Remarks to Members of Congress at a Reception Marking the Enactment of the Education Bill

Ladies and gentlemen:

Last Sunday I signed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act into law. I did that on Sunday because I did not want a single day's delay in placing this landmark legislation on the statute books of this country. But the celebration of this event could not be complete until I met and thanked each of you who fought the good fight.

I wish President Kennedy, my predecessor, could be here today to see his dream come true, of an education bill for all the people of this country--and also, that Senator Robert Taft, who introduced a bill many years ago, back in the forties, in the educational field, and who said to us in the Senate the day he introduced the bill, "The obligation of the Federal Government is to help build a basic floor under public education in America."

Well, for 18 years we were frustrated as we tried to do just that. We failed because we talked instead of doing. We spoke instead of acting. We concentrated on issues that divided us, instead of the one overriding issue that unites us all. And that issue is the need to help each child in America get all the education that he can take.

Well, now Congress has acted and we are here in this historic room in the White House this afternoon to celebrate that action You acted overwhelmingly by a vote of 263 to 153 in the House of Representatives And as much as I love the House, long a I served in the House, and with all the differences I have with Wayne Morse on Viet-Nam, we don't differ on education And I am so proud of Mike Mansfield, and Wayne Morse, Lister Hill, Ralph Yarborough, Senator Kennedy, and all of the other who are here this afternoon who passed this bill 73 to 18 in the United States Senate.

I think Congress has passed the most significant education bill in the history of the Congress. We have made a new commitment to quality and to equality in the education of our young people. "Better built schoolrooms for 'the boys,' "Eliza Cook once warned, "than cells and gibbets for 'the man.'" And that is what we are trying to do.

I know those of you who sat in on the hearings have heard this many, many times but I hope the people of America can realize that we now spend about $1,800 a year to keep a delinquent youth in the detention home; we spend $2,500 for a family on relief; we spend $3,500 for a criminal in a State prison--1,800, 3,500, 3,500--but we only spend $450 a year per child in our public schools.

Well, we are going to change that.

The men and women of the Congress who supported this legislation--and I want to emphasize that they are members of both parties, most of the members of both parties voted for it, a few members of each party voted against it, it's not partisan--but those who voted for this bill, in my judgment, will be remembered as pioneers of a new day of greatness in America. And as long as your name is called your ancestors and your descendants are going to be proud of it. You mark that prediction.

I look back on my father's service in the Texas Legislature many years ago, and they say he was one of 45. Well, that was a minority. But think of being one of 73 who voted for this bill in the Senate, and one of 253 that voted for it in the House. And your children and your grandchildren are going to be proud to point to your picture and say, "That's what my granddaddy did." And those of you who did not vote for it, they are going to be proud of you just because you served with them!

You ought to strike that. That was not in the text.

Now, I want to say something to you leaders of education, and the church, and other groups who are willing to submerge your differences for the moment to work for the passage of this bill. I think you are going to share in that glory. And when the picture of this day is taken, in the words of one of our United States Senators of many years ago, I am going to paint a picture of this group, and over those who sit in this room now I am going to hang the roll of honor on each of you who participated. You have done your job.

And now the responsibility is ours--the executive department. We must carry on and we must administer it. And I have a very keen sense of that obligation to each of you, and a keen sense to the children of America, to make certain that the program is carried out swiftly and efficiently. And these folks talk about fiesta without waste.

So I am asking Secretary Celebrezze and Commissioner Keppel to move immediately to prepare the Office of Education for the big job that it has to do, just as soon as the funds are appropriated. Upon their recommendation, I am notifying the Secretary now that later I am going to appoint a task force to carry out his recommendation to assist him in the next 60 days on organizational and personnel problems in this area to administer this bill.

The Director of the Bureau of the Budget, the Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, and others will personally help and make available their best experts for this task, because we want excellence in administration. Now that we have reached a point where we can have excellence in legislation we don't want you to get ahead of us.

Health is important. So is beautification, civil fights, agriculture, defense posture, but all of these are nothing if we do not have education.

I will never do anything in my entire life, now or in the future, that excites me more, or benefits the Nation I serve more, or makes the land and all of its people better and wiser and stronger, or anything that I think means more to freedom and justice in the world than what we have done with this education bill.

Now, whatever else they may say about me, I did not talk to any Senators or Congressmen about this bill, except the leadership--Senator Mansfield and Senator Morse--although I heard my name mentioned out on the fringes several times while it was being considered. But you take it from me, I worked harder and longer on this measure than on any measure I have ever worked on since I came to Washington in 1931--and I am proud of it.

How to find the right formula. Mr. Gardner is here today and we had a task force work 6 months on that even when I didn't know I was going to be President; I was just running for President. We had a task force working on trying to find an area of agreement, how to give this bill endurance and life and make its urgency come alive to the Congress and the American people. These were the questions that kept me awake at night. And when we would get a group all hitched up and pulling together and the traces tight, moving down the road, why some male or female would come along and just scatter it in all directions. We'd have to put the whole thing back together again.

