not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American
people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we
have to give the American people one that lives within its means.
The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time
when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go
forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the
challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing
virtues; we must have both.
I believe our new, smaller government must work in an old-fashioned
American way, together with all of our citizens through state and local
governments, in the workplace, in religious, charitable and civic
associations. Our goal must be to enable all our people to make the most
of their own lives--with stronger families, more educational
opportunity, economic security, safer streets, a cleaner environment in
a safer world.
To improve the state of our Union, we must ask more of ourselves, we
must expect more of each other, and we must face our challenges
together.
Here, in this place, our responsibility begins with balancing the budget
in a way that is fair to all Americans. There is now broad bipartisan
agreement that permanent deficit spending must come to an end.
I compliment the Republican leadership and the membership for the energy
and determination you have brought to this task of balancing the budget.
And I thank the Democrats for passing the largest deficit reduction plan
in history in 1993, which has already cut the deficit nearly in half in
three years.
Deficit
Since 1993, we have all begun to see the benefits of deficit reduction.
Lower interest rates have made it easier for businesses to borrow and to
invest and to create new jobs. Lower interest rates have brought down
the cost of home mortgages, car payments and credit card rates to
ordinary citizens. Now, it is time to finish the job and balance the
budget.
Though differences remain among us which are significant, the combined
total of the proposed savings that are common to both plans is more than
enough, using the numbers from your Congressional Budget Office to
balance the budget in seven years and to provide a modest tax cut.
These cuts are real. They will require sacrifice from everyone. But
these cuts do not undermine our fundamental obligations to our parents,
our children, and our future, by endangering Medicare, or Medicaid, or
education, or the environment, or by raising taxes on working families.
I have said before, and let me say again, many good ideas have come out
of our negotiations. I have learned a lot about the way both Republicans
and Democrats view the debate before us. I have learned a lot about the
good ideas that we could all embrace.
We ought to resolve our remaining differences. I am willing to work to
resolve them. I am ready to meet tomorrow. But I ask you to consider
that we should at least enact these savings that both plans have in
common and give the American people their balanced budget, a tax cut,
lower interest rates, and a brighter future. We should do that now, and
make permanent deficits yesterday’s legacy.
Now it is time for us to look also to the challenges of today and
tomorrow, beyond the burdens of yesterday. The challenges are
significant. But America was built on challenges, not promises. And when
we work together to meet them, we never fail. That is the key to a more
perfect Union. Our individual dreams must be realized by our common
efforts.
Tonight I want to speak to you about the challenges we all face as a
people.
Strengthening Families
Our first challenge is to cherish our children and strengthen America’s
families. Family is the foundation of American life. If we have stronger
families, we will have a stronger America.
Before I go on, I would like to take just a moment to thank my own
family, and to thank the person who has taught me more than anyone else
over 25 years about the importance of families and children--a wonderful
wife, a magnificent mother and a great First Lady. Thank you, Hillary.
All strong families begin with taking more responsibility for our
children. I have heard Mrs. Gore say that it’s hard to be a parent
today, but it’s even harder to be a child. So all of us, not just as
parents, but all of us in our other roles--our media, our schools, our
teachers, our communities, our churches and synagogues, our businesses,
our governments--all of us have a responsibility to help our children to
make it and to make the most of their lives and their God-given
capacities.
To the media, I say you should create movies and CDs and television
shows you’d want your own children and grandchildren to enjoy.
I call on Congress to pass the requirement for a V-chip in TV sets so
that parents can screen out programs they believe are inappropriate for
their children. When parents control what their young children see, that
is not censorship; that is enabling parents to assume more personal
responsibility for their children’s upbringing. And I urge them to do
it. The V-chip requirement is part of the important telecommunications
bill now pending in this Congress. It has bipartisan support, and I urge
you to pass it now.
To make the V-chip work, I challenge the broadcast industry to do what
movies have done--to identify your programming in ways that help parents
to protect their children. And I invite the leaders of major media
corporations in the entertainment industry to come to the White House
next month to work with us in a positive way on concrete ways to improve
what our children see on television. I am ready to work with you.
I say to those who make and market cigarettes: every year a million
children take up smoking, even though it is against the law. Three
hundred thousand of them will have their lives shortened as a result.
Our administration has taken steps to stop the massive marketing
campaigns that appeal to our children. We are simply saying: Market your
products to adults, if you wish, but draw the line on children.
I say to those who are on welfare, and especially to those who have been
trapped on welfare for a long time: For too long our welfare system has
undermined the values of family and work, instead of supporting them.
The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping welfare reform. We
agree on time limits, tough work requirements, and the toughest possible
child support enforcement. But I believe we must also provide child care
so that mothers who are required to go to work can do so without
worrying about what is happening to their children.
I challenge this Congress to send me a bipartisan welfare reform bill
that will really move people from welfare to work and do the right thing
by our children. I will sign it immediately.
Let us be candid about this difficult problem. Passing a law, even the
best possible law, is only a first step. The next step is to make it
work. I challenge people on welfare to make the most of this opportunity
for independence. I challenge American businesses to give people on
welfare the chance to move into the work force. I applaud the work of
religious groups and others who care for the poor. More than anyone else
in our society, they know the true difficulty of the task before us, and
they are in a position to help. Every one of us should join them. That
is the only way we can make real welfare reform a reality in the lives
of the American people.
To strengthen the family we must do everything we can to keep the teen
pregnancy rate going down. I am gratified, as I’m sure all Americans
are, that it has dropped for two years in a row. But we all know it is
still far too high.
Tonight I am pleased to announce that a group of prominent Americans is
responding to that challenge by forming an organization that will
support grass-roots community efforts all across our country in a
national campaign against teen pregnancy. And I challenge all of us and
every American to join their efforts.
I call on American men and women in families to give greater respect to
one another. We must end the deadly scourge of domestic violence in our
country. And I challenge America’s families to work harder to stay
together. For families who stay together not only do better
economically, their children do better as well.
In particular, I challenge the fathers of this country to love and care
for their children. If your family has separated, you must pay your
child support. We’re doing more than ever to make sure you do, and we’re
going to do more, but let’s all admit something about that, too: A check
will not substitute for a parent’s love and guidance. And only you--only
you can make the decision to help raise your children. No matter who you
are, how low or high your station in life, it is the most basic human
duty of every American to do that job to the best of his or her ability.
Education
Our second challenge is to provide Americans with the educational
opportunities we will all need for this new century. In our schools,
every classroom in America must be connected to the information
superhighway, with computers and good software, and well-trained
teachers. We are working with the telecommunications industry, educators
and parents to connect 20 percent of California’s classrooms by this
spring, and every classroom and every library in the entire United
States by the year 2000. I ask Congress to support this education
technology initiative so that we can make sure this national partnership
succeeds.
Every diploma ought to mean something. I challenge every community,
every school and every state to adopt national standards of excellence;
to measure whether schools are meeting those standards; to cut
bureaucratic red tape so that schools and teachers have more flexibility
for grass-roots reform; and to hold them accountable for results. That’s
what our Goals 2000 initiative is all about.
I challenge every state to give all parents the right to choose which
public school their children will attend; and to let teachers form new
schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job.
I challenge all our schools to teach character education, to teach good
values and good citizenship. And if it means that teenagers will stop
killing each other over designer jackets, then our public schools should
be able to require their students to wear school uniforms.
I challenge our parents to become their children’s first teachers. Turn
off the TV. See that the homework is done. And visit your children’s
classroom. No program, no teacher, no one else can do that for you.
My fellow Americans, higher education is more important today than ever
before. We’ve created a new student loan program that’s made it easier
to borrow and repay those loans, and we have dramatically cut the
student loan default rate. That’s something we should all be proud of,
because it was unconscionably high just a few years ago. Through
AmeriCorps, our national service program, this year 25,000 young people
will earn college money by serving their local communities to improve
the lives of their friends and neighbors. These initiatives are right
for America and we should keep them going.
And we should also work hard to open the doors of college even wider. I
challenge Congress to expand work-study and help one million young
Americans work their way through college by the year 2000; to provide a
$1000 merit scholarship for the top five percent of graduates in every
high school in the United States; to expand Pell Grant scholarships for
deserving and needy students; and to make up to $10,000 a year of
college tuition tax deductible. It’s a good idea for America.
Our third challenge is to help every American who is willing to work for
it, achieve economic security in this new age. People who work hard
still need support to get ahead in the new economy. They need education
and training for a lifetime. They need more support for families raising
children. They need retirement security. They need access to health
care. More and more Americans are finding that the education of their
childhood simply doesn’t last a lifetime.
G.I. Bill For Workers
So I challenge Congress to consolidate 70 overlapping, antiquated
job-training programs into a simple voucher worth $2,600 for unemployed
or underemployed workers to use as they please for community college
tuition or other training. This is a G.I. Bill for America’s workers we
should all be able to agree on.
More and more Americans are working hard without a raise. Congress sets
the minimum wage. Within a year, the minimum wage will fall to a 40-year
low in purchasing power. Four dollars and 25 cents an hour is no longer
a living wage, but millions of Americans and their children are trying
to live on it. I challenge you to raise their minimum wage.
In 1993, Congress cut the taxes of 15 million hard-pressed working
families to make sure that no parents who work full-time would have to
raise their children in poverty, and to encourage people to move from
welfare to work. This expanded earned income tax credit is now worth
about $1,800 a year to a family of four living on $20,000. The budget
bill I vetoed would have reversed this achievement and raised taxes on
nearly 8 million of these people. We should not do that.
I also agree that the people who are helped under this initiative are
not all those in our country who are working hard to do a good job
raising their children and at work. I agree that we need a tax credit
for working families with children. That’s one of the things most of us
in this Chamber, I hope, can agree on. I know it is strongly supported
by the Republican majority. And it should be part of any final budget
agreement.
I want to challenge every business that can possibly afford it to
provide pensions for your employees. And I challenge Congress to pass a
proposal recommended by the White House Conference on Small Business
that would make it easier for small businesses and farmers to establish
their own pension plans. That is something we should all agree on.
