State of the Union | Page 8

Richard Nixon
the late sixties, was
reduced last year. Inflation will be further reduced this year.
But as we have moved from runaway inflation toward reasonable price
stability and at the same time as we have been moving from a wartime
economy to a peacetime economy, we have paid a price in increased
unemployment.
We should take no comfort from the fact that the level of
unemployment in this transition from a wartime to a peacetime
economy is lower than in any peacetime year of the sixties.
This is not good enough for the man who is unemployed in the
seventies. We must do better for workers in peacetime and we will do
better.
To achieve this, I will submit an expansionary budget this year--one
that will help stimulate the economy and thereby open up new job
opportunities for millions of Americans.
It will be a full employment budget, a budget designed to be in balance
if the economy were operating at its peak potential. By spending as if
we were at full employment, we will help to bring about full
employment.
I ask the Congress to accept these expansionary policies--to accept the
concept of a full employment budget. At the same time, I ask the
Congress to cooper* ate in resisting expenditures that go beyond the
limits of the full employment budget. For as we wage a campaign to
bring about a widely shared prosperity, we must not reignite the fires of
inflation and so undermine that prosperity.
With the stimulus and the discipline of a full employment budget, with
the commitment of the independent Federal Reserve System to provide
fully for the monetary needs of a growing economy, and with a much
greater effort on the part of labor and management to make their wage
and price decisions in the light of the national interest and their own
self-interest--then for the worker, the farmer, the consumer, for
Americans everywhere we shall gain the goal of a new prosperity: more
jobs, more income, more profits, without inflation and without war.
This is a great goal, and one that we can achieve together.

The third great goal is to continue the effort so dramatically begun last
year: to restore and enhance our natural environment.
Building on the foundation laid in the 37-point program that I
submitted to Congress last year, I will propose a strong new set of
initiatives to clean up our air and water, to combat noise, and to
preserve and restore our surroundings.
I will propose programs to make better use of our land, to encourage a
balanced national growth--growth that will revitalize our rural
heartland and enhance the quality of life in America.
And not only to meet today's needs but to anticipate those of tomorrow,
I will put forward the most extensive program ever proposed by a
President of the United States to expand the Nation's parks, recreation
areas, open spaces, in a way that truly brings parks to the people where
the people are. For only if we leave a legacy of parks will the next
generation have parks to enjoy.
As a fourth great goal, I will offer a far-reaching set of proposals for
improving America's health care and making it available more fairly to
more people.
I will propose:
--A program to insure that no American family will be prevented from
obtaining basic medical care by inability to pay.
--I will propose a major increase in and redirection of aid to medical
schools, to greatly increase the number of doctors and other health
personnel.
--Incentives to improve the delivery of health services, to get more
medical care resources into those areas that have not been adequately
served, to make greater use of medical assistants, and to slow the
alarming rise in the costs of medical care.
--New programs to encourage better preventive medicine, by attacking
the causes of disease and injury, and by providing incentives to doctors
to keep people well rather than just to treat them when they are sick.
I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch
an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for
whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come
in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the
atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering
this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve

this goal.
America has long been the wealthiest nation in the world. Now it is
time we became the healthiest nation in the world.
The fifth great goal is to strengthen and to renew our State and local
governments.
As we approach our 200th anniversary in 1976, we remember that this
Nation launched itself as a loose confederation of
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