For the four fiscal years from July 1, 1946, to June 30, 1950, we had a net surplus of 4.3 billion dollars.  Using this surplus, and the Treasury’s excess cash reserves, the debt was reduced substantially, reaching a low point of 251 billion dollars in June, 1949, and ending up at 257 billion dollars on June 30, 1950.

In July of 1950, we began our rapid rearmament, and for two years held very close to a pay-as-we-go policy.  But in the current fiscal year and the next, rising expenditures for defense will substantially outrun receipts.  This will pose an immediate and serious problem for the new Congress.

Now let me turn to another question we faced at the war’s end.  Would we take up again, and carry forward, the great projects of social welfare—­so badly needed, so long overdue—­that the New Deal had introduced into our national life?  Would our Government continue to have a heart for the people, or was the progress of the New Deal to be halted in the aftermath of war as decisively as the progress of Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom had been halted after the first world war?

This question, too, we have answered.  We have answered it by doubling old age insurance benefits and extending coverage to ten million more people.  We have answered it by increasing our minimum wage.  We have answered by the three million privately constructed homes that the Federal Government has helped finance since the war—­and the 155 thousand units of low rent public housing placed under construction since 1949.

We have answered with the 42 thousand new hospital beds provided since 1946 through the joint efforts of the Federal Government and local communities.

We have answered by helping eight million veterans of World War II to obtain advanced education, 196 thousand to start in business, and 64 thousand to buy farms.

We have answered by continuing to help farmers obtain electric power, until today nearly 90 per cent of our farms have power line electric service.

In these and other ways, we have demonstrated, up to now, that our democracy has not forgotten how to use the powers of the Government to promote the people’s welfare and security.

Another of the big post-war questions was this:  What we would do with the Nation’s natural resources—­its soils and water, forests and grasslands.  Would we continue the strong conservation movement of the 1930’s, or would we, as we did after the First World War, slip back into the practices of monopoly, exploitation, and waste?

The answer is plain.  All across our country, the soil conservation movement has spread, aided by Government programs, enriching private and public lands, preserving them from destruction, improving them for future use.  In our river basins, we have invested nearly 5 billion dollars of public funds in the last eight years—­invested them in projects to control floods, irrigate farmlands, produce low-cost power and get it to the housewives and farmers and businessmen who need it.  We have been vigilant in protecting the people’s property—­lands and forests and oil and minerals.