US Presidency
1963

We must move along the path to a higher rate of growth and full employment. For this would mean tens of billions of dollars more each year in production, profits, wages, and public revenues. It would mean an end to the persistent slack which has kept our unemployment at or above 5 percent for 61 out of the past 62 months and an end to the growing pressures for such restrictive measures as the 35-hour week, which alone could increase hourly labor costs by as much as 14 percent, start a new wage-price spiral of inflation, and undercut our efforts to compete with other nations. To achieve these greater gains, one step, above all, is essential the enactment this year of a substantial reduction and revision in Federal income taxes. For it is increasingly clear to those in Government, business, and labor who are responsible for our economy's success that our obsolete tax system exerts too heavy a drag on private purchasing power, profits, and employment. Designed to check inflation in earlier years, it now checks growth instead.