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President[ Lyndon B. Johnson

         Date[ January 12, 1966

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House and the Senate, my fellow

Americans:

I come before you tonight to report on the State of the Union for the third

time.

I come here to thank you and to add my tribute, once more, to the Nation's

gratitude for this, the 89th Congress. This Congress has already reserved

for itself an honored chapter in the history of America.

Our Nation tonight is engaged in a brutal and bitter conflict in Vietnam.

Later on I want to discuss that struggle in some detail with you. It just

must be the center of our concerns.

But we will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory

over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This Nation

is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong

enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a

Great Society here at home.

And that is what I have come here to ask of you tonight.

I recommend that you provide the resources to carry forward, with full

vigor, the great health and education programs that you enacted into law

last year.

I recommend that we prosecute with vigor and determination our war on

poverty.

I recommend that you give a new and daring direction to our foreign aid

program, designed to make a maximum attack on hunger and disease and

ignorance in those countries that are determined to help themselves, and to

help those nations that are trying to control population growth.

I recommend that you make it possible to expand trade between the United

States and Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

I recommend to you a program to rebuild completely, on a scale never before

attempted, entire central and slum areas of several of our cities in

America.

I recommend that you attack the wasteful and degrading poisoning of our

rivers, and, as the cornerstone of this effort, clean completely entire

large river basins.

I recommend that you meet the growing menace of crime in the streets by

building up law enforcement and by revitalizing the entire Federal system

from prevention to probation.

I recommend that you take additional steps to insure equal justice to all

of our people by effectively enforcing nondiscrimination in Federal and

State jury selection, by making it a serious Federal crime to obstruct

public and private efforts to secure civil rights, and by outlawing

discrimination in the sale and rental of housing.

I recommend that you help me modernize and streamline the Federal

Government by creating a new Cabinet level Department of Transportation and

reorganizing several existing agencies. In turn, I will restructure our

civil service in the top grades so that men and women can easily be

assigned to jobs where they are most needed, and ability will be both

required as well as rewarded.

I will ask you to make it possible for Members of the House of

Representatives to work more effectively in the service of the Nation

through a constitutional amendment extending the term of a Congressman to 4

years, concurrent with that of the President. II.

Because of Vietnam we cannot do all that we should, or all that we would

like to do. We will ruthlessly attack waste and inefficiency. We will make

sure that every dollar is spent with the thrift and with the commonsense

which recognizes how hard the taxpayer worked in order to earn it.

We will continue to meet the needs of our people by continuing to develop

the Great Society.

Last year alone the wealth that we produced increased $47 billion, and it

will soar again this year to a total over $720 billion.

Because our economic policies have produced rising revenues, if you approve

every program that I recommend tonight, our total budget deficit will be

one of the lowest in many years. It will be only $1.8 billion next year.

Total spending in the administrative budget will be $112.8 billion.

Revenues next year will be $111 billion.

On a cash basis--which is the way that you and I keep our family

budget--the Federal budget next year will actually show a surplus. That is

to say, if we include all the money that your Government will take in and

all the money that your Government will spend, your Government next year

will collect one-half billion dollars more than it will spend in the year

1967.

I have not come here tonight to ask for pleasant luxuries or for idle

pleasures. I have come here to recommend that you, the representatives of

the richest Nation on earth, you, the elected servants of a people who live

in abundance unmatched on this globe, you bring the most urgent decencies

of life to all of your fellow Americans.

There are men who cry out: We must sacrifice. Well, let us rather ask them:

Who will they sacrifice? Are they going to sacrifice the children who seek

the learning, or the sick who need medical care, or the families who dwell

in squalor now brightened by the hope of home? Will they sacrifice

opportunity for the distressed, the beauty of our land, the hope of our

poor?

Time may require further sacrifices. And if it does, then we will make

them.

But we will not heed those who wring it from the hopes of the unfortunate

here in a land of plenty.

I believe that we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

But if there are some who do not believe this, then, in the name of

justice, let them call for the contribution of those who live in the

fullness of our blessing, rather than try to strip it from the hands of

those that are most in need.

And let no one think that the unfortunate and the oppressed of this land

sit stifled and alone in their hope tonight. Hundreds of their servants and

their protectors sit before me tonight here in this great Chamber. III.

The Great Society leads us along three roads--growth and justice and

liberation.

I can report to you tonight what you have seen for yourselves already--in

every city and countryside. This Nation is flourishing.

Workers are making more money than ever--with after-tax income in the past

5 years up 33 percent; in the last year alone, up 8 percent.

