But if we really want to cut spending, we’re going to have to do more,

and some of it will be difficult. Tonight I call for an across-the-board

freeze in Federal Government salaries for one year. And

thereafter, during this 4-year period, I recommend that salaries rise

at one point lower than the cost of living allowance normally involved

in Federal pay increases.

Next, I recommend that we make 150 specific budget cuts, as you know,

and that all those who say we should cut more be as specific as I have

been.

Finally, let me say to my friends on both sides of the aisle, it is not

enough simply to cut Government; we have to rethink the whole way it

works. When I became President I was amazed at just the way the White

House worked, in ways that added lots of money to what taxpayers had to

pay, outmoded ways that didn’t take maximum advantage of technology and

didn’t do things that any business would have done years ago to save

taxpayers’ money.

So I want to bring a new spirit of innovation into every Government

Department. I want to push education reform, as I said, not just to

spend more money but to really improve learning. Some things work, and

some things don’t. We ought to be subsidizing the things that work and

discouraging the things that don’t. I’d like to use that Superfund to

clean up pollution for a change and not just pay lawyers.

In the aftermath of all the difficulties with the savings and loans, we

must use Federal bank regulators to protect the security and safety of

our financial institutions, but they should not be used to continue the

credit crunch and to stop people from making sensible loans.

I’d like for us to not only have welfare reform but to reexamine the

whole focus of all of our programs that help people, to shift them from

entitlement programs to empowerment programs. In the end we want people

not to need us anymore. I think that’s important.

But in the end we have to get back to the deficit. For years there’s

been a lot of talk about it but very few credible efforts to deal with

it. And now I understand why, having dealt with the real numbers for 4

weeks. But I believe this plan does; it tackles the budget deficit

seriously and over the long term. It puts in place one of the biggest

deficit reductions and one of the biggest changes in Federal priorities,

from consumption to investment, in the history of this country at the

same time over the next 4 years.

Let me say to all the people watching us tonight who will ask me these

questions beginning tomorrow as I go around the country and who’ve

asked it in the past: We’re not cutting the deficit just because

experts say it’s the thing to do or because it has some intrinsic merit.

We have to cut the deficit because the more we spend paying off the

debt, the less tax dollars we have to invest in jobs and education and

the future of this country. And the more money we take out of the pool

of available savings, the harder it is for people in the private sector

to borrow money at affordable interest rates for a college loan for

their children, for a home mortgage, or to start a new business.

That’s why we’ve got to reduce the debt, because it is crowding out

other activities that we ought to be engaged in and that the American

people ought to be engaged in. We cut the deficit so that our children

will be able to buy a home, so that our companies can invest in the

future and in retraining their workers, so that our Government can make

the kinds of investments we need to be a stronger and smarter and safer

nation.

If we don’t act now, you and I might not even recognize this Government

10 years from now. If we just stay with the same trends of the last 4

years, by the end of the decade the deficit will be $635 billion a year,

almost 80 percent of our gross domestic product. And paying interest on

that debt will be the costliest Government program of all. We’ll still

be the world’s largest debtor. And when Members of Congress come here,

they’ll be devoting over 20 cents on the dollar to interest payments,

more than half of the budget to health care and to other entitlements.

And you’ll come here and deliberate and argue over 6 or 7 cents on the

dollar, no matter what America’s problems are. We will not be able to

have the independence we need to chart the future that we must. And

we’ll be terribly dependent on foreign funds for a large portion of our

investment.

This budget plan, by contrast, will by 1997 cut $140 billion in that

year alone from the deficit, a real spending cut, a real revenue

increase, a real deficit reduction, using the independent numbers of

the Congressional Budget Office. [Laughter] Well, you can laugh, my

fellow Republicans, but I’ll point out that the Congressional Budget

Office was normally more conservative in what was going to happen and

closer to right than previous Presidents have been.

I did this so that we could argue about priorities with the same set of

numbers. I did this so that no one could say I was estimating my way

out of this difficulty. I did this because if we can agree together on

the most prudent revenues we’re likely to get if the recovery stays and

we do right things economically, then it will turn out better for the

American people than we say. In the last 12 years, because there were

differences over the revenue estimates, you and I know that both

parties were given greater elbow room for irresponsibility. This is

tightening the rein on the Democrats as well as the Republicans. Let’s

at least argue about the same set of numbers so the American people

will think we’re shooting straight with them.

As I said earlier, my recommendation makes more than 150 difficult

reductions to cut the Federal spending by a total of $246 billion. We

are eliminating programs that are no longer needed, such as nuclear

power research and development. We’re slashing subsidies and canceling

wasteful projects. But many of these programs were justified in their

time, and a lot of them are difficult for me to recommend reductions in,

some really tough ones for me personally. I recommend that we reduce

interest subsidies to the Rural Electric Administration. That’s a

difficult thing for me to recommend. But I think that I cannot exempt

the things that exist in my State or in my experience, if I ask you to

deal with things that are difficult for you to deal with. We’re going

to have to have no sacred cows except the fundamental abiding interest

of the American people.

I have to say that we all know our Government has been just great at

building programs. The time has come to show the American people that

we can limit them too; that we can not only start things, that we can

actually stop things.

About the defense budget, I raise a hope and a caution. As we

restructure our military forces to meet the new threats of the

post-cold-war world, it is true that we can responsibly reduce our defense

budget. And we may all doubt what that range of reductions is, but let

me say that as long as I am President, I will do everything I can to

make sure that the men and women who serve under the American flag will

remain the best trained, the best prepared, the best equipped fighting

force in the world. And every one of you should make that solemn pledge.

We still have responsibilities around the world. We are the world’s

only superpower. This is still a dangerous and uncertain time, and we

owe it to the people in uniform to make sure that we adequately provide

for the national defense and for their interests and needs. Backed by

an effective national defense and a stronger economy, our Nation will

be prepared to lead a world challenged as it is everywhere by ethnic

conflict, by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, by the

global democratic revolution, and by challenges to the health of our

global environment.

I know this economic plan is ambitious, but I honestly believe it is

necessary for the continued greatness of the United States. And I think

it is paid for fairly, first by cutting Government, then by asking the

most of those who benefited the most in the past, and by asking more

Americans to contribute today so that all of us can prosper tomorrow.

For the wealthiest, those earning more than $180,000 per year, I ask

you all who are listening tonight to support a raise in the top rate

for Federal income taxes from 31 to 36 percent. We recommend a 10

percent surtax on incomes over $250,000 a year, and we recommend

closing some loopholes that let some people get away without paying any

tax at all.

For businesses with taxable incomes in excess of $10 million, we

recommend a raise in the corporate tax rate, also to 36 percent, as

well as a cut in the deduction for business entertainment expenses. Our

plan seeks to attack tax subsidies that actually reward companies more

for shutting their operations down here and moving them overseas than

for staying here and reinvesting in America. I say that as someone who

believes that American companies should be free to invest around the

world and as a former Governor who actively sought investment of

foreign companies in my State. But the Tax Code should not express a

preference to American companies for moving somewhere else, and it does

in particular cases today.

We will seek to ensure that, through effective tax enforcement, foreign

corporations who do make money in America simply pay the same taxes

that American companies make on the same income.

To middle class Americans who have paid a great deal for the last 12

years and from whom I ask a contribution tonight, I will say again as I

did on Monday night: You’re not going alone any more, you’re certainly

not going first, and you’re not going to pay more for less as you have

too often in the past. I want to emphasize the facts about this plan:

98.8 percent of America’s families will have no increase in their

income tax rates, only 1.2 percent at the top.

Let me be clear: There will also be no new cuts in benefits for

Medicare. As we move toward the 4th year, with the explosion in health

care costs, as I said, projected to account for 50 percent of the

growth of the deficit between now and the year 2000, there must be

planned cuts in payments to providers, to doctors, to hospitals, to

labs, as a way of controlling health care costs. But I see these only

as a stopgap until we can reform the entire health care system. If

you’ll help me do that, we can be fair to the providers and to the

consumers of health care. Let me repeat this, because I know it matters

to a lot of you on both sides of the aisle. This plan does not make a

recommendation for new cuts in Medicare benefits for any beneficiary.

Secondly, the only change we are making in Social Security is one that

has already been publicized. The plan does ask older Americans with

higher incomes, who do not rely solely on Social Security to get by, to

contribute more. This plan will not affect the 80 percent of Social

Security recipients who do not pay taxes on Social Security now. Those

who do not pay tax on Social Security now will not be affected by this

plan.

Our plan does include a broad-based tax on energy, and I want to tell

you why I selected this and why I think it’s a good idea. I recommend

that we adopt a Btu tax on the heat content of energy as the best way

to provide us with revenue to lower the deficit because it also combats

pollution, promotes energy efficiency, promotes the independence,

economically, of this country as well as helping to reduce the debt,

and because it does not discriminate against any area. Unlike a carbon

tax, that’s not too hard on the coal States; unlike a gas tax, that’s

not too tough on people who drive a long way to work; unlike an ad

valorem tax, it doesn’t increase just when the price of an energy

source goes up. And it is environmentally responsible. It will help us

in the future as well as in the present with the deficit.

Taken together, these measures will cost an American family with an

income of about $40,000 a year less than $17 a month. It will cost

American families with incomes under $30,000 nothing because of other

programs we propose, principally those raising the earned-income tax

credit.

Because of our publicly stated determination to reduce the deficit, if

we do these things, we will see the continuation of what’s happened

just since the election. Just since the election, since the Secretary

of the Treasury, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget,

and others who have begun to speak out publicly in favor of a tough

deficit reduction plan, interest rates have continued to fall long-term.

