Remarks at a Luncheon in the Senate Dining Room

Mike, Everett, and my friends in the Senate:

This has been a very pleasant and entertaining hour for me. When you called and asked me to come here and have lunch with you yesterday I deeply regretted that I could not cancel other engagements that had been made some time ago. But I was very gratified to know that you could adjust your schedule to have this luncheon today.

I remember one time when I was running for the Senate many years ago a young reporter came into my campaign headquarters and saw my secretary and was making inquiries about the campaign and observed that she had a glass of milk on her desk. He asked why. He went on from my secretary's office to Jake Pickle's office. He is a young fellow over in Congress from my district now. And he had a glass of milk on his desk.

After talking about the campaign, he asked the same question, "Why milk?" He finally got into several other offices--John Connally's office; he was the manager--and found that he had milk on his desk.

And the reporter said, "It's very interesting to me that here in this headquarters, every room I have been in has a glass of milk on the desk." He said, "Why is that?"

John Connally said, "Because most of us have ulcers and we have to take milk in the middle of the afternoon for them."

He said, "Well, how does it happen that all the people working for Lyndon Johnson seem to have ulcers? Why doesn't he have ulcers?"

John Connally said, "Well, he is just in the business of giving them, not getting them."

So maybe that is the way I should be today here. Maybe I should be in the business of getting speeches instead of giving them.

But I am going in one direction Monday. And I expect next week you will be going in another. I will be going away from home and you will be going back home. In many ways and in many respects I wish I could exchange places with you.

I would like to be able to give Senator Mansfield some assurance and some confidence that his hopes and his dreams about this meeting will bear fruit and are realistic, but I am not able to do that.

As some of you may remember, we met in Honolulu back early in the year. We presented to Premier Ky and General Westmoreland and other leaders in our efforts in Vietnam certain desirable steps that we thought should represent our goals and our objectives.

We were deeply concerned with inflation. We recognized the serious inadequacies in our transportation of our supplies and our troops in some instances--the port congestion. We were concerned with some of the coordination of our military efforts. We felt that it was desirable to start our planning toward moving toward a democratic election, and so forth.

At that time we had a general meeting of minds with the leaders of the South Vietnamese Government, with our military leaders, and with our political and economic leaders. Since then steps have been taken to improve the transportation 'and port conditions. We still have problems but they have materially improved.

Since then steps have been taken, based upon the recommendations of our economists, to try to institute remedial steps on inflation and devaluation. Some controls have been put into effect. Since then an election has been called and held under the most serious difficulties with a surprisingly large participation of the people themselves.

Our military effort has gone forward under great leadership, with considerable improvement, until the report I received this morning--and I will have another one somewhere around 2 o'clock from Mr. McNamara and Mr. Katzenbach--would indicate that our people are quite pleased with the success of our military leadership in that area.

But there is still much to be done--there are many weaknesses and many improvements. Other nations have been making their contributions. Korea has just completed sending more than 44,000 of its sons to South Vietnam. I believe now they have a higher percentage of their total population there than we do. The Australians are well represented there. The New Zealanders and the Philippines have also dispatched some help to that area.

In recent months the leaders of all of those nations--Thailand, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Korea have all come to Washington. Most of them have come in recent weeks and have exchanged views as heads of their states with the President and members of the Cabinet, and in some instances the Senators.

It has been the general feeling--it was at Honolulu and it has. been stronger since-that the leaders who had troops in South Vietnam should meet and discuss how we could better improve our effort there, to receive thorough briefings on our military objectives and our military situation, to try to institute the most effective peace effort that we could agree upon, to try to stabilize the economy, to try to pacify the country.

We are very disappointed in the results that have shown in our pacification efforts, after we have cleaned an area out and have moved on only to find it reinfested and the Vietcong to again come in and try to take it over. That was one of the purposes of Mr. Katzenbach's visit to South Vietnam now.

I expect that in the days ahead he will become an outstanding expert in that area of the world. And I am hopeful that as a result of this visit and others we may some way, somehow, sometime, find an answer that will bring an end to the blood that is being spilled there at this moment.

I think it appropriate not only that we go and meet and exchange views with the leaders of those engaged in this effort, but I think it appropriate that we return the visits that these leaders have made to our country.

And then, very frankly, I want to go back and return to the scene of some of my earlier years when Maggie and I were in the Pacific, and revisit Australia and New Zealand and some of that area of the world where I spent many anxious hours in 1942.

I would be an ingrate, and less than frank, if I did not say to all of you that you can observe from the two previous speeches made why I so quickly accepted the invitation to come here. These two men and the expressions that they gave are the reason that this is the great Congress.

As I was waiting for the British Foreign Secretary this morning, realizing that I would have a few observations to make, I looked over the thoughts that I had had last January when the Congress met and I asked them to consider the Nation's problems.

In those recommendations I guess there were some 90 measures of more or less importance, some 60 that we attached rather strong importance to, and we asked you to give consideration to them, pass them, improve them, amend them, or defeat them, as the majority will might determine.

