At the same time, it is clear that the budgetary program and the general program of the Government are actually inseparable.  The president bears the responsibility for recommending to the Congress a comprehensive set of proposals on all Government activities and their financing.  In formulating policies, as in preparing budgetary estimates, the Nation and the Congress have the right to expect the President to adjust and coordinate the views of the various departments and agencies to form a unified program.  And that program requires consideration in connection with the Budget, which is the annual work program of the Government.

Since our programs for this period which combines war liquidation with reconversion to a peacetime economy are inevitably large and numerous it is imperative that they be planned and executed with the utmost efficiency and the utmost economy.  We have cut the war program to the maximum extent consistent with national security.  We have held our peacetime programs to the level necessary to our national well-being and the attainment of our postwar objectives.  Where increased programs have been recommended, the increases have been held as low as is consistent with these goals.  I can assure the Congress of the necessity of these programs.  I can further assure the Congress that the program as a whole is well within our capacity to finance it.  All the programs I have recommended for action are included in the Budget figures.

For these reasons I have chosen to combine the customary Message on the State of the Union with the annual Budget Message, and to include in the Budget not only estimates for functions authorized by the Congress, but also for those which I recommend for its action.

I am also transmitting herewith the Fifth Quarterly Report of the Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion.[1] It is a comprehensive discussion of the present state of the reconversion program and of the immediate and long-range needs and recommendations.

[Footnote 1:  The report dated January 1, 1946, and entitled “Battle for Production” is printed in House Document 398 (79th Cong., 2d sess.).]

This constitutes, then, as complete a report as I find it possible to prepare now.  It constitutes a program of government in relation to the Nation’s needs.

With the growing responsibility of modern government to foster economic expansion and to promote conditions that assure full and steady employment opportunities, it has become necessary to formulate and determine the Government program in the light of national economic conditions as a whole.  In both the executive and the legislative branches we must make arrangements which will permit us to formulate the Government program in that light.  Such an approach has become imperative if the American political and economic system is to succeed under the conditions of economic instability and uncertainty which we have to face.  The Government needs to assure business, labor, and agriculture that Government policies will take due account of the requirements of a full employment economy.  The lack of that assurance would, I believe, aggravate the economic instability.