That means that for the middle class who will pay something more each

month, if they had any credit needs or demands, their increased energy

costs will be more than offset by lower interest costs for mortgages,

consumer loans, credit cards. This can be a wise investment for them

and their country now.

I would also point out what the American people already know, and that

is, because we’re a big, vast country where we drive long distances, we

have maintained far lower burdens on energy than any other advanced

country. We will still have far lower burdens on energy than any other

advanced country. And these will be spread fairly, with real attempts

to make sure that no cost is imposed on families with incomes under

$30,000 and that the costs are very modest until you get into the

higher income groups where the income taxes trigger in.

Now, I ask all of you to consider this: Whatever you think of the tax

program, whatever you think of the spending cuts, consider the cost of

not changing. Remember the numbers that you all know. If we just keep

on doing what we’re doing, by the end of the decade we’ll have a

$650-billion-a-year deficit. If we just keep on doing what we’re doing, by

the end of the decade 20 percent of our national income will go to

health care every year, twice as much as any other country on the face

of the globe. If we just keep on doing what we’re doing, over 20 cents

on the dollar will have to go to service the debt.

Unless we have the courage now to start building our future and stop

borrowing from it, we’re condemning ourselves to years of stagnation

interrupted by occasional recessions, to slow growth in jobs, to no

more growth in income, to more debt, to more disappointment. Worse,

unless we change, unless we increase investment and reduce the debt to

raise productivity so that we can generate both jobs and incomes, we

will be condemning our children and our children’s children to a lesser

life than we enjoyed. Once Americans looked forward to doubling their

living standards every 25 years. At present productivity rates, it will

take 100 years to double living standards, until our grandchildren’s

grandchildren are born. I say that is too long to wait.

Tonight the American people know we have to change. But they’re also

likely to ask me tomorrow and all of you for the weeks and months ahead

whether we have the fortitude to make the changes happen in the right

way. They know that as soon as I leave this Chamber and you go home,

various interest groups will be out in force lobbying against this or

that piece of this plan, and that the forces of conventional wisdom

will offer a thousand reasons why we well ought to do this but we just

can’t do it.

Our people will be watching and wondering, not to see whether you

disagree with me on a particular issue but just to see whether this is

going to be business as usual or a real new day, whether we’re all

going to conduct ourselves as if we know we’re working for them. We

must scale the walls of the people’s scepticisms, not with our words

but with our deeds. After so many years of gridlock and indecision,

after so many hopeful beginnings and so few promising results, the

American people are going to be harsh in their judgments of all of us

if we fail to seize this moment.

This economic plan can’t please everybody. If the package is picked

apart, there will be something that will anger each of us, won’t please

anybody. But if it is taken as a whole, it will help all of us. So I

ask you all to begin by resisting the temptation to focus only on a

particular spending cut you don’t like or some particular investment

that wasn’t made. And nobody likes the tax increases, but let’s just

face facts. For 20 years, through administrations of both parties,

incomes have stalled and debt has exploded and productivity has not

grown as it should. We cannot deny the reality of our condition. We

have got to play the hand we were dealt and play it as best we can.

My fellow Americans, the test of this plan cannot be “what is in it for

me.” It has got to be “what is in it for us.” If we work hard and if we

work together, if we rededicate ourselves to creating jobs, to

rewarding work, to strengthening our families, to reinventing our

Government, we can lift our country’s fortunes again.

Tonight I ask everyone in this Chamber and every American to look

simply into your heart, to spark your own hopes, to fire your own

imagination. There is so much good, so much possibility, so much

excitement in this country now that if we act boldly and honestly, as

leaders should, our legacy will be one of prosperity and progress. This

must be America’s new direction. Let us summon the courage to seize it.

Thank you. God bless America.

***

State of the Union Address

William J. Clinton

January 25, 1994

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, members of the 103rd Congress, my fellow

Americans:

I am not sure what speech is in the TelePrompTer tonight, but I hope we

can talk about the State of the Union.

I ask you to begin by recalling the memory of the giant who presided

over this chamber with such force and grace. Tip O’Neill liked to call

himself “A Man of the House” and he surely was that. But even more, he

was a man of the people, a bricklayer’s son who helped to build the

great American middle class. Tip O’Neill never forgot who he was, where

he came from, or who sent him here. Tonight he’s smiling down on us for

the first time from the Lord’s gallery. But in his honor, may we too

also remember who we are, where we come from, and who sent us here.

If we do that we will return over and over again to the principle that

if we simply give ordinary people equal opportunity, quality education,

and a fair shot at the American dream, they will do extraordinary

things.

We gather tonight in a world of changes so profound and rapid that all

nations are tested. Our American heritage has always been to master such

change, to use it to expand opportunity at home, and our leadership

abroad. But for too long and in too many ways, that heritage was

abandoned, and our country drifted.

For 30 years family life in America has been breaking down. For 20 years

the wages of working people have been stagnant or declining. For the 12

years of trickle down economics we built a false prosperity on a hollow

base as our national debt quadrupled. From 1989 to 1992 we experienced

the slowest growth in a half century. For too many families, even when

both parents were working, the American dream has been slipping away.

In 1992 the American people demanded that we change. I year ago I asked

all of you to join me in accepting responsibility for the future of our

country.

Well, we did. We replaced drift and deadlock with renewal and reform.

And I want to thank every one of you here who heard the American people,

who broke gridlock, who gave them the most successful teamwork between a

president and a Congress in 30 years.

Accomplishments

This Congress produced a budget that cut the deficit by half a trillion

dollars, cut spending and raised income taxes on only the wealthiest

Americans. This Congress produced tax relief for millions of low-income

workers to reward work over welfare. It produced NAFTA. It produced the

Brady bill, now the Brady law.

And thank you, Jim Brady, for being here, and God bless you, Sarah. This

Congress produced tax cuts to reduce the taxes of nine out of 10 small

businesses who use the money to invest more and create more jobs. It

produced more research and treatment for AIDS, more childhood

immunizations, more support for women’s health research, more affordable

college loans for the middle class, a new national service program for

those who want to give something back to their country and their

communities for higher education, a dramatic increase in high-tech

investments to move us from a defense to a domestic high-tech economy.

This Congress produced a new law--the motor voter bill--to help millions

of people register to vote. It produced family and medical leave--all

passed, all signed into law, with not one single veto.

These accomplishments were all commitments I made when I sought this

office, and in fairness, they all had to be passed by you in this

Congress. But I am persuaded that the real credit belongs to the people

who sent us here, who pay our salaries, who hold our feet to the fire.

But what we do here is really beginning to change lives. Let me just

give you one example.

Family And Medical Leave

I will never forget what the family and medical leave law meant to just

one father I met early one Sunday morning in the White House. It was

unusual to see a family there touring early Sunday morning, but he had

his wife and his three children there, one of them in a wheelchair. And

I came up, and after we had our picture taken and had a little visit, I

was walking off, and that man grabbed me by the arm and he said, “Mr.

President, let me tell you something. My little girl here is desperately

ill. She’s probably not going to make it. But because of the family

leave law, I was able to take time off to spend with her, the most

important I ever spent in my life, without losing my job and hurting the

rest of my family. It means more to me than I will ever be able to say.

Don’t you people up here ever think what you do doesn’t make a

difference. It does.”

Though we are making a difference, our work has just begun. Many

Americans still haven’t felt the impact of what we’ve done. The recovery

still hasn’t touched every community or created enough jobs. Incomes are

still stagnant. There’s still too much violence and not enough hope in

too many places.

Abroad, the young democracies we are strongly supporting still face very

difficult times and look to us for leadership.

And so tonight, let us resolve to continue the journey of renewal, to

create more and better jobs, to guarantee health security for all, to

reward welfare--work over welfare, to promote democracy abroad and to

begin to reclaim our streets from violent crime and drugs and gangs to

renew our own American community.

Deficit Reduction

Last year, we began to put our house in order by tackling the budget

deficit that was driving us toward bankruptcy. We cut $255 billion in

spending, including entitlements, in over 340 separate budget items. We

froze domestic spending and used honest budget numbers.

Led by the vice president, we’ve launched a campaign to reinvent

government. We’ve cut staff, cut perks, even trimmed the fleet of

federal limousines. After years of leaders whose rhetoric attacked

bureaucracy but whose actions expanded it, we will actually reduce it by

252,000 people over the next five years. By the time we have finished,

the federal bureaucracy will be at its lowest point in 30 years.

Because the deficit was so large and because they benefited from tax

cuts in the 1980s, we did ask the wealthiest Americans to pay more to

reduce the deficit. So on April the 15th, the American people will

discover the truth about what we did last year on taxes. Only the top

one--the top 1.2 percent of Americans, as I said all along, will face

higher income tax rates--let me repeat, only the wealthiest 1.2 percent

of Americans will face higher income tax rates and no one else will, and

that is the truth. Of course, there were, as there always are in

politics, naysayers who said this plan wouldn’t work, but they were

wrong. When I became president, the experts predicted that next year’s

deficit would be $300 billion, but because we acted, those same people

now say the deficit’s going to be under $180 billion, 40 percent lower

than was previously predicted.

The Economy

Our economic program has helped to produce the lowest core inflation

rate and the lowest interest rates in 20 years, and because those

interest rates are down, business investment and equipment is growing at

seven times the rate of the previous four years. Auto sales are way up,

home sales at a record high. Millions of Americans have refinanced their

homes and our economy has produced 1.6 million private-sector jobs in

1993, more than were created in the previous four years combined.

