State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower
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Dwight D. Eisenhower >> State of the Union Addresses of Dwight D. Eisenhower
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5. SCIENTIFIC COOPERATION WITH OUR ALLIES
Fifth: It is of the highest importance that the Congress enact the
necessary legislation to enable us to exchange appropriate scientific and
technical information with friendly countries as part of our effort to
achieve effective scientific cooperation.
It is wasteful in the extreme for friendly allies to consume talent and
money in solving problems that their friends have already solved--all
because of artificial barriers to sharing. We cannot afford to cut
ourselves off from the brilliant talents and minds of scientists in
friendly countries. The task ahead will be hard enough without handcuffs of
our own making.
The groundwork for this kind of cooperation has already been laid in
discussions among NATO countries. Promptness in following through with
legislation will be the best possible evidence of American unity of purpose
in cooperating with our friends.
6. EDUCATION AND RESEARCH
Sixth: In the area of education and research, I recommend a balanced
program to improve our resources, involving an investment of about a
billion dollars over a four year period. This involves new activities by
the Department of Health, Education and Welfare designed principally to
encourage improved teaching quality and student opportunities in the
interests of national security. It also provides a five-fold increase in
sums available to the National Science Foundation for its special
activities in stimulating and improving science education.
Scrupulous attention has been paid to maintaining local control of
educational policy, spurring the maximum amount of local effort, and to
avoiding undue stress on the physical sciences at the expense of other
branches of learning.
In the field of research, I am asking for substantial increases in basic
research funds, including a doubling of the funds available to the National
Science Foundation for this purpose.
But Federal action can do only a part of the job. In both education and
research, redoubled exertions will be necessary on the part of all
Americans if we are to rise to the demands of our times. This means hard
work on the part of state and local governments, private industry, schools
and colleges, private organizations and foundations, teachers, parents,
and--perhaps most important of all--the student himself, with his bag of
books and his homework.
With this kind of all-inclusive campaign, I have no doubt that we can
create the intellectual capital we need for the years ahead, invest it in
the right places--and do all this, not as regimented pawns, but as free men
and women !
7. SPENDING AND SAVING
Seventh: To provide for this extra effort for security, we must apply stern
tests of priority to other expenditures, both military and civilian. This
extra effort involves, most immediately, the need for a supplemental
defense appropriation of $1.3 billion for fiscal year 1958.
In the 1959 budget, increased expenditures for missiles, nuclear ships,
atomic energy, research and development, science and education, a special
contingency fund to deal with possible new technological discoveries, and
increases in pay and incentives to obtain and retain competent manpower add
up to a total increase over the comparable figures in the 1957 budget of
about $4 billion.
I believe that, in spite of these necessary increases, we should strive to
finance the 1959 security effort out of expected revenues. While we now
believe that expected revenues and expenditures will roughly balance, our
real purpose will be to achieve adequate security, but always with the
utmost regard for efficiency and careful management.
This purpose will require the cooperation of Congress in making careful
analysis of estimates presented, reducing expenditure on less essential
military programs and installations, postponing some new civilian programs,
transferring some to the states, and curtailing or eliminating others.
Such related matters as the national debt ceiling and tax revenues will be
dealt with in later messages.
8. WORKS OF PEACE
My last call for action is not primarily addressed to the Congress and
people of the United States. Rather, it is a message from the people of the
United States to all other peoples, especially those of the Soviet Union.
This is the spirit of what we would like to say:
"In the last analysis, there is only one solution to the grim problems that
lie ahead. The world must stop the present plunge toward more and more
destructive weapons of war, and turn the corner that will start our steps
firmly on the path toward lasting peace.
"Our greatest hope for success lies in a universal fact: the people of the
world, as people, have always wanted peace and want peace now.
"The problem, then, is to find a way of translating this universal desire
into action.
"This will require more than words of peace. It requires works of peace."
Now, may I try to give you some concrete examples of the kind of works of
peace that might make a beginning in the new direction.
For a start our people should learn to know each other better. Recent
negotiations in Washington have provided a basis in principle for greater
freedom of communication and exchange of people. I urge the Soviet
government to cooperate in turning principle into practice by prompt and
tangible actions that will break down the unnatural barriers that have
blocked the flow of thought and understanding between our people.
Another kind of work of peace is cooperation on projects of human welfare.
For example, we now have it within our power to eradicate from the face of
the earth that age-old scourge of mankind: malaria. We are embarking with
other nations in an all-out five-year campaign to blot out this curse
forever. We invite the Soviets to join with us in this great work of
humanity.
Indeed, we would be willing to pool our efforts with the Soviets in other
campaigns against the diseases that are the common enemy of all
mortals--such as cancer and heart disease.
If people can get together on such projects, is it not possible that we
could then go on to a full-scale cooperative program of Science for Peace?