Now it is done, it has been acted upon by the Congress, it has been exulted in by the American people and we are ready now to put it into action for this generation and countless yet unborn.

I was never prouder than I am right now. I was never prouder of the Congress, the leadership, both Houses. I could spell them out but it would take me an hour--Speaker McCormack, Carl Albert, Hale Boggs, Mike Mansfield and George Smathers, Russell Long, Hubert Humphrey, our Vice President, and Wayne Morse, Adam Clayton Powell, Lister Hill, Carl Perkins, and all who have worked in this field. Some of them had hearings, some of them expedited hearings, some of them fought off the amendments, some voted for the bills and helped beat them, some offered them. But in the end this is the final product in the American way.

Now this is just the beginning of America's first education bill. I want all of you to know that, Republicans and Democrats, this is passed while I happened to be President. There will be others passed when other men are President--Republicans and Democrats. It is the beginning, though, of new hope in America. But while we are here I am going to call a conference this year, this summer, when teachers can come to it.

I had my teacher Sunday who taught me when I was 4 years old. She is now up in her seventies and she is still as young and pretty as a daisy. And she came back from California where they wouldn't even recognize a Texas teacher's certificate until we got into the war and they needed teachers and they let her teach out there. Of course they didn't know who she had taught when they recognized it--done a bad job. But when I was 4 years old--they wouldn't let us enter until 6, but she broke the rule and held me on one knee and held another little friend of mine named Hugo Kline on the other knee. We located Hugo the other day--he is a barber up in Fredericksburg-and we brought him down to the ceremony. We are both too big to get on her knee now but we put our arms around her.

I told her we are going to have a White House conference on education. And I want you people to go out to the States--we are going to bring the Governors in here, maybe 5 or 7, whatever Secretary Celebrezze and Frank Keppel say, maybe the outstanding 10 Governors who have made the finest record in education in their States, and have them come in here and tell us how they did it. We want to bring in the outstanding teachers, principals, superintendents, college teachers.

My first teaching job was $55 a month and it was in a college and didn't pay much, so I decided I'd better get down to the lower level• Then I taught in a high school. I taught commercial arithmetic and geography in high school and that didn't pay much more. And I finally got down to where I had it made. I became principal of a Mexican school and they paid me $265 a month--and that is when I left and came to Washington•

But we want to have all these educational people from all groups, the State superintendents, the State leaders in the field, the State leaders and their organizations.

During that period I had my first lobbying job. I became a lobbyist for the Houston Teachers Association. I went to Austin and had to deal with that Texas Legislature-and that will try a man's soul, won't it? But I got them to put on a cigarette tax to help raise teachers' salaries•

We're going to have a White House educational conference this year out here on the lawn and ask all the people to come here and spend the day talking and planning, and preparing for how we are going to improve this bill next year and how we are going to extend the rim a little wider and how we are going to have the other education bills•

I am not going to commit myself to the Yarborough bill right now, but he is smiling and I am going to quit talking about the other education bill until I get out of here. Then we are going to have a health conference here and get the leading health administrators and specialists in the Nation so that we can, when we get--I guess Mike will wait until we get back to pass the health bill, but if he doesn't pass it before we leave he will pass it right after we get back, after Easter. We'll have a health conference, then we are going to have the outstanding people who have led the way in the health field, cancer, heart, stroke, and these things• And then when we get through with that we are going to have a beautification conference and have all of the leaders in that field out in the States--how they made their cities prettier, their highways prettier, and their States prettier, and beautified them.

We are going to have a civil rights conference where we can see the people who have taken the leadership in this field in helping people to have the benefits of education and to share and share equally in the rights that all Americans should have and in voters' rights and in compliance with the Civil Rights Act. We are going to call in leaders to talk on that. We are going to have a so much better and more enjoyable and productive summer this summer than we had last summer if you men get your job done in Congress in time for us to do it! And if not we will do it in the early fall.

But in the meantime I want to thank each of you for coming here. I have spoken longer than I wanted to--I hope you will pardon me for taking this time. But back when I was majority leader I said after having voted for all the educational bills that came before the Congress during that period of time--I had three in the House and five in the Senate while I was there; four were educational bills and the fifth was a vocational educational bill--I said as leader that there is nothing that I think is as vital to America, not even its defense posture, nothing as vital as the passage of educational legislation.

I have longed to see this day come and now it is here. I am going to enjoy it and I am going to celebrate it and I am going to quit now by pointing out what the Secretary of Labor said to the Cabinet the other day: We have 1 million youngsters who dropped out of school this year who could go on to complete their education, and their increased earning power over their life would contribute $4 billion to Federal income taxes.

Well, I am interested in the glories of art and architecture and the finer things of life and education, but I am also interested in income taxes, because that is what we use to pay for these things. And just by the dropouts that we now have we could bring $4 billion into this Treasury. I think your estimates run a billion, two something, so it is a good financial investment and so as economists and moneymakers you are not bad.

Thank you very much.