The people who supported this economic plan should be proud of its early

results--proud. But everyone in this chamber should know and acknowledge

that there is more to do. Next month I will send you one of the toughest

budgets ever presented to Congress. It will cut spending in more than

300 programs, eliminate 100 domestic programs, and reforms the way in

which governments buy goods and services.

This year we must again make the hard choices to live within the hard

spending ceilings we have set. We must do it. We have proved we can

bring the deficit down without choking off recovery, without punishing

seniors or the middle class, and without putting our national security

at risk. If you will stick with this plan, we will post three

consecutive years of declining deficits for the first time since Harry

Truman lived in the White House. And once again, the buck stops here.

Trade

Our economic plan also bolsters our strength and our credibility around

the world. Once we reduced the deficit and put the steel back into our

competitive edge, the world echoed with the sound of falling trade

barriers. In one year, with NAFTA, with GATT, with our efforts in Asia

and the national export strategy, we did more to open world markets to

American products than at any time in the last two generations. That

means more jobs and rising living standards for the American people, low

deficits, low inflation, low interest rates, low trade barriers and high

investments. These are the building blocks of our recovery. But if we

want to take full advantage of the opportunities before us in the global

economy, you all know we must do more.

As we reduce defense spending, I ask Congress to invest more in the

technologies of tomorrow. Defense conversion will keep us strong

militarily and create jobs for our people here at home.

As we protect our environment, we must invest in the environmental

technologies of the future which will create jobs. This year we will

fight for a revitalized Clean Water Act and a Safe Drinking Water Act

and a reformed Superfund program.

And the vice president is right; we must also work with the private

sector to connect every classroom, every clinic, every library, every

hospital in America into a national information superhighway by the year

2000. Think of it. Instant access to information will increase

productivity. It will help to educate our children. It will provide

better medical care. It will create jobs. And I call on the Congress to

pass legislation to establish that information superhighway this year.

As we expand opportunity and create jobs, no one can be left out. We

must continue to enforce fair lending and fair housing and all civil

rights laws, because America will never be complete in its renewal until

everyone shares in its bounty. But we all know, too, we can do all these

things-- put our economic house in order, expand world trade, target the

jobs of the future, guarantee equal opportunity.

But if we’re honest, we’ll all admit that this strategy still cannot

work unless we also give our people the education, training and skills

they need to seize the opportunities of tomorrow. We must set tough,

world-class academic and occupational standards for all our children and

give our teachers and students the tools they need to meet them.

Education

Our Goals 2000 proposal will empower individual school districts to

experiment with ideas like chartering their schools to be run by private

corporations or having more public school choice, to do whatever they

wish to do as long as we measure every school by one high standard: Are

our children learning what they need to know to compete and win in the

global economy?

Goals 2000 links world-class standards to grassroots reforms and I hope

Congress will pass it without delay. Our school to work initiative will

for the first time link school to the world of work, providing at least

one year of apprenticeship beyond high school. After all, most of the

people we’re counting on to build our economic future won’t graduate

from college. It’s time to stop ignoring them and start empowering them.

We must literally transform our outdated unemployment system into a new

reemployment system. The old unemployment system just sort of kept you

going while you waited for your old job to come back. We’ve got to have

a new system to move people into new and better jobs because most of

those old jobs just don’t come back. And we know that the only way to

have real job security in the future, to get a good job with a growing

income, is to have real skills and the ability to learn new ones. So

we’ve got to streamline today’s patchwork of training programs and make

them a source of new skill for our people who lose their jobs.

Reemployment, not unemployment, must become the centerpiece of our

economic renewal. I urge you to pass it in this session of Congress.

Welfare

And just as we must transform our unemployment system, so must we also

revolutionize our welfare system. It doesn’t work; it defies our values

as a nation. If we value work, we can’t justify a system that makes

welfare more attractive than work if people are worried about losing

their health care.

If we value responsibility, we can’t ignore the $34 billion in child

support absent parents out to be paying to millions of parents who are

taking care of their children--. If we value strong families, we can’t

perpetuate a system that actually penalizes those who stay together. Can

you believe that a child who has a child gets more money from the

government for leaving home than for staying home with a parent or a

grandparent? That’s not just bad policy, it’s wrong and we ought to

change it.

I worked on this problem for years before I became president, with other

governors and with members of Congress in both parties and with the

previous administration of another party. I worked on it with people who

were on welfare, lots of them. And I want to say something to everybody

here who cares about this issue. The people who most want to change this

system are the people who are dependent on it. They want to get off

welfare; they want to go back to work; they want to do right by their

kids.

I once had a hearing when I was a governor and I brought in people on

welfare from all over America who had found their way to work and a

woman from my state who testified was asked this question. What’s the

best thing about being off welfare and in a job. And without blinking an

eye, she looked at 40 governors and she said, when my boy goes to school

and they say “What does your mother do for a living?” he can give an

answer. These people want a better system and we ought to give it to

them.

Last year, we began this. We gave the states more power to innovate

because we know that a lot of great ideas come from outside Washington

and many states are already using it. Then this Congress took a dramatic

step. Instead of taxing people with modest incomes into poverty, we

helped them to work their way out of poverty by dramatically increasing

the earned income tax credit. It will lift 15 million working families

out of poverty, rewarding work over welfare, making it possible for

people to be successful workers and successful parents. Now that’s real

welfare reform.

But there is more to be done. This spring I will send you a

comprehensive welfare reform bill that builds on the Family Support Act

of 1988 and restores the basic values of work and responsibility. We

will say to teenagers if you have a child out of wedlock, we’ll no

longer give you a check to set up a separate household, we want families

to stay together; say to absent parents who aren’t paying their child

support if you’re not providing for your children we’ll garnish your

wages, suspend your license, track you across state lines, and if

necessary make some of you work off what you owe.

People who bring children into this world cannot and must not walk away

from them.

But to all those who depend on welfare, we should offer ultimately a

simple compact. We will provide the support, the job training, the child

care you need for up to two years, but after that anyone who can work,

must, in the private sector wherever possible, in community service if

necessary. That’s the only way we’ll ever make welfare what it ought to

be, a second chance, not a way of life.

I know it will be difficult to tackle welfare reform in 1994 at the same

time we tackle health care. But let me point out, I think it is

inevitable and imperative. It is estimated that one million people are

on welfare today because it’s the only way they can get health care

coverage for their children. Those who choose to leave welfare for jobs

without health benefits, and many entry level jobs don’t have health

benefits, find themselves in the incredible position of paying taxes

that help to pay for health care coverage for those who made the other

choice, to stay on welfare. No wonder people leave work and go back to

welfare, to get health care coverage. We’ve got to solve the health care

problem to have real welfare reform.

Health Care Reform

So this year we will make history by reforming the health care system.

And I would say to you, all of you my fellow public servants, this is

another issue where the people are way ahead of the politicians.

That may not be popular with either party, but it happens to be the

truth.

You know, the first lady has received now almost a million letters from

people all across America and from all walks of life. I’d like to share

just one of them with you. Richard Anderson of Reno, Nevada, lost his

job and, with it, his health insurance. Two weeks later, his wife, Judy,

suffered a cerebral aneurysm. He rushed her to the hospital, where she

stayed in intensive care for 21 days. The Anderson’s bills were over

$120,000. Although Judy recovered and Richard went back to work at $8 an

hour, the bills were too much for them and they were literally forced

into bankruptcy.

“Mrs. Clinton,” he wrote to Hillary, “no one in the United States of

America should have to lose everything they’ve worked for all their

lives because they were unfortunate enough to become ill.” It was to

help the Richard and Judy Andersons of America that the first lady and

so many others have worked so hard and so long on this health care

reform issue. We owe them our thanks and our action.

I know there are people here who say there’s no health care crisis. Tell

it to Richard and Judy Anderson. Tell it to the 58 million Americans who

have no coverage at all for some time each year. Tell it to the 81

million Americans with those preexisting conditions; those folks are

paying more or they can’t get insurance at all or they can’t ever change

their jobs because they or someone in their family has one of those

preexisting conditions. Tell it to the small businesses burdened by

skyrocketing costs of insurance. Most small businesses cover their

employers, and they pay on average 35 percent more in premiums than big

businesses or government. Or tell it to the 76 percent of insured

Americans, three out of four whose policies have lifetime limits, and

that means they can find themselves without any coverage at all just

when they need it the most.

So, if any of you believe there’s no crisis, you tell it to those

people, because I can’t.

There are some people who literally do not understand the impact of this

problem on people’s lives, but all you have to do is go out and listen

to them. Just go talk to them anywhere, in any congressional district in

this country. They’re Republicans and Democrats and independents. It

doesn’t have a lick to do with party. They think we don’t get it, and

it’s time we show that we do get it.

From the day we began, our health care initiative has been designed to

strengthen what is good about our health care system--the world’s best

health care professionals, cutting edge research, and wonderful research

institutions, Medicare for older Americans. None of this--none of it

should be put at risk. But we’re paying more and more money for less and

less care. Every year, fewer and fewer Americans even get to choose

their doctors. Every year, doctors and nurses spend more time on

paperwork and less time with patients because of the absolute

bureaucratic nightmare the present system has become.

This system is riddled with inefficiency, with abuse, with fraud, and

everybody knows it. In today’s health care system, insurance companies

call the shots. They pick whom they cover and how they cover them. They

can cut off your benefits when you need your coverage the most. They are

in charge.

