once again
substantially exceed our imports.
In short, we need not--and we shall not--take any action to increase the
dollar price of gold from $35 an ounce--to impose exchange controls--to
reduce our anti-recession efforts--to fall back on restrictive trade
policies--or to weaken our commitments around the world.
This Administration will not distort the value of the dollar in any
fashion. And this is a commitment.
Prudence and good sense do require, however, that new steps be taken to
ease the payments deficit and prevent any gold crisis. Our success in
world affairs has long depended in part upon foreign confidence in our
ability to pay. A series of executive orders, legislative remedies and
cooperative efforts with our allies will get underway immediately--aimed
at attracting foreign investment and travel to this country--promoting
American exports, at stable prices and with more liberal government
guarantees and financing--curbing tax and customs loopholes that
encourage undue spending of private dollars abroad--and (through OECD,
NATO and otherwise) sharing with our allies all efforts to provide for
the common defense of the free world and the hopes for growth of the
less developed lands. While the current deficit lasts, ways will be
found to ease our dollar outlays abroad without placing the full burden
on the families of men whom we have asked to serve our Flag overseas.
In short, whatever is required will be done to back up all our efforts
abroad, and to make certain that, in the future as in the past, the
dollar is as “sound as a dollar.”
III.
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.
IV.
But all these problems pale when placed beside those which confront us
around the world. No man entering upon this office, regardless of his
party, regardless of his previous service in Washington, could fail to
be staggered upon learning--even in this brief 10 day period--the harsh
enormity of the trials through which we must pass in the next four
years. Each day the crises multiply. Each day their solution grows more
difficult. Each day we draw nearer the hour of maximum danger, as
weapons spread and hostile forces grow stronger. I feel I must inform
the Congress that our analyses over the last ten days make it clear
that--in each of the principal areas of crisis--the tide of events has
been running out and time has not been our friend.
In Asia, the relentless pressures of the Chinese Communists menace the
security of the entire area--from the borders of India and South Viet
Nam to the jungles of Laos, struggling to protect its newly-won
independence. We seek in Laos what we seek in all Asia, and, indeed, in
all of the world--freedom for the people and independence for the
government. And this Nation shall persevere in our pursuit of these
objectives.
In Africa, the Congo has been brutally torn by civil strife, political
unrest and public disorder. We shall continue to support the heroic
efforts of the United Nations to restore peace and order--efforts which
are now endangered by mounting tensions, unsolved problems, and
decreasing support from many member states.
In Latin America, Communist agents seeking to exploit that region’s
peaceful revolution of hope have established a base on Cuba, only 90
miles from our shores. Our objection with Cuba is not over the people’s
drive for a better life. Our objection is to their domination by foreign
and domestic tyrannies. Cuban social and economic reform should be
encouraged. Questions of economic and trade policy can always be
negotiated. But Communist domination in this Hemisphere can never be
negotiated.
We are pledged to work with our sister Republics to free the Americas of
all such foreign domination and all tyranny, working toward the goal of
a free hemisphere of free governments, extending from Cape Horn to the
Arctic Circle.
In Europe our alliances are unfulfilled and in some disarray. The unity
of NATO has been weakened by economic rivalry and partially eroded by
national interest. It has not yet fully mobilized its resources nor
fully achieved a common outlook. Yet no Atlantic power can meet on its
own the mutual problems now facing us in defense, foreign aid, monetary
reserves, and a host of other areas; and our close ties with those whose
hopes and interests we share are among this Nation’s most powerful
assets.
Our greatest challenge is still the world that lies beyond the Cold
War--but the first great obstacle is still our relations with the Soviet
Union and Communist China. We must never be lulled into believing that
either power has yielded its ambitions for world domination--ambitions
which they forcefully restated only a short time ago. On the contrary,
our task is to convince them that aggression and subversion will not be
profitable routes to pursue these ends. Open and peaceful
competition--for prestige, for markets, for scientific achievement, even
for men’s minds--is something else again. For if Freedom and Communism
were to compete for man’s allegiance in a world at peace, I would look
to the future with ever increasing confidence.
