Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the Congress:
It is a pleasure to return from whence I came. You are among my oldestfriends in Washington—and this House is my oldest home. It was here, morethan 14 years ago, that I first took the oath of Federal office. It washere, for 14 years, that I gained both knowledge and inspiration frommembers of both parties in both Houses—from your wise and generousleaders—and from the pronouncements which I can vividly recall, sittingwhere you now sit—including the programs of two great Presidents, theundimmed eloquence of Churchill, the soaring idealism of Nehru, thesteadfast words of General de Gaulle. To speak from this same historicrostrum is a sobering experience. To be back among so many friends is ahappy one.
I am confident that that friendship will continue. Our Constitution wiselyassigns both joint and separate roles to each branch of the government; anda President and a Congress who hold each other in mutual respect willneither permit nor attempt any trespass. For my part, I shall withhold fromneither the Congress nor the people any fact or report, past, present, orfuture, which is necessary for an informed judgment of our conduct andhazards. I shall neither shift the burden of executive decisions to theCongress, nor avoid responsibility for the outcome of those decisions.
I speak today in an hour of national peril and national opportunity. Beforemy term has ended, we shall have to test anew whether a nation organizedand 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 inoffice—detailed legislation to remedy every national ill, the Congresswould rightly wonder whether the desire for speed had replaced the duty ofresponsibility.
My remarks, therefore, will be limited. But they will also be candid. Tostate the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past.The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies, and gives afaithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust. And,while the occasion does not call for another recital of our blessings andassets, we do have no greater asset than the willingness of a free anddetermined people, through its elected officials, to face all problemsfrankly and meet all dangers free from panic or fear.
I.
The present state of our economy is disturbing. We take office in the wakeof seven months of recession, three and one-half years of slack, sevenyears of diminished economic growth, and nine years of falling farmincome.
Business bankruptcies have reached their highest level since the GreatDepression. Since 1951 farm income has been squeezed down by 25 percent.Save for a brief period in 1958, insured unemployment is at the highestpeak in our history. Of some five and one-half million Americans who arewithout jobs, more than one million have been searching for work for morethan four months. And during each month some 150,000 workers are exhausti