What does it mean? It means every night millions of well-insured

Americans go to bed just an illness, an accident, or a pink slip away

from having no coverage or financial ruin. It means every morning

millions of Americans go to work without any health insurance at

all--something the workers in no other advanced country in the world do.

It means that every year more and more hard working people are told to

pick a new doctor because their boss has had to pick a new plan. And

countless others turndown better jobs because they know, if they take

the better job, they’ll lose their health insurance.

If we just let the health care system continue to drift, our country

will have people with less care, fewer choices, and higher bill.

Now, our approach protects the quality of care and people’s choices. It

builds on what works today in the private sector, to expand employer

based coverage, to guarantee private insurance for every American. And I

might say, employer based private insurance for every American was

proposed 20 years ago by President Richard Nixon to the United States

Congress. It was a good idea then, and it’s a better idea today.

Why do we want guaranteed private insurance? Because right now, nine out

of ten people who have insurance get it through their employers--and

that should continue. And if your employer is providing good benefits at

reasonable prices, that should continue too. And that ought to make the

Congress and the president feel better. Our goal is health insurance

everybody can depend on--comprehensive benefits that cover preventive

care and prescription drugs, health premiums that don’t just explode

when you get sick or you get older, the power--no matter how small your

business is --to choose dependable insurance at the same competitive

rates that governments and big business get today, one simple form for

people who are sick, and most of all, the freedom to choose a plan and

the right to choose your own doctor.

Our approach protects older Americans. Every plan before the Congress

proposes to slow the growth of Medicare. The difference is this. We

believe those savings should be used to improve health care for senior

citizens. Medicare must be protected, and it should cover prescription

drugs, and we should take the first steps in covering long-term care.

To those who would cut Medicare without protecting seniors, I say the

solution to today’s squeeze on middle class working people’s health care

is not to put the squeeze on middle class retired people’s health care.

We can do better than that. When it’s all said and done, it’s pretty

simple to me. Insurance ought to mean what it used to mean. You pay a

fair price for security, and when you get sick, health care is always

there--no matter what.

Along with the guarantee of health security, we all have to admit, too,

there must be more responsibility on the part of all of us in how we use

this system. People have to take their kids to get immunized. We should

all take advantage of preventive care. We must all work together to stop

the violence that explodes our emergency rooms. We have to practice

better health habits, and we can’t abuse the system. And those who don’t

have insurance under our approach will get coverage, but they will have

to pay something for it, too. The minority of businesses that provide no

insurance at all, and in so doing, shift the cost of the care of their

employees to others, should contribute something. People who smoke

should pay more for a pack of cigarettes. Everybody can contribute

something if we want to solve the health care crisis. There can’t be

anymore something for nothing. It will not be easy, but it can be done.

Now in the coming months I hope very much to work with both Democrats

and Republicans to reform a health care system by using the market to

bring down costs and to achieve lasting health security. But if you look

at history, we see that for 60 years this country has tried to reform

health care. President Roosevelt tried, President Truman tried,

President Nixon tried, President Carter tried. Every time the special

interests were powerful enough to defeat them, but not this time.

Campaign Finance Reform

I know that facing up to these interests will require courage. It will

raise critical questions about the way we finance our campaigns and how

lobbyists yield their influence. The work of change, frankly, will never

get any easier until we limit the influence of well financed interests

who profit from this current system. So I also must now call on you to

finish the job both houses began last year, by passing tough and

meaningful campaign finance reform and lobby reform legislation this

year.

You know, my fellow Americans, this is really a test for all of us. The

American people provide those of us in government service with terrific

health care benefits at reasonable costs. We have health care that’s

always there. I think we need to give every hard working, taxpaying

American the same health care security they have already given to us.

I want to make this very clear: I am open, as I have said repeatedly, to

the best ideas of concerned members of both parties. I have no special

brief for any specific approach, even in our own bill, except this: if

you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private

health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take

this pen, veto the legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start

all over again.

But I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think we’re ready to act

now. I believe that you’re ready to act now. And if you’re ready to

guarantee every American the same health care that you have, health care

that can never be taken away--now, not next year or the year after, now

is the time to stand with the people who sent us here. Now.

Foreign Policy

As we take these steps together to renew our strength at home, we cannot

turn away from our obligations to renew our leadership abroad. This is a

promising moment. Because of the agreements we have reached this year,

last year, Russia’s strategic nuclear missiles soon will no longer be

pointed at the United States. Nor will we point ours at them.

Instead of building weapons in space, Russian scientists will help us to

build the international space station.

And of course there are still dangers in the world: rampant arms

proliferation, bitter regional conflicts, ethnic and nationalist

tensions in many new democracies, severe environmental degradation the

world over, and fanatics who seek to cripple the world’s cities with

terror. As the world’s greatest power, we must therefore maintain our

defenses and our responsibilities. This year we secured indictments

against terrorists and sanctions against those harbor them. We worked to

promote environmentally-sustainable economic growth. We achieved

agreements with Ukraine, with Belarus, with Kazakhstan, to eliminate

completely their nuclear arsenals. We are working to achieve a Korean

Peninsula free of nuclear weapons. We will seek early ratification of

the treaty to ban chemical weapons worldwide. And earlier today we

joined with over 30 nations to begin negotiations on a comprehensive ban

to stop all nuclear testing.

But nothing--nothing--is more important to our security than our

nation’s armed forces. We honor their contributions, including those who

are carrying out the longest humanitarian airlift in history in

Bosnia---- those who will complete their mission in Somalia this year

and their brave comrades who gave their lives there. Our forces are the

finest military our nation has ever had, and I have pledged that as long

as I am president they will remain the best-equipped, the best-trained

and the best-prepared fighting force on the face of the earth.

Defense

Last year, I proposed a defense plan that maintains our post-Cold War

security at a lower cost. This year, many people urged me to cut our

defense spending further to pay for other government programs. I said

no. The budget I send to Congress draws the line against further defense

cuts. It protects the readiness and quality of our forces. Ultimately,

the best strategy is to do that. We must not cut defense further. I hope

the Congress without regard to party will support that position.

Ultimately, the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a

durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere.

Democracies don’t attack each other. They make better trading partners

and partners in diplomacy. That is why we have supported, you and I, the

democratic reformers in Russia and in the other states of the former

Soviet bloc. I applaud the bipartisan support this Congress provided

last year for our initiatives to help Russia, Ukraine and the other

states through their epic transformations.

Our support of reform must combine patience for the enormity of the task

and vigilance for our fundamental interest and values. We will continue

to urge Russia and the other states to press ahead with economic

reforms, and we will seek to cooperate with Russia to solve regional

problems while insisting that, if Russian troops operate in neighboring

states, they do so only when those states agree to their presence and in

strict accord with international standards.

But we must also remember as these nations chart their own futures, and

they must chart their own futures, how much more secure and more

prosperous our own people will be if democratic and market reform

succeed all across the former communist bloc. Our policy has been to

support that move and that has been the policy of the Congress. We

should continue it.

Europe

That is why I went to Europe earlier this month, to work with our

European partners to help to integrate all the former communist

countries into a Europe that has the possibility of becoming unified for

the first time in its entire history, it’s entire history, based on the

simple commitments of all nations in Europe to democracy, to free

markets, and to respect for existing borders.

With our allies, we have created a partnership for peace that invites

states from the former Soviet bloc and other non-NATO members to work

with NATO in military cooperation. When I met with Central Europe’s

leaders, including Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel, men who put their lives

on the line for freedom, I told them that the security of their region

is important to our country’s security.

This year, we must also do more to support democratic renewal and human

rights and sustainable development all around the world. We will ask

Congress to ratify the new GATT accord, we will continue standing by

South Africa as it works its way through its bold and hopeful and

difficult transition to democracy. We will convene a summit of the

Western hemisphere’s democratic leaders from Canada to the tip of South

America. And we will continue to press for the restoration of true

democracy in Haiti.

And as we build a more constructive relationship with China, we must

continue to insist on clear signs of improvement in that nation’s human

rights record.

Middle East

We will also work for new progress toward the Middle East peace. Last

year the world watched Yitzhak Rabin and Yasir Arafat at the White House

when they had their historic handshake of reconciliation. But there is a

long, hard road ahead. And on that road I am determined that I and our

administration will do all we can to achieve a comprehensive and lasting

peace for all the peoples of the region.

Now, there are some in our country who argue that with the Cold War,

America should turn its back on the rest of the world. Many around the

world were afraid we would do just that. But I took this office on a

pledge that had no partisan tinge to keep our nation secure by remaining

engaged in the rest of the world. And this year, because of our work

together, enacting NAFTA, keeping our military strong and prepared,

supporting democracy abroad, we have reaffirmed America’s leadership,

America’s engagement, and as a result, the American people are more

secure than they were before.

Crime

But while Americans are more secure from threats abroad, I think we all

now that in many ways we are less secure from threats here at home.

Everyday the national peace is shattered by crime.

In Petaluma, California, an innocent slumber party gives way to

agonizing tragedy for the family of Polly Klaas. An ordinary train ride

on Long Island ends in a hail of nine millimeter rounds. A tourist in

Florida is nearly burned alive by bigots simply because he is black.

Right here in our nation’s capital, a brave young man named Jason White,

a policeman, the son and grandson of policemen, is ruthlessly gunned

down.

Violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society,

limiting personal freedom, and fraying the ties that bind us.