To meet this array of challenges--to fulfill the role we cannot avoid on
the world scene--we must reexamine and revise our whole arsenal of
tools: military, economic and political.
One must not overshadow the other. On the Presidential Coat of Arms, the
American eagle holds in his right talon the olive branch, while in his
left he holds a bundle of arrows. We intend to give equal attention to
both.
First, we must strengthen our military tools. We are moving into a
period of uncertain risk and great commitment in which both the military
and diplomatic possibilities require a Free World force so powerful as
to make any aggression clearly futile. Yet in the past, lack of a
consistent, coherent military strategy, the absence of basic assumptions
about our national requirements and the faulty estimates and duplication
arising from inter-service rivalries have all made it difficult to
assess accurately how adequate--or inadequate--our defenses really are.
I have, therefore, instructed the Secretary of Defense to reappraise our
entire defense strategy--our ability to fulfill our commitments--the
effectiveness, vulnerability, and dispersal of our strategic bases,
forces and warning systems--the efficiency and economy of our operation
and organization--the elimination of obsolete bases and
installations--and the adequacy, modernization and mobility of our
present conventional and nuclear forces and weapons systems in the light
of present and future dangers. I have asked for preliminary conclusions
by the end of February--and I then shall recommend whatever legislative,
budgetary or executive action is needed in the light of these
conclusions.
In the meantime, I have asked the Defense Secretary to initiate
immediately three new steps most clearly needed now:
First, I have directed prompt attention to increase our air-lift
capacity. Obtaining additional air transport mobility--and obtaining it
now--will better assure the ability of our conventional forces to
respond, with discrimination and speed, to any problem at any spot on
the globe at any moment’s notice. In particular it will enable us to
meet any deliberate effort to avoid or divert our forces by starting
limited wars in widely scattered parts of the globe.
(b) I have directed prompt action to step up our Polaris submarine
program. Using unobligated ship-building funds now (to let contracts
originally scheduled for the next fiscal year) will build and place on
station--at least nine months earlier than planned--substantially more
units of a crucial deterrent--a fleet that will never attack first, but
possess sufficient powers of retaliation, concealed beneath the seas, to
discourage any aggressor from launching an attack upon our security.
(c) I have directed prompt action to accelerate our entire missile
program. Until the Secretary of Defense’s reappraisal is completed, the
emphasis here will be largely on improved organization and
decision-making--on cutting down the wasteful duplications and the
time-lag that have handicapped our whole family of missiles. If we are
to keep the peace, we need an invulnerable missile force powerful enough
to deter any aggressor from even threatening an attack that he would
know could not destroy enough of our force to prevent his own
destruction. For as I said upon taking the oath of office: “Only when
our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that
they will never be employed.”
Secondly, we must improve our economic tools. Our role is essential and
unavoidable in the construction of a sound and expanding economy for the
entire non-communist world, helping other nations build the strength to
meet their own problems, to satisfy their own aspirations--to surmount
their own dangers. The problems in achieving this goal are towering and
unprecedented--the response must be towering and unprecedented as well,
much as Lend-Lease and the Marshall Plan were in earlier years, which
brought such fruitful results.
(a) I intend to ask the Congress for authority to establish a new and
more effective program for assisting the economic, educational and
social development of other countries and continents. That program must
stimulate and take more effectively into account the contributions of
our allies, and provide central policy direction for all our own
programs that now so often overlap, conflict or diffuse our energies and
resources. Such a program, compared to past programs, will require
--more flexibility for short run emergencies
--more commitment to long term development--new attention to education
at all levels--greater emphasis on the recipient nation’s role, their
effort, their purpose, with greater social justice for their people,
broader distribution and participation by their people and more
efficient public administration and more efficient tax systems of their
own
--and orderly planning for national and regional development instead of
a piecemeal approach.
I hope the Senate will take early action approving the Convention
establishing the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
This will be an important instrument in sharing with our allies this
development effort--working toward the time when each nation will
contribute in proportion to its ability to pay. For, while we are
prepared to assume our full share of these huge burdens, we cannot and
must not be expected to bear them alone.
