That's what I want to talk with you about tonight. I call it the New
Covenant but it's grounded in a very, very old idea that all Americans have
not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their
God-given talents and determination can take them. And to give something
back to their communities and their country in return.
Opportunity and responsibility--they go hand in hand; we can't have one
without the other, and our national community can't hold together without
both.
Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip our
people to meet the challenges of the new economy, how we can change the way
our Government works to fit a different time and, above all, how we can
repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together behind our common
purpose. We must have dramatic change in our economy, our Government and
ourselves.
My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise to the occasion.
Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride. As we embark on this
course, let us put our country first, remembering that regardless of party
label we are all Americans. And let the final test of everything we do be a
simple one: Is it good for the American people?
Let me begin by saying that we cannot ask Americans to be better citizens
if we are not better servants. You made a good start by passing that law
which applies to Congress all the laws you put on the private sector--and
I was proud to sign it yesterday.
But we have a lot more to do before people really trust the way things work
around here. Three times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors
of Washington as were here 20 years ago. The American people look at their
capital and they see a city where the well-connected and the well-protected
can work the system, but the interests of ordinary citizens are often left
out.
As the new Congress opened its doors, lobbyists were still doing business
as usual--the gifts, the trips--all the things that people are concerned
about haven't stopped.
Twice this month you missed opportunities to stop these practices. I know
there were other considerations in those votes, but I want to use something
that I've heard my Republican friends say from time to time: There doesn't
have to be a law for everything.
So tonight I ask you to just stop taking the lobbyists' perks, just stop.
We don't have to wait for legislation to pass to send a strong signal to
the American people that things are really changing. But I also hope you
will send me the strongest possible lobby reform bill, and I'll sign that,
too. We should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work what
they're spending, what they want. We should also curb the role of big money
in elections by capping the cost of campaigns and limiting the influence of
PAC's.
And as I have said for three years, we should work to open the air waves so
that they can be an instrument of democracy not a weapon of destruction by
giving free TV time to candidates for public office.
When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was reported
in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the halls of this sacred
building and cheered. This year, let's give the folks at home something to
cheer about.
More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way the
Government works. Let's make it smaller, less costly and smarter. Leaner
not meaner.