We should also protect existing pension plans. Two years ago, with
bipartisan support that was almost unanimous on both sides of the aisle,
we moved to protect the pensions of 8 million working people and to
stabilize the pensions of 32 million more. Congress should not now let
companies endanger those workers’ pension funds. I know the proposal to
liberalize the ability of employers to take money out of pension funds
for other purposes would raise money for the treasury. But I believe it
is false economy. I vetoed that proposal last year, and I would have to
do so again.
Health Care
Finally, if our working families are going to succeed in the new
economy, they must be able to buy health insurance policies that they do
not lose when they change jobs or when someone in their family gets
sick. Over the past two years, over one million Americans in working
families have lost their health insurance. We have to do more to make
health care available to every American. And Congress should start by
passing the bipartisan bill sponsored by Senator Kennedy and Senator
Kassebaum that would require insurance companies to stop dropping people
when they switch jobs, and stop denying coverage for preexisting
conditions. Let’s all do that.
And even as we enact savings in these programs, we must have a common
commitment to preserve the basic protections of Medicare and
Medicaid--not just to the poor, but to people in working families,
including children, people with disabilities, people with AIDS, and
senior citizens in nursing homes.
In the past three years, we’ve saved $15 billion just by fighting health
care fraud and abuse. We have all agreed to save much more. We have all
agreed to stabilize the Medicare Trust Fund. But we must not abandon our
fundamental obligations to the people who need Medicare and Medicaid.
America cannot become stronger if they become weaker.
The G.I. Bill for workers, tax relief for education and child rearing,
pension availability and protection, access to health care, preservation
of Medicare and Medicaid--these things, along with the Family and
Medical Leave Act passed in 1993--these things will help responsible,
hard-working American families to make the most of their own lives.
But employers and employees must do their part, as well, as they are
doing in so many of our finest companies--working together, putting the
long-term prosperity ahead of the short-term gain. As workers increase
their hours and their productivity, employers should make sure they get
the skills they need and share the benefits of the good years, as well
as the burdens of the bad ones. When companies and workers work as a
team they do better, and so does America.
Crime
Our fourth great challenge is to take our streets back from crime and
gangs and drugs. At last we have begun to find a way to reduce crime,
forming community partnerships with local police forces to catch
criminals and prevent crime. This strategy, called community policing,
is clearly working. Violent crime is coming down all across America. In
New York City murders are down 25 percent; in St. Louis, 18 percent; in
Seattle, 32 percent. But we still have a long way to go before our
streets are safe and our people are free from fear.
The Crime Bill of 1994 is critical to the success of community policing.
It provides funds for 100,000 new police in communities of all sizes.
We’re already a third of the way there. And I challenge the Congress to
finish the job. Let us stick with a strategy that’s working and keep the
crime rate coming down.
Community policing also requires bonds of trust between citizens and
police. I ask all Americans to respect and support our law enforcement
officers. And to our police, I say, our children need you as role models
and heroes. Don’t let them down.
The Brady Bill has already stopped 44,000 people with criminal records
from buying guns. The assault weapons ban is keeping 19 kinds of assault
weapons out of the hands of violent gangs. I challenge the Congress to
keep those laws on the books.
Our next step in the fight against crime is to take on gangs the way we
once took on the mob. I’m directing the FBI and other investigative
agencies to target gangs that involve juveniles in violent crime, and to
seek authority to prosecute as adults teenagers who maim and kill like
adults.
And I challenge local housing authorities and tenant associations:
Criminal gang members and drug dealers are destroying the lives of
decent tenants. From now on, the rule for residents who commit crime and
peddle drugs should be one strike and you’re out.
I challenge every state to match federal policy to assure that serious
violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentence.
More police and punishment are important, but they’re not enough. We
have got to keep more of our young people out of trouble, with
prevention strategies not dictated by Washington, but developed in
communities. I challenge all of our communities, all of our adults, to
give our children futures to say yes to. And I challenge Congress not to
abandon the Crime Bill’s support of these grass-roots prevention
efforts.
Finally, to reduce crime and violence we have to reduce the drug
problem. The challenge begins in our homes, with parents talking to
their children openly and firmly. It embraces our churches and
synagogues, our youth groups and our schools.
I challenge Congress not to cut our support for drug-free schools.
People like the D.A.R.E. officers are making a real impression on grade
schoolchildren that will give them the strength to say no when the time
comes.
Meanwhile, we continue our efforts to cut the flow of drugs into
America. For the last two years, one man in particular has been on the
front lines of that effort. Tonight I am nominating him--a hero of the
Persian Gulf War and the Commander in Chief of the United States
Military Southern Command--General Barry McCaffrey, as America’s new
Drug Czar.
General McCaffrey has earned three Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars
fighting for this country. Tonight I ask that he lead our nation’s
battle against drugs at home and abroad. To succeed, he needs a force
far larger than he has ever commanded before. He needs all of us. Every
one of us has a role to play on this team.
Thank you, General McCaffrey, for agreeing to serve your country one
more time.
Environment
Our fifth challenge: to leave our environment safe and clean for the
next generation. Because of a generation of bipartisan effort we do have
cleaner water and air, lead levels in children’s blood has been cut by
70 percent, toxic emissions from factories cut in half. Lake Erie was
dead, and now it’s a thriving resource. But 10 million children under 12
still live within four miles of a toxic waste dump. A third of us
breathe air that endangers our health. And in too many communities, the
water is not safe to drink. We still have much to do.
Yet Congress has voted to cut environmental enforcement by 25 percent.
That means more toxic chemicals in our water, more smog in our air, more
pesticides in our food. Lobbyists for polluters have been allowed to
write their own loopholes into bills to weaken laws that protect the
health and safety of our children. Some say that the taxpayer should
pick up the tab for toxic waste and let polluters who can afford to fix
it off the hook. I challenge Congress to reexamine those policies and to
reverse them.
This issue has not been a partisan issue. The most significant
environmental gains in the last 30 years were made under a Democratic
Congress and President Richard Nixon. We can work together. We have to
believe some basic things. Do you believe we can expand the economy
without hurting the environment? I do. Do you believe we can create more
jobs over the long run by cleaning the environment up? I know we can.
That should be our commitment.
We must challenge businesses and communities to take more initiative in
protecting the environment, and we have to make it easier for them to do
it. To businesses this administration is saying: If you can find a
cheaper, more efficient way than government regulations require to meet
tough pollution standards, do it--as long as you do it right. To
communities we say: We must strengthen community right-to-know laws
requiring polluters to disclose their emissions, but you have to use the
information to work with business to cut pollution. People do have a
right to know that their air and their water are safe.
Foreign Policy
Our sixth challenge is to maintain America’s leadership in the fight for
freedom and peace throughout the world. Because of American leadership,
more people than ever before live free and at peace. And Americans have
known 50 years of prosperity and security.
We owe thanks especially to our veterans of World War II. I would like
to say to Senator Bob Dole and to all others in this Chamber who fought
in World War II, and to all others on both sides of the aisle who have
fought bravely in all our conflicts since: I salute your service, and so
do the American people.
All over the world, even after the Cold War, people still look to us and
trust us to help them seek the blessings of peace and freedom. But as
the Cold War fades into memory, voices of isolation say America should
retreat from its responsibilities. I say they are wrong.
The threats we face today as Americans respect no nation’s borders.
Think of them: terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction,
organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic and religious hatred,
aggression by rogue states, environmental degradation. If we fail to
address these threats today, we will suffer the consequences in all our
tomorrows.
Of course, we can’t be everywhere. Of course, we can’t do everything.
But where our interests and our values are at stake, and where we can
make a difference, America must lead. We must not be isolationist.
We must not be the world’s policeman. But we can and should be the
world’s very best peacemaker. By keeping our military strong, by using
diplomacy where we can and force where we must, by working with others
to share the risk and the cost of our efforts, America is making a
difference for people here and around the world. For the first time
since the dawn of the nuclear age, there is not a single Russian missile
pointed at America’s children.
North Korea
North Korea has now frozen its dangerous nuclear weapons program. In
Haiti, the dictators are gone, democracy has a new day, the flow of
desperate refugees to our shores has subsided. Through tougher trade
deals for America--over 80 of them--we have opened markets abroad, and
now exports are at an all-time high, growing faster than imports and
creating good American jobs.
Northern Ireland
We stood with those taking risks for peace: In Northern Ireland, where
Catholic and Protestant children now tell their parents, violence must
never return. In the Middle East, where Arabs and Jews who once seemed
destined to fight forever now share knowledge and resources, and even
dreams.
Bosnia
And we stood up for peace in Bosnia. Remember the skeletal prisoners,
the mass graves, the campaign to rape and torture, the endless lines of
refugees, the threat of a spreading war. All these threats, all these
horrors have now begun to give way to the promise of peace. Now, our
troops and a strong NATO, together with our new partners from Central
Europe and elsewhere, are helping that peace to take hold.
As all of you know, I was just there with a bipartisan congressional
group, and I was so proud not only of what our troops were doing, but of
the pride they evidenced in what they were doing. They knew what
America’s mission in this world is, and they were proud to be carrying
it out.
Through these efforts, we have enhanced the security of the American
people. But make no mistake about it: important challenges remain.
Russia
The START II Treaty with Russia will cut our nuclear stockpiles by
another 25 percent. I urge the Senate to ratify it--now. We must end the
race to create new nuclear weapons by signing a truly comprehensive
nuclear test ban treaty--this year.
As we remember what happened in the Japanese subway, we can outlaw
poison gas forever if the Senate ratifies the Chemical Weapons
Convention--this year. We can intensify the fight against terrorists and
organized criminals at home and abroad if Congress passes the
anti-terrorism legislation I proposed after the Oklahoma City
bombing--now. We can help more people move from hatred to hope all
across the world in our own interest if Congress gives us the means to
remain the world’s leader for peace.
My fellow Americans, the six challenges I have just discussed are for
all of us. Our seventh challenge is really America’s challenge to those
of us in this hallowed hall tonight: to reinvent our government and make
our democracy work for them.
