(1) First, the Manpower Training and Development Act, to stop the waste of able-bodied men and women who want to work, but whose only skill has been replaced by a machine, or moved with a mill, or shut down with a mine;
(2) Second, the Youth Employment Opportunities Act, to help train and place not only the one million young Americans who are both out of school and out of work, but the twenty-six million young Americans entering the labor market in this decade; and
(3) Third, the 8 percent tax credit for investment in machinery and equipment, which, combined with planned revisions of depreciation allowances, will spur our modernization, our growth, and our ability to compete abroad.
Moreover--pleasant as it may be to bask in the warmth of recovery--let us not forget that we have suffered three recessions in the last 7 years. The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining--by filling three basic gaps in our anti-recession protection. We need:
(1) First, Presidential stand-by authority, subject to Congressional veto, to adjust personal income tax rates downward within a specified range and time, to slow down an economic decline before it has dragged us all down;
(2) Second, Presidential stand-by authority, upon a given rise in the rate of unemployment, to accelerate Federal and federally-aided capital improvement programs; and
(3) Third, a permanent strengthening of our unemployment compensation system--to maintain for our fellow citizens searching for a job who cannot find it, their purchasing power and their living standards without constant resort--as we have seen in recent years by the Congress and the Administrations--to temporary supplements.
If we enact this six-part program, we can show the whole world that a free economy need not be an unstable economy--that a free system need not leave men unemployed--and that a free society is not only the most productive but the most stable form of organization yet fashioned by man.
II. FIGHTING INFLATION
But recession is only one enemy of a free economy--inflation is another. Last year, 1961, despite rising production and demand, consumer prices held almost steady--and wholesale prices declined. This is the best record of overall price stability of any comparable period of recovery since the end of World War II.