The world's most affluent society can surely afford to spend whatever must be spent for its freedom and security. We shall continue to maintain the m… - Lyndon B. Johnson
" "The world's most affluent society can surely afford to spend whatever must be spent for its freedom and security. We shall continue to maintain the military forces necessary for our security without regard to arbitrary or predetermined budget ceilings. But we shall continue to insist that those forces be procured at the lowest possible cost and operated with the greatest possible economy and efficiency. To acquire and maintain our unprecedented military power, we have been obliged to invest more than one-half of every dollar paid in taxes to the Federal Government. The Defense budget has grown from $43 billion in Fiscal Year 1960 to more than $51 billion in Fiscal Year 1964. I now estimate the Defense expenditures for Fiscal Year 1965 to be about $49.3 billion, or approximately $2 billion less than in Fiscal Year 1964. I further estimate that Defense expenditures for Fiscal Year 1966 will be reduced still another $300 million. There are two main reasons for this leveling-off in Defense expenditures: First, we have achieved many of the needed changes and increases in our military force structure; Second, we are now realizing the benefits of the rigorous Cost Reduction Program introduced into the Defense establishment during the past four years. As I have stated--and as our enemies well know--this country now possesses a range of credible, usable military power enabling us to deal with every form of military challenge from guerrilla terrorism to thermonuclear war. Barring a significant shift in the international situation, we are not likely to require further increments on so large a scale during the next several years. Expenditures for Defense will thus constitute a declining portion of our expanding annual Gross National Product, which is now growing at the rate of 5 percent each year. If, over the next several years, we continue to spend approximately the same amount of dollars annually for our national defense that we are spending today, an ever-larger share of our expanding national wealth will be free to meet other vital needs, both public and private. Let me be clear, however, to friend and foe alike. So long as I am President, we shall spend whatever is necessary for the security of our people.
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About Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson (27 August 1908 – 22 January 1973), often referred to by his initials LBJ, was an American politician. After a long career in U.S. legislatures, Johnson became the vice president of the United States of America under John F. Kennedy, from 1961 to 1963. A Democrat, Johnson became the 36th U.S. president in 1963, after Kennedy's assassination. He served in the role until 1969.
Also Known As
Native Name:
Lyndon Baines Johnson
Also Known As:
LBJ
Alternative Names:
Lyndon Johnson
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President Johnson
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L. B. Johnson
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Additional quotes by Lyndon B. Johnson
This is how we propose to create these opportunities. First we will give high priority to helping young Americans who lack skills, who have not completed their education or who cannot complete it because they are too poor. The years of high school and college age are the most critical stage of a young person's life. If they are not helped then, many will be condemned to a life of poverty which they, in turn, will pass on to their children. I therefore recommend the creation of a Job Corps, a Work-Training Program, and a Work Study Program. A new national Job Corps will build toward an enlistment of 100,000 young men. They will be drawn from those whose background, health and education make them least fit for useful work. Those who volunteer will enter more than 100 Camps and Centers around the country. Half of these young men will work, in the first year, on special conservation projects to give them education, useful work experience and to enrich the natural resources of the country. Half of these young men will receive, in the first year, a blend of training, basic education and work experience in Job Training Centers. These are not simply camps for the underprivileged. They are new educational institutions, comparable in innovation to the land grant colleges. Those who enter them will emerge better qualified to play a productive role in American society.
As it has come to every generation of Americans, to your hands--to your willingness to work and sacrifice and dare--will be entrusted the fate of the American experiment. Though the responsibility is the same, your task is different and much more difficult than any that have gone before. First, your world will be a young person's world. Fifty-five percent of the world's population is under the age of 25. By 1968 the average age of an American citizen will have dropped to 25. Your generation, the younger generation, is the world's majority. Second, you inherit a world with the greatest of danger, the largest difficulties, and the most promising destiny in history. No longer can we ignore the hopes of the poor and the oppressed. And for the first time we have the power to fulfill those hopes. You may witness a rebirth of hope or the ruin of civilization, you may witness the defeat of misery or the destruction of man. These are choices which you, too, are called upon to make. Third, as an American citizen today, you are also a citizen of the world. Your cause is truly the cause of all mankind.
I would like briefly, today, to mention three problems which menace man's welfare and will threaten it even when armed destruction and war are things of the past. They are the problems of poverty, of disease, and of diminishing natural resources. First is the problem of poverty--the growing division between the rich and poor nations. Today the per capita product of the developed countries is $1,730 a year. In the developing countries it is $143. And the gap is widening, not narrowing. Our own growth must continue. But we must find ways to step up the growth of others or we will be an increasingly isolated island of wealth in the midst of mounting misery. Second is man's struggle against disease, the focal point in his war to control the destructive forces of nature. Each year 3 million people die from tuberculosis. Each year 5 million die from dysentery, 500,000 from measles. In some countries one-sixth of the entire population suffer from leprosy. Yet, we have the knowledge to reduce the toll of these diseases, and to avert millions of separate tragedies of needless death and suffering. Third is the need to develop new resources, and new ways to use existing resources. It has been estimated that if everyone in the world were to rise to the level of living of the United States we would then have to extract about 20 billion tons of iron, 300 million tons of copper, 300 million tons of lead, and 200 million tons of zinc. These totals are well over 100 times the world's present annual rate of production.
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