Editor's Note: In a historic speech delivered with eloquence before Congress on Jan. 8, 1964, former President Lyndon Johnson, in his first State of the Union Address, also known as the war on poverty speech, forcefully summoned the conscience of the nation to fight poverty. Fifty-four years later, American society is still caught up in the manacles of severe economic inequality. We reproduce the speech as a salient reminder of where we are.
Last year's congressional session was the longest in peacetime history. With that foundation, let us work together to make this year's session the best in the Nation's history.
We have in 1964 a unique opportunity and obligation — to prove the success of our system; to disprove those cynics and critics at home and abroad who question our purpose and our competence.
Let us carry forward the plans and programs of John Fitzgerald Kennedy — not because of our sorrow or sympathy, but because they are right.
It will cut our deficit in half — from $10 billion to $4,900 million. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951.
It will call for total expenditures of $97,900 million — compared to $98,400 million for the current year, a reduction of more than $500 million. It will call for new obligational authority of $103,800 million — a reduction of more than $4 billion below last year's request of $107,900 million.
But it is not a standstill budget, for America cannot afford to stand still. Our population is growing. Our economy is more complex. Our people's needs are expanding.
But by closing down obsolete installations, by curtailing less urgent programs, by cutting back where cutting back seems to be wise, by insisting on a dollar's worth for a dollar spent, I am able to recommend in this reduced budget the most Federal support in history for education, for health, for retraining the unemployed, and for helping the economically and the physically handicapped.
This budget, and this year's legislative program, are designed to help each and every American citizen fulfill his basic hopes — his hopes for a fair chance to make good; his hopes for fair play from the law; his hopes for a full-time job on full-time pay; his hopes for a decent home for his family in a decent community; his hopes for a good school for his children with good teachers; and his hopes for security when faced with sickness or unemployment or old age.
Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope — some because of their poverty, and some because of theft color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity.
For until the bill is signed, its investment incentives cannot be deemed certain, and the withholding rate cannot be reduced-and the most damaging and devastating thing you can do to any businessman in America is to keep him in doubt and to keep him guessing on what our tax policy is. And I say that we should now reduce to 14 percent instead of 15 percent our withholding rate.
I therefore urge the Congress to take final action on this bill by the first of February, if at all possible. For however proud we may be of the unprecedented progress of our free enterprise economy over the last 3 years, we should not and we cannot permit it to pause.
In 1963, for the first time in history, we crossed the 70 million job mark, but we will soon need more than 75 million jobs. In 1963 our gross national product reached the $600 billion level — $100 billion higher than when we took office. But it easily could and it should be still $30 billion higher today than it is.
Wages and profits and family income are also at their highest levels in history — but I would remind you that 4 million workers and 13 percent of our industrial capacity are still idle today.
Let me make one principle of this administration abundantly clear: All of these increased opportunities — in employment, in education, in housing, and in every field-must be open to Americans of every color. As far as the writ of Federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination. For this is not merely an economic issue, or a social, political, or international issue. It is a moral issue, and it must be met by the passage this session of the bill now pending in the House.
Today, Americans of all races stand side by side in Berlin and in Viet Nam. They died side by side in Korea. Surely they can work and eat and travel side by side in their own country.
First, we must maintain — and our reduced defense budget will maintain — that margin of military safety and superiority obtained through 3 years of steadily increasing both the quality and the quantity of our strategic, our conventional, and our anti-guerilla forces. In 1964 we will be better prepared than ever before to defend the cause of freedom, whether it is threatened by outright aggression or by the infiltration practiced by those in Hanoi and Havana, who ship arms and men across international borders to foment insurrection. And we must continue to use that strength as John Kennedy used it in the Cuban crisis and for the test ban treaty — to demonstrate both the futility of nuclear war and the possibilities of lasting peace.
Second, we must take new steps — and we shall make new proposals at Geneva — toward the control and the eventual abolition of arms. Even in the absence of agreement, we must not stockpile arms beyond our needs or seek an excess of military power that could be provocative as well as wasteful.
Third, we must make increased use of our food as an instrument of peace — making it available by sale or trade or loan or donation-to hungry people in all nations which tell us of their needs and accept proper conditions of distribution.
Fourth, we must assure our pre-eminence in the peaceful exploration of outer space, focusing on an expedition to the moon in this decade — in cooperation with other powers if possible, alone if necessary.
Eighth, we must strengthen the ability of free nations everywhere to develop their independence and raise their standard of living, and thereby frustrate those who prey on poverty and chaos. To do this, the rich must help the poor — and we must do our part. We must achieve a more rigorous administration of our development assistance, with larger roles for private investors, for other industrialized nations, and for international agencies and for the recipient nations themselves.
My good friends and my fellow Americans: In these last 7 sorrowful weeks, we have learned anew that nothing is so enduring as faith, and nothing is so degrading as hate.
John Kennedy was a victim of hate, but he was also a great builder of faith — faith in our fellow Americans, whatever their creed or their color or their station in life; faith in the future of man, whatever his divisions and differences.
So I ask you now in the Congress and in the country to join with me in expressing and fulfilling that faith in working for a nation, a nation that is free from want and a world that is free from hate — a world of peace and justice, and freedom and abundance, for our time and for all time to come.