More people are working than ever before in our history--an increase last

year of 2 1/2 million jobs.

Corporations have greater after-tax earnings than ever in history. For the

past 5 years those earnings have been up over 65 percent, and last year

alone they had a rise of 20 percent.

Average farm income is higher than ever. Over the past 5 years it is up 40

percent, and over the past year it is up 22 percent alone.

I was informed this afternoon by the distinguished Secretary of the

Treasury that his preliminary estimates indicate that our balance of

payments deficit has been reduced from $2.8 billion in 1964 to $1.3

billion, or less, in 1965. This achievement has been made possible by the

patriotic voluntary cooperation of businessmen and bankers working with

your Government.

We must now work together with increased urgency to wipe out this balance

of payments deficit altogether in the next year.

And as our economy surges toward new heights we must increase our vigilance

against the inflation which raises the cost of living and which lowers the

savings of every family in this land. It is essential, to prevent

inflation, that we ask both labor and business to exercise price and wage

restraint, and I do so again tonight.

I believe it desirable, because of increased military expenditures, that

you temporarily restore the automobile and certain telephone excise tax

reductions made effective only 12 days ago. Without raising taxes--or even

increasing the total tax bill paid--we should move to improve our

withholding system so that Americans can more realistically pay as they go,

speed up the collection of corporate taxes, and make other necessary

simplifications of the tax structure at an early date.

I hope these measures will be adequate. But if the necessities of Vietnam

require it, I will not hesitate to return to the Congress for additional

appropriations, or additional revenues if they are needed.

I propose legislation to establish unavoidable requirements for

nondiscriminatory jury selection in Federal and State courts--and to give

the Attorney General the power necessary to enforce those requirements.

I propose legislation to strengthen authority of Federal courts to try

those who murder, attack, or intimidate either civil rights workers or

others exercising their constitutional rights--and to increase penalties to

a level equal to the nature of the crime.

Legislation, resting on the fullest constitutional authority of the Federal

Government, to prohibit racial discrimination in the sale or rental of

housing.

For that other nation within a Nation--the poor--whose distress has now

captured the conscience of America, I will ask the Congress not only to

continue, but to speed up the war on poverty. And in so doing, we will

provide the added energy of achievement with the increased efficiency of

experience.

To improve the life of our rural Americans and our farm population, we will

plan for the future through the establishment of several new Community

Development Districts, improved education through the use of Teacher Corps

teams, better health measures, physical examinations, and adequate and

available medical resources.

For those who labor, I propose to improve unemployment insurance, to expand

minimum wage benefits, and by the repeal of section 14(b) of the

Taft-Hartley Act to make the labor laws in all our States equal to the laws

of the 31 States which do not have tonight right-to-work measures.

And I also intend to ask the Congress to consider measures which, without

improperly invading State and local authority, will enable us effectively

to deal with strikes which threaten irreparable damage to the national

interest.

Yet, slowly, painfully, on the edge of victory, has come the knowledge that

shared prosperity is not enough. In the midst of abundance modern man walks

oppressed by forces which menace and confine the quality of his life, and

which individual abundance alone will not overcome.

We can subdue and we can master these forces--bring increased meaning to

our lives--if all of us, Government and citizens, are bold enough to change

old ways, daring enough to assault new dangers, and if the dream is dear

enough to call forth the limitless capacities of this great people.

This year we must continue to improve the quality of American life.

Let us fulfill and improve the great health and education programs of last

year, extending special opportunities to those who risk their lives in our

Armed Forces.

I urge the House of Representatives to complete action on three programs

already passed by the Senate--the Teacher Corps, rent assistance, and home

rule for the District of Columbia.

In some of our urban areas we must help rebuild entire sections and

neighborhoods containing, in some cases, as many as 100,000 people. Working

together, private enterprise and government must press forward with the

task of providing homes and shops, parks and hospitals, and all the other

necessary parts of a flourishing community where our people can come to

live the good life.

I will offer other proposals to stimulate and to reward planning for the

growth of entire metropolitan areas.

Of all the reckless devastations of our national heritage, none is really

more shameful than the continued poisoning of our rivers and our air.

We must undertake a cooperative effort to end pollution in several river

basins, making additional funds available to help draw the plans and

construct the plants that are necessary to make the waters of our entire

river systems clean, and make them a source of pleasure and beauty for all

of our people.

To attack and to overcome growing crime and lawlessness, I think we must

have a stepped-up program to help modernize and strengthen our local police

forces.

