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"A Balanced Budget." That proposition defined, the President bore down on his central point for 1959: "I shall submit a balanced budget for the next year, a year that is expected to be the most prosperous of our history to date. If we cannot live within our means during such a time of rising prosperity, the hope of fiscal integrity will fail."
Specifically he would:
¶ Request the Treasury Department to prepare tax reforms (which many headlines called TAX CUTS ) for use "at the proper time,'' designed to "enhance incentives for all Americans to work, to save, and to invest";
¶ Set up a new Cabinet committee to study wage-price stability;
¶ Ask Congress to amend the Employment Act of 1946, to write into U.S. law the determination of the Federal Government to keep price levels steady;
¶ Urge congressional legislation "to make more effective use of the large federal expenditure for agriculture," which ran in fiscal 1959 to $5 billion for farm price supports and brought the U.S. hoard of stored-up surplus farm commodities to a total value of $9 billion and an annual cost for storage, interest and handling of $1 billion.
"The Shining Prospect." "All of us know." said the President, "that to advance the cause of freedom we must do much more than help build sound economies." The U.S. had taken strong stands in Lebanon. Formosa, Berlin (heavy applause) that were "clear, right and expressive of the determined will of a united people." The U.S.'s allies in Europe are experiencing new internal vitality. But the U.S. has not yet marshaled all of its powerful moral forces.
In this world context, it needs at home 1) to legislate a cleanup of crooked labor unions, and 2) to advance civil rights and equality of opportunity under the law. And beyond setting domestic examples, the U.S. at all times should seek "to replace force with a genuine rule of law among nations." Implied promise: a presidential proposal to remove current restrictions to full U.S. use of the World Court to settle disputes.
Then, to his top-heavily Democratic audience, the President spoke one of his finest perorations:
Let us remind ourselves that Marxist scripture is not new; this is not the gospel of the future. Its basic objective is dictatorship, old as history. What is new is the shining prospect that man can build a world where all can live in dignity. We march in the noblest of causes—human freedom.
If we make ourselves worthy of America's ideals, if we do not forget that our nation was founded on the premise that all men are creatures of God's making, the world will come to know that it is free men who carry forward the true promise of human progress and dignity.
Thank you very much.
*Gold is valued at about $500 per pound; the Air Force's supersonic Convair B58 bomber costs $26.7 million at $568 per pound: the Navy's lighter North American A3J nuclear bomber costs $17.6 million at $651 per pound.