The crime bill before Congress gives you a chance to do something about

it, a chance to be tough and smart. What does that mean? Let me begin by

saying I care a lot about this issue. Many years ago, when I started out

in public life, I was the attorney general of my state. I served as a

governor for a dozen years. I know what it’s like to sign laws

increasing penalties, to build more prison cells, to carry out the death

penalty. I understand this issue and it is not a simple thing.

First, we must recognize that most violent crimes are committed by a

small percentage of criminals who too often break the laws even when

they are on parole. Now those who commit crimes should be punished, and

those who commit repeated violent crimes should be told when you commit

a third violent crime, you will be put away and put away for good, three

strikes and you are out.

Second, we must take serious steps to reduce violence and prevent crime,

beginning with more police officers and more community policing. We know

right now that police who work the streets, know the folks, have the

respect of the neighborhood kids, focus on high crime areas, we know

that they are more likely to prevent crime as well as catch criminals.

Look at the experience of Houston, where the crime rate dropped 17

percent in one year when that approach was taken. Here tonight is one of

those community policemen, a brave, young detective, Kevin Jett, whose

beat is eight square blocks in one of the toughest neighborhoods in New

York. Every day he restores some sanity and safety, and a sense of

values and connection to the people whose lives he protects. I’d like to

ask him to stand up and be recognized tonight.

You will be given a chance to give the children of this country, the law

abiding working people of this country, and don’t forget, in the

toughest neighborhoods in this country, in the highest crime

neighborhoods in this country the vast majority of people get up every

day and obey the law, pay their taxes, do their best to raise their

kids. They deserve people like Kevin Jett, and you’re going to be given

the chance to give the American people another 100,000 of them, well

trained, and I urge you to do it.

You have before you crime legislation which also establishes a police

corps to encourage young people to get an education, and pay it off by

serving as police officers, which encourages retiring military personnel

to move into police forces--and enormous resources for our country, one

which has a safe schools provisions which will give our young people the

chance to walk to school in safety and to be in school in safety instead

of dodging bullets. These are important things.

The third thing we have to do is to build on the Brady Bill--the Brady

Law to take further steps----to take further steps to keep guns out of

the hands of criminals.

Now, I want to say something about this issue. Hunters must always be

free to hunt, law abiding adults should always be free to own guns and

protect their homes. I respect that part of our culture. I grew up in

it. But I want to ask the sportsmen and others who lawfully own guns to

join us in this campaign to reduce gun violence. I say to you, I know

you didn’t create this problem, but we need your help to solve it. There

is no sporting purpose on earth that should stop the United States

Congress from banishing assault weapons that outgun police and cut down

children.

Fourth, we must remember that drugs are a factor in an enormous

percentage of crimes. Recent studies indicate, sadly, that drug use is

on the rise again among our young people. The Crime Bill contains--all

the crime bills contain--more money for drug treatment, for criminal

addicts, and boot camps for youthful offenders that include incentives

to get off drugs and to stay off drugs. Our administration’s budget,

with all its cuts, contains a large increase in funding for drug

treatment and drug education. You must pass them both. We need then

desperately.

My fellow Americans, the problem of violence is an un-American problem.

It has no partisan or philosophical element. Therefore, I urge you find

ways as quickly as possible to set aside partisan differences and pass a

strong, smart, tough crime bill.

But further, I urge you to consider this: As you demand tougher

penalties for those who choose violence, let us also remember how we

came to this sad point. In our toughest neighborhoods, on our meanest

streets, in our poorest rural areas, we have seen a stunning and

simultaneous breakdown of community, family, and work, the heart and

soul of civilized society. This has created a vast vacuum which has been

filled by violence and drugs and gangs. So I ask you to remember that

even as we say no to crime, we must give people, especially our young

people something to say yes to. Many of our initiatives, from job

training to welfare reform to health care to national service will help

to rebuild distressed communities, to strengthen families, to provide

work, but more needs to be done. That’s what our community empowerment

agenda is all about--challenging businesses to provide more investment

through empowerment zones, ensuring banks will make loans in the same

communities their deposits come from, passing legislation to unleash the

power of capital through community development banks to create jobs,

opportunity, and hope where they’re needed most.

But I think you know that to really solve this problem, we’ll all have

to put our heads together, leave our ideological armor aside, and find

some new ideas to do even more.

The Role Of Government

And let’s be honest, we all know something else, too. Our problems go

way beyond the reach of government. They’re rooted in the loss of values

and the disappearance of work and the breakdown of our families and our

communities. My fellow Americans, we can cut the deficit, create jobs,

promote democracy around the world, pass welfare reform and health care,

pass the toughest crime bill in history and still leave too many of our

people behind.

The American people have got to want to change from within if we’re

going to bring back work and family and community. We cannot renew our

country when, within a decade, more than half of the children will be

born into families where there has been no marriage. We cannot renew

this country when 13-year-old boys get semi-automatic weapons to shoot 9

year olds for kicks. We can’t renew our country when children are having

children and the fathers walk away as if the kids don’t amount to

anything. We can’t renew the country when our businesses eagerly look

for new investments and new customers abroad but ignore those people

right here at home who’d give anything to have their jobs and would

gladly buy their products if they had the money to do it.

We can’t renew our country unless more of us--I mean all of us--are

willing to join the churches and the other good citizens, people like

all the black ministers I’ve worked with over the years or the priests

and the nuns I met at Our Lady of Help in East Los Angeles or my good

friend Tony Campolo in Philadelphia, unless we’re willing to work with

people like that, people who are saving kids, adopting schools, making

streets safer. All of us can do that.

We can’t renew our country until we realize that governments don’t raise

children; parents do. Parents who know their children’s teachers and

turn off the television and help with the homework and teach their kids

right from wrong--those kind of parents can make all the difference. I

know. I had one. And I’m telling you we have got to stop pointing our

fingers at these kids who have no future and reach our hands out to

them. Our country needs it. We need it. And they deserve it.

And so I say to you tonight let’s give our children a future. Let us

take away their guns and give them books. Let us overcome their despair

and replace it with hope. Let us, by our example, teach them to obey the

law, respect our neighbors, and cherish our values. Let us weave these

sturdy threads into a new American community that once more stand strong

against the forces of despair and evil because everybody has a chance to

walk into a better tomorrow.

Oh, there will be naysayers who fear that we won’t be equal to the

challenges of this time, but they misread our history, our heritage,

even today’s headlines. All those things tell us we can and we will

overcome any challenge.

When the earth shook and fires raged in California; when I saw the

Mississippi deluge the farmlands of the Midwest in a 500 year flood;

when the century’s bitterest cold swept from North Dakota to Newport

News it seemed as though the world itself was coming apart at the seams.

But the American people, they just came together. They rose to the

occasion, neighbor helping neighbor, strangers risking life and limb to

stay total strangers, showing the better angels of our nature.

Let us not reserve the better angels only for natural disasters, leaving

our deepest and most profound problems to petty political fighting.

Let us instead by true to our spirit, facing facts, coming together,

bringing hope and moving forward.

Tonight, my fellow Americans, we are summoned to answer a question as

old as the republic itself, what is the state of our union?

It is growing stronger but it must be stronger still. With your help and

God’s help it will be.

Thank you and God Bless America.

***

State of the Union Address

William J. Clinton

January 24, 1995

Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, members of the 104th Congress, my fellow

Americans:

Again we are here in the sanctuary of democracy. And once again, our

democracy has spoken.

So let me begin by congratulating all of you here in the 104th Congress,

and congratulating you, Mr. Speaker.

If we agree on nothing else tonight, we must agree that the American

people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 1994.

And as I look out at you, I know how some of you must have felt in 1992.

I must say that in both years we didn’t hear America singing, we heard

America shouting. And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike,

must say: We hear you. We will work together to earn the jobs you have

given us. For we are the keepers of the sacred trust and we must be

faithful to it in this new and very demanding era.

Over 200 years ago, our founders changed the entire course of human

history by joining together to create a new country based on a single,

powerful idea. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights.

Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea--the

American idea--and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and different

times. To Lincoln and to his Congress, to preserve the Union and to end

slavery. To Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, to restrain the

abuses and excesses of the Industrial Revolution and to assert our

leadership in the world. To Franklin Roosevelt, to fight the failure and

pain of the Great Depression and to win our country’s great struggle

against fascism.

And to all our Presidents since, to fight the cold war. Especially, I

recall two who struggled to fight that cold war in partnership with

Congresses where the majority was of a different party. To Harry Truman,

who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at home and who built the

architecture of the cold war. And to Ronald Reagan, whom we wish well

tonight, and who exhorted us to carry on until the twilight struggle

against Communism was won.

In another time of change and challenge, I had the honor to be the first

President to be elected in the post-cold-war era, an era marked by the

global economy, the information revolution, unparalleled change in

opportunity and in security for the American people.

I came to this hallowed chamber two years ago on a mission: To restore

the American dream for all our people and to make sure that we move into

the 21st century still the strongest force for freedom and democracy in

the entire world.

I was determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored. In

this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes. And I have

learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor.

But I am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it

was two years ago.

Accomplishments

Record numbers, record numbers of Americans are succeeding in the new

global economy. We are at peace, and we are a force for peace and

freedom throughout the world. We have almost six million new jobs since

I became President, and we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment

and inflation in 25 years.

Our businesses are more productive and here we have worked to bring the

deficit down, to expand trade, to put more police on our streets, to

give our citizens more of the tools they need to get an education and to

rebuild their own communities. But the rising tide is not lifting all

the boats.

While our nation is enjoying peace and prosperity, too many of our

people are still working harder and harder for less and less. While our

businesses are restructuring and growing more productive and

competitive, too many of our people still can’t be sure of having a job

next year or even next month. And far more than our material riches are

threatened, things far more precious to us: our children, our families,

our values.

