In each generation, with toil and tears, we have had to earn our heritage again. If we fail now, we shall have forgotten in abundance what we learned… - Lyndon B. Johnson

The new program I propose is within our means. Its cost of 970 million dollars is 1 percent of our national budget--and every dollar I am requesting for this program is already included in the budget I sent to Congress in January. But we cannot measure its importance by its cost. For it charts an entirely new course of hope for our people. We are fully aware that this program will not eliminate all the poverty in America in a few months or a few years. Poverty is deeply rooted and its causes are many. But this program will show the way to new opportunities for millions of our fellow citizens. It will provide a lever with which we can begin to open the door to our prosperity for those who have been kept outside. It will also give us the chance to test our weapons, to try our energy and ideas and imagination for the many battles yet to come. As conditions change, and as experience illuminates our difficulties, we will be prepared to modify our strategy. And this program is much more than a beginning. Rather it is a commitment. It is a total commitment by this President, and this Congress, and this nation, to pursue victory over the most ancient of mankind's enemies.

No words are adequate to really express the feeling of this occasion. Most of all, I wish to be equal to your confidence, and to the hopes of all of the people of America. We have voted as many, but tonight we must face the world as one.

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.