Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, distinguished Members of the Congress:I share with all of you the grief that you feel at the death today of one of the most beloved, respected, and effective Members of this body, the distinguished Representative from Rhode Island, Mr. Fogarty.I have come here tonight to report to you that this is a time of testing for our Nation.At home, the question is whether we will continue working for better opportunities for all Americans, when most Americans are already living better than any people in history.Abroad, the question is whether we have the staying power to fight a very costly war, when the objective is limited and the danger to us is seemingly remote.So our test is not whether we shrink from our country's cause when the dangers to us are obvious and dose at hand, but, rather, whether we carry on when they seem obscure and distant--and some think that it is safe to lay down our burdens.I have come tonight m ask this Congress and this Nation to resolve that issue: to meet our commitments at home and abroad-to continue to build a better America--and to reaffirm this Nation's allegiance to freedom.As President Abraham Lincoln said, "We must ask where we are, and whither we are tending."The last 3 years bear witness to our determination to make this a better country.We have struck down legal barriers to equality.We have improved the education of 7 million deprived children and this year alone we have enabled almost 1 million students to go to college.We have brought medical care to older people who were unable to afford it. Three and one-half million Americans have already received treatment under Medicare since July.We have built a strong economy that has put almost 3 million more Americans on the payrolls in the last year alone.We have included more than 9 million new workers under a higher minimum wage.We have launched new training programs to provide job skills for almost 1 million Americans.We have helped more than a thousand local communities to attack poverty in the neighborhoods of the poor. We have set out to rebuild our cities on a scale that has never been attempted before. We have begun to rescue our waters from the menace of pollution and to restore the beauty of our land and our countryside, our cities and our towns.We have given 1 million young Americans a chance to earn through the Neighborhood Youth Corps--or through Head Start, a chance to learn.So together we have tried to meet the needs of our people. And, we have succeeded in creating a better life for the many as well as the few. Now we must answer whether our gains shall be the foundations of further progress, or whether they shall be only monuments to what might have been-abandoned now by a people who lacked the will to see their great work through.I believe that our people do not want to quit--though the task is great, the work hard, often frustrating, and success is a matter not of days or months, but of years-and sometimes it may be even decades.I have come here tonight to discuss with you five ways of carrying forward the progress of these last 3 years. These five ways concern programs, partnerships, priorities, prosperity, and peace.First, programs. We must see to it, I think, that these new programs that we have passed work effectively and are administered in the best possible way.Three years ago we set out to create these new instruments of social progress. This required trial and error--and it has produced both. But as we learn, through success and failure, we are changing our strategy and we are trying to improve our tactics. In the long run, these starts--some rewarding, others inadequate and disappointing--are crucial to SUCCESS.One example is the struggle to make life better for the less fortunate among us.On a similar occasion, at this rostrum in 1949, I heard a great American President, Harry S. Truman, declare this: "The American people have decided that poverty is just as wasteful and just as unnecessary as preventable disease."Many listened to President Truman that day here in this Chamber, but few understood what was required and did anything about it. The executive branch and the Congress waited 15 long years before ever taking any action on that challenge, as it did on many other challenges that great President presented. And when, 3 years ago, you here in the Congress joined with me in a declaration of war on poverty, then I warned, "It will not be a short or easy struggle-no single weapon... will suffice--but we shall not rest until that war is won."And I have come here to renew that pledge tonight.I recommend that we intensify our efforts to give the poor a chance to enjoy and to join in this Nation's progress.I shall propose certain administrative changes suggested by the Congress--as well as some that we have learned from our own trial and error.I shall urge special methods and special funds to reach the hundreds of thousands of Americans that are now trapped in the ...
