I am not unaware that we have suffering and privation at home.  When it exceeds the capacity for the relief within the States concerned, it will have Federal consideration.  It seems to me we should be indifferent to our own heart promptings, and out of accord with the spirit which acclaims the Christmastide, if we do not give out of our national abundance to lighten this burden of woe upon a people blameless and helpless in famine’s peril.

There are it full score of topics concerning which it would be becoming to address you, and on which I hope to make report at a later time.  I have alluded to the things requiring your earlier attention.  However, I can not end this limited address without a suggested amendment to the organic law.

Many of us belong to that school of thought which is hesitant about altering the fundamental law.  I think our tax problems, the tendency of wealth to seek nontaxable investment, and the menacing increase of public debt, Federal, State and municipal-all justify a proposal to change the Constitution so as to end the issue of nontaxable bonds.  No action can change the status of the many billions outstanding, but we can guard against future encouragement of capital’s paralysis, while a halt in the growth of public indebtedness would be beneficial throughout our whole land.

Such a change in the Constitution must be very thoroughly considered before submission.  There ought to be known what influence it will have on the inevitable refunding of our vast national debt, how it will operate on the necessary refunding of State and municipal debt, how the advantages of Nation over State and municipality, or the contrary, may be avoided.  Clearly the States would not ratify to their own apparent disadvantage.  I suggest the consideration because the drift of wealth into nontaxable securities is hindering the flow of large capital to our industries, manufacturing, agricultural, and carrying, until we are discouraging the very activities which make our wealth.

Agreeable to your expressed desire and in complete accord with the purposes of the executive branch of the Government, there is in Washington, as you happily know, an International Conference now most earnestly at work on plans for the limitation of armament, a naval holiday, and the just settlement of problems which might develop into causes of international disagreement.

It is easy to believe a world-hope is centered on this Capital City.  A most gratifying world-accomplishment is not improbable.

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State of the Union Address
Warren Harding
December 8, 1922

Members of the Congress: 

So many problems are calling for solution that a recital of all of them, in the face of the known limitations of a short session of Congress, would seem to lack sincerity of purpose.  It is four years since the World War ended, but the inevitable readjustment of the social and economic order is not more than barely begun.  There is no acceptance of pre-war conditions anywhere in the world.  In a very general way humanity harbors individual wishes to go on with war-time compensation for production, with pre-war requirements in expenditure.  In short, everyone, speaking broadly, craves readjustment for everybody except himself, while there can be no just and permanent readjustment except when all participate.