To our sister republics to the south, we have pledged a new alliance for
progress--alianza para progreso. Our goal is a free and prosperous Latin
America, realizing for all its states and all its citizens a degree of
economic and social progress that matches their historic contributions
of culture, intellect and liberty. To start this nation’s role at this
time in that alliance of neighbors, I am recommending the following:
--That the Congress appropriate in full the $500 million fund pledged by
the Act of Bogota, to be used not as an instrument of the Cold War, but
as a first step in the sound development of the Americas.
--That a new Inter-Departmental Task Force be established under the
leadership of the Department of State, to coordinate at the highest
level all policies and programs of concern to the Americas.
--That our delegates to the OAS, working with those of other members,
strengthen that body as an instrument to preserve the peace and to
prevent foreign domination anywhere in the Hemisphere.
--That, in cooperation with other nations, we launch a new hemispheric
attack on illiteracy and inadequate educational opportunities to all
levels; and, finally,
--That a Food-for-Peace mission be sent immediately to Latin America to
explore ways in which our vast food abundance can be used to help end
hunger and malnutrition in certain areas of suffering in our own
hemisphere.
This Administration is expanding its Food-for-Peace Program in every
possible way. The product of our abundance must be used more effectively
to relieve hunger and help economic growth in all corners of the globe.
And I have asked the Director of this Program to recommend additional
ways in which these surpluses can advance the interests of world
peace--including the establishment of world food reserves.
An even more valuable national asset is our reservoir of dedicated men
and women--not only on our college campuses but in every age group--who
have indicated their desire to contribute their skills, their efforts,
and a part of their lives to the fight for world order. We can mobilize
this talent through the formation of a National Peace Corps, enlisting
the services of all those with the desire and capacity to help foreign
lands meet their urgent needs for trained personnel.
Finally, while our attention is centered on the development of the non-
communist world, we must never forget our hopes for the ultimate freedom
and welfare of the Eastern European peoples. In order to be prepared to
help re-establish historic ties of friendship, I am asking the Congress
for increased discretion to use economic tools in this area whenever
this is found to be clearly in the national interest. This will require
amendment of the Mutual Defense Assistance Control Act along the lines I
proposed as a member of the Senate, and upon which the Senate voted last
summer. Meanwhile, I hope to explore with the Polish government the
possibility of using our frozen Polish funds on projects of peace that
will demonstrate our abiding friendship for and interest in the people
of Poland.
Third, we must sharpen our political and diplomatic tools--the means of
cooperation and agreement on which an enforceable world order must
ultimately rest.
I have already taken steps to coordinate and expand our disarmament
effort--to increase our programs of research and study--and to make arms
control a central goal of our national policy under my direction. The
deadly arms race, and the huge resources it absorbs, have too long
overshadowed all else we must do. We must prevent that arms race from
spreading to new nations, to new nuclear powers and to the reaches of
outer space. We must make certain that our negotiators are better
informed and better prepared--to formulate workable proposals of our own
and to make sound judgments about the proposals of others.
I have asked the other governments concerned to agree to a reasonable
delay in the talks on a nuclear test ban--and it is our intention to
resume negotiations prepared to reach a final agreement with any nation
that is equally willing to agree to an effective and enforceable treaty.
We must increase our support of the United Nations as an instrument to
end the Cold War instead of an arena in which to fight it. In
recognition of its increasing importance and the doubling of its
membership
--we are enlarging and strengthening our own mission to the U.N.
--we shall help insure that it is properly financed.
--we shall work to see that the integrity of the office of the
Secretary-General is maintained.
--And I would address a special plea to the smaller nations of the
world--to join with us in strengthening this organization, which is far
more essential to their security than it is to ours--the only body in
the world where no nation need be powerful to be secure, where every
nation has an equal voice, and where any nation can exert influence not
according to the strength of its armies but according to the strength of
its ideas. It deserves the support of all.
Finally, this Administration intends to explore promptly all possible
areas of cooperation with the Soviet Union and other nations “to invoke
the wonders of science instead of its terrors.” Specifically, I now
invite all nations--including the Soviet Union--to join with us in
developing a weather prediction program, in a new communications
satellite program and in preparation for probing the distant planets of
Mars and Venus, probes which may someday unlock the deepest secrets of
the universe.
