Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 104th Congress, my fellow Americans: Again we are here in the sanctuary of democracy, and once again our democracy has spoken. So let me begin by congratulating all of you here in the 104th Congress and congratulating you, Mr. Speaker. If we agree on nothing else tonight, we must agree that the American people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 1994. And as I look out at you, I know how some of you must have felt in 1992. [ ] I must say that in both years we didn't hear America singing, we heard America shouting. And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, must say, "We hear you. We will work together to earn the jobs you have given us." For we are the keepers of a sacred trust, and we must be faithful to it in this new and very demanding era. Over 200 years ago, our Founders changed the entire course of human history by joining together to create a new country based on a single powerful idea: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea, the American idea, and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and different times: to Lincoln and to his Congress to preserve the Union and to end slavery; to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to restrain the abuses and excesses of the industrial revolution and to assert our leadership in the world; to Franklin Roosevelt to fight the failure and pain of the Great Depression and to win our country's great struggle against fascism; and to all our Presidents since to fight the cold war. Especially, I recall two who struggled to fight that cold war in partnership with Congresses where the majority was of a different party: to Harry Truman, who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at home and who built the architecture of the cold war; and to Ronald Reagan, whom we wish well tonight and who exhorted us to carry on until the twilight struggle against communism was won. In another time of change and challenge, I had the honor to be the first President to be elected in the post-cold-war era, an era marked by the global economy, the information revolution, unparalleled change and opportunity and insecurity for the American people. I came to this hallowed Chamber 2 years ago on a mission, to restore the American dream for all our people and to make sure that we move into the 21st century still the strongest force for freedom and democracy in the entire world. I was determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored. In this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, and I have learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was 2 years ago. [ ] Thank you. Record numbers of Americans are succeeding in the new global economy. We are at peace, and we are a force for peace and freedom throughout the world. We have almost 6 million new jobs since I became President, and we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. Our businesses are more productive. And here we have worked to bring the deficit down, to expand trade, to put more police on our streets, to give our citizens more of the tools they need to get an education and to rebuild their own communities. But the rising tide is not lifting all boats. While our Nation is enjoying peace and prosperity, too many of our people are still working harder and harder, for less and less. While our businesses are restructuring and growing more productive and competitive, too many of our people still can't be sure of having a job next year or even next month. And far more than our material riches are threatened, things far more precious to us, our children, our families, our values. Our civil life is suffering in America today. Citizens are working together less and shouting at each other more. The common bonds of community which have been the great strength of our country from its very beginning are badly frayed. What are we to do about it? More than 60 years ago, at the dawn of another new era, President Roosevelt told our Nation, "New conditions impose new requirements on Government and those who conduct Government." And from that simple proposition, he shaped the New Deal, which helped to restore our Nation to prosperity and define the relationship between our people and their Government for half a century. That approach worked in its time. But we today, we face a very different time and very different conditions. We are moving from an industrial age built on gears and sweat to an information age demanding skills and learning and flexibility. Our Government, once a champion of national purpose, is now seen by many as simply a captive of narrow interests, putting more burdens on our citizens rather than equipping them to get ahead. The values that used to hold us all together seem to be coming apart. So tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges of this time. As we enter a new era, we need a new set of understandings, not just with Government but, even more important, with one another as Americans. That's what I want to talk with you about tonight. I call it the New Covenant. But it's grounded in a very, very old idea, that all Americans have not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their God-given talents and determination can take them and to give something back to their communities and their country in return. Opportunity and responsibility: They go hand in hand. We can't have one without the other. And our national community can't hold together without both. Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip our people to meet the challenges of a new economy, how we can change the way our Government works to fit a different time, and, above all, how we can repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together behind our common purpose. We must have dramatic change in our economy, our Government, and ourselves. My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise to the occasion. Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride. As we embark on this new course, let us put our country first, remembering that regardless of party label, we are all Americans. And let the final test of everything we do be a simple one: Is it good for the American people? Let me begin by saying that we cannot ask Americans to be better citizens if we are not better servants. You made a good start by passing that law which applies to Congress all the laws you put on the private sector, and I was proud to sign it yesterday. But we have a lot more to do before people really trust the way things work around here. Three times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors of Washington as were here 20 years ago. The American people look at their Capital, and they see a city where the well-connected and the well-protected can work the system, but the interests of ordinary citizens are often left out. As the new Congress opened its doors, lobbyists were still doing business as usual; the gifts, the trips, all the things that people are concerned about haven't stopped. Twice this month you missed opportunities to stop these practices. I know there were other considerations in those votes, but I want to use something that I've heard my Republican friends say from time to time, "There doesn't have to be a law for everything." So tonight I ask you to just stop taking the lobbyists' perks. Just stop. We don't have to wait for legislation to pass to send a strong signal to the American people that things are really changing. But I also hope you will send me the strongest possible lobby reform bill, and I'll sign that, too. We should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work what they're spending, what they want. We should also curb the role of big money in elections by capping the cost of campaigns and limiting the influence of PAC's. And as I have said for 3 years, we should work to open the airwaves so that they can be an instrument of democracy, not a weapon of destruction, by giving free TV time to candidates for public office. When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the Halls of this sacred building and cheered. This year, let's give the folks at home something to cheer about. More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way the Government works. Let's make it smaller, less costly, and smarter; leaner, not meaner. [ ] I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine is alive and well. [ ] The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter. The old way of governing around here protected organized interests. We should look out for the interests of ordinary people. The old way divided us by interest, constituency, or class. The New Covenant way should unite us behind a common vision of what's best for our country. The old way dispensed services through large, top-down, inflexible bureaucracies. The New Covenant way should shift these resources and decisionmaking from bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and competition and individual responsibility into national policy. The old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward failure. The New Covenant way should have built-in incentives to reward success. The old way was centralized here in Washington. The New Covenant way must take hold in the communities all across America. And we should help them to do that. Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security here at home and abroad. We must not ask Government to do what we should do for ourselves. We should rely on Government as a partner to help us to do more for ourselves and for each other. I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there is somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and the other illusion that the Government is a source of every problem we have. Our job is to get rid of yesterday's Government so that our own people can meet today's and tomorrow's needs. And we ought to do it together. You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say they would cut Government and how bad it was, but not much happened. We actually did it. We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions from the Federal bureaucracy in the last 2 years alone. Based on decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President, by the time I come here again next year. Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have already saved taxpayers $63 billion. The age of the $500 hammer and the ashtray you can break on "David Letterman" is gone. Deadwood programs, like mohair subsidies, are gone. We've streamlined the Agriculture Department by reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We've slashed the small business loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We've thrown away the Government's 10,000page personnel manual. And the Government is working better in important ways: FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to helping people in disasters. You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there or the people in California who have dealt with floods and earthquakes and fires, and they'll tell you that. Government workers, working hand in hand with private business, rebuilt southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under budget. And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of the 5,600 schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business. Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want to just mention one because it will be discussed here in the next few weeks. University administrators all over the country have told me that they are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our direct college loan program, which makes college loans cheaper and more affordable with better repayment terms for students, costs the Government less, and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the Government and for the universities. We shouldn't cap that program. We should give every college in America the opportunity to be a part of it. Previous Government programs gathered dust. The reinventing Government report is getting results. And we're not through. There's going to be a second round of reinventing Government. We propose to cut $130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3, getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need, like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve Program. And we're working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making them more sensible. The programs and regulations that have outlived their usefulness should go. We have to cut yesterday's Government to help solve tomorrow's problems. And we need to get Government closer to the people it's meant to serve. We need to help move programs down to the point where States and communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better job. If they can do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of the way and let them do what they can do better. Taking power away from Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be for. It's time for Congress to stop passing on to the States the cost of decisions we make here in Washington. I know there are still serious differences over the details of the unfunded mandates legislation, but I want to work with you to make sure we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interests and give justified relief where we need to give it. For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending projects. Last year was no difference. There was a $1 million to study stress in plants and $12 million for a tick removal program that didn't work. It's hard to remove ticks. Those of us who have had them know. [ ] But I'll tell you something, if you'll give me line-item veto, I'll remove some of that unnecessary spending. But I think we should all remember, and almost all of us would agree, that Government still has important responsibilities. Our young people—we should think of this when we cut— our young people hold our future in their hands. We still owe a debt to our veterans. And our senior citizens have made us what we are. Now, my budget cuts a lot. But it protects education, veterans, Social Security, and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. You should, and I hope you will. And when we give more flexibility to the States, let us remember that there are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed in every State, North and South, East and West: Immunization against childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools, Head Start, medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants, all these things, all these things are in the national interest. I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations. But when we deregulate, let's remember what national action in the national interest has given us: safer food for our families, safer toys for our children, safer nursing homes for our parents, safer cars and highways, and safer workplaces, cleaner air, and cleaner water. Do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. But we can have common sense and still provide for safe drinking water. We can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps, and we ought to do it. Should we cut the deficit more? Well, of course we should. Of course we should. But we can bring it down in a way that still protects our economic recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be punished but instead should be helped. I know many of you in this Chamber support the balanced budget amendment. I certainly want to balance the budget. Our administration has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a very, very long time. If you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do, then you have to be straight with the American people. They have a right to know what you're going to cut, what taxes you're going to raise, and how it's going to affect them. We should be doing things in the open around here. For example, everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger Social Security. I would oppose that, and I think most Americans would. Nothing has done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility than our failed welfare system. This is one of the problems we have to face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It rewards welfare over work. It undermines family values. It lets millions of parents get away without paying their child support. It keeps a minority but a significant minority of the people on welfare trapped on it for a very long time. I've worked on this problem for a long time, nearly 15 years now. As a Governor, I had the honor of working with the Reagan administration to write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988. In the last 2 years, we made a good start at continuing the work of welfare reform. Our administration gave two dozen States the right to slash through Federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and dependency. Last year I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever presented by an administration. We have to make welfare what it was meant to be, a second chance, not a way of life. We have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly as possible, to provide child care and teach them skills, if that's what they need, for up to 2 years. And after that, there ought to be a simple, hard rule: Anyone who can work must go to work. If a parent isn't paying child support, they should be forced to pay. We should suspend drivers' license, track them across State lines, make them work off what they owe. That is what we should do. Governments do not raise children, people do. And the parents must take responsibility for the children they bring into this world. I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence to independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because they happen to be poor. We should, we should require work and mutual responsibility. But we shouldn't cut people off just because they're poor, they're young, or even because they're unmarried. We should promote responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school. But we shouldn't put them and their children out on the street. And I know all the arguments, pro and con, and I have read and thought about this for a long time. I still don't think we can in good conscience punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents. My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American people care about this without regard to party or race or region. So let this be the year we end welfare as we know it. But also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this issue to divide America. No one is more eager to end welfare— [ ]—I may be the only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare office, who's actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare. And I am telling you, the people who are trapped on it know it doesn't work; they also want to get off. So we can promote, together, education and work and good parenting. I have no problem with punishing bad behavior or the refusal to be a worker or a student or a responsible parent. I just don't want to punish poverty and past mistakes. All of us have made our mistakes, and none of us can change our yesterdays. But every one of us can change our tomorrows. And America's best example of that may be Lynn Woolsey, who worked her way off welfare to become a Congresswoman from the State of California. I know the Members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as are all the citizens of our country. And I remind you that last year we passed a very tough crime bill: longer sentences, "three strikes and you're out," almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons, more