Our people have a right to feel secure in their homes and on their

streets--and that right just must be secured.

Nor can we fail to arrest the destruction of life and property on our

highways.

I will propose a Highway Safety Act of 1966 to seek an end to this mounting

tragedy.

We must also act to prevent the deception of the American

consumer--requiring all packages to state clearly and truthfully their

contents--all interest and credit charges to be fully revealed--and keeping

harmful drugs and cosmetics away from our stores.

It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring

institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich

fertility of American political invention. We must change to master

change.

I propose to take steps to modernize and streamline the executive branch,

to modernize the relations between city and State and Nation.

A new Department of Transportation is needed to bring together our

transportation activities. The present structure--35 Government agencies,

spending $5 billion yearly--makes it almost impossible to serve either the

growing demands of this great Nation or the needs of the industry, or the

right of the taxpayer to full efficiency and real frugality.

I will propose in addition a program to construct and to flight-test a new

supersonic transport airplane that will fly three times the speed of

sound--in excess of 2,000 miles per hour.

I propose to examine our Federal system--the relation between city, State,

Nation, and the citizens themselves. We need a commission of the most

distinguished scholars and men of public affairs to do this job. I will ask

them to move on to develop a creative federalism to best use the wonderful

diversity of our institutions and our people to solve the problems and to

fulfill the dreams of the American people.

As the process of election becomes more complex and more costly, we must

make it possible for those without personal wealth to enter public life

without being obligated to a few large contributors.

Therefore, I will submit legislation to revise the present unrealistic

restriction on contributions--to prohibit the endless proliferation of

committees, bringing local and State committees under the act--to attach

strong teeth and severe penalties to the requirement of full disclosure of

contributions--and to broaden the participation of the people, through added

tax incentives, to stimulate small contributions to the party and to the

candidate of their choice.

To strengthen the work of Congress I strongly urge an amendment to provide

a 4-year term for Members of the House of Representatives--which should not

begin before 1972.

The present 2-year term requires most Members of Congress to divert

enormous energies to an almost constant process of campaigning--depriving

this Nation of the fullest measure of both their skill and their wisdom.

Today, too, the work of government is far more complex than in our early

years, requiring more time to learn and more time to master the technical

tasks of legislating. And a longer term will serve to attract more men of

the highest quality to political life. The Nation, the principle of

democracy, and, I think, each congressional district, will all be better

served by a 4-year term for Members of the House. And I urge your swift

action. IV.

Tonight the cup of peril is full in Vietnam. That conflict is not an

isolated episode, but another great event in the policy that we have

followed with strong consistency since World War II.

The touchstone of that policy is the interest of the United States--the

welfare and the freedom of the people of the United States. But nations

sink when they see that interest only through a narrow glass.

In a world that has grown small and dangerous, pursuit of narrow aims could

bring decay and even disaster.

An America that is mighty beyond description--yet living in a hostile or

despairing world--would be neither safe nor free to build a civilization to

liberate the spirit of man.

In this pursuit we helped rebuild Western Europe. We gave our aid to Greece

and Turkey, and we defended the freedom of Berlin.

In this pursuit we have helped new nations toward independence. We have

extended the helping hand of the Peace Corps and carried forward the

largest program of economic assistance in the world.

And in this pursuit we work to build a hemisphere of democracy and of

social justice.

In this pursuit we have defended against Communist aggression--in Korea

under President Truman--in the Formosa Straits under President

Eisenhower--in Cuba under President Kennedy--and again in Vietnam.

Tonight Vietnam must hold the center of our attention, but across the world

problems and opportunities crowd in on the American Nation. I will discuss

them fully in the months to come, and I will follow the five continuing

lines of policy that America has followed under its last four Presidents.

While special Vietnam expenditures for the next fiscal year are estimated

to increase by $5.8 billion, I can tell you that all the other expenditures

put together in the entire Federal budget will rise this coming year by

only $.6 billion. This is true because of the stringent cost-conscious

economy program inaugurated in the Defense Department, and followed by the

other departments of Government.

We will vigorously pursue existing proposals--and seek new ones--to control

arms and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

By strengthening the common defense, by stimulating world commerce, by

meeting new hopes, these associations serve the cause of a flourishing

world.

We will take new steps this year to help strengthen the Alliance for

Progress, the unity of Europe, the community of the Atlantic, the regional

organizations of developing continents, and that supreme association--the

United Nations.

We will work to strengthen economic cooperation, to reduce barriers to

trade, and to improve international finance.