Reform
Last year this Congress applied to itself the laws it applies to
everyone else. This Congress banned gifts and meals from lobbyists. This
Congress forced lobbyists to disclose who pays them and what legislation
they are trying to pass or kill. This Congress did that, and I applaud
you for it.
Now I challenge Congress to go further--to curb special interest
influence in politics by passing the first truly bipartisan campaign
reform bill in a generation. You, Republicans and Democrats alike, can
show the American people that we can limit spending and open the
airwaves to all candidates.
I also appeal to Congress to pass the line-item veto you promised the
American people.
Our administration is working hard to give the American people a
government that works better and costs less. Thanks to the work of Vice
President Gore, we are eliminating 16,000 pages of unnecessary rules and
regulations, shifting more decision-making out of Washington, back to
states and local communities.
As we move into the era of balanced budgets and smaller government, we
must work in new ways to enable people to make the most of their own
lives. We are helping America’s communities, not with more bureaucracy,
but with more opportunities. Through our successful Empowerment Zones
and Community Development Banks, we are helping people to find jobs, to
start businesses. And with tax incentives for companies that clean up
abandoned industrial property, we can bring jobs back to places that
desperately, desperately need them.
But there are some areas that the federal government should not leave
and should address and address strongly. One of these areas is the
problem of illegal immigration. After years of neglect, this
administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the protection of our
borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are
increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And
tonight, I announce I will sign an executive order to deny federal
contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
Let me be very clear about this: We are still a nation of immigrants; we
should be proud of it. We should honor every legal immigrant here,
working hard to become a new citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.
I want to say a special word now to those who work for our federal
government. Today our federal government is 200,000 employees smaller
than it was the day I took office as President.
Our federal government today is the smallest it has been in 30 years,
and it’s getting smaller every day. Most of our fellow Americans
probably don’t know that. And there is a good reason: The remaining
federal work force is composed of Americans who are now working harder
and working smarter than ever before, to make sure the quality of our
services does not decline.
I’d like to give you one example. His name is Richard Dean. He is a 49
year-old Vietnam veteran who’s worked for the Social Security
Administration for 22 years now. Last year he was hard at work in the
Federal Building in Oklahoma City when the blast killed 169 people and
brought the rubble down all around him. He reentered that building four
times. He saved the lives of three women. He’s here with us this
evening, and I want to recognize Richard and applaud both his public
service and his extraordinary personal heroism.
But Richard Dean’s story doesn’t end there. This last November, he was
forced out of his office when the government shut down. And the second
time the government shut down he continued helping Social Security
recipients, but he was working without pay.
On behalf of Richard Dean and his family, and all the other people who
are out there working every day doing a good job for the American
people, I challenge all of you in this Chamber: Never, ever shut the
federal government down again.
On behalf of all Americans, especially those who need their Social
Security payments at the beginning of March, I also challenge the
Congress to preserve the full faith and credit of the United States--to
honor the obligations of this great nation as we have for 220 years; to
rise above partisanship and pass a straightforward extension of the debt
limit and show people America keeps its word.
I know that this evening I have asked a lot of Congress, and even more
from America. But I am confident: When Americans work together in their
homes, their schools, their churches, their synagogues, their civic
groups, their workplace, they can meet any challenge.
I say again, the era of big government is over. But we can’t go back to
the era of fending for yourself. We have to go forward to the era of
working together as a community, as a team, as one America, with all of
us reaching across these lines that divide us--the division, the
discrimination, the rancor--we have to reach across it to find common
ground. We have got to work together if we want America to work.
I want you to meet two more people tonight who do just that. Lucius
Wright is a teacher in the Jackson, Mississippi, public school system. A
Vietnam veteran, he has created groups to help inner-city children turn
away from gangs and build futures they can believe in. Sergeant Jennifer
Rodgers is a police officer in Oklahoma City. Like Richard Dean, she
helped to pull her fellow citizens out of the rubble and deal with that
awful tragedy. She reminds us that in their response to that atrocity
the people of Oklahoma City lifted all of us with their basic sense of
decency and community.
Lucius Wright and Jennifer Rodgers are special Americans. And I have the
honor to announce tonight that they are the very first of several
thousand Americans who will be chosen to carry the Olympic torch on its
long journey from Los Angeles to the centennial of the modern Olympics
in Atlanta this summer--not because they are star athletes, but because
they are star citizens, community heroes meeting America’s challenges.
They are our real champions.
Now, each of us must hold high the torch of citizenship in our own
lives. None of us can finish the race alone. We can only achieve our
destiny together--one hand, one generation, one American connecting to
another.
There have always been things we could do together--dreams we could make
real--which we could never have done on our own. We Americans have
forged our identity, our very union, from every point of view and every
point on the planet, every different opinion. But we must be bound
together by a faith more powerful than any doctrine that divides us--by
our belief in progress, our love of liberty, and our relentless search
for common ground.
America has always sought and always risen to every challenge. Who would
say that, having come so far together, we will not go forward from here?
Who would say that this age of possibility is not for all Americans?
Our country is and always has been a great and good nation. But the best
is yet to come, if we all do our part.
Thank you, God bless you and God bless the United States of America.
Thank you.
***
State of the Union Address
William J. Clinton
February 4, 1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the 105th Congress,
distinguished guests, my fellow Americans:
I think I should start by saying thanks for inviting me back.
I come before you tonight with a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime history--and a plan of action to meet that challenge, to
prepare our people for the bold new world of the 21st century.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won
back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls
declining, we are winning back our optimism, the enduring faith that we
can master any difficulty. With the Cold War receding and global
commerce at record levels, we are helping to win an unrivaled peace and
prosperity all across the world.
My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we must
rise to the decisive moment, to make a nation and a world better than
any we have ever known.
The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age, unimagined
new work, life-enhancing technology--all these are ours to seize. That
is our honor and our challenge. We must be shapers of events, not
observers, for if we do not act, the moment will pass and we will lose
the best possibilities of our future.
We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy. The enemy of our
time is inaction.
So tonight I issue a call to action--action by this Congress, action by
our states, by our people to prepare America for the 21st century;
action to keep our economy and our democracy strong and working for all
our people; action to strengthen education and harness the forces of
technology and science; action to build stronger families and stronger
communities and a safer environment; action to keep America the world’s
strongest force for peace, freedom and prosperity; and above all, action
to build a more perfect union here at home.
The spirit we bring to our work will make all the difference.
We must be committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans,
responsibility from all Americans in a community of all Americans. And
we must be committed to a new kind of government: not to solve all our
problems for us, but to give our people--all our people--the tools they
need to make the most of their own lives. And we must work together.
The people of this nation elected us all. They want us to be partners,
not partisans. They put us all right here in the same boat. They gave us
all oars, and they told us to row. Now, here is the direction I believe
we should take.
First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business of our
country: to balance the budget, renew our democracy, and finish the job
of welfare reform.
Over the last four years we have brought new economic growth by
investing in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our deficits,
creating over 11 million new jobs, a four-year record.
Now we must keep our economy the strongest in the world. We here tonight
have an historic opportunity. Let this Congress be the Congress that
finally balances the budget. Thank you.
In two days I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by
2002. This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people while
protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment. It will
balance the budget and build on the vice president’s efforts to make our
government work better--even as it costs less.
It will balance the budget and provide middle-class tax relief to pay
for education and health care, to help to raise a child, to buy and sell
a home.
Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature. It does
not require us to rewrite our Constitution. I believe, I believe it is
both unnecessary, unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment that could
cripple our country in time of economic crisis and force unwanted
results such as judges halting Social Security checks or increasing
taxes.
Let us at least agree we should not pass any measure, no measure should
be passed that threatens Social Security. We don’t need, whatever your
view on that, we all must concede we don’t need a constitutional
amendment, we need action. Whatever our differences, we should balance
the budget now, and then, for the long-term health of our society, we
must agree to a bipartisan process to preserve Social Security and
reform Medicare for the long run, so that these fundamental programs
will be as strong for our children as they are for our parents.
And let me say something that’s not in my script tonight. I know this is
not going to be easy. But I really believe one of the reasons the
American people gave me a second term was to take the tough decisions in
the next four years that will carry our country through the next 50
years. I know it is easier for me than for you to say or do. But another
reason I was elected is to support all of you, without regard to party,
to give you what is necessary to join in these decisions. We owe it to
our country and to our future.
Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit ourselves
tonight, before the eyes of America, to finally enacting bipartisan
campaign finance reform.
Now, Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan have
reached across party lines here to craft tough and fair reform. Their
proposal would curb spending, reduce the role of special interests,
create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents, and ban
contributions from non-citizens, all corporate sources, and the other
large soft-money contributions that both parties receive.
You know and I know that this can be delayed, and you know and I know
that delay will mean the death of reform.
So let’s set our own deadline. Let’s work together to write bipartisan
campaign finance reform into law and pass McCain-Feingold by the day we
celebrate the birth of our democracy, July the 4th.
There is a third piece of unfinished business. Over the last four years
we moved a record two and a quarter million people off the welfare
roles. Then last year Congress enacted landmark welfare reform
legislation demanding that all able-bodied recipients assume the
responsibility of moving from welfare to work. Now each and every one of
us has to fulfill our responsibility, indeed our moral obligation, to
make sure that people who now must work can work. And now we must act to
meet a new goal: two million more people off the welfare rolls by the
year 2000.
Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives for businesses that
hire people off welfare; Incentives for job placement firms in states to
create more jobs for welfare recipients; Training, transportation and
child care to help people go to work. Now I challenge every state--turn
those welfare checks into private sector paychecks. I challenge every
religious congregation, every community nonprofit, every business to
hire someone off welfare. And I’d like to say especially to every
employer in our country who ever criticized the old welfare system, you
can’t blame that old system anymore; we have torn it down. Now, do your
part. Give someone on welfare the chance to go to work.