prevention, 100,000 more police. And we paid for it all by reducing the size of the Federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local communities to lower the crime rate. There may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime, to be smarter with crime, to help to lower that rate first. Well, if there are, let's talk about them, and let's do them. But let's not go back on the things that we did last year that we know work, that we know work because the local law enforcement officers tell us that we did the right thing, because local community leaders who have worked for years and years to lower the crime rate tell us that they work. Let's look at the experience of our cities and our rural areas where the crime rate has gone down and ask the people who did it how they did it. And if what we did last year supports the decline in the crime rate— and I am convinced that it does—let us not go back on it. Let's stick with it, implement it. We've got 4 more hard years of work to do to do that. I don't want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that divided this body greatly last year. The last Congress also passed the Brady bill and, in the crime bill, the ban on 19 assault weapons. I don't think it's a secret to anybody in this room that several Members of the last Congress who voted for that aren't here tonight because they voted for it. And I know, therefore, that some of you who are here because they voted for it are under enormous pressure to repeal it. I just have to tell you how I feel about it. The Members of Congress who voted for that bill and I would never do anything to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in other appropriate sporting activities. I've done it since I was a boy, and I'm going to keep right on doing it until I can't do it anymore. But a lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so that police officers and kids wouldn't have to lay down their lives under a hail of assault weapon attack, and I will not let that be repealed. I will not let it be repealed. I'd like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal with. I want us to cut more spending, but I hope we won't cut Government programs that help to prepare us for the new economy, promote responsibility, and are organized from the grassroots up, not by Federal bureaucracy. The very best example of this is the national service corps, AmeriCorps. It passed with strong bipartisan support. And now there are 20,000 Americans, more than ever served in one year in the Peace Corps, working all over this country, helping people person-to-person in local grassroots volunteer groups, solving problems, and in the process earning some money for their education. This is citizenship at its best. It's good for the AmeriCorps members, but it's good for the rest of us, too. It's the essence of the New Covenant, and we shouldn't stop it. All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. The most important job of our Government in this new era is to empower the American people to succeed in the global economy. America has always been a land of opportunity, a land where, if you work hard, you can get ahead. We've become a great middle class country. Middle class values sustain us. We must expand that middle class and shrink the under class, even as we do everything we can to support the millions of Americans who are already successful in the new economy. America is once again the world's strongest economic power: almost 6 million new jobs in the last 2 years, exports booming, inflation down. High-wage jobs are coming back. A record number of American entrepreneurs are living the American dream. If we want it to stay that way, those who work and lift our Nation must have more of its benefits. Today, too many of those people are being left out. They're working harder for less. They have less security, less income, less certainty that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids or retirement for themselves. We cannot let this continue. If we don't act, our economy will probably keep doing what it's been doing since about 1978, when the income growth began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale and the people in the vast middle got very little growth, and people who worked like crazy but were on the bottom then fell even further and further behind in the years afterward, no matter how hard they worked. We've got to have a Government that can be a real partner in making this new economy work for all of our people, a Government that helps each and every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity to renew our skills. That's why we worked so hard to increase educational opportunities in the last 2 years, from Head Start to public schools, to apprenticeships for young people who don't go to college, to making college loans more available and more affordable. That's the first thing we have to do. We've got to do something to empower people to improve their skills. The second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes immediately by lowering their taxes. We took the first step in 1993 with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes under $27,000, a tax cut that this year will average about $1,000 a family. And we also gave tax reductions to most small and new businesses. Before we could do more than that, we first had to bring down the deficit we inherited, and we had to get economic growth up. Now we've done both. And now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way. But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation: to empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of their own lives. The spotlight should shine on those who make the right choices for themselves, their families, and their communities. I have proposed the middle class bill of rights, which should properly be called the bill of rights and responsibilities because its provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their children and to educate themselves. It will, therefore, give needed tax relief and raise incomes in both the short run and the long run in a way that benefits all of us. There are four provisions. First, a tax deduction for all education and training after high school. If you think about it, we permit businesses to deduct their investment, we permit individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages, but today an education is even more important to the economic well-being of our whole country than even those things are. We should do everything we can to encourage it. And I hope you will support it. Second, we ought to cut taxes $500 for families with children under 13. Third, we ought to foster more savings and personal responsibility by permitting people to establish an individual retirement account and withdraw from it, tax-free, for the cost of education, health care, first-time homebuying, or the care of a parent. And fourth, we should pass a "GI bill" for America's workers. We propose to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money to the States but give the money directly to the American people, offer vouchers to them so that they, if they're laid off or if they're working for a very low wage, can get a voucher worth $2,600 a year for up to 2 years to go to their local community colleges or wherever else they want to get the skills they need to improve their lives. Let's empower people in this way, move it from the Government directly to the workers of America. Now, any one of us can call for a tax cut, but I won't accept one that explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk. We ought to pay for our tax cuts fully and honestly. Just 2 years ago, it was an open question whether we would find the strength to cut the deficit. Thanks to the courage of the people who were here then, many of whom didn't return, we did cut the deficit. We began to do what others said would not be done. We cut the deficit by over $600 billion, about $10,000 for every family in this country. It's coming down 3 years in a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was President, and I don't think anybody in America wants us to let it explode again. In the budget I will send you, the middle class bill of rights is fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in programs, cuts in special interest subsidies. And the spending cuts will more than double the tax cuts. My budget pays for the middle class bill of rights without any cuts in Medicare. And I will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts with Medicare cuts. That's not the right thing to do. I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief, and some of them I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all of you. My test for our proposals will be: Will it create jobs and raise incomes; will it strengthen our families and support our children; is it paid for; will it build the middle class and shrink the under class? If it does, I'll support it. But if it doesn't, I won't. The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the under class is also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage. It rewards work. Two and a half million Americans, two and a half million Americans, often women with children, are working out there today for $4.25 an hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year that minimum wage will be at a 40-year low. That's not my idea of how the new economy ought to work. Now, I've studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into the job market. But the most important thing is, you can't make a living on $4.25 an hour, especially if you have children, even with the working families tax cut we passed last year. In the past, the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue, and I think it should be again. So I want to challenge