Gains in jobs and profits are going hand in hand. Workers are gaining in purchasing power through fuller employment, through longer hours, through hi… - Lyndon B. Johnson

A fourth enduring strand of policy has been to help improve the life of man. From the Marshall Plan to this very moment tonight, that policy has rested on the claims of compassion, and the certain knowledge that only a people advancing in expectation will build secure and peaceful lands. This year I propose major new directions in our program of foreign assistance to help those countries who will help themselves. We will conduct a worldwide attack on the problems of hunger and disease and ignorance. We will place the matchless skill and the resources of our own great America, in farming and in fertilizers, at the service of those countries committed to develop a modern agriculture. We will aid those who educate the young in other lands, and we will give children in other continents the same head start that we are trying to give our own children. To advance these ends I will propose the International Education Act of 1966. I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared—for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by increasing our research—and we will earmark funds to help their efforts. In the next year, from our foreign aid sources, we propose to dedicate $1 billion to these efforts, and we call on all who have the means to join us in this work in the world.

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.

What we won when all of our people united just must not now be lost in suspicion, distrust, selfishness, and politics among any of our people. Believing this as I do, I have concluded that I should not permit the Presidency to become involved in the partisan divisions that are developing in this political year. With America's sons in the fields far away, with America's future under challenge right here at home, with our hopes and the world's hopes for peace in the balance every day, I do not believe that I should devote an hour or a day of my time to any personal partisan causes or to any duties other than the awesome duties of this office — the Presidency of your country. Accordingly, I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President.