We have as a guide and inspiration the success of our Atoms-for-Peace
proposal, which in only a few years, under United Nations auspices, became
a reality in the International Atomic Energy Agency.
A program of Science for Peace might provide a means of funneling into one
place the results of research from scientists everywhere and from there
making it available to all parts of the world.
There is almost no limit to the human betterment that could result from
such cooperation. Hunger and disease could increasingly be driven from the
earth. The age-old dream of a good life for all could, at long last, be
translated into reality.
But of all the works of peace, none is more needed now than a real first
step toward disarmament.
Last August the United Nations General Assembly, by an overwhelming vote,
approved a disarmament plan that we and our allies sincerely believed to be
fair and practical. The Soviets have rejected both the plan, and the
negotiating procedure set up by the United Nations. As a result,
negotiation on this supremely important issue is now at a stand-still.
But the world cannot afford to stand still on disarmament! We must never
give up the search for a basis of agreement.
Our allies from time to time develop differing ideas on how to proceed. We
must concert these convictions among ourselves. Thereafter, any reasonable
proposal that holds promise for disarmament and reduction of tension must
be heard, discussed, and, if possible, negotiated.
But a disarmament proposal, to hold real promise, must at the minimum have
one feature: reliable means to ensure compliance by all. It takes actions
and demonstrated integrity on both sides to create and sustain confidence.
And confidence in a genuine disarmament agreement is vital, not only to the
signers of the agreement, but also to the millions of people all over the
world who are weary of tensions and armaments.
I say once more, to all peoples, that we will always go the extra mile with
anyone on earth if it will bring us nearer a genuine peace. CONCLUSION
These, then, are the ways in which we must funnel our energies more
efficiently into the task of advancing security and peace.
These actions demand and expect two things of the American people:
sacrifice, and a high degree of understanding. For sacrifice to be
effective it must be intelligent. Sacrifice must be made for the right
purpose and in the right place--even if that place happens to come close to
home !
After all, it is no good demanding sacrifice in general terms one day, and
the next day, for local reasons, opposing the elimination of some unneeded
Federal facility.
It is pointless to condemn Federal spending in general, and the next moment
condemn just as strongly an effort to reduce the particular Federal grant
that touches one's own interest.
And it makes no sense whatever to spend additional billions on military
strength to deter a potential danger, and then, by cutting aid and trade
programs, let the world succumb to a present danger in economic guise.
My friends of the Congress: The world is waiting to see how wisely and
decisively a free representative government will now act.
I believe that this Congress possesses and will display the wisdom promptly
to do its part in translating into law the actions demanded by our nation's
interests. But, to make law effective, our kind of government needs the
full voluntary support of millions of Americans for these actions.
I am fully confident that the response of the Congress and of the American
people will make this time of test a time of honor. Mankind then will see
more clearly than ever that the future belongs, not to the concept of the
regimented atheistic state, but to the people--the God-fearing,
peace-loving people of all the world.
The Address as reported from the floor appears in the Congressional Record
(vol. 104, p. 171).
***
State of the Union Address
Dwight D. Eisenhower
January 9, 1959
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 86th Congress, my fellow
citizens:
This is the moment when Congress and the Executive annually begin their
cooperative work to build a better America.
One basic purpose unites us: To promote strength and security, side by side
with liberty and opportunity.
As we meet today, in the 170th year of the Republic, our Nation must
continue to provide--as all other free governments have had to do
throughout time--a satisfactory answer to a question as old as history. It
is: Can Government based upon liberty and the God-given rights of man,
permanently endure when ceaselessly challenged by a dictatorship, hostile
to our mode of life, and controlling an economic and military power of
great and growing strength?
For us the answer has always been found, and is still found in the
devotion, the vision, the courage and the fortitude of our people.
Moreover, this challenge we face, not as a single powerful nation, but as
one that has in recent decades reached a position of recognized leadership
in the Free World.
We have arrived at this position of leadership in an era of remarkable
productivity and growth. It is also a time when man's power of mass
destruction has reached fearful proportions.
Possession of such capabilities helps create world suspicion and tension.
We, on our part, know that we seek only a just peace for all, with
aggressive designs against no one. Yet we realize that there is uneasiness
in the world because of a belief on the part of peoples that through
arrogance, miscalculation or fear of attack, catastrophic war could be
launched. Keeping the peace in today's world more than ever calls for the
utmost in the nation's resolution, wisdom, steadiness and unremitting
effort.
We cannot build peace through desire alone. Moreover, we have learned the
bitter lesson that international agreements, historically considered by us
as sacred, are regarded in Communist doctrine and in practice to be mere
scraps of paper. The most recent proof of their disdain of international
obligations, solemnly undertaken, is their announced intention to abandon
their responsibilities respecting Berlin.