Our civil life is suffering in America today. Citizens are working

together less and shouting at each other more. The common bonds of

community which have been the great strength of our country from its

very beginning are badly frayed.

What are we to do about it?

More than 60 years ago at the dawn of another new era, President

Roosevelt told our nation new conditions impose new requirements on

Government and those who conduct Government. And from that simple

proposition he shaped the New Deal, which helped to restore our nation

to prosperity and defined the relationship between our people and their

Government for half a century.

That approach worked in its time but today we face a very different time

and very different conditions. We are moving from an industrial age

built on gears and sweat to an information age demanding skills and

learning and flexibility.

Our Government, once a champion of national purpose, is now seen by many

as simply a captive of narrow interests putting more burdens on our

citizens rather than equipping them to get ahead. The values that used

to hold us all together seem to be coming apart.

So tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges of

this time. As we enter a new era, we need a new set of understandings

not just with Government but, even more important, with one another as

Americans.

New Covenant

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.

I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine’s alive and well.

The Role Of Government

The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old

bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter. The old

way of governing around here protected organized interests; we should

look out for the interests of ordinary people. The old way divided us by

interests, constituency or class; the New Covenant way should unite us

behind a common vision of what’s best for our country.

The old way dispensed services through large, top-down, inflexible

bureaucracies. The New Covenant way should shift these resources and

decision making from bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and

competition and individual responsibility into national policy.

The old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward failure.

The New Covenant way should have built-in incentives to reward success.

The old way was centralized here in Washington. The New Covenant way

must take hold in the communities all across America, and we should help

them to do that.

Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower

people to make the most of their own lives and to enhance our security

here at home and abroad.

We must not ask Government to do what we should do for ourselves. We

should rely on Government as a partner to help us to do more for

ourselves and for each other.

I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters,

we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there

is somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and the other

illusion that the Government is the source of every problem that we

have.

Our job is to get rid of yesterday’s Government so that our own people

can meet today’s and tomorrow’s needs.

And we ought to do it together.

You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say they

would cut Government and how bad it was. But not much happened.

We actually did it. We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in

spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions

from the Federal bureaucracy in the last two years alone.

Based on decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a

quarter of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it

the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was president, by the time I

come here again next year.

Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have

already saved taxpayers $ 63 billion. The age of the $ 500 hammer and

the ashtray you can break on David Letterman is gone. Deadwood programs

like mohair subsidies are gone. We’ve streamlined the Agriculture

Department by reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We’ve slashed the

small-business loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We’ve

thrown away the Government’s 10,000-page personnel manual.

And the Government is working better in important ways. FEMA, the

Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to

helping people in disaster.

You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there or

the people in California who’ve dealt with floods and earthquakes and

fires and they’ll tell you that.

Government workers, working hand-in-hand with private business, rebuilt

Southern California’s fractured freeways in record time and under

budget.

And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of the 5,600

schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business.

Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want to

just mention one because it’ll be discussed here in the next few weeks.

University administrators all over the country have told me that they

are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our

direct college loan program, which makes college loans cheaper and more

affordable with better repayment terms for students, costs the

Government less and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the

Government and for the universities.

We shouldn’t cap that program, we should give every college in America

the opportunity to be a part of it.

Previous Government programs gather dust; the reinventing Government

report is getting results. And we’re not through--there’s going to be a

second round of reinventing Government.

We propose to cut $ 130 billion in spending by shrinking departments,

extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing

programs down to 3, getting rid of over a hundred programs we do not

need like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve

Program.

And we’re working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making

them more sensible. The programs and regulations that have outlived

their usefulness should go. We have to cut yesterday’s Government to

help solve tomorrow’s problems.

And we need to get Government closer to the people it’s meant to serve.

We need to help move programs down to the point where states and

communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better

job. If they can do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of

the way and let them do what they can do better.

Community Empowerment

Taking power away from Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to

communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be

for. It’s time for Congress to stop passing onto the states the cost of

decisions we make here in Washington.

I know there are still serious differences over the details of the

unfunded mandates legislation but I want to work with you to make sure

we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interest and

give justified relief where we need to give it.

For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending

projects. Last year was no different. There was a million dollars to

study stress in plants and $ 12 million for a tick removal program that

didn’t work. It’s hard to remove ticks; those of us who’ve had them

know.

But I’ll tell you something, if you’ll give me the line-item veto, I’ll

remove some of that unnecessary spending.

But, I think we should all remember, and almost all of us would agree,

that Government still has important responsibilities.

Our young people--we should think of this when we cut--our young people

hold our future in their hands. We still owe a debt to our veterans. And

our senior citizens have made us what we are.

Budget

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.

Welfare

Nothing is done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility

than our failed welfare system. This is one of the problems we have to

face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It rewards welfare over

work, it undermines family values, it lets millions of parents get away

without paying their child support, it keeps a minority--but a

significant minority--of the people on welfare trapped on it for a very

long time.

I worked on this problem for a long time--nearly 15 years now. As a

Governor I had the honor of working with the Reagan Administration to

write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988.

In the last two years we made a good start in continuing the work of

welfare reform. Our Administration gave two dozen states the right to

slash through Federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare

systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and

dependency.

Last year, I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever

presented by an Administration. We have to make welfare what it was

meant to be--a second chance, not a way of life.

We have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly as possible, to

provide child care and teach them skills, if that’s what they need, for

up to two years. But after that, there ought to be a simple, hard rule.

Anyone who can work must go to work.

If a parent isn’t paying child support, they should be forced to pay.

We should suspend driver’s licenses, track them across state lines, make

them work off what they owe. That is what we should do. Governments do

not raise children, people do. And the parents must take responsibility

for the children they bring into this world.

I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But

our goal must be to liberate people and lift them from dependence to

independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to

responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because

they happen to be poor.

We should--we should require work and mutual responsibility. But we

shouldn’t cut people off just because they’re poor, they’re young or

even because they’re unmarried. We should promote responsibility by

requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other

supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school. But we

shouldn’t put them and their children out on the street.

And I know all the arguments pro and con and I have read and thought

about this for a long time: I still don’t think we can, in good

conscience, punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents.

My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American

people care about this, without regard to party or race or region. So

let this be the year we end welfare as we know it.

But also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this

issue to divide America.

No one is more eager to end welfare.

I may be the only President who’s actually had the opportunity to sit in

the welfare office, who’s actually spent hours and hours talking to

people on welfare, and I am telling you the people who are trapped on it

know it doesn’t work. They also want to get off.

So we can promote, together, education and work and good parenting. I

have no problem with punishing bad behavior or the refusal to be a

worker or a student or a responsible parent. I just don’t want to punish

poverty and past mistakes. All of us have made our mistakes and none of

us can change our yesterdays, but every one of us can change our

tomorrows.

And America’s best example of that may be Lynn Woolsey, who worked her

way off welfare to become a Congresswoman from the state of California.

Crime

I know the members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as are

all the citizens of our country. But I remind you that last year we

passed a very tough crime bill--longer sentences, three strikes and

you’re out, almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons,

more prevention, 100,000 more police--and we paid for it all by reducing

the size of the Federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local

communities to lower the crime rate.

There may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime, to be

smarter with crime, to help to lower that rate first. Well if there are,

let’s talk about them and let’s do them. But let’s not go back on the

things that we did last year that we know work--that we know work

because the local law-enforcement officers tell us that we did the right

thing. Because local community leaders, who’ve worked for years and

years to lower the crime rate, tell us that they work.

Let’s look at the experience of our cities and our rural areas where the

crime rate has gone down and ask the people who did it how they did it

and if what we did last year supports the decline in the crime rate, and

I am convinced that it does, let us not go back on it, let’s stick with

it, implement it--we’ve got four more hard years of work to do to do

that.

I don’t want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the

country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that divided this body

greatly last year. The last Congress also passed the Brady bill and in

the crime bill the ban on 19 assault weapons.

I don’t think it’s a secret to anybody in this room that several members

of the last Congress who voted for that aren’t here tonight because they

voted for it. And I know, therefore, that some of you that are here

because they voted for it are under enormous pressure to repeal it. I

just have to tell you how I feel about it.

The members who voted for that bill and I would never do anything to

infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in

other appropriate sporting activities. I’ve done it since I was a boy,

and I’m going to keep right on doing it until I can’t do it anymore.

But a lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so that police

officers and kids wouldn’t have to lay down their lives under a hail of

assault-weapon attacks, and I will not let that be repealed. I will not

let it be repealed.

I’d like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal with. I

want us to cut more spending, but I hope we won’t cut Government

programs that help to prepare us for the new economy, promote

responsibility and are organized from the grass roots up, not by Federal

bureaucracy.

The very best example of this is the National Service Corps--AmeriCorps.

It passed with strong bipartisan support and now there are 20,000

Americans --more than ever served in one year in the Peace

Corps--working all over this country, helping person to person in local

grass-roots volunteer groups, solving problems and in the process

earning some money for their education.

This is citizenship at its best. It’s good for the AmeriCorps members,

but it’s good for the rest of us, too. It’s the essence of the New

Covenant and we shouldn’t stop it.

Illegal Immigration

All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in

every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers

of illegal aliens entering our country.

The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal

immigrants. The public services they use impose burdens on our

taxpayers. That’s why our Administration has moved aggressively to

secure our borders more, by hiring a record number of new border guards,

by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking

down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.