Tonight I am pleased to announce that five major corporations--Sprint,
Monsanto, UPS, Burger King and United Airlines--will be the first to
join in a new national effort to marshal America’s businesses large and
small to create jobs so that people can move from welfare to work.
We passed welfare reform. All of you know I believe we were right to do
it. But no one can walk out of this chamber with a clear conscience
unless you are prepared to finish the job.
And we must join together to do something else, too, something both
Republican and Democratic governors have asked us to do: to restore
basic health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes immigrants
who came to this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the
law. To do otherwise is simply unworthy of a great nation of immigrants.
Now, looking ahead, the greatest step of all, the high threshold to the
future we must now cross, and my number one priority for the next four
years, is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the
world. Thank you.
Let’s work together to meet these three goals: every eight-year-old must
be able to read, every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the
Internet, every 18-year-old must be able to go to college, and every
adult American must be able to keep on learning for a lifetime.
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals--$51
billion next year--but far more than money is required. I have a plan, a
call to action for American education based on these 10 principles:
First, a national crusade for education standards--not federal
government standards, but national standards, representing what all our
students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st
century. Every state and school must shape the curriculum to reflect
these standards and train teachers to lift students up to them. To help
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an
effort over the next two years to develop national tests of student
achievement in reading and math.
Tonight I issue a challenge to the nation. Every state should adopt high
national standards, and by 1999, every state should test every 4th
grader in reading and every 8th grader in math to make sure these
standards are met.
Raising standards will not be easy, and some of our children will not be
able to meet them at first. The point is not to put our children down,
but to lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs help, what
changes in teaching to make, and which schools need to improve. They can
help us end social promotion, for no child should move from grade school
to junior high or junior high to high school until he or she is ready.
Last month our secretary of education, Dick Riley, and I visited
northern Illinois, where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in
a project aptly called First in the World, took the third International
Math and Science Study.
That’s a test that reflects the world-class standards our children must
meet for the new era. And those students in Illinois tied for first in
the world in science and came in second in math. Two of them, Kristen
Tanner and Chris Getsla, are here tonight along with their teacher, Sue
Winski. They’re up there with the first lady, and they prove that when
we aim high and challenge our students, they will be the best in the
world. Let’s give them a hand. Stand up, please.
Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. Most
of us in this chamber would not be here tonight without the help of
those teachers. I know that I wouldn’t be here.
For years many of our educators, led by North Carolina’s governor, Jim
Hunt, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have
worked very hard to establish nationally accepted credentials for
excellence in teaching.
Just 500 of these teachers have been certified since 1995. My budget
will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification as master
teachers. We should reward and recognize our best teachers. And as we
reward them, we should quickly and fairly remove those few who don’t
measure up, and we should challenge more of our finest young people to
consider teaching as a career.
Third, we must do more to help all our children read. Forty percent--40
percent--of our 8-year-olds cannot read on their own. That’s why we have
just launched the America Reads initiative, to build a citizen army of
one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read
independently by the end of the 3rd grade. We will use thousands of
AmeriCorps volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. We want at least
100,000 college students to help.
And tonight I’m pleased that 60 college presidents have answered my
call, pledging that thousands of their work-study students will serve
for one year as reading tutors.
This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal.
You must use these tutors to help your students read. And it is
especially a challenge to our parents. You must read with your children
every night.
This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the first days of
life. Scientists are now discovering how young children develop
emotionally and intellectually from their very first days and how
important it is for parents to begin immediately talking, singing, even
reading to their infants. The first lady has spent years writing about
this issue, studying it. And she and I are going to convene a White
House conference on early learning and the brain this spring to explore
how parents and educators can best use these startling new findings.
We already know we should start teaching children before they start
school. That’s why this balanced budget expands Head Start to one
million children by 2002. And that is why the vice president and Mrs.
Gore will host their annual family conference this June on what we can
do to make sure that parents are an active part of their children’s
learning all the way through school.
They’ve done a great deal to highlight the importance of family in our
life, and now they’re turning their attention to getting more parents
involved in their children’s learning all the way through school. I
thank you, Mr. Vice President, and I thank you especially, Tipper, for
what you’re doing.
Fifth, every state should give parents the power to choose the right
public school for their children. Their right to choose will foster
competition and innovation that can make public schools better. We
should also make it possible for more parents and teachers to start
charter schools, schools that set and meet the highest standards and
exist only as long as they do.
Our plan will help America to create 3,000 of these charter schools by
the next century, nearly seven times as there are in the country today,
so that parents will have even more choices in sending their children to
the best schools.
Sixth, character education must be taught in our schools. We must teach
our children to be good citizens. And we must continue to promote order
and discipline; supporting communities that introduce school uniforms,
impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive students from
the classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs in schools.
Seventh, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools
that are literally falling down. With the student population at an
all-time high, and record numbers of school buildings falling into
disrepair, this has now become a serious national concern. Therefore, my
budget includes a new initiative: $5 billion to help communities finance
$20 billion in school construction over the next four years.
Eighth, we must make the 13th and 14th years of education--at least two
years of college--just as universal in America by the 21st century as a
high school education is today, and we must open the doors of college to
all Americans.
To do that, I propose America’s Hope Scholarship, based on Georgia’s
pioneering program--two years of a $1,500 tax credit for college
tuition, enough to pay for the typical community college. I also propose
a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for all tuition after high
school, an expanded IRA you can withdraw from tax free for education,
and the largest increase in Pell Grant scholarship in 20 years.
Now this plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on
money they save for college tuition. I ask you to pass it and give every
American who works hard the chance to go to college.
Ninth, in the 21st century we must expand the frontiers of learning
across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have the chance
to learn new skills.
Most Americans live near a community college. The roads that take them
there can be paths to a better future. My GI bill for America’s workers
will transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a
simple skill grant to go directly into eligible workers’ hands.
For too long this bill has been sitting on that desk there, without
action. I ask you to pass it now. Let’s give more of our workers the
ability to learn and to earn for a lifetime.
Tenth, we must bring the power of the Information Age into all our
schools.
Last year I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to
the Internet by the year 2000, so that for the first time in our
history, children in the most isolated rural town, the most comfortable
suburbs, the poorest inner-city schools will have the same access to the
same universe of knowledge.
That is my plan--a call to action for American education. Some may say
that it is unusual for a president to pay this kind of attention to
education. Some may say it is simply because the president and his
wonderful wife have been obsessed with this subject for more years than
they can recall. That is not what is driving these proposals. We must
understand the significance of this endeavor.
One of the greatest sources of our strength throughout the Cold War was
a bipartisan foreign policy. Because our future was at stake, politics
stopped at the water’s edge. Now I ask you, and I ask all our nation’s
governors, I ask parents, teachers and citizens all across America, for
a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because education is a
critical national security issue for our future and politics must stop
at the schoolhouse door.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful
forces of science and technology to benefit all Americans. This is the
first State of the Union carried live in video over the Internet, but
we’ve only begun to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that
should become the modern birthright of every citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. Now we
should connect every hospital to the Internet so that doctors can
instantly share data about their patients with the best specialists in
the field.
And I challenge the private sector tonight to start by connecting every
children’s hospital as soon as possible so that a child in bed can stay
in touch with school, family and friends. A sick child need no longer be
a child alone.
We must build the second generation of the Internet so that our leading
universities and national laboratories can communicate in speeds a
thousand times faster than today to develop new medical treatments, new
sources of energy, new ways of working together. But we cannot stop
there.
As the Internet becomes our new town square, a computer in every home: a
teacher of all subjects, a connection to all cultures. This will no
longer be a dream, but a necessity. And over the next decade, that must
be our goal.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars
probes and the International Space Station, both of which will have
practical applications for our everyday living.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The human
genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life. American
scientists have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian
cancer and medication that stops a stroke in progress and begins to
reverse its effects, and treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives
of people with HIV and AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National
Institutes of Health has increased dramatically to $1.5 billion. With
new resources, NIH will now become the most powerful discovery engine
for an AIDS vaccine, working with other scientists, to finally end the
threat of AIDS. Thank you. Remember that every year, every year we move
up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine we’ll save millions of lives around
the world. We must reinforce our commitment to medical science.
To prepare America for the 21st century we must build stronger families.
Over the past four years the Family and Medical Leave Law has helped
millions of Americans to take time off to be with their families.
With new pressures on people and the way they work and live, I believe
we must expand family leave so that workers can take time off for
teacher conferences and a child’s medical checkup. We should pass flex
time so workers can choose to be paid for overtime in income or trade it
in for time off to be with their families.
We must continue--we must continue, step by step, to give more families
access to affordable quality health care. Forty million Americans still
lack health insurance. Ten million children still lack health insurance.
Eighty percent of them have working parents who pay taxes. That is
wrong.
My--my balanced budget will extend health coverage to up to 5 million of
those children. Since nearly half of all children who lose their
insurance do so because their parents lose or change a job, my budget
will also ensure that people who temporarily lose their jobs can still
afford to keep their health insurance. No child should be without a
doctor just because a parent is without a job.
My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the trust
fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many
families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer’s, and, for the first
time, it would fully pay for annual mammograms.
Just as we ended drive-through deliveries of babies last year, we must
now end the dangerous and demeaning practice of forcing women home from
the hospital only hours after a mastectomy.
I ask your support for bipartisan legislation to guarantee that a woman
can stay in the hospital for 48 hours after a mastectomy. With us
tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at
this practice spurred a national movement and inspired this legislation.
I’d like her to stand so we can thank her for her efforts. Dr. Zarfos,
thank you.
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by
50 percent. Now we should go further and do better by making it a felony
for any parent to cross a state line in an attempt to flee from this,
his or her most sacred obligation.
Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm in our
determination to ban the advertising and marketing of cigarettes that
endanger their lives.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build stronger
communities. We should start with safe streets. Serious crime has
dropped five years in a row. The key has been community policing. We
must finish the job of putting 100,000 community police on the streets
of the United States.