I tried in that message to think about what the average American family wanted for his family and for his country. I realized it was food for his body, education for his children, health for his family, conservation, and beautification for his country. And we made the appropriate recommendations.

Mike Manatos tells me this morning that of those 60 important bills of the 90 that we listed, the Senate has completed action on 48 of them already and they are now laws of the land. On most of those 48 bills the leaders voted identically, which I think is a great tribute not only to the leaders, but to the Senate and to the country.

I have looked at the Congresses for 174 years, and their record. In the field of education, which is a very important and very popular subject these days, in the previous 174 years up to the 88th Congress we had passed six education bills. Abraham Lincoln's administration passed the first one, then Woodrow Wilson, Harry Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy made his recommendations, submitted his views on elementary and higher education and others, but in the second session of the 88th Congress and the 89th Congress, in those 3 years, the Congress has passed three times as many education bills--18 to be exact--as have been passed in all the 174 years put together.

Our average expenditure on education in the first 174 years has been an average of $33 million a year. This Congress--you-will appropriate in excess of $4 billion a year for that subject. So you can see what has happened in that field.

In the field of health, all the Congresses put together in 174 years have passed some 17 health bills. The 89th Congress--you-passed 24 health measures, substantial health measures, headed by the grandpappy of them all--medical care. And you will spend as much money in the 89th Congress on health as has been spent in all the other 88 Congresses put together on the subject of health.

In the field of conservation you have passed more than 20 major conservation measures that will permit parks and recreation areas to be built where the people live. Many of those more than a million acres that we have added to our recreational domain are within 1 hour or 2 hours, the most 5 hours, drive of half the population of this country.

I see my friend the champion of the Tennessee Valley Authority in front of me. I was reading the other day where when President Roosevelt first passed the TVA, the appropriation that year was $11 million. That project has grown and has been such a symbol and such an influence in the lives of the people of this country that the representatives from almost 100 nations of the world have gone and looked at it and received inspiration and example. This year we passed a $750 million authorization bond issue and it was barely noticed. You had to look in the want-ad page.

And I thought how far we had come. In the first days we debated so long about $11 million and this year we were spending that much in this field--and how wonderful it was.

I have given you just a few of the reasons why I think this is the great Congress. This year we have more than 5 million people here at home who will benefit from the food that we distribute as a result of our production and through our food stamp plan, and through our school lunch program, and those things.

This year I have told you what will happen in the education of our children. And there is nothing more important. I have given you a brief outline of how we are concentrating on the things that mean most. On our standard of living, 10 million more people are working today than were working when we came into office. They are drawing the highest salaries ever in the history of any nation, an average of $114 per week.

This year, with the best estimates we could make, with the Treasury experts and the budget fiscal machines, we still underestimated our revenue by more than $10 billion. In other words, we took in $10 billion more than we calculated we could take in.

The point I am making is not that we have done all that we should do. There are some things I have recommended that I know you think were mistakes and you have so indicated. There are some things I haven't recommended that you wish that I had. But as long as we can move in the field of food, recreation, education, wages, jobs, income, health, Medicare, nursing homes, and have the strongest defense of any nation in the world--General Westmoreland told me when he came down to see me 3 weeks ago that he was absolutely convinced that we had the ablest, the most intelligent, the most physically fit, best equipped soldiers in uniform than any nation had ever put on any battlefield. Because of that defense, and because of that strength, we expect to maintain our system and our security, and also to make it possible for the 3 billion other people in the world to someday, somehow, achieve some of the blessings that have come our way.

So there is nothing that gives me more pride, although I never relish opposition-there is nothing that gives me more pride than to have an opposition of the quality and the kind that is my loyal opposition, led by Senator Dirksen in the Senate.

You have been fair with me and you have been just with me. You have been good to me. But that is not really very important to anybody how you have been to me. You have tried to put the interest of your country first and to serve it. Senator Mansfield and the Democrats who have supported their President every time they could have been a great source of strength and inspiration to me.

I was reading last night what had been said about every President. I don't know that I have as yet taken the prize for having had the meanest things said about me, because I just don't guess they could have said any meaner things than they did about Thomas Jefferson. But I went through what they had said about Jefferson, Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and others.

And I turned over and turned out my light and thought for just a moment that after all, I had been getting some pretty good breaks up to now and I had a lot to be thankful for. A good deal of it is in this room. I treasure and prize the friendship of each of you. I am not doing everything the way you do it, but I am doing it the best way I know how.

My problem--the problem of no President is ever doing what is right; you can't get promoted from where we are; you always try, and search, and yearn to do what is right-our great problem is knowing what is right. And really, the things that get up to the President--if it is cut and dried, and it is black and white, and it is pretty sure, well, the fellow at the other end settles it at his level. It is just those that come up that are pretty well balanced. Either way you go, you are in trouble with what they pick out for me to handle.

For your indulgence and for your understanding, I am grateful. Along with you, I will continue to pray that maybe somehow we can find peace in the world and then just think about what a wonderful, glorious day it will be to enjoy the prosperity that is ours in the land and to be able to have our men back home living in security and safety, with peace in the world.

Thank you for your courtesies and your hospitalities, for your blessings and for your prayers.