Today this country is ahead in the science and technology of space,
while the Soviet Union is ahead in the capacity to lift large vehicles
into orbit. Both nations would help themselves as well as other nations
by removing these endeavors from the bitter and wasteful competition of
the Cold War. The United States would be willing to join with the Soviet
Union and the scientists of all nations in a greater effort to make the
fruits of this new knowledge available to all--and, beyond that, in an
effort to extend farm technology to hungry nations--to wipe out
disease--to increase the exchanges of scientists and their
knowledge--and to make our own laboratories available to technicians of
other lands who lack the facilities to pursue their own work. Where
nature makes natural allies of us all, we can demonstrate that
beneficial relations are possible even with those with whom we most
deeply disagree--and this must someday be the basis of world peace and
world law.
V.
I have commented on the state of the domestic economy, our balance of
payments, our Federal and social budget and the state of the world. I
would like to conclude with a few remarks about the state of the
Executive branch. We have found it full of honest and useful public
servants--but their capacity to act decisively at the exact time action
is needed has too often been muffled in the morass of committees,
timidities and fictitious theories which have created a growing gap
between decision and execution, between planning and reality. In a time
of rapidly deteriorating situations at home and abroad, this is bad for
the public service and particularly bad for the country; and we mean to
make a change.
I have pledged myself and my colleagues in the cabinet to a continuous
encouragement of initiative, responsibility and energy in serving the
public interest. Let every public servant know, whether his post is high
or low, that a man’s rank and reputation in this Administration will be
determined by the size of the job he does, and not by the size of his
staff, his office or his budget. Let it be clear that this
Administration recognizes the value of dissent and daring--that we greet
healthy controversy as the hallmark of healthy change. Let the public
service be a proud and lively career. And let every man and woman who
works in any area of our national government, in any branch, at any
level, be able to say with pride and with honor in future years: “I
served the United States government in that hour of our nation’s need.”
For only with complete dedication by us all to the national interest can
we bring our country through the troubled years that lie ahead. Our
problems are critical. The tide is unfavorable. The news will be worse
before it is better. And while hoping and working for the best, we
should prepare ourselves now for the worst.
We cannot escape our dangers--neither must we let them drive us into
panic or narrow isolation. In many areas of the world where the balance
of power already rests with our adversaries, the forces of freedom are
sharply divided. It is one of the ironies of our time that the
techniques of a harsh and repressive system should be able to instill
discipline and ardor in its servants--while the blessings of liberty
have too often stood for privilege, materialism and a life of ease.
But I have a different view of liberty.
Life in 1961 will not be easy. Wishing it, predicting it, even asking
for it, will not make it so. There will be further setbacks before the
tide is turned. But turn it we must. The hopes of all mankind rest upon
us--not simply upon those of us in this chamber, but upon the peasant in
Laos, the fisherman in Nigeria, the exile from Cuba, the spirit that
moves every man and Nation who shares our hopes for freedom and the
future. And in the final analysis, they rest most of all upon the pride
and perseverance of our fellow citizens of the great Republic.
In the words of a great President, whose birthday we honor today,
closing his final State of the Union Message sixteen years ago, “We pray
that we may be worthy of the unlimited opportunities that God has given
us.”
***
State of the Union Address
John F. Kennedy
January 11, 1962
Mr. Vice President, my old colleague from Massachusetts and your new
Speaker, John McCormack, Members of the 87th Congress, ladies and
gentlemen:
This week we begin anew our joint and separate efforts to build the
American future. But, sadly, we build without a man who linked a long
past with the present and looked strongly to the future. “Mister Sam”
Rayburn is gone. Neither this House nor the Nation is the same without
him.
Members of the Congress, the Constitution makes us not rivals for power
but partners for progress. We are all trustees for the American people,
custodians of the American heritage. It is my task to report the State
of the Union--to improve it is the task of us all.
In the past year, I have traveled not only across our own land but to
other lands--to the North and the South, and across the seas. And I have
found--as I am sure you have, in your travels--that people everywhere,
in spite of occasional disappointments, look to us--not to our wealth or
power, but to the splendor of our ideals. For our Nation is commissioned
by history to be either an observer of freedom’s failure or the cause of
its success. Our overriding obligation in the months ahead is to fulfill
the world’s hopes by fulfilling our own faith.