As a consequence, we can have no confidence in any treaty to which
Communists are a party except where such a treaty provides within itself
for self-enforcing mechanisms. Indeed, the demonstrated disregard of the
Communists of their own pledges is one of the greatest obstacles to success
in substituting the Rule of Law for rule by force.
Yet step by step we must strengthen the institutions of peace--a peace that
rests upon justice--a peace that depends upon a deep knowledge and dear
understanding by all peoples of the cause and consequences of possible
failure in this great purpose.
To achieve this peace we seek to prevent war at any place and in any
dimension. If, despite our best efforts, a local dispute should flare into
armed hostilities, the next problem would be to keep the conflict from
spreading, and so compromising freedom. In support of these objectives we
maintain forces of great power and flexibility.
Our formidable air striking forces are a powerful deterrent to general war.
Large and growing portions of these units can depart from their bases in a
matter of minutes.
Similar forces are included in our naval fleets.
Ground and other tactical formations can move with swiftness and precision,
when requested by friendly and responsible governments, to help curb
threatened aggression. The stabilizing influence of this capacity has been
dramatically demonstrated more than once over the past year.
Our military and related scientific progress has been highly gratifying.
Great strides have been made in the development of ballistic missiles.
Intermediate range missiles are now being deployed in operational units.
The Arias intercontinental ballistic missile program has been marked by
rapid development as evidenced by recent successful tests. Missile training
units have been established and launching sites are far along in
construction.
New aircraft that fly at twice the speed of sound are entering our
squadrons.
We have successfully placed five satellites in orbit, which have gathered
information of scientific importance never before available. Our latest
satellite illustrates our steady advance in rocketry and foreshadows new
developments in world-wide communications.
Warning systems constantly improve.
Our atomic submarines have shattered endurance records and made historic
voyages under the North Polar Sea.
A major segment of our national scientific and engineering community is
working intensively to achieve new and greater developments. Advance in
military technology requires adequate financing but, of course, even more,
it requires talent and time.
All this is given only as a matter of history; as a record of our progress
in space and ballistic missile fields in no more than four years of
intensive effort. At the same time we clearly recognize that some of the
recent Soviet accomplishments in this particular technology are indeed
brilliant.
Under the law enacted last year the Department of Defense is being
reorganized to give the Secretary of Defense full authority over the
military establishment. Greater efficiency, more cohesive effort and
speedier reaction to emergencies are among the many advantages we are
already noting from these changes.
These few highlights point up our steady military gains. We are rightfully
gratified by the achievements they represent. But we must remember that
these imposing armaments are purchased at great cost.
National Security programs account for nearly sixty percent of the entire
Federal budget for this coming fiscal year.
Modern weapons are exceedingly expensive.
The overall cost of introducing ATLAS into our armed forces will average
$35 million per missile on the firing line.
This year we are investing an aggregate of close to $7 billion in missile
programs alone.
Other billions go for research, development, test and evaluation of new
weapons systems.
Our latest atomic submarines will cost $50 millions each, while some
special types will cost three times as much.
We are now ordering fighter aircraft which are priced at fifty times as
much as the fighters of World War II.
We are buying certain bombers that cost their weight in gold.
These sums are tremendous, even when compared with the marvelous resiliency
and capacity of our economy.
Such expenditures demand both balance and perspective in our planning for
defense. At every turn, we must weigh, judge and select. Needless
duplication of weapons and forces must be avoided.
We must guard against feverish building of vast armaments to meet glibly
predicted moments of so-called "maximum peril." The threat we face is not
sporadic or dated: It is continuous. Hence we must not be swayed in our
calculations either by groundless fear or by complacency. We must avoid
extremes, for vacillation between extremes is inefficient, costly, and
destructive of morale. In these days of unceasing technological advance, we
must plan our defense expenditures systematically and with care, fully
recognizing that obsolescence compels the never-ending replacement of older
weapons with new ones.
The defense budget for the coming year has been planned on the basis of
these principles and considerations. Over these many months I have
personally participated in its development.
The aim is a sensible posture of defense. The secondary aim is increased
efficiency and avoidance of waste. Both are achieved by this budgetary
plan.
Working by these guide lines I believe with all my heart that America can
be as sure of the strength and efficiency of her armed forces as she is of
their loyalty. I am equally sure that the nation will thus avoid useless
expenditures which, in the name of security, might tend to undermine the
economy and, therefore, the nation's safety.
Our own vast strength is only a part of that required for dependable
security. Because of this we have joined with nearly 50 other nations in
collective security arrangements. In these common undertakings each nation
is expected to contribute what it can in sharing the heavy load. Each
supplies part of a strategic deployment to protect the forward boundaries
of freedom.
Constantly we seek new ways to make more effective our contribution to this
system of collective security. Recently I have asked a Committee of eminent
Americans of both parties to re-appraise our military assistance programs
and the relative emphasis which should be placed on military and economic
aid.