We should pass the Victims’ Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and I
ask you to mount a full-scale assault on juvenile crime, with
legislation that declares war on gangs with new prosecutors and tougher
penalties, extends the Brady bill so violent teen criminals will not be
able to buy handguns, requires child safety locks on handguns to prevent
unauthorized use, and helps to keep our schools open after hours, on
weekends and in the summer so our young people will have someplace to go
and something to say yes to.
This balanced budget includes the largest anti-drug effort ever--to stop
drugs at their source; punish those who push them; and teach our young
people that drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal, and drugs will kill
them. I hope you will support it.
Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and rural
neighborhoods, but we must do more to empower them to create the
conditions in which all families can flourish and to create jobs through
investment by business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They’ve already
brought so much hope to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment
rate has been cut in half in four years. We should restore contaminated
urban land and buildings to constructive use. We should expand the
network of community development banks.
And together, we must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment
approach, including private sector tax incentives, to renew our capital
city so that Washington is a great place to work and live--and once
again the proud face America shows the world!
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four
years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous
12. Now we should clean up 500 more so that our children grow up next to
parks, not poison. I urge to pass my proposal to make big polluters live
by a simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you should pay to
clean it up.
In the last four years, we strengthened our nation’s safe food and clean
drinking water laws; we protected some of America’s rarest, most
beautiful land in Utah’s Red Rocks region; created three new national
parks in the California desert; and began to restore the Florida
Everglades.
Now we must be as vigilant with our rivers as we are with our lands.
Tonight I announce that this year I will designate 10 American Heritage
Rivers to help communities alongside them revitalize their waterfronts
and clean up pollution in the rivers, proving once again that we can
grow the economy as we protect the environment.
We must also protect our global environment, working to ban the worst
toxic chemicals and to reduce the greenhouse gases that challenge our
health even as they change our climate.
Now, we all know that in all of our communities some of our children
simply don’t have what they need to grow and learn in their own homes or
schools or neighborhoods. And that means the rest of us must do more,
for they are our children, too. That’s why President Bush, General Colin
Powell, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join the vice
president and me to lead the President’s Summit of Service in
Philadelphia in April.
Our national service program, AmeriCorps, has already helped 70,000
young people to work their way through college as they serve America.
Now we intend to mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of
ways. Citizen service is an American responsibility which all Americans
should embrace. And I ask your support for that endeavor.
I’d like to make just one last point about our national community. Our
economy is measured in numbers and statistics. And it’s very important.
But the enduring worth of our nation lies in our shared values and our
soaring spirit. So instead of cutting back on our modest efforts to
support the arts and humanities I believe we should stand by them and
challenge our artists, musicians, and writers, challenge our museums,
libraries, and theaters.
We should challenge all Americans in the arts and humanities to join
with their fellow citizens to make the year 2000 a national celebration
of the American spirit in every community, a celebration of our common
culture in the century that is past and in the new one to come in a new
millennium so that we can remain the world’s beacon not only of liberty
but of creativity long after the fireworks have faded.
To prepare America for the 21st century we must master the forces of
change in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for an
uncharted time.
Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the institutions
that secured victory in the Cold War and built a growing world economy.
As a result, today more people than ever embrace our ideals and share
our interests. Already we have dismantled many of the blocks and
barriers that divided our parents’ world. For the first time, more
people live under democracy than dictatorship including every nation in
our own hemisphere but one, and its day, too, will come.
Now we stand at another moment of change and choice, and another time to
be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years of security and
prosperity.
In this endeavor, our first task is to help to build for the very first
time an undivided, democratic Europe. When Europe is stable, prosperous,
and at peace, America is more secure.
To that end, we must expand NATO by 1999, so that countries that were
once our adversaries can become our allies. At the special NATO summit
this summer, that is what we will begin to do. We must strengthen NATO’s
Partnership for Peace with non-member allies. And we must build a stable
partnership between NATO and a democratic Russia.
An expanded NATO is good for America, and a Europe in which all
democracies define their future not in terms of what they can do to each
other, but in terms of what they can do together for the good of
all--that kind of Europe is good for America.
Second, America must look to the East no less than to the West.
Our security demands it. Americans fought three wars in Asia in this
century.
Our prosperity requires it. More than 2 million American jobs depend
upon trade with Asia. There, too, we are helping to shape an Asia
Pacific community of cooperation, not conflict.
Let our--let our progress there not mask the peril that remains.
Together with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea
and bridge the Cold War’s last divide. And I call on Congress to fund
our share of the agreement under which North Korea must continue to
freeze and then dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China for the sake of our
interests and our ideals. An isolated China is not good for America. A
China playing its proper role in the world is. I will go to China, and I
have invited China’s president to come here, not because we agree on
everything, but because engaging China is the best way to work on our
common challenges, like ending nuclear testing, and to deal frankly with
our fundamental differences, like human rights.
The American people must prosper in the global economy. We’ve worked
hard to tear down trade barriers abroad so that we can create good jobs
at home. I’m proud to say that today America is once again the most
competitive nation and the No. 1 exporter in the world.
Now we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and Latin
America, two of the fastest-growing regions on earth, or be left behind
as these emerging economies forge new ties with other nations. That is
why we need the authority now to conclude new trade agreements that open
markets to our goods and services even as we preserve our values.
We need not shrink from the challenge of the global economy. After all,
we have the best workers and the best products. In a truly open market,
we can out-compete anyone, anywhere on earth.
But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can
advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the world. There is no
better example of this truth than Latin America where democracy and open
markets are on the march together. That is why I will visit there in the
spring to reinforce our important ties.
We should all be proud that America led the effort to rescue our
neighbor, Mexico, from its economic crisis. And we should all be proud
that last month Mexico repaid the United States, three full years ahead
of schedule, with half a billion dollar profit to us.
America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace. From the
Middle East to Haiti, from Northern Ireland to Africa, taking reasonable
risks for peace keeps us from being drawn into far more costly conflicts
later. With American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now
the habits of peace must take hold.
The new NATO force will allow reconstruction and reconciliation to
accelerate. Tonight I ask Congress to continue its strong support of our
troops. They are doing a remarkable job there for America, and America
must do right by them.
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. In the
past four years, we agreed to ban--we led the way to a worldwide
agreement to ban nuclear testing.
With Russia, we dramatically cut nuclear arsenals and we stopped
targeting each other’s citizens. We are acting to prevent nuclear
materials from falling into the wrong hands, and to rid the world of
land mines.
We are working with other nations with renewed intensity to fight drug
traffickers and to stop terrorists before they act and hold them fully
accountable if they do.
Now we must rise to a new test of leadership--ratifying the Chemical
Weapons Convention. Make no mistake about it, it will make our troops
safer from chemical attack. It will help us to fight terrorism. We have
no more important obligations, especially in the wake of what we now
know about the Gulf War.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by
Republican and Democratic administrations, and Republican and Democratic
members of Congress, and already approved by 68 nations. But if we do
not act by April the 29th, when this convention goes into force--with or
without us--we will lose the chance to have Americans leading and
enforcing this effort. Together we must make the Chemical Weapons
Convention law so that at last we can begin to outlaw poisoned gas from
the earth.
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges. We must
maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase funding for
weapons modernization by the year 2000. And we must take good care of
our men and women in uniform. They are the world’s finest.
We must also renew our commitment to America’s diplomacy and pay our
debts and dues to international financial institutions like the World
Bank--and to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar--every dollar we
devote to preventing conflicts, to promoting democracy, to stopping the
spread of disease and starvation brings a sure return in security and
savings. Yet international affairs spending today is just 1 percent of
the federal budget, a small fraction of what America invested in
diplomacy to choose leadership over escapism at the start of the cold
war.
If America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead America
simply must find the will to pay our way. A farsighted America moved the
world to a better place over these last 50 years. And so it can be for
another 50 years. But a shortsighted America will soon find its words
falling on deaf ears all around the world.
Almost exactly 50 years ago in the first winter of the Cold War
President Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon our
country to meet its responsibilities of leadership. This was his
warning. He said, “If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the world,
and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.”
That Congress, led by Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenburg,
answered President Truman’s call. Together, they made the commitments
that strengthened our country for 50 years. Now let us do the same. Let
us do what it takes to remain the indispensable nation, to keep America
strong, secure and prosperous for another 50 years.
In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out of
the power of our example here at home, out of our ability to remain
strong as one America.
All over the world people are being torn asunder by racial, ethnic and
religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and terror. We are the world’s
most diverse democracy, and the world looks to us to show that it is
possible to live and advance together across those kinds of differences.
America has always been a nation of immigrants.
From the start, a steady stream of people in search of freedom and
opportunity have left their own lands to make this land their home. We
started as an experiment in democracy fueled by Europeans. We have grown
into an experiment in democratic diversity fueled by openness and
promise.
My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our diversity is a
weakness; it is our greatest strength.
Americans speak every language, know every country. People on every
continent can look to us and see the reflection of their own great
potential, and they always will, as long as we strive to give all our
citizens, whatever their background, an opportunity to achieve their own
greatness.
We’re not there yet. We still see evidence of a biting bigotry and
intolerance in ugly words and awful violence, in burned churches and
bombed buildings. We must fight against this in our country and in our
hearts.
Just a few days before my second inauguration, one of our country’s
best-known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, suggested that I read
Isaiah 58:12. Here’s what it says: “Thou shalt raise up the foundations
of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the
breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.”
I placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office, on behalf
of all Americans, for no matter what our differences in our faiths, our
backgrounds, our politics, we must all be repairers of the breach.
I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us how.
Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud American whose
family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. He was awarded the
Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fighting for his
country in Vietnam. And he went on to serve Texas and America fighting
for our future here in this chamber.
We are grateful for his service and honored that his mother, Lillie
Tejeda, and his sister, Mary Alice, have come from Texas to be with us
here tonight. And we welcome you. Thank you.
Gary Locke, the newly-elected governor of Washington state, is the first
Chinese-American governor in the history of our country. He’s the proud
son of two of the millions of Asian American immigrants who strengthened
America with their hard work, family values and good citizenship.
He represents the future we can all achieve. Thank you, governor, for
being here. Please stand up.