you to have honest hearings on this, to get together, to find a way to make the minimum wage a living wage. Members of Congress have been here less than a month, but by the end of the week, 28 days into the new year, every Member of Congress will have earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum wage worker makes all year long. Everybody else here, including the President, has something else that too many Americans do without, and that's health care. Now, last year we almost came to blows over health care, but we didn't do anything. And the cold, hard fact is that, since last year, since I was here, another 1.1 million Americans in working families have lost their health care. And the cold, hard fact is that many millions more, most of them farmers and small business people and self-employed people, have seen their premiums skyrocket, their copays and deductibles go up. There's a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics have health insurance but really what they've got is a piece of paper that says they won't lose their home if they get sick. Now, I still believe our country has got to move toward providing health security for every American family. But I know that last year, as the evidence indicates, we bit off more than we could chew. So I'm asking you that we work together. Let's do it step by step. Let's do whatever we have to do to get something done. Let's at least pass meaningful insurance reform so that no American risks losing coverage for facing skyrocketing prices, that nobody loses their coverage because they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change jobs or lose a job or a family member gets sick. I want to work together with all of you who have an interest in this, with the Democrats who worked on it last time, with the Republican leaders like Senator Dole, who has a longtime commitment to health care reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year. We ought to make sure that self-employed people in small businesses can buy insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing pools. We ought to help families provide long-term care for a sick parent or a disabled child. We can work to help workers who lose their jobs at least keep their health insurance coverage for a year while they look for work. And we can find a way—it may take some time, but we can find a way—to make sure that our children have health care. You know, I think everybody in this room, without regard to party, can be proud of the fact that our country was rated as having the world's most productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade. But we can't be proud of the fact that we're the only wealthy country in the world that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their children with health insurance today than we did 10 years ago, the last time we were the most productive economy in the world. So let's work together on this. It is too important for politics as usual. Much of what the American people are thinking about tonight is what we've already talked about. A lot of people think that the security concerns of America today are entirely internal to our borders. They relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and our children, our streets, our health, and protecting those borders. Now that the cold war has passed, it's tempting to believe that all the security issues, with the possible exception of trade, reside here at home. But it's not so. Our security still depends upon our continued world leadership for peace and freedom and democracy. We still can't be strong at home unless we're strong abroad. The financial crisis in Mexico is a case in point. I know it's not popular to say it tonight, but we have to act, not for the Mexican people but for the sake of the millions of Americans whose livelihoods are tied to Mexico's wellbeing. If we want to secure American jobs, preserve American exports, safeguard America's borders, then we must pass the stabilization program and help to put Mexico back on track. Now let me repeat: It's not a loan. It's not foreign aid. It's not a bailout. We will be given a guarantee like cosigning a note, with good collateral that will cover our risks. This legislation is the right thing for America. That's why the bipartisan leadership has supported it. And I hope you in Congress will pass it quickly. It is in our interest, and we can explain it to the American people because we're going to do it in the right way. You know, tonight, this is the first State of the Union Address ever delivered since the beginning of the cold war when not a single Russian missile is pointed at the children of America. And along with the Russians, we're on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We've come so far so fast in this post-cold-war world that it's easy to take the decline of the nuclear threat for granted. But it's still there, and we aren't finished yet. This year I'll ask the Senate to approve START II to eliminate weapons that carry 5,000 more warheads. The United States will lead the charge to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to eliminate chemical weapons. To stop and roll back North Korea's potentially deadly nuclear program, we'll continue to implement the agreement we have reached with that nation. It's smart. It's tough. It's a deal based on continuing inspection with safeguards for our allies and ourselves. This year I'll submit to Congress comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terrorists, whether they strike at home or abroad. As the cowards who bombed the World Trade Center found out, this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice. Just this week, another horrendous terrorist act in Israel killed 19 and injured scores more. On behalf of the American people and all of you, I send our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. I know that in the face of such evil, it is hard for the people in the Middle East to go forward. But the terrorists represent the past, not the future. We must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her neighbors in the Middle East. Accordingly, last night I signed an Executive order that will block the assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that threaten to disrupt the peace process. It prohibits financial transactions with these groups. And tonight I call on all our allies and peace-loving nations throughout the world to join us with renewed fervor in a global effort to combat terrorism. We cannot permit the future to be marred by terror and fear and paralysis. From the day I took the oath of office, I pledged that our Nation would maintain the best equipped, best trained, and best prepared military on Earth. We have, and they are. They have managed the dramatic downsizing of our forces after the cold war with remarkable skill and spirit. But to make sure our military is ready for action and to provide the pay and the quality of life the military and their families deserve, I'm asking the Congress to add $25 billion in defense spending over the next 6 years. I have visited many bases at home and around the world since I became President. Tonight I repeat that request with renewed conviction. We ask a very great deal of our Armed Forces. Now that they are smaller in number, we ask more of them. They go out more often to more different places and stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways. And we must give them and their families what the times demand and what they have earned. Just think about what our troops have done in the last year, showing America at its best, helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy back to the people of Haiti. We have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from South Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia, from Latin America to the Middle East. All these endeavors are good in those places, but they make our future more confident and more secure. Well, my fellow Americans, that's my agenda for America's future: expanding opportunity, not bureaucracy; enhancing security at home and abroad; empowering our people to make the most of their own lives. It's ambitious and achievable, but it's not enough. We even need more than new ideas for changing the world or equipping Americans to compete in the new economy, more than a Government that's smaller, smarter, and wiser, more than all of the changes we can make in Government and in the private sector from the outside in. Our fortunes and our posterity also depend upon our ability to answer some questions from within, from the values and voices that speak to our hearts as well as our heads; voices that tell us we have to do more to accept responsibility for ourselves and our families, for our communities, and yes, for our fellow citizens. We see our families and our communities all over this country coming apart, and we feel the common ground shifting from under us. The PTA, the town hall meeting, the ball park, it's hard for a lot of overworked parents to find the time and space for those things that strengthen the bonds of trust and cooperation. Too many of our children don't even have parents and grandparents who can give them those experiences that they need to build their own character and their sense of identity. We all know that while we here in this Chamber can make a difference on those things, that the real differences will be made by our fellow citizens, where they work and where they live and that it will be made almost without regard to party. When I used to go to the softball park in Little Rock to watch my daughter's league and people would come up to me, fathers and mothers, and talk to me, I can honestly say I had no idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans or Democrats. When I visited the relief centers after the floods in California, northern