From the Marshall plan to this very moment tonight, that policy has rested

on the claims of compassion, and the certain knowledge that only a people

advancing in expectation will build secure and peaceful lands.

This year I propose major new directions in our program of foreign

assistance to help those countries who will help themselves.

We will conduct a worldwide attack on the problems of hunger and disease

and ignorance.

We will place the matchless skill and the resources of our own great

America, in farming and in fertilizers, at the service of those countries

committed to develop a modern agriculture.

We will aid those who educate the young in other lands, and we will give

children in other continents the same head start that we are trying to give

our own children. To advance these ends I will propose the International

Education Act of 1966.

I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at

disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the

uncared-for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out

smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during

this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by

increasing our research--and we will earmark funds to help their efforts.

In the next year, from our foreign aid sources, we propose to dedicate $1

billion to these efforts, and we call on all who have the means to join us

in this work in the world.

For a peaceful world order will be possible only when each country walks

the way that it has chosen to walk for itself.

We follow this principle by encouraging the end of colonial rule.

We follow this principle, abroad as well as at home, by continued hostility

to the rule of the many by the few--or the oppression of one race by

another.

We follow this principle by building bridges to Eastern Europe. And I will

ask the Congress for authority to remove the special tariff restrictions

which are a barrier to increasing trade between the East and the West.

The insistent urge toward national independence is the strongest force of

today's world in which we live.

In Africa and Asia and Latin America it is shattering the designs of those

who would subdue others to their ideas or their will.

It is eroding the unity of what was once a Stalinist empire.

In recent months a number of nations have east out those who would subject

them to the ambitions of mainland China.

History is on the side of freedom and is on the side of societies shaped

from the genius of each people. History does not favor a single system or

belief--unless force is used to make it so.

That is why it has been necessary for us to defend this basic principle of

our policy, to defend it in Berlin, in Korea, in Cuba--and tonight in

Vietnam.

For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young

Americans die in a distant land.

Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to

sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the

love of its freedom.

How many times--in my lifetime and in yours--have the American people

gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and

tell them of danger?

Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that

the security and the freedom of this Nation required.

And they do again tonight in Vietnam. Not too many years ago Vietnam was a

peaceful, if troubled, land. In the North was an independent Communist

government. In the South a people struggled to build a nation, with the

friendly help of the United States.

There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on

their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was

dim. Then, little more than 6 years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest.

And from that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from North to

South in a swelling stream that is swallowing the remnants of revolution in

aggression.

As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave,

abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we

could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed.

And we will stay until aggression has stopped.

We will stay because a just nation cannot leave to the cruelties of its

enemies a people who have staked their lives and independence on America's

solemn pledge--a pledge which has grown through the commitments of three

American Presidents.

We will stay because in Asia and around the world are countries whose

independence rests, in large measure, on confidence in America's word and

in America's protection. To yield to force in Vietnam would weaken that

confidence, would undermine the independence of many lands, and would whet

the appetite of aggression. We would have to fight in one land, and then we

would have to fight in another--or abandon much of Asia to the domination

of Communists.

And we do not intend to abandon Asia to conquest.

Last year the nature of the war in Vietnam changed again. Swiftly

increasing numbers of armed men from the North crossed the borders to join

forces that were already in the South. Attack and terror increased, spurred

and encouraged by the belief that the United States lacked the will to

continue and that their victory was near.

Despite our desire to limit conflict, it was necessary to act: to hold back

the mounting aggression, to give courage to the people of the South, and to

make our firmness clear to the North. Thus. we began limited air action

against military targets in North Vietnam. We increased our fighting force

to its present strength tonight of 190,000 men.

These moves have not ended the aggression but they have prevented its

success. The aims of the enemy have been put out of reach by the skill and

the bravery of Americans and their allies--and by the enduring courage of

the South Vietnamese who, I can tell you, have lost eight men last year for

every one of ours.

The enemy is no longer close to victory. Time is no longer on his side.

There is no cause to doubt the American commitment.

Our decision to stand firm has been matched by our desire for peace.

In 1965 alone we had 300 private talks for peace in Vietnam, with friends

and adversaries throughout the world.

Since Christmas your Government has labored again, with imagination and

endurance, to remove any barrier to peaceful settlement. For 20 days now we

and our Vietnamese allies have dropped no bombs in North Vietnam.

Able and experienced spokesmen have visited, in behalf of America, more

than 40 countries. We have talked to more than a hundred governments, all

113 that we have relations with, and some that we don't. We have talked to

the United Nations and we have called upon all of its members to make any

contribution that they can toward helping obtain peace.

