State of the Union | Page 4

a cut--and that is the requests of those agencies
with the responsibilities for law enforcement.
We have heard a great deal of overblown rhetoric during the sixties in
which the word "war" has perhaps too often been used--the war on
poverty, the war on misery, the war on disease, the war on hunger. But

if there is one area where the word "war" is appropriate it is in the fight
against crime. We must declare and win the war against the criminal
elements which increasingly threaten our cities, our homes, and our
lives.
We have a tragic example of this problem in the Nation's Capital, for
whose safety the Congress and the Executive have the primary
responsibility. I doubt if many Members of this Congress who live
more than a few blocks from here would dare leave their cars in the
Capitol garage and walk home alone tonight.
Last year this administration sent to the Congress 13 separate pieces of
legislation dealing with organized crime, pornography, street crime,
narcotics, crime in the District of Columbia.
None of these bills has reached my desk for signature.
I am confident that the Congress will act now to adopt the legislation I
placed before you last year. We in the Executive have done everything
we can under existing law, but new and stronger weapons are needed in
that fight.
While it is true that State and local law enforcement agencies are the
cutting edge in the effort to eliminate street crime, burglaries, murder,
my proposals to you have embodied my belief that the Federal
Government should play a greater role in working in partnership with
these agencies.
That is why 1971 Federal spending for local law enforcement will
double that budgeted for 1970.
The primary responsibility for crimes that affect individuals is with
local and State rather than with Federal Government. But in the field of
organized crime, narcotics, pornography, the Federal Government has a
special responsibility it should fulfill. And we should make Washington,
D.C., where we have the primary responsibility, an example to the
Nation and the world of respect for law rather than lawlessness.
I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well
become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the
seventies.
In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The
profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a
real sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier?
Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this

place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people
lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog,
poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?
These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit
conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They live in the
foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern
ourselves with the way real people live in real life.
The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our
surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to
make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land,
and to our water?
Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond
factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this
country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans,
because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our
failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent
disaster later.
Clean air, clean water, open spaces-these should once again be the
birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.
We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is
clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our
years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that
debt is being called.
The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most
comprehensive and costly program in this field in America's history.
It is not a program for just one year. A year's plan in this field is no
plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but 5 years or 10
years--whatever time is required to do the job.
I shall propose to this Congress a $10 billion nationwide clean waters
program to put modern municipal waste treatment plants in every place
in America where they are needed to make our waters clean again, and
do it now. We have the industrial capacity, if we begin