I am hopeful that preliminary recommendations of this Committee will be
available in time to assist in shaping the Mutual Security program for the
coming fiscal year.
Any survey of the free world's defense structure cannot fail to impart a
feeling of regret that so much of our effort and resources must be devoted
to armaments. At Geneva and elsewhere we continue to seek technical and
other agreements that may help to open up, with some promise, the issues of
international disarmament. America will never give up the hope that
eventually all nations can, with mutual confidence, drastically reduce
these non-productive expenditures. II.
The material foundation of our national safety is a strong and expanding
economy. This we have--and this we must maintain. Only with such an economy
can we be secure and simultaneously provide for the well-being of our
people.
A year ago the nation was experiencing a decline in employment and output.
Today that recession is fading into history, and this without gigantic,
hastily-improvised public works projects or untimely tax reductions. A
healthy and vigorous recovery has been under way since last May. New homes
are being built at the highest rate in several years. Retail sales are at
peak levels. Personal income is at an all-time high.
The marked forward thrust of our economy reaffirms our confidence in
competitive enterprise. But--clearly--wisdom and prudence in both the
public and private sectors of the economy are always necessary.
Our outlook is this: 1960 commitments for our armed forces, the Atomic
Energy Commission and Military Assistance exceed 47 billion dollars. In the
foreseeable future they are not likely to be significantly lower. With an
annual population increase of three million, other governmental costs are
bound to mount.
After we have provided wisely for our military strength, we must judge how
to allocate our remaining government resources most effectively to promote
our well-being and economic growth.
Federal programs that will benefit all citizens are moving forward.
Next year we will be spending increased amounts on health programs; on
Federal assistance to science and education; on the development of the
nation's water resources; on the renewal of urban areas; and on our vast
system of Federal-aid highways.
Each of these additional outlays is being made necessary by the surging
growth of America.
Let me illustrate. Responsive to this growth, Federal grants and long term
loans to assist 14 major types of capital improvements in our cities will
total over 2 billion dollars in 1960--double the expenditure of two years
ago. The major responsibility for development in these fields rests in the
localities, even though the Federal Government will continue to do its
proper part in meeting the genuine needs of a burgeoning population.
But the progress of our economy can more than match the growth of our
needs. We need only to act wisely and confidently.
Here, I hope you will permit me to digress long enough to express something
that is much on my mind.
The basic question facing us today is more than mere survival--the military
defense of national life and territory. It is the preservation of a way of
life.
We must meet the world challenge and at the same time permit no stagnation
in America.
Unless we progress, we regress.
We can successfully sustain security and remain true to our heritage of
freedom if we clearly visualize the tasks ahead and set out to perform them
with resolution and fervor. We must first define these tasks and then
understand what we must do to perform them.
If progress is to be steady we must have long term guides extending far
ahead, certainly five, possibly even ten years. They must reflect the
knowledge that before the end of five years we will have a population of
over 190 million. They must be goals that stand high, and so inspire every
citizen to climb always toward mounting levels of moral, intellectual and
material strength. Every advance toward them must stir pride in individual
and national achievements.
To define these goals, I intend to mobilize help from every available
source.
We need more than politically ordained national objectives to challenge the
best efforts of free men and women. A group of selfless and devoted
individuals, outside of government, could effectively participate in making
the necessary appraisal of the potentials of our future. The result would
be establishment of national goals that would not only spur us on to our
finest efforts, but would meet the stern test of practicality.
The Committee I plan will comprise educators and representatives of labor,
management, finance, the professions and every other kind of useful
activity.
Such a study would update and supplement, in the light of continuous
changes in our society and its economy, the monumental work of the
Committee on Recent Social Trends which was appointed in 1931 by President
Hoover. Its report has stood the test of time and has had a beneficial
influence on national development. The new Committee would be concerned,
among other things, with the acceleration of our economy's growth and the
living standards of our people, their health and education, their better
assurance of life and liberty and their greater opportunities. It would
also be concerned with methods to meet such goals and what levels of
government--Local, State, or Federal--might or should be particularly
concerned.
As one example, consider our schools, operated under the authority of local
communities and states. In their capacity and in their quality they conform
to no recognizable standards. In some places facilities are ample, in
others meager. Pay of teachers ranges between wide limits, from the
adequate to the shameful. As would be expected, quality of teaching varies
just as widely. But to our teachers we commit the most valuable possession
of the nation and of the family--our children.
We must have teachers of competence. To obtain and hold them we need
standards. We need a National Goal. Once established I am certain that
public opinion would compel steady progress toward its accomplishment.
Such studies would be helpful, I believe, to government at all levels and
to all individuals. The goals so established could help us see our current
needs in perspective. They will spur progress.
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