California, last week, a woman came up to me and did something that very few of you would do. She hugged me and said, "Mr. President, I'm a Republican, but I'm glad you're here." [ ] Now, why? We can't wait for disasters to act the way we used to act every day, because as we move into this next century, everybody matters. We don't have a person to waste. And a lot of people are losing a lot of chances to do better. That means that we need a New Covenant for everybody. For our corporate and business leaders, we're going to work here to keep bringing the deficit down, to expand markets, to support their success in every possible way. But they have an obligation when they're doing well to keep jobs in our communities and give their workers a fair share of the prosperity they generate. For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud your creativity and your worldwide success, and we support your freedom of expression. But you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time. We've got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem, the epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I have sent to Congress a plan to target schools all over this country with antipregnancy programs that work. But Government can only do so much. Tonight I call on parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference. We can do this, and we must. And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders. You know, I'm proud of the fact the United States has more houses of worship per capita than any country in the world. These people who lead our houses of worship can ignite their congregations to carry their faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we hold dear. Because so much of what must be done must come from the inside out and our religious leaders and their congregations can make all the difference, they have a role in the New Covenant as well. There must be more responsibility for all of our citizens. You know, it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the streets and in school. It takes a lot of people to build the Habitat for Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin. It takes a lot of people to provide the people power for all of the civic organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to most of us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach the children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe that they can be whatever they want to be. I know it's hard when you're working harder for less, when you're under great stress, to do these things. A lot of our people don't have the time or the emotional stress, they think, to do the work of citizenship. Most of us in politics haven't helped very much. For years, we've mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads either promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and frustrations. And more and more of our citizens now get most of their information in very negative and aggressive ways that are hardly conducive to honest and open conversations. But the truth is, we have got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different views. If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength of America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground. And in this day, everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We simply cannot want for a tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another. I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with the First Lady that represent what I'm trying to talk about—citizens. I have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in the last election. But they represent what we ought to be doing. Cindy Perry teaches second graders to read in AmeriCorps in rural Kentucky. She gains when she gives. She's a mother of four. She says that her service inspired her to get her high school equivalency last year. She was married when she was a teenager—stand up, Cindy. She was married when she was a teenager. She had four children. But she had time to serve other people, to get her high school equivalency, and she's going to use her AmeriCorps money to go back to college. Chief Stephen Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He's been a national leader—stand up, Steve. He's been a national leader in using more police in community policing, and he's worked with AmeriCorps to do it. And the crime rate in Kansas City has gone down as a result of what he did. Corporal Gregory Depestre went to Haiti as part of his adopted country's force to help secure democracy in his native land. And I might add, we must be the only country in the world that could have gone to Haiti and taken Haitian-Americans there who could speak the language and talk to the people. And he was one of them, and we're proud of him. The next two folks I've had the honor of meeting and getting to know a little bit, the Reverend John and the Reverend Diana Cherry of the A.M.E. Zion Church in Temple Hills, Maryland. I'd like to ask them to stand. I want to tell you about them. In the early eighties, they left Government service and formed a church in a small living room in a small house, in the early eighties. Today that church has 17,000 members. It is one of the three or four biggest churches in the entire United States. It grows by 200 a month. They do it together. And the special focus of their ministry is keeping families together. Two things they did make a big impression on me. I visited their church once, and I learned they were building a new sanctuary closer to the Washington, DC, line in a higher crime, higher drug rate area because they thought it was part of their ministry to change the lives of the people who needed them. The second thing I want to say is that once Reverend Cherry was at a meeting at the White House with some other religious leaders, and he left early to go back to this church to minister to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church from all over America to convince them to come back together, to save their marriages, and to raise their kids. This is the kind of work that citizens are doing in America. We need more of it, and it ought to be lifted up and supported. The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up? Fifty years ago, in the sands of Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas taught and learned the lessons of citizenship. On February 20th, 1945, he and three of his buddies encountered the enemy and two grenades at their feet. Jack Lucas threw himself on both of them. In that moment, he saved the lives of his companions, and miraculously in the next instant, a medic saved his life. He gained a foothold for freedom, and at the age of 17, just a year older than his grandson who is up there with him today— and his son, who is a West Point graduate and a veteran—at 17, Jack Lucas became the youngest Marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. All these years later, yesterday, here's what he said about that day: "It didn't matter where you were from or who you were, you relied on one another. You did it for your country." We all gain when we give, and we reap what we sow. That's at the heart of this New Covenant. Responsibility, opportunity, and citizenship, more than stale chapters in some remote civic book, they're still the virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our God-given potential and be like them and also to fulfill the eternal promise of this country, the enduring dream from that first and most sacred covenant. I believe every person in this country still believes that we are created equal and given by our Creator the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is a very, very great country. And our best days are still to come. Thank you, and God bless you all.
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 104th Congress, my fellow Americans: Again we are here in the sanctuary of democracy, and once again our democracy has spoken. So let me begin by congratulating all of you here in the 104th Congress and congratulating you, Mr. Speaker. If we agree on nothing else tonight, we must agree that the American people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 1994. And as I look out at you, I know how some of you must have felt in 1992. [ ] I must say that in both years we did not hear America singing, we heard America shouting. And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats alike, must say, "We hear you. We will work together to earn the jobs you have given us." For we are the keepers of a sacred trust, and we must be faithful to it in this new and very demanding era. Over 200 years ago, our Founders changed the entire course of human history by joining together to create a new country based on a single powerful idea: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." It has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea, the American idea, and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and different times: to Lincoln and to his Congress to preserve the Union and to end slavery; to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to restrain the abuses and excesses of the industrial revolution and to assert our leadership in the world; to Franklin Roosevelt to fight the failure and pain of the Great Depression and to win our country's great struggle against fascism; and to all our Presidents since to fight the cold war. Especially, I recall two who struggled to fight that cold war in partnership with Congresses where the majority was of a different party: to Harry Truman, who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at home and who built the architecture of the cold war; and to Ronald Reagan, whom we wish well tonight and who exhorted us to carry on until the twilight struggle against communism was won. In another time of change and challenge, I had