I. STRENGTHENING THE ECONOMY
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.
II. FIGHTING INFLATION
But recession is only one enemy of a free economy--inflation is another.
Last year, 1961, despite rising production and demand, consumer prices
held almost steady--and wholesale prices declined. This is the best
record of overall price stability of any comparable period of recovery
since the end of World War II.
Inflation too often follows in the shadow of growth--while price
stability is made easy by stagnation or controls. But we mean to
maintain both stability and growth in a climate of freedom.
Our first line of defense against inflation is the good sense and public
spirit of business and labor--keeping their total increases in wages and
profits in step with productivity. There is no single statistical test
to guide each company and each union. But I strongly urge them--for
their country’s interest, and for their own--to apply the test of the
public interest to these transactions.
Within this same framework of growth and wage-price stability:
--This administration has helped keep our economy competitive by
widening the access of small business to credit and Government
contracts, and by stepping up the drive against monopoly, price-fixing,
and racketeering;
--We will submit a Federal Pay Reform bill aimed at giving our
classified, postal, and other employees new pay scales more comparable
to those of private industry;
--We are holding the fiscal 1962 budget deficit far below the level
incurred after the last recession in 1958; and, finally,
--I am submitting for fiscal 1963 a balanced Federal Budget.
This is a joint responsibility, requiring Congressional cooperation on
appropriations, and on three sources of income in particular:
(1) First, an increase in postal rates, to end the postal deficit;
(2) Second, passage of the tax reforms previously urged, to remove
unwarranted tax preferences, and to apply to dividends and to interest
the same withholding requirements we have long applied to wages; and
(3) Third, extension of the present excise and corporation tax rates,
except for those changes--which will be recommended in a
message--affecting transportation.
III. GETTING AMERICA MOVING
But a stronger nation and economy require more than a balanced Budget.
They require progress in those programs that spur our growth and fortify
our strength.
CITIES
A strong America depends on its cities--America’s glory, and sometimes
America’s shame. To substitute sunlight for congestion and progress for
decay, we have stepped up existing urban renewal and housing programs,
and launched new ones--redoubled the attack on water pollution--speeded
aid to airports, hospitals, highways, and our declining mass transit
systems--and secured new weapons to combat organized crime,
racketeering, and youth delinquency, assisted by the coordinated and
hard-hitting efforts of our investigative services: the FBI, the
Internal Revenue, the Bureau of Narcotics, and many others. We shall
need further anti-crime, mass transit, and transportation
legislation--and new tools to fight air pollution. And with all this
effort under way, both equity and common sense require that our nation’s
urban areas--containing three-fourths of our population--sit as equals
at the Cabinet table. I urge a new Department of Urban Affairs and
Housing.
AGRICULTURE AND RESOURCES
A strong America also depends on its farms and natural resources.
American farmers took heart in 1961--from a billion dollar rise in farm
income--and from a hopeful start on reducing the farm surpluses. But we
are still operating under a patchwork accumulation of old laws, which
cost us $1 billion a year in CCC carrying charges alone, yet fail to
halt rural poverty or boost farm earnings.
Our task is to master and turn to fully fruitful ends the magnificent
productivity of our farms and farmers. The revolution on our own
countryside stands in the sharpest contrast to the repeated farm
failures of the Communist nations and is a source of pride to us all.
Since 1950 our agricultural output per man-hour has actually doubled!
Without new, realistic measures, it will someday swamp our farmers and
our taxpayers in a national scandal or a farm depression.
I will, therefore, submit to the Congress a new comprehensive farm
program--tailored to fit the use of our land and the supplies of each
crop to the long-range needs of the sixties--and designed to prevent
chaos in the sixties with a program of common sense.
We also need for the sixties--if we are to bequeath our full national
estate to our heirs--a new long-range conservation and recreation
program--expansion of our superb national parks and
forests--preservation of our authentic wilderness areas--new starts on
water and power projects as our population steadily increases--and
expanded REA generation and transmission loans.
CIVIL RIGHTS