Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
There is another matter which seems to me to be very intimately associated
with the question of national safety and preparation for defense. That is
our policy towards the Philippines and the people of Porto Rico. Our
treatment of them and their attitude towards us are manifestly of the first
consequence in the development of our duties in the world and in getting a
free hand to perform those duties. We must be free from every unnecessary
burden or embarrassment; and there is no better way to be clear of
embarrassment than to fulfil our promises and promote the interests of
those dependent on us to the utmost. Bills for the alteration and reform of
the government of the Philippines and for rendering fuller political
justice to the people of Porto Rico were submitted to the sixty-third
Congress. They will be submitted also to you. I need not particularize
their details. You are most of you already familiar with them. But I do
recommend them to your early adoption with the sincere conviction that
there are few measures you could adopt which would more serviceably clear
the way for the great policies by which we wish to make good, now and
always, our right to lead in enterprises of peace and good will and
economic and political freedom.
The plans for the armed forces of the nation which I have outlined, and for
the general policy of adequate preparation for mobilization and defense,
involve of course very large additional expenditures of money,-expenditures
which will considerably exceed the estimated revenues of the government. It
is made my duty by law, whenever the estimates of expenditure exceed the
estimates of revenue, to call the attention of the Congress to the fact and
suggest any means of meeting the deficiency that it may be wise or possible
for me to suggest. I am ready to believe that it would be my duty to do so
in any case; and I feel particularly bound to speak of the matter when it
appears that the deficiency will arise directly out of the adoption by the
Congress of measures which I myself urge it to adopt. Allow me, therefore,
to speak briefly of the present state of the Treasury and of the fiscal
problems which the next year will probably disclose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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