the honor to be the first President to be elected in the post-cold-war era, an era marked by the global economy, the information revolution, unparalleled change and opportunity and insecurity for the American people. I came to this hallowed Chamber 2 years ago on a mission, to restore the American dream for all our people and to make sure that we move into the 21st century still the strongest force for freedom and democracy in the entire world. I was determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored. In this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, and I have learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was 2 years ago. [ ] Thank you. Record numbers of Americans are succeeding in the new global economy. We are at peace, and we are a force for peace and freedom throughout the world. We have almost 6 million new jobs since I became President, and we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25 years. Our businesses are more productive. And here we have worked to bring the deficit down, to expand trade, to put more police on our streets, to give our citizens more of the tools they need to get an education and to rebuild their own communities. But the rising tide is not lifting all boats. While our Nation is enjoying peace and prosperity, too many of our people are still working harder and harder, for less and less. While our businesses are restructuring and growing more productive and competitive, too many of our people still cannot be sure of having a job next year or even next month. And far more than our material riches are threatened, things far more precious to us, our children, our families, our values. Our civil life is suffering in America today. Citizens are working together less and shouting at each other more. The common bonds of community which have been the great strength of our country from its very beginning are badly frayed. What are we to do about it? More than 60 years ago, at the dawn of another new era, President Roosevelt told our Nation, "New conditions impose new requirements on Government and those who conduct Government." And from that simple proposition, he shaped the New Deal, which helped to restore our Nation to prosperity and define the relationship between our people and their Government for half a century. That approach worked in its time. But we today, we face a very different time and very different conditions. We are moving from an industrial age built on gears and sweat to an information age demanding skills and learning and flexibility. Our Government, once a champion of national purpose, is now seen by many as simply a captive of narrow interests, putting more burdens on our citizens rather than equipping them to get ahead. The values that used to hold us all together seem to be coming apart. So tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges of this time. As we enter a new era, we need a new set of understandings, not just with Government but, even more important, with one another as Americans. That is what I want to talk with you about tonight. I call it the New Covenant. But it is grounded in a very, very old idea, that all Americans have not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their God-given talents and determination can take them and to give something back to their communities and their country in return. Opportunity and responsibility: They go hand in hand. We cannot have one without the other. And our national community cannot hold together without both. Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip our people to meet the challenges of a new economy, how we can change the way our Government works to fit a different time, and, above all, how we can repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together behind our common purpose. We must have dramatic change in our economy, our Government, and ourselves. My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise to the occasion. Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride. As we embark on this new course, let us put our country first, remembering that regardless of party label, we are all Americans. And let the final test of everything we do be a simple one: Is it good for the American people? Let me begin by saying that we cannot ask Americans to be better citizens if we are not better servants. You made a good start by passing that law which applies to Congress all the laws you put on the private sector, and I was proud to sign it yesterday. But we have a lot more to do before people really trust the way things work around here. Three times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors of Washington as were here 20 years ago. The American people look at their Capital, and they see a city where the well-connected and the well-protected can work the system, but the interests of ordinary citizens are often left out. As the new Congress opened its doors, lobbyists were still doing business as usual; the gifts, the trips, all the things that people are concerned about have not stopped. Twice this month you missed opportunities to stop these practices. I know there were other considerations in those votes, but I want to use something that I have heard my Republican friends say from time to time, "There does not have to be a law for everything." So tonight I ask you to just stop taking the lobbyists' perks. Just stop. We do not have to wait for legislation to pass to send a strong signal to the American people that things are really changing. But I also hope you will send me the strongest possible lobby reform bill, and I will sign that, too. We should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work what they are spending, what they want. We should also curb the role of big money in elections by capping the cost of campaigns and limiting the influence of PAC's. And as I have said for 3 years, we should work to open the airwaves so that they can be an instrument of democracy, not a weapon of destruction, by giving free TV time to candidates for public office. When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the Halls of this sacred building and cheered. This year, let us give the folks at home something to cheer about. More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way the Government works. Let us make it smaller, less costly, and smarter; leaner, not meaner. [ ] I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine is alive and well. [ ] The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter. The old way of governing around here protected organized interests. We should look out for the interests of ordinary people. The old way divided us by interest, constituency, or class. The New Covenant way should unite us behind a common vision of what is best for our country. The old way dispensed services through large, top-down, inflexible bureaucracies. The New Covenant way should shift these resources and decisionmaking from bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and competition and individual responsibility into national policy. The old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward failure. The New Covenant way should have built-in incentives to reward success. The old way was centralized here in Washington. The New Covenant way must take hold in the communities all across America. And we should help them to do that. Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security here at home and abroad. We must not ask Government to do what we should do for ourselves. We should rely on Government as a partner to help us to do more for ourselves and for each other. I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there is somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and the other illusion that the Government is a source of every problem we have. Our job is to get rid of yesterday's Government so that our own people can meet today's and tomorrow's needs. And we ought to do it together. You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say they would cut Government and how bad it was, but not much happened. We actually did it. We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions from the Federal bureaucracy in the last 2 years alone. Based on decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President, by the time I come here again next year. Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have already saved taxpayers $63 billion. The age of the $500 hammer and the ashtray you can break on "David Letterman" is gone. Deadwood programs, like mohair subsidies, are gone. We have streamlined the Agriculture Department by reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We have slashed the small business loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We have thrown away the Government's 10,000page personnel manual. And the Government is working better in important ways: FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to helping people in disasters. You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there or the people in California who have dealt with floods and earthquakes and fires, and they will tell you that. Government workers, working hand in hand with private business, rebuilt southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under budget. And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of the 5,600 schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business. Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want to just mention one because it will be discussed here in the next few weeks. University administrators all over the country have told me that they are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our direct college loan program, which makes college loans cheaper and more affordable with better repayment terms for students, costs the Government less, and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the Government and for the universities. We should not cap that program. We should give every college in America the opportunity to be a part of it. Previous Government programs gathered dust. The reinventing Government report is getting results. And we are not through. There is going to be a second round of reinventing Government. We propose to cut $130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3, getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need, like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve Program. And we are working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making them more sensible. The programs and regulations that have outlived their usefulness should go. We have to cut yesterday's Government to help solve tomorrow's problems. And we need to get Government closer to the people it is meant to serve. We need to help move programs down to the point where States and communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better job. If they can do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of the way and let them do what they can do better. Taking power away from Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be for. It is time for Congress to stop passing on to the States the cost of decisions we make here in Washington. I know there are still serious differences over the details of the unfunded mandates legislation, but I want to work with you to make sure we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interests and give justified relief where we need to give it. For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending projects. Last year was no difference. There was a $1 million to study stress in plants and $12 million for a tick removal program that did not work. It is hard to remove ticks. Those of us who have had them know. [ ] But I will tell you something, if you will give me line-item veto, I will remove some of that unnecessary spending. But I think we should all remember, and almost all of us would agree, that Government still has important responsibilities. Our young people—we should think of this when we cut— our young people hold our future in their hands. We still owe a debt to our veterans. And our senior citizens have made us what we are. Now, my budget cuts a lot. But it protects education, veterans, Social Security, and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. You should, and I hope you will. And when we give more flexibility to the States, let us remember that there are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed in every State, North and South, East and West: Immunization against childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools, Head Start, medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants, all these things, all these things are in the national interest. I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations. But when we deregulate, let us remember what national action in the national interest has given us: safer food for our families, safer toys for our children, safer nursing homes for our parents, safer cars and highways, and safer workplaces, cleaner air, and cleaner water. Do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. But we can have common sense and still provide for safe drinking water. We can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps, and we ought to do it. Should we cut the deficit more? Well, of course we should. Of course we should. But we can bring it down in a way that still protects our economic recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be punished but instead should be helped. I know many of you in this Chamber support the balanced budget amendment. I certainly want to balance the budget. Our administration has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a very, very long time. If you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do, then you have to be straight with the American people. They have a right to know what you are going to cut, what taxes you are going to raise, and how it is going to affect them. We should be doing things in the open around here. For example, everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger Social Security. I would oppose that, and I think most Americans would. Nothing has done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility than our failed welfare system. This is one of the problems we have to face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It rewards welfare over work. It undermines family values. It let us millions of parents get away without paying their child support. It keeps a minority but a significant minority of the people on welfare trapped on it for a very long time. I have worked on this problem for a long time, nearly 15 years now. As a Governor, I had the honor of working with the Reagan administration to write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988. In the last 2 years, we made a good start at continuing the work of welfare reform. Our administration gave two dozen States the right to slash through Federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and dependency. Last year I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever presented by an administration. We have to make welfare what it was meant to be, a second chance, not a way of life. We have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly as possible, to provide child care and teach them skills, if that is what they need, for up to 2 years. And after that, there ought to be a simple, hard rule: Anyone who can work must go to work. If a parent is not paying child support, they should be forced to pay. We should suspend drivers' license, track them across State lines, make them work off what they owe. That is what we should do. Governments do not raise children, people do. And the parents must take responsibility for the children they bring into this world. I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence to independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because they happen to be poor. We should, we should require work and mutual responsibility. But we should not cut people off just because they are poor, they are young, or even because they are unmarried. We should promote responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school. But we should not put them and their children out on the street. And I know all the arguments, pro and con, and I have read and thought about this for a long time. I still do not think we can in good conscience punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents. My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American people care about this without regard to party or race or region. So let this be the year we end welfare as we know it. But also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this issue to divide America. No one is more eager to end welfare— [ ]—I may be the only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare office, who is actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare. And I am telling you, the people who are trapped on it know it does not work; they also want to get off. So we can promote, together, education and work and good parenting. I have no problem with punishing bad behavior or the refusal to be a worker or a student or a responsible parent. I just do not want to punish poverty and past mistakes. All of us have made our mistakes, and none of us can change our yesterdays. But every one of us can change our tomorrows. And America's best example of that may be Lynn Woolsey, who worked her way off welfare to become a Congresswoman from the State of California. I know the Members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as are all the citizens of our country. And I remind you that last year we passed a very tough crime bill: longer sentences, "three strikes and you are out," almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons, more prevention, 100,000 more police. And we paid for it all by reducing the size of the Federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local communities to lower the crime rate. There may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime, to be smarter with crime, to help to lower that rate first. Well, if there are, let us talk about them, and let us do them. But let us not go back on the things that we did last year that we know work, that we know work because the local law enforcement officers tell us that we did the right thing, because local community leaders who have worked for years and years to lower the crime rate tell us that they work. Let us look at the experience of our cities and our rural areas where the crime rate has gone down and ask the people who did it how they did it. And if what we did last year supports the decline in the crime rate— and I am convinced that it does—let us not go back on it. Let us stick with it, implement it. We have got 4 more hard years of work to do to do that. I do not want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that divided this body greatly last year. The last Congress also passed the Brady bill and, in the crime bill, the ban on 19 assault weapons. I do not think it is a secret to anybody in this room that several Members of the last Congress who voted for that are not here tonight because they voted for it. And I know, therefore, that some of you who are here because they voted for it are under enormous pressure to repeal it. I just have to tell you how I feel about it. The Members of Congress who voted for that bill and I would never do anything to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in other appropriate sporting activities. I have done it since I was a boy, and I am going to keep right on doing it until I cannot do it anymore. But a lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so that