Now, my budget cuts a lot. But it protects education, veterans, Social
Security and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. You should,
and I hope you will.
And when we give more flexibility to the states, let us remember that there
are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed in every
state, north and south, east and west.
Immunization against childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools,
Head Start, medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants--all
these things are in the national interest.
I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations, but
when we deregulate let's remember what national action in the national
interest has given us: safer food for our families, safer toys for our
children, safer nursing homes for our parents, safer cars and highways and
safer workplaces, cleaner air and cleaner water. Do we need common sense
and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. But we can have common
sense and still provide for safe drinking water. We can have fairness and
still clean up toxic dumps and we ought to do it.
Should we cut the deficit more? Well of course we should. Of course we
should. But we can bring it down in a way that still protects our economic
recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be punished, but
instead should be helped.
I know many of you in this chamber support the balanced-budget amendment. I
certainly want to balance the budget. Our Administration has done more to
bring the budget down and to save money than any in a very, very long
time.
If you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do, then you
have to be straight with the American people. They have a right to know
what you're going to cut, what taxes you're going to raise, how it's going
to affect them.
And we should be doing things in the open around here. For example,
everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger Social
Security. I would oppose that, and I think most Americans would.