Reverend Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, along with
Kristen Tanner and Chris Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen
Zarfos--they’re all Americans from different roots whose lives reflect
the best of what we can become when we are one America.
We may not share a common past, but we surely do share a common future.
Building one America is our most important mission, the foundation for
many generations of every other strength we must build for this new
century. Money cannot buy it, power cannot compel it, technology cannot
create it. It can only come from the human spirit.
America is far more than a place; it is an idea--the most powerful idea
in the history of nations, and all of us in this chamber, we are now the
bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world.
A child born tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th century.
Everything that child will know about America will be because of what we
do now to build a new century. We don’t have a moment to waste.
Tomorrow there will be just over 1,000 days until the year 2000. One
thousand days to prepare our people. One thousand days to work together.
One thousand days to build a bridge to a land of new promise.
My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize those days and the
century.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.
***
State of the Union Address
William J. Clinton
January 27, 1998
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the 105th Congress,
distinguished guests, my fellow Americans:
Since the last time we met in this chamber, America has lost two
patriots and fine public servants. Though they sat on opposite sides of
the aisle, Representatives Walter Capps and Sonny Bono shared a deep
love for this House and an unshakable commitment to improving the lives
of all our people.
In the past few weeks, they have both been eulogized. Tonight, I think
we should begin by sending a message to their families and their friends
that we celebrate their lives, and give thanks for their service to our
nation.
For 209 years, it has been the president’s duty to report to you on the
state of the union. Because of the hard work and high purpose of the
American people, these are good times for America. We have more than 14
million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 24 years, the lowest core
inflation in 30 years, incomes are rising and we have the highest home
ownership in history. Crime has dropped for a record five years in a
row, and the welfare rolls are at their lowest levels in 27 years. Our
leadership in the world is unrivaled. Ladies and gentlemen, the state of
our union is strong.
But with barely 700 days left in the 20th century, this is not a time to
rest. It is a time to build--to build the America within reach, an
America where everybody has a chance to get ahead, with hard work; where
every citizen can live in a safe community; where families are strong,
schools are good, and all our young people can go on to college; an
America where scientists find cures for diseases from diabetes to
Alzheimer’s to AIDS; an America where every child can stretch a hand
across a keyboard and reach every book ever written, every painting ever
painted, every symphony ever composed; where government provides
opportunity and citizens honor the responsibility to give something back
to their communities; an America which leads the world to new heights of
peace and prosperity.
This is the America we have begun to build. This is the America we can
leave to our children--if we join together to finish the work at hand.
Let us strengthen our nation for the 21st century.
Rarely have Americans lived through so much change in so many ways in so
short a time. Quietly, but with gathering force, the ground has shifted
beneath our feet as we have moved into an information age, a global
economy, a truly new world.
For five years now, we have met the challenge of these changes as
Americans have at every turning point in our history, by renewing the
very idea of America, widening the circle of opportunity, deepening the
meaning of our freedom, forging a more perfect union. We shaped a new
kind of government for the information age. I thank the vice president
for his leadership, and the Congress for its support, in building a
government that is leaner, more flexible, a catalyst for new ideas, and
most of all, a government that gives the American people the tools they
need to make the most of their own lives.
We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say government
is the enemy and those who say government is the answer. My fellow
Americans, we have found a third way. We have the smallest government in
35 years, but a more progressive one. We have a smaller government but a
stronger nation.
We are moving steadily toward a an even stronger America in the 21st
century--an economy that offers opportunity, a society rooted in
responsibility, and a nation that lives as a community.
First, Americans in this chamber and across this nation have pursued a
new strategy for prosperity: fiscal discipline to cut interest rates and
spur growth; investments in education and skills, in science and
technology and transportation, to prepare our people for the new
economy; new markets for American products and American workers.
When I took office, the deficit for 1998 was projected to be $357
billion, and heading higher. This year, our deficit is projected to be
$10 billion, and heading lower.
For three decades, six presidents have come before you to warn of the
damage deficits pose to our nation. Tonight, I come before you to
announce that the federal deficit, once so incomprehensively large that
it had 11 zeros, will be simply zero.
I will submit to Congress, for 1999, the first balanced budget in 30
years.
And if we hold fast to fiscal discipline, we may balance the budget this
year--four years ahead of schedule.
You can all be proud of that, because turning a sea of red ink into
black is no miracle. It is the product of hard work by the American
people, and of two visionary actions in Congress: The courageous vote in
1993 that led to a cut in the deficit of 90 percent and the truly
historic bipartisan balanced budget agreement passed by this Congress.
Here’s the really good news: If we maintain our resolve, we will produce
balanced budgets as far as the eye can see.
We must not go back to unwise spending or untargeted tax cuts that risk
reopening the deficit. Last year, together, we enacted targeted tax cuts
so that the typical middle class family will now have the lowest tax
rates in 20 years.
My plan to balance the budget next year includes both new investments
and new tax cuts targeted to the needs of working families: for
education, for child care, for the environment.
But whether the issue is tax cuts or spending, I ask all of you to meet
this test: approve only those priorities that can actually be
accomplished without adding a dime to the deficit.
Now, if we balance the budget for next year, it is projected that we’ll
then have a sizeable surplus in the years that immediately follow. What
should we do with this projected surplus?
I have a simple four-word answer: Save Social Security first.
Tonight, I propose that we reserve 100 percent of the surplus--that’s
every penny of any surplus--until we have taken all the necessary
measures to strengthen the Social Security system for the 21st century.
Let us say--let us say to all Americans watching tonight, whether you’re
70 or 50, or whether you just started paying into the system, Social
Security will be there when you need it. Let us make this commitment:
Social Security first. Let’s do that--together.
I also want to say that all the American people who are watching us
tonight should be invited to join in this discussion, in facing these
issues squarely and forming a true consensus on how we should proceed.
We’ll start by conducting nonpartisan forums in every region of the
country, and I hope that lawmakers of both parties will participate.
We’ll hold a White House conference on Social Security in December. And
one year from now, I will convene the leaders of Congress to craft
historic bipartisan legislation to achieve a landmark for our
generation, a Social Security system that is strong in the 21st century.
In an economy that honors opportunity, all Americans must be able to
reap the rewards of prosperity. Because these times are good, we can
afford to take one simple, sensible step to help millions of workers
struggling to provide for their families. We should raise the minimum
wage.
The information age is first and foremost an education age, in which
education will start at birth and continue throughout a lifetime. Last
year, from this podium, I said that education has to be our highest
priority. I laid out a 10-point plan to move us forward, and urged all
of us to let politics stop at the schoolhouse door.
Since then, this Congress--across party lines--and the American people
have responded, in the most important year for education in a
generation-- expanding public school choice, opening the way to 3,000
charter schools, working to connect every classroom in the country to
the information superhighway, committing to expand Head Start to a
million children, launching America Reads, sending literally thousands
of college students into our elementary schools to make sure all our
8-year-olds can read.
Last year I proposed--and you passed--220,000 new Pell Grant
scholarships for deserving students. Student loans, already less
expensive and easier to repay--now you get to deduct the interest.
Families all over America now can put their savings into new, tax-free
education IRAs.
And this year, for the first two years of college, families will get a
$1500 tax credit--a Hope Scholarship that will cover the cost of most
community college tuition. And for junior and senior year, graduate
school, and job training, there is a lifetime learning credit. You did
that, and you should be very proud of it.
And because of these actions, I have something to say to every family
listening to us tonight: your children can go on to college. If you know
a child from a poor family, tell her not to give up, she can go on to
college. If you know a young couple struggling with bills, worried they
won’t be able to send their children to college, tell them not to give
up, their children can go on to college. If you know somebody who’s
caught in a dead-end job and afraid he can’t afford the classes
necessary to get better jobs for the rest of his life, tell him not to
give up, he can go on to college.
Because of the things that have been done, we can make college as
universal in the 21st century as high school is today. And, my friends,
that will change the face and future of America.
We have opened wide the doors of the world’s best system of higher
education. Now we must make our public elementary and secondary schools
the world’s best as well--by raising standards, raising expectations and
raising accountability.
Thanks to the actions of this Congress last year, we will soon have, for
the very first time, a voluntary national test based on national
standards in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math.
Parents have a right to know whether their children are mastering the
basics. And every parent already knows the key; good teachers and small
classes.
Tonight, I propose the first ever national effort to reduce class size
in the early grades. My balanced budget will help to hire a hundred
thousand new teachers who have passed the state competency tests. Now
with these teachers--listen--with these teachers, we will actually be
able to reduce class size in the first, second and third grades to an
average of 18 students a class all across America.
Now, if I’ve got the math right, more teachers teaching smaller classes
requires more classrooms. So I also propose a school construction tax
cut to help communities modernize or build 5,000 schools.
We must also demand greater accountability. When we promote a child from
grade to grade who hasn’t mastered the work, we don’t do that child any
favors. It is time to end social promotion in America’s schools.
Last year, in Chicago, they made that decision--not to hold our children
back, but to lift them up. Chicago stopped social promotion and started
mandatory summer school to help students who are behind to catch up.
I propose to help other communities follow Chicago’s lead. Let’s say to
them stop promoting children who don’t learn, and we will give you the
tools to make sure they do.
I also ask this Congress to support our efforts to enlist colleges and
universities to reach out to disadvantaged children starting in the
sixth grade so that they can get the guidance and hope they need so they
can know that they, too, will be able to go on to college.
As we enter the 21st century, the global economy requires us to seek
opportunity not just at home, but in all the markets of the world. We
must shape this global economy, not shrink from it.
In the last five years, we have led the way in opening new markets, with
240 trade agreements that remove foreign barriers to products bearing
the proud stamp, “Made in the USA.” Today, record high exports account
for fully one-third of our economic growth. I want to keep them going,
because that’s the way to keep America growing and to advance a safer,
more stable world.
Now, all of you know, whatever your views are, that I think this is a
great opportunity for America. I know there is opposition to more
comprehensive trade agreements. I have listened carefully, and I believe
that the opposition is rooted in two fears: first, that our trading
partners will have lower environmental and labor standards, which will
give them an unfair advantage in our market and do their own people no
favors, even if there’s more business; and second, that if we have more
trade, more of our workers will lose their jobs and have to start over.
