because the DOD & VA are part of the Executive Branch... so it's not a matter of "rah rah" but a matter of a President acknowledging every one of the departments and agencies managed by a President in a yearly summary narrative, while also providing a glimpse at the vision for goals and activities for the coming year.
So for Carter, an example from his 1981 (final) SOTU before Raygun was inaugurated -
VETERANS
This country and its leadership has a continuing and unique obligation to the men and women who served their nation in the armed forces and help maintain or restore peace in the world.
My commitment to veterans, as evidenced by my record, is characterized by a conscientious and consistent emphasis in these general areas:
First, we have worked to honor the Vietnam veteran. During my Administration, and under the leadership of VA Administrator Max Cleland, I was proud to lead our country in an overdue acknowledgement of our Nation's gratitude to the men and women who served their country during the bitter war in Southeast Asia. Their homecoming was deferred and seemed doomed to be ignored. Our country has matured in the last four years and at long last we were able to separate the war from the warrior and honor these veterans. But with our acknowledgement of their service goes an understanding that some Vietnam veterans have unique needs and problems.
My Administration was able to launch a long sought after psychological readjustment and outreach program, unprecedented in its popularity, sensitivity and success. This program must be continued. The Administration has also grappled with the difficult questions posed by some veterans who served in Southeast Asia and were exposed to potentially harmful substances, including the herbicide known as Agent Orange. We have launched scientific inquiries that should answer many veterans' questions about their health and should provide the basis for establishing sound compensation policy. We cannot rest until their concerns are dealt with in a sensitive, expeditious and compassionate fashion.
Second, we have focused the VA health care system in the needs of the service-connected disabled veteran. We initiated and are implementing the first reform of the VA vocational rehabilitation system since its inception in 1943. Also, my Administration was the first to seek a cost-of-living increase for the recipients of VA compensation every year. My last budget also makes such a request. The Administration also launched the Disabled Veterans Outreach Program in the Department of Labor which has successfully placed disabled veterans in jobs. Services provided by the VA health care system will be further targeted to the special needs of disabled veterans during the coming year.
Third, the VA health care system, the largest in the free world, has maintained its independence and high quality during my Administration. We have made the system more efficient and have therefore treated more veterans than ever before by concentrating on out-patient care and through modern management improvements. As the median age of the American veteran population increases, we must concentrate on further changes within the VA system to keep it independent and to serve as a model to the nation and to the world as a center for research, treatment and rehabilitation.
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/speeches/su81jec.phtml
And from the same transcript, this might set off head explosions -
DEFENSE BUDGET
For many years the Soviets have steadily increased their real defense spending, expanded their strategic forces, strengthened their forces in Europe and Asia, and enhanced their capability for projecting military force around the world directly or through the use of proxies. Afghanistan dramatizes the vastly increased military power of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union has built a war machine far beyond any reasonable requirements for their own defense and security. In contrast, our own defense spending declined in real terms every year from 1968 through 1976.
We have reversed this decline in our own effort. Every year since 1976 there has been a real increase in our defense spending, and our lead has encouraged increases by our allies. With the support of the Congress, we must and will make an even greater effort in the years ahead.
The Fiscal Year 1982 budget would increase funding authority for defense to more than $196 billion. This amount, together with a supplemental request for FY 1981 of about $6 billion, will more than meet my Administration's pledge for a sustained growth of 3 percent in real expenditures, and provides for 5 percent in program growth in FY 1982 and beyond.
The trends we mean to correct cannot be remedied overnight; we must be willing to see this program through. To ensure that we do so I am setting a growth rate for defense that we can sustain over the long haul.
The defense program I have proposed for the next five years will require some sacrifice, but sacrifice we can well afford.
The defense program emphasizes four areas:
It ensures that our strategic nuclear forces will be equivalent to those of the Soviet Union and that deterrence against nuclear war will be maintained;
It upgrades our forces so that the military balance between NATO and the Warsaw Pact will continue to deter the outbreak of war, conventional or nuclear, in Europe;
It provides us the ability to come quickly to the aid of friends and allies around the globe;
And it ensures that our Navy will continue to be the most powerful on the seas.
http://www.jimmycarterlibrary.gov/documents/speeches/su81jec.phtml
So one needs to avoid trying to manufacture a fantasy football-like government based on rusty memories of the past.
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