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We think people of all ages should be prepared to meet the high cost of illness in their old age and we all know that they are not. There is not a man or woman in this room that doesn't have an uncle or aunt, cousin, or mama or papa that needs this protection. There is no reason why we should continue year after year to talk about it. There is time to do something about it.

President Kennedy and I went into most of the 50 States in 1960 talking about it. I listened to the recordings of my appearances throughout this Nation in 1960 and the deafening applause, if there ever was any deafening applause to anything I said, always came when I talked about a program to provide medical care under social security for the aged. So make no mistake about it. The people are ahead of us in this field. They want this program. They will support this program. They are going to have this program. The question now is just its timing.

Third, I am going to designate the month of May 1965 as Senior Citizens Month. It is a time dedicated to community action on behalf of older Americans. There are now 18 million men and women that are 65 and over in the United States. Every 20 seconds another American joins their ranks. Their hopes and their problems are shared by us all. It is up to us to help them solve them. What we do for them today will enrich our own lives tomorrow and I think will enrich the lives of our children in the decades to come.

I know of nothing more necessary or desirable. I know nothing more rewarding or satisfying than to be able to participate in the transformation of the dreams that we have had for our fathers and our mothers and our aging into realities. And I think before the leaves turn brown in the fall and before we go back to counsel and consult and exchange views with our constituencies, I hope we can have a book like this filled with achievements and accomplishments. And we can have, as we say in our country, the coonskins on the wall instead of just a lot of conversation about them. And if we do, no group will be more responsible than those of you that are assembled here this morning.

Now finally, I think I have outlined some of my hopes for tomorrow and this land must never be content, this land must never reach the point where we have arrived. This land must always be a land with vision and with hope, and with struggle, and be willing to work and move and fight to improve and to better and to, we hope, ultimately achieve excellence. And when we do, we will find that progress will have moved on and there is still a part of the road to go.

So thank you for coming here. You will have not only the blessings of this administration but you will have the very active understanding and cooperation of this virile young Vice President, and he will be here on the job working with you every minute of the day -- north, south, east, and west. I see where he has been down in Georgia this weekend facing the elements and getting heated up for the days ahead. He even burned his overcoat, I think, and if he is not out of the country attending some funeral he will be here working for you.