State of the Union AddressesNixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous)
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State of the Union Addresses
Nixon, Richard M. (Richard Milhous)
Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
The primary responsibility for crimes that affect individuals is with local
and State rather than with Federal Government. But in the field of
organized crime, narcotics, pornography, the Federal Government has a
special responsibility it should fulfill. And we should make Washington,
D.C., where we have the primary responsibility, an example to the Nation
and the world of respect for law rather than lawlessness.
I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well
become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the
seventies.
In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The
profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a real
sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier?
Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place
will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in
metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by
water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?
These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit
conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They live in the
foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern
ourselves with the way real people live in real life.
The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our
surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make
reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our
water?
Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond
factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country.
It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more
than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs
which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.
Clean air, clean water, open spaces--these should once again be the
birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.
We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is
clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years
of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is
being called.
The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and
costly program in this field in America's history.
It is not a program for just one year. A year's plan in this field is no
plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but 5 years or 10
years--whatever time is required to do the job.
I shall propose to this Congress a $10 billion nationwide clean waters
program to put modern municipal waste treatment plants in every place in
America where they are needed to make our waters clean again, and do it
now. We have the industrial capacity, if we begin now, to build them all
within 5 years. This program will get them built within 5 years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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