The Objectives for 1956

Shortly after noon one day last week, President Eisenhower submitted to the Congress his fourth annual message on the State of the Union. He first expressed grateful thanks to a kind Providence, "whose protection has been ever present and whose bounty has been manifold and abundant." He summed up the good state in which the U.S. finds itself in the winter of 1956 (see box). Then, in accordance with the constitutional sanction, he turned to the prospects for the future:

"Every political and economic guide supports a valid confidence that wise effort will be rewarded by an even more plentiful harvest of human benefit than we now enjoy. Our resources are too many, our principles too dynamic, our purposes too worthy, and the issues at stake too immense for us to entertain doubt or fear. But our responsibilities require that we approach this year's business with a sober humility."

World Perspective. The primary U.S. objective, said the President, was the achievement of world peace with justice and the removal of "the pall of fear." The President reviewed his meeting with the Communist leaders at Geneva last July and the ill-fated foreign ministers' conference in October. "The Soviet leaders are not yet willing to create the indispensable conditions for a secure and lasting peace," he said. "Communist tactics against the free nations have shifted in emphasis from reliance on violence ... to reliance on division, enticement and duplicity." The U.S., therefore, needed to maintain and strengthen its collective security pacts with free countries, its own "long-haul" program of military preparedness. The U.S. needed to press its quest for regional objectives: in Asia, "help to nations struggling to maintain their freedom"; in Europe, "a greater measure of integration"; in the Middle East, "a fair solution of the tragic dispute between the Arab states and Israel, all of whom we want as our friends."

The U.S. technique, the President said, should be "dynamic as well as flexible, designed primarily to forward the achievement of our own objectives rather than to meet each shift and change on the Communist front." He, therefore, proposed a new approach to foreign economic aid, requesting Congress to grant him "limited authority to make longer-term commitments." Likeliest outline of the new presidential idea: a ten-year program, ultimately totaling $1 billion, designed to provide about $100 million a year for specific foreign projects, e.g., Egypt's Aswan Dam, approved by U.S. diplomats and engineers.

"Human Concerns." At home the Pres ident underlined his own concept of himself as a conservative in fiscal matters, a liberal in human affairs. "I expect the budget to be in balance during the fiscal year ending June 30, 1956," he said. "I shall propose a balanced budget for the next fiscal year ending June 30, 1957 ... I earnestly believe that a tax cut can be deemed justifiable only when it will not unbalance the budget, a budget which makes provision for some reduction, even though modest, in our national debt."

Nonetheless, the President went on to propose a long schedule of federal assistance for the U.S. economy. He wanted a "soil bank" for agriculture, in which farmers would be paid for taking some of their land out of certain fields of production. (This week he sent a nine-point package farm program to the Congress, featuring a soil bank that could put $1 billion into farmers' pockets by 1957.) He wanted Congress to look into "an experimental program of flood damage indemnities." He hoped to divert federal funds to help depressed areas, which he called "pockets of chronic unemployment." High on his list was the plan--stalled through 1955--for a ten-year, $25 billion program of interstate highway construction with "adequate" arrangements for financing.

Moving on to what he called "the response to human concerns," the President proposed a five-year program of federal aid for school construction. He pointed proudly to the fact that almost three out of five U.S. families own their own homes; then he proposed the extension of public housing facilities for low-income families, with specific authority to construct 70,000 new housing units within the next two years. The President bore down heavily upon the national problem of high medical costs: extended voluntary health insurance was essential, he said, to "help reduce the dollar barrier between many Americans and the benefits of modern care."

"Threefold Movement." Briefly, the President touched on some specifics, e.g., statehood for Hawaii, revision of the McCarran-Walter Immigration Act. before reverting to the theme of the "program for the republic begun three years ago." He concluded: "The vista before us is bright. The march of science, the expanding economy, the advance in collective security toward a just peace--in this threefold movement our people are creating new standards by which the future of the republic may be judged.

"Progress, however, will be realized only as it is more than matched by a continuing growth in the spiritual strength of the nation. Our dedication to moral values must be complete in our dealings abroad and in our relationships among ourselves. We have single-minded devotion to the common good of America. Never must we forget that this means the wellbeing, the prosperity, the security of all Americans in every walk of life."

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