In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the

deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better

identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the

commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.

We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It is

wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit

the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years,

and we must do more to stop it.

The most important job of our Government in this new era is to empower

the American people to succeed in the global economy. America has always

been a land of opportunity, a land where, if you work hard, you can get

ahead. We’ve become a great middle-class country; middle-class values

sustain us. We must expand that middle class and shrink the underclass

even as we do everything we can to support the millions of Americans who

are already successful in the new economy.

America is once again the world’s strongest economic power: almost six

million new jobs in the last two years, exports booming, inflation down,

high-wage jobs are coming back. A record number of American

entrepreneurs are living the American dream.

If we want it to stay that way, those who work and lift our nation must

have more of its benefits.

Today, too many of those people are being left out. They’re working

harder for less. They have less security, less income, less certainty

that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids

or retirement for themselves.

We cannot let this continue. If we don’t act, our economy will probably

keep doing what it’s been doing since about 1978, when the income growth

began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale. And the

people in the vast middle got very little growth and people who worked

like crazy but were on the bottom then, fell even further and further

behind in the years afterward, no matter how hard they worked.

We’ve got to have a Government that can be a real partner in making this

new economy work for all of our people, a Government that helps each and

every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity to renew

our skills.

Education

That’s why we worked so hard to increase educational opportunities in

the last two years from Head Start to public schools to apprenticeships

for young people who don’t go to college, to making college loans more

available and more affordable.

That’s the first thing we have to do: We’ve got to do something to

empower people to improve their skills.

Taxes

Second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes

immediately by lowering their taxes.

We took the first step in 1993 with a working family tax cut for 15

million families with incomes under $ 27,000, a tax cut that this year

will average about $ 1,000 a family.

And we also gave tax reductions to most small and new businesses. Before

we could do more than that, we first had to bring down the deficit we

inherited and we had to get economic growth up. Now we’ve done both, and

now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way.

But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation: to

empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of

their own lives. The spotlight should shine on those who make the right

choices for themselves, their families and their communities.

Middle Class Bill Of Rights

I have proposed a middle-class bill of rights, which should properly be

called the bill of rights and responsibilities, because its provisions

only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their children

and to educate themselves. It will, therefore, give needed tax relief

and raise incomes, in both the short run and the long run, in a way that

benefits all of us.

There are four provisions:

First, a tax deduction for all education and training after high school.

If you think about it, we permit businesses to deduct their investment,

we permit individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages, but

today an education is even more important to the economic well-being of

our whole country than even those things are. We should do everything we

can to encourage it, and I hope you will support it.

Second, we ought to cut taxes $ 500 for families with children under 13.

Third, we ought to foster more savings and personal responsibility by

permitting people to establish an individual retirement account and

withdraw from it tax free for the cost of education, health care,

first-time home buying or the care of a parent.

And fourth, we should pass a G.I. bill for America’s workers. We propose

to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money to the

states but give the money directly to the American people, offer

vouchers to them so that they--if they’re laid off or if they’re working

for a very low wage--can get a voucher worth $ 2,600 a year for up to

two years to go to their local community colleges or wherever else they

want to get the skills they need to improve their lives. Let’s empower

people in this way. Move it from the Government directly to the workers

of America.

Cutting The Deficit Now

Any one of us can call for a tax cut, but I won’t accept one that

explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk. We ought to pay for

our tax cuts fully and honestly. Just two years ago it was an open

question whether we would find the strength to cut the deficit.

Thanks to the courage of the people who were here then, many of whom

didn’t return, we did cut the deficit. We began to do what others said

would not be done: We cut the deficit by over $ 600 billion, about $

10,000 for every family in this country. It’s coming down three years in

a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was President and I don’t

think anybody in America wants us to let it explode again.

In the budget I will send you, the middle-class bill of rights is fully

paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in programs, cuts in

special interest subsidies. And the spending cuts will more than double

the tax cuts. My budget pays for the middle-class bill of rights without

any cuts in Medicare, and I will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts

with Medicare cuts. That’s not the right thing to do.

I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief. And some

of them, I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all of

you.

My tests for our proposals will be: Will it create jobs and raise

incomes? Will it strengthen our families and support our children? Is it

paid for? Will it build the middle class and shrink the underclass?

If it does, I’ll support it. But if it doesn’t, I won’t.

Minimum Wage

The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the underclass is

also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage.

It rewards work--two and a half million Americans, often women with

children, are working out there today for four-and-a-quarter an hour. In

terms of real buying power, by next year, that minimum wage will be at a

40-year low. That’s not my idea of how the new economy ought to work.

Now I studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a

minimum-wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a

modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into

the job market. But the most important thing is you can’t make a living

on $ 4.25 an hour. Now --especially if you have children, even with the

working families tax cut we passed last year.

In the past, the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue and I think it

should be again. So I want to challenge you to have honest hearings on

this, to get together to find a way to make the minimum wage a living

wage.

Members of Congress have been here less than a month but by the end of

the week--28 days into the new year--every member of Congress will have

earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum-wage worker makes

all year long.

Everybody else here, including the President, has something else that

too many Americans do without and that’s health care.

Health Care

Now, last year we almost came to blows over health care, but we didn’t

do anything. And the cold, hard fact is that since last year--since I

was here--another 1.1 million Americans in working families have lost

their health care. And the cold, hard fact is that many millions

more--most of them farmers and small business people and self-employed

people--have seen their premiums skyrocket, their co-pays and

deductibles go up.

There’s a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics

have health insurance but really what they’ve got is a piece of paper

that says they won’t lose their home if they get sick.

Now I still believe our country has got to move toward providing health

security for every American family, but--but I know that last year, as

the evidence indicates, we bit off more than we could chew.

So I’m asking you that we work together. Let’s do it step by step. Let’s

do whatever we have to do to get something done. Let’s at least pass

meaningful insurance reform so that no American risks losing coverage

for facing skyrocketing prices but that nobody loses their coverage

because they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change

jobs or lose a job or a family member gets sick.

I want to work together with all of you who have an interest in this:

with the Democrats who worked on it last time, with the Republican

leaders like Senator Dole who has a longtime commitment to health care

reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year. We

ought to make sure that self-employed people in small businesses can buy

insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing pools.

We ought to help families provide long-term care for a sick parent to a

disabled child. We can work to help workers who lose their jobs at least

keep their health insurance coverage for a year while they look for

work, and we can find a way--it may take some time, but we can find a

way--to make sure that our children have health care.

You know, I think everybody in this room, without regard to party, can

be proud of the fact that our country was rated as having the world’s

most productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade, but we

can’t be proud of the fact that we’re the only wealthy country in the

world that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their children

with health insurance today than we did 10 years ago--the last time we

were the most productive economy in the world.

So let’s work together on this. It is too important for politics as

usual.

Much of what the American people are thinking about tonight is what

we’ve already talked about. A lot of people think that the security

concerns of America today are entirely internal to our borders, they

relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and our

children, our streets, our health and protecting those borders.

Foreign Policy

Now that the Cold War has passed, it’s tempting to believe that all the

security issues, with the possible exception of trade, reside here at

home. But it’s not so. Our security still depends on our continued world

leadership for peace and freedom and democracy. We still can’t be strong

at home unless we’re strong abroad.

Mexico

The financial crisis in Mexico is a case in point. I know it’s not

popular to say it tonight but we have to act, not for the Mexican people

but for the sake of the millions of Americans whose livelihoods are tied

to Mexico’s well-being. If we want to secure American jobs, preserve

American exports, safeguard America’s borders then we must pass the

stabilization program and help to put Mexico back on track.

Now let me repeat: it’s not a loan, it’s not foreign aid, it’s not a

bail-out. We’ll be given a guarantee like co-signing a note with good

collateral that will cover our risk.

This legislation is the right thing for America. That’s why the

bipartisan leadership has supported it. And I hope you in Congress will

pass it quickly. It is in our interest and we can explain it to the

American people, because we’re going to do it in the right way.

Russia

You know, tonight this is the first State of the Union address ever

delivered since the beginning of the cold war when not a single Russian

missile is pointed at the children of America.

And along with the Russians, we’re on our way to destroying the missiles

and the bombers that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We’ve come so far so

fast in this post-cold-war world that it’s easy to take the decline of

the nuclear threat for granted. But it’s still there, and we aren’t

finished yet.

This year, I’ll ask the Senate to approve START II to eliminate weapons

that carry 5,000 more warheads. The United States will lead the charge

to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, to enact a

comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to eliminate chemical weapons.

North Korea

To stop and roll back North Korea’s potentially deadly nuclear program,

we’ll continue to implement the agreement we have reached with that

nation. It’s smart, it’s tough, it’s a deal based on continuing

inspection with safeguards for our allies and ourselves.

This year, I’ll submit to Congress comprehensive legislation to

strengthen our hand in combating terrorists, whether they strike at home

or abroad. As the cowards who bombed the World Trade Center found out,

this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice.

Middle East

Just this week, another horrendous terrorist act in Israel killed 19 and

injured scores more. On behalf of the American people and all of you, I

send our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. I know that in

the face of such evil, it is hard for the people in the Middle East to

go forward. But the terrorists represent the past, not the future. We

must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her

neighbors in the Middle East.

Accordingly, last night I signed an executive order that will block the

assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that threaten to

disrupt the peace process. It prohibits financial transactions with

these groups.

