US Presidency
1971

The rise in the cost of living, which had been gathering dangerous momentum in the late sixties, was reduced last year. Inflation will be further reduced this year. But as we have moved from runaway inflation toward reasonable price stability and at the same time as we have been moving from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy, we have paid a price in increased unemployment. We should take no comfort from the fact that the level of unemployment in this transition from a wartime to a peacetime economy is lower than in any peacetime year of the sixties. This is not good enough for the man who is unemployed in the I am. We must do better for workers in peacetime and we will do better. To achieve this, I will submit an expansionary budget this year, one that will help stimulate the economy and thereby open up new job opportunities for millions of Americans. It will be a full employment budget, a budget designed to be in balance if the economy were operating at its peak potential.