I think we should seek to advance worker and environmental standards
around the world. It should--I have made it abundantly clear that it
should be a part of our trade agenda, but we cannot influence other
countries’ decisions if we send them a message that we’re backing away
from trade with them.
This year I will send legislation to Congress, and ask other nations to
join us, to fight the most intolerable labor practice of all-abusive
child labor.
We should also offer help and hope to those Americans temporarily left
behind with the global marketplace or by the march of technology, which
may have nothing to do with trade. That’s why we have more than doubled
funding for training dislocated workers since 1993. And if my new budget
is adopted, we will triple funding. That’s why we must do more, and more
quickly, to help workers who lose their jobs for whatever reason.
You know, we help communities in a special way when their military base
closes. We ought to help them in the same way if their factory closes.
Again, I ask the Congress to continue its bipartisan work to consolidate
the tangle of training programs we have today into one single GI Bill
for Workers, a simple skills grant so people can, on their own, move
quickly to new jobs, to higher incomes and brighter futures.
Now, we all know in every way in life change is not always easy, but we
have to decide whether we’re going to try to hold it back and hide from
it, or reap its benefits. And remember the big picture here: while we’ve
been entering into hundreds of new trade agreements, we’ve been creating
millions of new jobs. So this year we will forge new partnerships with
Latin America, Asia and Europe, and we should pass the new African Trade
Act. It has bipartisan support.
I will also renew my request for the fast-track negotiating authority
necessary to open more new markets, created more new jobs, which every
president has had for two decades.
You know, whether we like it or not, in ways that are mostly positive,
the world’s economies are more and more interconnected and
interdependent. Today, an economic crisis anywhere can affect economies
everywhere. Recent months have brought serious financial problems to
Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea and beyond.
Now why should Americans be concerned about this?
First, these countries are our customers. If they sink into recession,
they won’t be able to buy the goods we’d like to sell them.
Second, they’re also our competitors, so if their currencies lose their
value and go down, then the price of their goods will drop, flooding our
market and others with much cheaper goods, which makes it a lot tougher
for our people to compete.
And finally, they are our strategic partners. Their stability bolsters
our security.
The American economy remains sound and strong, and I want to keep it
that way. But because the turmoil in Asia will have an impact on all the
world’s economies, including ours, making that negative impact as small
as possible is the right thing to do for America, and the right thing to
do for a safer world.
Our policy is clear: no nation can recover if it does not reform itself,
but when nations are willing to undertake serious economic reform, we
should help them do it. So I call on Congress to renew America’s
commitment to the International Monetary Fund.
And I think we should say to all the people we’re trying to represent
here, that preparing for a far off storm that may reach our shores is
far wiser than ignoring the thunder ’til the clouds are just overhead.
A strong nation rests on the rock of responsibility. A society rooted in
responsibility must first promote the value of work, not welfare. We
could be proud that after decades of finger-pointing and failure,
together we ended the old welfare system. And we’re now replacing
welfare checks with paychecks.
Last year, after a record four-year decline in welfare rolls I
challenged our nation to move two million more Americans off welfare by
the year 2000. I’m pleased to report we have also met that goal two full
years ahead of schedule.
This is a grand achievement, the sum of many acts of individual courage,
persistence and hope.
For 13 years, Elaine Kinslow of Indianapolis, Indiana was on and off
welfare. Today she’s a dispatcher with a van company. She’s saved enough
money to move her family into a good neighborhood. And she’s helping
other welfare recipients go to work.
Elaine Kinslow and all those like her are the real heroes of the welfare
revolution. There are millions like her all across America, and I am
happy she could join the first lady tonight. Elaine, we’re very proud of
you. Please stand up.
We still have a lot more to do, all of us, to make welfare reform a
success; providing child care, helping families move closer to available
jobs, challenging more companies to join our Welfare to Work
Partnership, increasing child-support collections from deadbeat parents
who have a duty to support their own children. I also want to thank
Congress for restoring some of the benefits to immigrants who are here
legally and working hard. And I hope you will finish that job this year.
We have to make it possible for all hard-working families to meet their
most important responsibilities. Two years ago, we helped guarantee that
Americans can keep their health insurance when they changed jobs. Last
year, we extended health care to up to 5 million children. This year, I
challenge Congress to take the next historic steps. A hundred and sixty
million of our fellow citizens are in managed care plans. These plans
save money, and they can improve care. But medical decisions ought to be
made by medical doctors, not insurance company accountants.
I urge this Congress to reach across the aisle and write into law a
consumer bill of rights that says this: You have the right to know all
your medical options, not just the cheapest. You have the right to
choose the doctor you want for the care you need. You have the right to
emergency room care wherever and whenever you need it. You have the
right to keep your medical records confidential.
Now, traditional care or managed care, every American deserves quality
care. Millions of Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have lost
their health insurance. Some are retired. Some are laid off. Some lose
their coverage when their spouses retire. After a lifetime of work,
they’re left with nowhere to turn.
So I ask the Congress, let these hard-working Americans buy into the
Medicare system. It won’t add a dime to the deficit, but the peace of
mind it will provide will be priceless.
Next, we must help parents protect their children from the gravest
health threat that they face: an epidemic of teen smoking spread by
multimillion dollar marketing campaigns. I challenge Congress. Let’s
pass bipartisan, comprehensive legislation that will improve public
health, protect our tobacco farmers, and change the way tobacco
companies do business forever.
Let’s do what it takes to bring teen smoking down. Let’s raise the price
of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack over the next 10 years, with
penalties on the tobacco industry if it keeps marketing to our children.
Now tomorrow, like every day, 3,000 children will start smoking, and a
thousand will die early as a result. Let this Congress be remembered as
the Congress that saved their lives.
In the new economy, most parents work harder than ever. They face a
constant struggle to balance their obligations to be good workers, and
their even more important obligations to be good parents.
The Family and Medical Leave Act was the very first bill I was
privileged to sign into law as president in 1993. Since then, about 15
million people have taken advantage of it, and I’ve met a lot of them
all across this country. I ask you to extend the law to cover 10 million
more workers, and to give parents time off when they have to go see
their children’s teachers or take them to the doctor.
Child care is the next frontier we must face to enable people to succeed
at home and at work. Last year, I co-hosted the very first White House
conference on child care with one of our foremost experts, America’s
first lady. From all corners of America, we heard the same
message--without regard to region or income or political
affiliation--we’ve got to raise the quality of child care, we’ve got to
make it safer, we’ve got to make it more affordable.
So here’s my plan: Help families to pay for child care for a million
more children; scholarships and background checks for child-care
workers, and a new emphasis on early learning; tax credits for
businesses that provide child care for their employees; and a larger
child-care tax credit for working families.
Now, if you pass my plan, what this means is that a family of four with
an income of $35,000 and high child-care costs will no longer pay a
single penny of federal income tax.
You know, I think this is such a big issue with me because of my own
personal experience. I have often wondered how my mother, when she was a
young widow, would have been able to go away to school and get an
education and come back and support me, if my grandparents hadn’t been
able to take care of me. She and I were really very lucky.
How many other families have never had that same opportunity? The truth
is, we don’t know the answer to that question, but we do know what the
answer should be. Not a single American family should ever have to
choose between the job they need and the child they love.
A society rooted in responsibility must provide safe streets, safe
schools, and safe neighborhoods. We pursued a strategy of more police,
tougher punishment, smarter prevention with crime-fighting partnerships,
with local law enforcement and citizen groups, where the rubber hits the
road.
I can report to you tonight that it’s working. Violent crime is down,
robbery is down, assault is down, burglary is down for five years in a
row all across America. Now, we need to finish the job of putting
100,000 more police on our streets.
Again, I ask Congress to pass a juvenile crime bill that provides more
prosecutors and probation officers to crack down on gangs and guns and
drugs and bar violent juveniles from buying guns for life. And I ask you
to dramatically expand our support for after-school programs. I think
every American should know that most juvenile crime is committed between
the hours of 3:00 in the afternoon and 8:00 at night. We can keep so
many of our children out of trouble in the first place if we give them
some place to go other than the streets, and we ought to do it.
Drug use is on the decline. I thank General McCaffrey for his
leadership, and I thank this Congress for passing the largest anti-drug
budget in history. Now I ask you to join me in a ground-breaking effort
to hire a thousand new Border Patrol agents and to deploy the most
sophisticated available new technologies to help close the door on drugs
at our borders.
Police, prosecutors, and prevention programs, good as they are, they
can’t work if our court system doesn’t work. Today, there are large
numbers of vacancies in our federal courts. Here is what the chief
justice of the United States wrote: “Judicial vacancies cannot remain at
such high levels indefinitely without eroding the quality of justice.”
I simply ask the United States Senate to heed this plea and vote on the
highly qualified nominees before you, up or down.
We must exercise responsibility not just at home but around the world.
On the eve of a new century, we have the power and the duty to build a
new era of peace and security. But make no mistake about it; today’s
possibilities are not tomorrow’s guarantees. America must stand against
the poisoned appeals of extreme nationalism. We must combat an unholy
access of new threats from terrorists, international criminals and drug
traffickers.
These 21st century predators feed on technology and the free flow of
information and ideas and people, and they will be all the more lethal
if weapons of mass destruction fall into their hands. To meet these
challenges, we are helping to write international rules of the road for
the 21st century, protecting those who join the family of nations and
isolating those who do not.
Within days, I will ask the Senate for its advice and consent to make
Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic the newest members of NATO. For
50 years, NATO contained communism and kept America and Europe secure.
Now these three formerly communist countries have said yes to democracy.
I ask the Senate to say yes to them, our new allies.
By taking in new members and working closely with new partners,
including Russia and Ukraine, NATO can help to assure that Europe is a
stronghold for peace in the 21st century.