And tonight I call on all our allies in peace-loving nations throughout

the world to join us with renewed fervor in a global effort to combat

terrorism, we cannot permit the future to be marred by terror and fear

and paralysis.

Defense

From the day I took the oath of office, I pledged that our nation would

maintain the best-equipped, best-trained and best-prepared military on

earth. We have and they are. They have managed the dramatic downsizing

of our forces after the cold war with remarkable skill and spirit. But

to make sure our military is ready for action and to provide the pay and

the quality of life the military and their families deserve, I’m asking

the Congress to add $ 25 billion in defense spending over the next six

years.

I have visited many bases at home and around the world since I became

President. Tonight I repeat that request with renewed conviction. We ask

a very great deal of our armed forces. Now that they are smaller in

number, we ask more of them. They go out more often to more different

places and stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways,

and we must give them and their families what the times demand and what

they have earned.

Just think about what our troops have done in the last year, showing

America at its best, helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in

Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to

Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy back to the people of Haiti.

We have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from South

Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia,

from Latin America to the Middle East. All these endeavors are good in

those places but they make our future more confident and more secure.

Well, my fellow Americans, that’s my agenda for America’s future:

expanding opportunity not bureaucracy, enhancing security at home and

abroad, empowering our people to make the most of their own lives.

It’s ambitious and achievable. But it’s not enough.

We even need more than new ideas for changing the world or equipping

Americans to compete in the new economy, more than a Government that’s

smaller, smarter and wiser, more than all the changes we can make in

Government and in the private sector from the outside in.

Values And Voices

Our fortunes and our prosperity also depend upon our ability to answer

some questions from within--from the values and voices that speak to our

hearts as well as our heads, voices that tell us we have to do more to

accept responsibility for ourselves and our families, for our

communities, and yes, for our fellow citizens.

We see our families and our communities all over this country coming

apart. And we feel the common ground shifting from under us. The PTA,

the town hall meeting, the ball park--it’s hard for a lot of overworked

parents to find the time and space for those things that strengthen the

bonds of trust and cooperation.

Too many of our children don’t even have parents and grandparents who

can give them those experiences that they need to build their own

character and their sense of identity. We all know that while we here in

this chamber can make a difference on those things, that the real

differences will be made by our fellow citizens where they work and

where they live.

And it’ll be made almost without regard to party. When I used to go to

the softball park in Little Rock to watch my daughter’s league and

people would come up to me--fathers and mothers--and talk to me, I can

honestly say I had no idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans

or Democrats.

When I visited the relief centers after the floods in California,

Northern California, last week, a woman came up to me and did something

that very few of you would do. She hugged me and said, “Mr. President,

I’m a Republican, but I’m glad you’re here.”

Now, why? We can’t wait for disasters to act the way we used to act

every day. Because as we move into this next century, everybody matters.

We don’t have a person to waste. And a lot of people are losing a lot of

chances to do better.

That means that we need a New Covenant for everybody--for our corporate

and business leaders, we’re going to work here to keep bringing the

deficit down, to expand markets, to support their success in every

possible way. But they have an obligation: when they’re doing well, to

keep jobs in our communities and give their workers a fair share of the

prosperity they generate.

For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud

your creativity and your worldwide success and we support your freedom

of expression but you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of

your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant,

repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates

our media all the time.

We’ve got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to

help us stop our most serious social problem: the epidemic of teen

pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I have sent to

Congress a plan to target schools all over this country with

anti-pregnancy programs that work. But government can only do so much.

Tonight, I call on parents and leaders all across this country to join

together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a

difference. We can do this and we must.

And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders. You

know, I’m proud of the fact that the United States has more house of

worship per capita than any country in the world. These people, who lead

our houses of worship, can ignite their congregations to carry their

faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the

people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of

all we hold dear, because so much of what must be done must come from

the inside out. And our religious leaders and their congregations can

make all the difference. They have a role in the New Covenant as well.

There must be more responsibility for all of our citizens. You know it

takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the

streets and in school. It takes a lot of people to build the Habitat for

Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin. It takes a

lot of people to provide the people power for all the civic

organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to

most of us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach the

children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to

learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe

that they can be whatever they want to be.

I know it’s hard when you’re working harder for less, when you’re under

great stress, to do these things. A lot of our people don’t have the

time or the emotional stress they think to do the work of citizenship.

Most of us in politics haven’t helped very much. For years, we’ve mostly

treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of

political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads--either

promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and

frustrations. And more and more of our citizens now get most of their

information in very negative and aggressive ways that is hardly

conducive to honest and open conversations. But the truth is we have got

to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different

views.

If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength of

America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time

ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were

different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground. And

in this day everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We simply

cannot wait for a tornado, a fire or a flood to behave like Americans

ought to behave in dealing with one another.

I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with the

First Lady that represent what I’m trying to talk about. Citizens. I

have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in

the last election, but they represent what we ought to be doing.

Cindy Perry teaches second-graders to read in AmeriCorps in rural

Kentucky. She gains when she gives. She’s a mother of four.

She says that her service inspired her to get her high school

equivalency last year. She was married when she was a teen-ager. Stand

up, Cindy. She married when she was a teen-ager. She had four children,

but she had time to serve other people, to get her high school

equivalency and she’s going to use her AmeriCorps money to go back to

college.

Steven Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He’s been a national

leader--stand up Steve. He’s been a national leader in using more police

in community policing and he’s worked with AmeriCorps to do it, and the

crime rate in Kansas City has gone down as a result of what he did.

Cpl. Gregory Depestre went to Haiti as part of his adopted country’s

force to help secure democracy in his native land. And I might add we

must be the only country in the world that could have gone to Haiti and

taken Haitian-Americans there who could speak the language and talk to

the people, and he was one of them and we’re proud of him.

The next two folks I’ve had the honor of meeting and getting to know a

little bit. The Rev. John and the Rev. Diana Cherry of the A.M.E. Zion

Church in Temple Hills, Md. I’d like to ask them to stand. I want to

tell you about them. In the early 80’s they left Government service and

formed a church in a small living room in a small house in the early

80’s. Today that church has 17,000 members. It is one of the three or

four biggest churches in the entire United States. It grows by 200 a

month.

They do it together. And the special focus of their ministry is keeping

families together. They are--Two things they did make a big impression

on me. I visited their church once and I learned they were building a

new sanctuary closer to the Washington, D.C., line, in a higher-crime,

higher-drug-rate area because they thought it was part of their ministry

to change the lives of the people who needed them. Second thing I want

to say is that once Reverend Cherry was at a meeting at the White House

with some other religious leaders and he left early to go back to his

church to minister to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church

from all over America to convince them to come back together to save

their marriages and to raise their kids. This is the kind of work that

citizens are doing in America. We need more of it and it ought to be

lifted up and supported.

The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from Hattiesburg,

Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up. Fifty years ago in the sands of

Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas taught and learned the lessons of citizenship. On

February the 20th, 1945, he and three of his buddies encountered the

enemy and two grenades at their feet. Jack Lucas threw himself on both

of them. In that moment he saved the lives of his companions and

miraculously in the next instant a medic saved his life. He gained a

foothold for freedom and at the age of 17, just a year older than his

grandson, who’s up there with him today, and his son, who is a West

Point graduate and a veteran, at 17, Jack Lucas became the youngest

marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the

Congressional Medal of Honor. All these years later, yesterday, here’s

what he said about that day: Didn’t matter where you were from or who

you were. You relied on one another. You did it for your country. We all

gain when we give and we reap what we sow. That’s at the heart of this

New Covenant. Responsibility, opportunity and citizenship.

More than stale chapters in some remote civic book they’re still the

virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our God-given

potential and be like them. And also to fulfill the eternal promise of

this country, the enduring dream from that first and most-sacred

covenant. I believe every person in this country still believes that we

are created equal and given by our creator the right to life, liberty

and the pursuit of happiness.

This is a very, very great country and our best days are still to come.

Thank you and God bless you all.

***

State of the Union Address

William J. Clinton

January 23, 1996

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the 104th Congress,

distinguished guests, my fellow Americans all across our land:

Let me begin tonight by saying to our men and women in uniform around

the world, and especially those helping peace take root in Bosnia and to

their families, I thank you. America is very, very proud of you.

My duty tonight is to report on the state of the Union--not the state of

our government, but of our American community; and to set forth our

responsibilities, in the words of our Founders, to form a more perfect

union.

The state of the Union is strong. Our economy is the healthiest it has

been in three decades. We have the lowest combined rates of unemployment

and inflation in 27 years. We have created nearly 8 million new jobs,

over a million of them in basic industries, like construction and

automobiles. America is selling more cars than Japan for the first time

since the 1970s. And for three years in a row, we have had a record

number of new businesses started in our country.

Our leadership in the world is also strong, bringing hope for new peace.

And perhaps most important, we are gaining ground in restoring our

fundamental values. The crime rate, the welfare and food stamp rolls,

the poverty rate and the teen pregnancy rate are all down. And as they

go down, prospects for America’s future go up.

We live in an age of possibility. A hundred years ago we moved from farm

to factory. Now we move to an age of technology, information, and global

competition. These changes have opened vast new opportunities for our

people, but they have also presented them with stiff challenges. While

more Americans are living better, too many of our fellow citizens are

working harder just to keep up, and they are rightly concerned about the

security of their families.

The Role Of Government

We must answer here three fundamental questions: First, how do we make

the American Dream of opportunity for all a reality for all Americans

who are willing to work for it? Second, how do we preserve our old and

enduring values as we move into the future? And, third, how do we meet

these challenges together, as one America?