Statement by the President to Cabinet Members and Agency Heads on the New Government-Wide Planning and Budgeting System.

I HAVE ASKED you to meet with me this morning to discuss the introduction of a new planning and budgeting system throughout the Government.

The objective of this program is simple: to use the most modern management tools so that the full promise of a finer life can be brought to every American at the least possible cost.

This program is aimed at finding new ways to do new jobs faster, better, less expensively; to insure sounder judgment through more accurate information; to pinpoint those things we ought to do more, and to spotlight those things we ought to do less; to make our decision-making process as up-to-date as our space-exploring equipment. In short, we want to trade in our surveys for automobiles, our old cannon for new missiles.

Everything I have done in both legislation and the construction of a budget has been guided by my deep concern for the American people--consistent with wise management of the taxpayer's dollar.

In translating this principle in action, and with the help of an outstanding Congress, we have passed more progressive legislation than in any comparable period in history.

We have been compassionate. We have also been prudent.

But we can and must do better if we are to bring the Great Society closer to all the people.

Good government demands excellence.

It demands the fullest value for each dollar spent. It demands that we take advantage of the most modern management techniques. This is what I want to introduce today-a new planning-programing-budgeting system developed by our top management experts led by Budget Director Charles Schultze. Once in operation, it will enable us to:

(1) Identify our national goals with precision and on a continuing basis

(2) Choose among those goals the ones that are most urgent

(3) Search for alternative means of reaching those goals most effectively at the least cost

(4) Inform ourselves not merely on next year's costs, but on the second, and third, and subsequent year's costs of our programs

(5) Measure the performance of our programs to insure a dollar's worth of service for each dollar spent.

This system will improve our ability to control our programs and our budgets rather than having them control us. It will operate year round. Studies, goals, program proposals, and reviews will be scheduled throughout the year instead of being crowded into "budget time."

To establish this system and carry out the necessary studies, each of you will need a central staff for program and policy planning accountable directly to you. To make this work will take good people, the best you now have and the best you can find.

I intend to have the 1968 budget and later year programs presented in this new form by next spring.

With these programs will go the first studies produced by your planning and policy staffs.

It is important to remember one thing: no system, no matter how refined, can make decisions for you. You and I have that responsibility in the executive branch. But our judgment is no better than our information. This system will present us with the alternatives and the information on the basis of which we can, together, make better decisions. The people will be the beneficiary.

The Budget Director has already talked to most of you about the need for this new approach. He is now preparing plans for setting it up. He is ready to help you in any way he can.

Within the next several weeks he will send out detailed instructions for incorporating fiscal year 1968 and later-year programs into this system. But to make this new plan a success, he will need your full support. I know that you will give him that support.