This year we ought to make a number of urgently needed improvements in our social security law.  For one thing, benefits under old-age and survivors insurance should be raised $5 a month above the present average of $42.  For another thing, the States should be given special aid to help them increase public assistance payments.  By doing these things now, we can ease the pressure of living costs for people who depend on those fixed payments.

We should also make some cost-of-living adjustments for those receiving veterans’ compensation for death or disability incurred in the service of our country.  In addition, now is the time to start a sensible program of readjustment benefits for our veterans who have seen service since the fighting broke out in Korea.

Another thing the Congress should do at this session is to strengthen our system of farm price supports to meet the defense emergency.  The “sliding scale” in the price support law should not be allowed to penalize farmers for increasing production to meet defense needs.  We should also find a new and less costly method for supporting perishable commodities than the law now provides.

We need to act promptly to improve our labor law.  The Taft-Hartley Act has many serious and far-reaching defects.  Experience has demonstrated this so clearly that even the sponsors of the act now admit that it needs to be changed.  A fair law, fair to both management and labor, is indispensable to sound labor relations and to full, uninterrupted production.  I intend to keep on working for a fair law until we get one.

As we build our strength to defend the freedom in the world, we ourselves must extend the benefits of freedom more widely among all our own people.  We need to take action toward the wider enjoyment of civil rights.  Freedom is the birthright of every American.

The executive branch has been making real progress toward full equality of treatment and opportunity—­in the Armed Forces, in the civil service, and in private firms working for the Government.  Further advances require action by Congress, and I hope that means will be provided to give the Members of the Senate and the House a chance to vote on them.

I am glad to hear that home rule for the District of Columbia will be the first item of business before the Senate.  I hope that it, as well as statehood for Hawaii and Alaska, will be adopted promptly.

All these measures I have been talking about—­measures to advance the well-being of our people—­demonstrate to the world the forward movement of our free society.

This demonstration of the way free men govern themselves has a more powerful influence on the people of the world—­on both sides of the Iron Curtain—­than all the trick slogans and pie-in-the-sky promises of the Communists.

But our shortcomings, as well as our progress, are watched from abroad.  And there is one shortcoming I want to speak about plainly.