That tax bill has been thoroughly discussed for a year. Now we need action. The new budget clearly allows it. Our taxpayers surely deserve it. Our ec… - Lyndon B. Johnson

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the House and the Senate, my fellow Americans. I come before you tonight to report on the State of the Union for the third time. I come here to thank you and to add my tribute, once more, to the nation's gratitude for this, the 89th Congress. This Congress has already reserved for itself an honored chapter in the history of America. Our nation tonight is engaged in a brutal and bitter conflict in Vietnam. Later on I want to discuss that struggle in some detail with you. It just must be the center of our concerns. But we will not permit those who fire upon us in Vietnam to win a victory over the desires and the intentions of all the American people. This nation is mighty enough, its society is healthy enough, its people are strong enough, to pursue our goals in the rest of the world while still building a Great Society here at home. And that is what I have come here to ask of you tonight.

Let there be no mistake. The objectives we seek will not be handed to you by a beneficent government. The work of a few men in Washington will not make life easier. No one man can lead this Nation, and you cannot sit idly by, quietly waiting for the day when someone else will make everything better for you. These goals are going to demand your effort and your work and your sacrifice, and the best from every American. It will mean that each of you must participate in the affairs of your community and your State and your Nation. It will require the help of government at every level, of labor and of business, of farmers and consumers. A President can lead and teach, and explore, and set goals. He can have his eyes in the stars, with a vision that will flow therefrom, and he can have his feet on the ground, with a solid foundation that we need. But no leader can make a people more than they are, or make them more than they really want to be. My success and America's success will depend on you.

By the oath I have taken "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States," duty directs — and strong personal conviction impels — that I advise the Congress that action is necessary, and necessary now, if the Constitution is to be upheld and the rights of all citizens are not to be mocked, abused and denied. I must regretfully report to the Congress the following facts: 1. That the Fifteenth Amendment of our Constitution is today being systematically and willfully circumvented in certain State and local jurisdictions of our Nation.
2. That representatives of such State and local governments acting "under the color of law," are denying American citizens the right to vote on the sole basis of race or color.
3. That, as a result of these practices, in some areas of our country today no significant number of American citizens of the Negro race can be registered to vote except upon the intervention and order of a Federal Court.
4. That the remedies available under law to citizens thus denied their Constitutional rights — and the authority presently available to the Federal Government to act in their behalf — are clearly inadequate.
5. That the denial of these rights and the frustration of efforts to obtain meaningful relief from such denial without undue delay is contributing to the creation of conditions which are both inimical to our domestic order and tranquillity and incompatible with the standards of equal justice and individual dignity on which our society stands.
I am, therefore, calling upon the Congress to discharge the duty authorized in Section 2 of the Fifteenth Amendment "to enforce this Article by appropriate legislation."