In public statements and in private communications, to adversaries and to

friends, in Rome and Warsaw, in Paris and Tokyo, in Africa and throughout

this hemisphere, America has made her position abundantly clear.

We seek neither territory nor bases, economic domination or military

alliance in Vietnam. We fight for the principle of self-determination--that

the people of South Vietnam should be able to choose their own course,

choose it in free elections without violence, without terror, and without

fear.

The people of all Vietnam should make a free decision on the great question

of reunification.

This is all we want for South Vietnam. It is all the people of South

Vietnam want. And if there is a single nation on this earth that desires

less than this for its own people, then let its voice be heard.

We have also made it clear--from Hanoi to New York--that there are no

arbitrary limits to our search for peace. We stand by the Geneva Agreements

of 1954 and 1962. We will meet at any conference table, we will discuss any

proposals--four points or fourteen or forty--and we will consider the views

of any group. We will work for a cease-fire now or once discussions have

begun. We will respond if others reduce their use of force, and we will

withdraw our soldiers once South Vietnam is securely guaranteed the right

to shape its own future.

We have said all this, and we have asked--and hoped--and we have waited for

a response.

So far we have received no response to prove either success or failure.

We have carried our quest for peace to many nations and peoples because we

share this planet with others whose future, in large measure, is tied to

our own action, and whose counsel is necessary to our own hopes.

We have found understanding and support. And we know they wait with us

tonight for some response that could lead to peace.

I wish tonight that I could give you a blueprint for the course of this

conflict over the coming months, but we just cannot know what the future

may require. We may have to face long, hard combat or a long, hard

conference, or even both at once.

Until peace comes, or if it does not come, our course is clear. We will act

as we must to help protect the independence of the valiant people of South

Vietnam. We will strive to limit the conflict, for we wish neither

increased destruction nor do we want to invite increased danger.

But we will give our fighting men what they must have: every gun, and every

dollar, and every decision--whatever the cost or whatever the challenge.

And we will continue to help the people of South Vietnam care for those

that are ravaged by battle, create progress in the villages, and carry

forward the healing hopes of peace as best they can amidst the uncertain

terrors of war.

And let me be absolutely clear: The days may become months, and the months

may become years, but we will stay as long as aggression commands us to

battle.

There may be some who do not want peace, whose ambitions stretch so far

that war in Vietnam is but a welcome and convenient episode in an immense

design to subdue history to their will. But for others it must now be

clear--the choice is not between peace and victory, it lies between peace

and the ravages of a conflict from which they can only lose.

The people of Vietnam, North and South, seek the same things: the shared

needs of man, the needs for food and shelter and education--the chance to

build and work and till the soil, free from the arbitrary horrors of

battle--the desire to walk in the dignity of those who master their own

destiny. For many painful years, in war and revolution and infrequent

peace, they have struggled to fulfill those needs.

It is a crime against mankind that so much courage, and so much will, and

so many dreams, must be flung on the fires of war and death.

To all of those caught up in this conflict we therefore say again tonight:

Let us choose peace, and with it the wondrous works of peace, and beyond

that, the time when hope reaches toward consummation, and life is the

servant of life.

In this work, we plan to discharge our duty to the people whom we serve.

V.

This is the State of the Union.

But over it all--wealth, and promise, and expectation--lies our troubling

awareness of American men at war tonight.

How many men who listen to me tonight have served their Nation in other

wars? How very many are not here to listen?

The war in Vietnam is not like these other wars. Yet, finally, war is

always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It

is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate.

Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in this

world.

Many of you share the burden of this knowledge tonight with me. But there

is a difference. For finally I must be the one to order our guns to fire,

against all the most inward pulls of my desire. For we have children to

teach, and we have sick to be cured, and we have men to be freed. There are

poor to be lifted up, and there are cities to be built, and there is a

world to be helped.

Yet we do what we must.

I am hopeful, and I will try as best I can, with everything I have got, to

end this battle and to return our sons to their desires.

Yet as long as others will challenge America's security and test the

clearness of our beliefs with fire and steel, then we must stand or see the

promise of two centuries tremble. I believe tonight that you do not want me

to try that risk. And from that belief your President summons his strength

for the trials that lie ahead in the days to come.

The work must be our work now. Scarred by the weaknesses of man, with

whatever guidance God may offer us, we must nevertheless and alone with our

mortality, strive to ennoble the life of man on earth.

Thank you, and goodnight.

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