Next, I will ask Congress to continue its support for our troops and
their mission in Bosnia. This Christmas, Hillary and I traveled to
Sarajevo with Senator and Mrs. Dole and a bipartisan congressional
delegation. We saw children playing in the streets where, two years ago,
they were hiding from snipers and shells. The shops were filled with
food. The cafes were alive with conversation. The progress there is
unmistakable; but it is not yet irreversible.
To take firm root, Bosnia’s fragile peace still needs the support of
American and allied troops when the current NATO mission ends in June. I
think Senator Dole actually said it best. He said: “This is like being
ahead in the fourth quarter of a football game; now is not the time to
walk off the field and forfeit the victory.”
I wish all of you could have seen our troops in Tuzla. They’re very
proud of what they are doing in Bosnia, and we’re all very proud of
them. One of those--one of those brave soldiers is sitting with the
first lady tonight: Army Sergeant Michael Tolbert. His father was a
decorated Vietnam vet. After college in Colorado, he joined the Army.
Last year he led an infantry unit that stopped a mob of extremists from
taking over a radio station that is a voice of democracy and tolerance
in Bosnia. Thank you very much, Sergeant, for what you represent.
In Bosnia and around the world, our men and women in uniform always do
their mission well. Our mission must be to keep them well-trained and
ready, to improve their quality of life, and to provide the 21st century
weapons they need to defeat any enemy.
I ask Congress to join me in pursuing an ambitious agenda to reduce the
serious threat of weapons of mass destruction. This year, four decades
after it was first proposed by President Eisenhower, a Comprehensive
Nuclear Test Ban is within reach. By ending nuclear testing, we can help
to prevent the development of new and more dangerous weapons, and make
it more difficult for non-nuclear states to build them.
I am pleased to announce that four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff--Generals John Shalikashvili, Colin Powell and David Jones, and
Admiral William Crowe--have endorsed this treaty, and I ask the Senate
to approve it this year.
Together we must also confront the new hazards of chemical and
biological weapons, and the outlaw states, terrorists and organized
criminals seeking to acquire them.
Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade, and much of his
nation’s wealth, not on providing for the Iraqi people, but on
developing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to
deliver them.
The United Nations weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job,
finding and destroying more of Iraq’s arsenal than was destroyed during
the entire gulf war. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to stop them from
completing their mission.
I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans and Democrats,
when I say to Saddam Hussein, “You cannot defy the will of the world,”
and when I say to him, “You have used weapons of mass destruction
before; we are determined to deny you the capacity to use them again.”
Last year, the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention to
protect our soldiers and citizens from poison gas. Now we must act to
prevent the use of disease as a weapon of war and terror. The Biological
Weapons Convention has been in effect for 23 years now. The rules are
good, but the enforcement is weak. We must strengthen it with a new
international inspection system to detect and deter cheating. In the
months ahead, I will pursue our security strategy with old allies in
Asia and Europe, and new partners from Africa to India and Pakistan,
from South America to China. And from Belfast to Korea to the Middle
East, America will continue to stand with those who stand for peace.
Finally, it’s long past time to make good on our debt to the United
Nations.
More and more we are working with other nations to achieve common goals.
If we want America to lead, we’ve got to set a good example. As we
see--as we see so clearly in Bosnia, allies who share our goals can also
share our burdens. In this new era, our freedom and independence are
actually enriched, not weakened, by our increasing interdependence with
other nations. But we have to do our part.
Our founders set America on a permanent course toward a more perfect
union. To all of you, I say, it is a journey we can only make together,
living as one community.
First, we have to continue to reform our government, the instrument of
our national community. Everyone knows elections have become too
expensive, fueling a fund-raising arms race.
This year, by March the 6th, at long last the Senate will actually vote
on bipartisan campaign finance reform proposed by senators McCain and
Feingold. Let’s be clear; a vote against McCain-Feingold is a vote for
soft money and for the status quo. I ask you to strengthen our democracy
and pass campaign finance reform this year.
But at least equally important, we have to address the real reason for
the explosion in campaign costs: the high cost of media advertising. I
will-- for the folks watching at home, those were the groans of pain in
the audience--I will formally request that the Federal Communications
Commission act to provide free or reduced-cost television time--for
candidates who observe spending limits voluntarily. The airwaves are a
public trust, and broadcasters also have to help us in this effort to
strengthen our democracy.
Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have reduced the federal
payroll by 300,000 workers, cut 16,000 pages of regulation, eliminated
hundreds of programs and improved the operations of virtually every
government agency. But we can do more.
Like every taxpayer, I’m outraged by the reports of abuses by the IRS.
We need some changes there: new citizen advocacy panels, a stronger
taxpayer advocate, phone lines open 24 hours a day, relief for innocent
taxpayers.
Last year, by an overwhelming bipartisan margin, the House of
Representatives passed sweeping IRS reforms. This bill must not now
languish in the Senate. Tonight, I ask the Senate: Follow the House;
pass the bipartisan package as your first order of business. I hope to
goodness before I finish I can think of something to say ‘Follow the
Senate’ on so I’ll be out of trouble!
A nation that lives as a community must value all its communities. For
the past five years, we have worked to bring the spark of private
enterprise to inner city and poor rural areas with community development
banks, more commercial loans into poor neighborhoods, cleanup of
polluted sites for development.
Under the continued leadership of the vice president, we propose to
triple the number of empowerment zones to give business incentives to
invest in those areas. We should. We should also give poor families more
help to move into homes of their own, and we should use tax cuts to spur
the construction of more low-income housing.
Last year, this Congress took strong action to help the District of
Columbia. Let us renew our resolve to make our capital city a great city
for all who live and visit here.
Our cities are the vibrant hubs of great metropolitan areas. They are
still the gateway for new immigrants from every continent who come here
to work for their own American dreams. Let’s keep our cities going
strong into the 21st Century. They’re a very important part of our
future.
Our communities are only as healthy as the air our children breathe, the
water they drink, the Earth they will inherit. Last year we put in place
the toughest-ever controls on smog and soot. We moved to protect
Yellowstone, the Everglades, Lake Tahoe. We expanded every community’s
right to know about toxics that threaten their children.
Just yesterday, our food safety plan took effect, using new science to
protect consumers from dangers like e. coli and salmonella.
Tonight, I ask you to join me in launching a new Clean Water initiative,
a far-reaching effort to clean our rivers, our lakes and our coastal
waters for our children.
Our overriding environmental challenge tonight is the worldwide problem
of climate change, global warming, the gathering crisis that requires
worldwide action. The vast majority of scientists have concluded
unequivocally that if we don’t reduce the emission of greenhouse gases
at some point in the next century, we’ll disrupt our climate and put our
children and grandchildren at risk.
This past December, America led the world to reach a historic agreement
committing our nation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through market
forces, new technologies, energy efficiency.
We have it in our power to act right here, right now. I propose $6
billion in tax cuts, in research and development, to encourage
innovation, renewable energy, fuel-efficient cars, energy-efficient
homes. Every time we have acted to heal our environment, pessimists have
told us it would hurt the economy. Well, today our economy is the
strongest in a generation, and our environment is the cleanest in a
generation. We have always found a way to clean the environment and grow
the economy at the same time. And when it comes to global warming, we’ll
do it again.
Finally, community means living by the defining American value, the
ideal heard ’round the world: that we’re all created equal. Throughout
our history, we haven’t always honored that ideal, and we’ve never fully
lived up to it. Often it’s easier to believe that our differences matter
more than what we have in common. It may be easier, but it’s wrong.
What we have to do in our day and generation to make sure that America
truly becomes one nation, what do we have to do? We’re becoming more and
more and more diverse. Do you believe we can become one nation? The
answer cannot be to dwell on our differences, but to build on our shared
values.
And we all cherish family and faith, freedom and responsibility. We all
want our children to grow up in the world where their talents are
matched by their opportunities.
I’ve launched this national initiative on race to help us recognize our
common interests and to bridge the opportunity gaps that are keeping us
from becoming one America. Let us begin by recognizing what we still
must overcome.
Discrimination against any American is un-American. We must vigorously
enforce the laws that make it illegal. I ask your help to end the
backlog at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Sixty thousand
of our fellow citizens are waiting in line for justice, and we should
act now to end their wait.
We should also recognize that the greatest progress we can make toward
building one America lies in the progress we make for all Americans,
without regard to race. When we open the doors of college to all
Americans, when we rid all our streets of crime, when there are jobs
available to people from all our neighborhoods, when we make sure all
parents have the child care they need, we’re helping to build one
nation.
We in this chamber and in this government must do all we can to address
the continuing American challenge to build one America. But we’ll only
move forward if all our fellow citizens, including every one of you at
home watching tonight, is also committed to this cause.
We must work together, learn together, live together, serve together. On
the forge of common enterprise, Americans of all backgrounds can hammer
out a common identity.
We see it today in the United States military, in the Peace Corps, in
AmeriCorps. Wherever people of all races and backgrounds come together
in a shared endeavor and get a fair chance, we do just fine. With shared
values and meaningful opportunities and honest communications and
citizen service, we can unite a diverse people in freedom and mutual
respect. We are many. We must be one.
In that spirit, let us lift our eyes to the new millennium. How will we
mark that passage? It just happens once every thousand years. This year,
Hillary and I launched the White House Millennium Program to promote
America’s creativity and innovation and to preserve our heritage and
culture into the 21st century. Our culture lives in every community, and
every community has places of historic value that tell our stories as
Americans. We should protect them.
I am proposing a public-private partnership to advance our arts and
humanities and to celebrate the millennium by saving America’s treasures
great and small. And while we honor the past, let us imagine the future.
Now, think about this. The entire store of human knowledge now doubles
every five years. In the 1980s, scientists identified the gene causing
cystic fibrosis; it took nine years. Last year, scientists located the
gene that causes Parkinson’s disease--in only nine days! Within a
decade, gene chips will offer a road map for prevention of illnesses
throughout a lifetime. Soon, we’ll be able to carry all the phone calls
on Mother’s Day on a single strand of fiber the width of a human hair. A
child born in 1998 may well live to see the 22nd century.