The west coast dock strike is a case in point.  This Nation cannot and will not tolerate that kind of irresponsible labor tie-up in the future.

The messages also include basic reforms which are essential if our structure of government is to be adequate in the decades ahead.

They include reform of our wasteful and outmoded welfare system—­substitution of a new system that provides work requirements and work incentives for those who can help themselves, income support for those who cannot help themselves, and fairness to the working poor.

They include a $17 billion program of Federal revenue sharing with the States and localities as an investment in their renewal, an investment also of faith in the American people.

They also include a sweeping reorganization of the executive branch of the Federal Government so that it will be more efficient, more responsive, and able to meet the challenges of the decades ahead.

One year ago, standing in this place, I laid before the opening session of this Congress six great goals.  One of these was welfare reform.  That proposal has been before the Congress now for nearly 2 1/2 years.

My proposals on revenue sharing, government reorganization, health care, and the environment have now been before the Congress for nearly a year.  Many of the other major proposals that I have referred to have been here that long or longer.

Now, 1971, we can say, was a year of consideration of these measures.  Now let us join in making 1972 a year of action on them, action by the Congress, for the Nation and for the people of America.

Now, in addition, there is one pressing need which I have not previously covered, but which must be placed on the national agenda.

We long have looked in this Nation to the local property tax as the main source of financing for public primary and secondary education.

As a result, soaring school costs, soaring property tax rates now threaten both our communities and our schools.  They threaten communities because property taxes, which more than doubled in the 10 years from 1960 to ’70, have become one of the most oppressive and discriminatory of all taxes, hitting most cruelly at the elderly and the retired; and they threaten schools, as hard-pressed voters understandably reject new bond issues at the polls.

The problem has been given even greater urgency by four recent court decisions, which have held that the conventional method of financing schools through local property taxes is discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Nearly 2 years ago, I named a special Presidential commission to study the problems of school finance, and I also directed the Federal departments to look into the same problems.  We are developing comprehensive proposals to meet these problems.

This issue involves two complex and interrelated sets of problems:  support of the schools and the basic relationships of Federal, State, and local governments in any tax reforms.