police officers and kids would not have to lay down their lives under a hail of assault weapon attack, and I will not let that be repealed. I will not let it be repealed. I would like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal with. I want us to cut more spending, but I hope we will not cut Government programs that help to prepare us for the new economy, promote responsibility, and are organized from the grassroots up, not by Federal bureaucracy. The very best example of this is the national service corps, AmeriCorps. It passed with strong bipartisan support. And now there are 20,000 Americans, more than ever served in one year in the Peace Corps, working all over this country, helping people person-to-person in local grassroots volunteer groups, solving problems, and in the process earning some money for their education. This is citizenship at its best. It is good for the AmeriCorps members, but it is good for the rest of us, too. It is the essence of the New Covenant, and we should not stop it. All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That is why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we must do more to stop it. The most important job of our Government in this new era is to empower the American people to succeed in the global economy. America has always been a land of opportunity, a land where, if you work hard, you can get ahead. We have become a great middle class country. Middle class values sustain us. We must expand that middle class and shrink the under class, even as we do everything we can to support the millions of Americans who are already successful in the new economy. America is once again the world's strongest economic power: almost 6 million new jobs in the last 2 years, exports booming, inflation down. High-wage jobs are coming back. A record number of American entrepreneurs are living the American dream. If we want it to stay that way, those who work and lift our Nation must have more of its benefits. Today, too many of those people are being left out. They are working harder for less. They have less security, less income, less certainty that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids or retirement for themselves. We cannot let this continue. If we do not act, our economy will probably keep doing what it is been doing since about 1978, when the income growth began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale and the people in the vast middle got very little growth, and people who worked like crazy but were on the bottom then fell even further and further behind in the years afterward, no matter how hard they worked. We have got to have a Government that can be a real partner in making this new economy work for all of our people, a Government that helps each and every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity to renew our skills. That is why we worked so hard to increase educational opportunities in the last 2 years, from Head Start to public schools, to apprenticeships for young people who do not go to college, to making college loans more available and more affordable. That is the first thing we have to do. We have got to do something to empower people to improve their skills. The second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes immediately by lowering their taxes. We took the first step in 1993 with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes under $27,000, a tax cut that this year will average about $1,000 a family. And we also gave tax reductions to most small and new businesses. Before we could do more than that, we first had to bring down the deficit we inherited, and we had to get economic growth up. Now we have done both. And now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way. But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation: to empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of their own lives. The spotlight should shine on those who make the right choices for themselves, their families, and their communities. I have proposed the middle class bill of rights, which should properly be called the bill of rights and responsibilities because its provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their children and to educate themselves. It will, therefore, give needed tax relief and raise incomes in both the short run and the long run in a way that benefits all of us. There are four provisions. First, a tax deduction for all education and training after high school. If you think about it, we permit businesses to deduct their investment, we permit individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages, but today an education is even more important to the economic well-being of our whole country than even those things are. We should do everything we can to encourage it. And I hope you will support it. Second, we ought to cut taxes $500 for families with children under 13. Third, we ought to foster more savings and personal responsibility by permitting people to establish an individual retirement account and withdraw from it, tax-free, for the cost of education, health care, first-time homebuying, or the care of a parent. And fourth, we should pass a "GI bill" for America's workers. We propose to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money to the States but give the money directly to the American people, offer vouchers to them so that they, if they are laid off or if they are working for a very low wage, can get a voucher worth $2,600 a year for up to 2 years to go to their local community colleges or wherever else they want to get the skills they need to improve their lives. Let us empower people in this way, move it from the Government directly to the workers of America. Now, any one of us can call for a tax cut, but I will not accept one that explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk. We ought to pay for our tax cuts fully and honestly. Just 2 years ago, it was an open question whether we would find the strength to cut the deficit. Thanks to the courage of the people who were here then, many of whom did not return, we did cut the deficit. We began to do what others said would not be done. We cut the deficit by over $600 billion, about $10,000 for every family in this country. It is coming down 3 years in a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was President, and I do not think anybody in America wants us to let it explode again. In the budget I will send you, the middle class bill of rights is fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in programs, cuts in special interest subsidies. And the spending cuts will more than double the tax cuts. My budget pays for the middle class bill of rights without any cuts in Medicare. And I will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts with Medicare cuts. That is not the right thing to do. I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief, and some of them I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all of you. My test for our proposals will be: Will it create jobs and raise incomes; will it strengthen our families and support our children; is it paid for; will it build the middle class and shrink the under class? If it does, I will support it. But if it does not, I will not. The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the under class is also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage. It rewards work. Two and a half million Americans, two and a half million Americans, often women with children, are working out there today for $4.25 an hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year that minimum wage will be at a 40-year low. That is not my idea of how the new economy ought to work. Now, I have studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into the job market. But the most important thing is, you cannot make a living on $4.25 an hour, especially if you have children, even with the working families tax cut we passed last year. In the past, the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue, and I think it should be again. So I want to challenge you to have honest hearings on this, to get together, to find a way to make the minimum wage a living wage. Members of Congress have been here less than a month, but by the end of the week, 28 days into the new year, every Member of Congress will have earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum wage worker makes all year long. Everybody else here, including the President, has something else that too many Americans do without, and that is health care. Now, last year we almost came to blows over health care, but we did not do anything. And the cold, hard fact is that, since last year, since I was here, another 1.1 million Americans in working families have lost their health care. And the cold, hard fact is that many millions more, most of them farmers and small business people and self-employed people, have seen their premiums skyrocket, their copays and deductibles go up. There is a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics have health insurance but really what they have got is a piece of paper that says they will not lose their home if they get sick. Now, I still believe our country has got to move toward providing health security for every American family. But I know that last year, as the evidence indicates, we bit off more than we could chew. So I am asking you that we work together. Let us do it step by step. Let us do whatever we have to do to get something done. Let us at least pass meaningful insurance reform so that no American risks losing coverage for facing skyrocketing prices, that nobody loses their coverage because they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change jobs or lose a job or a family member gets sick. I want to work together with all of you who have an interest in this, with the Democrats who worked on it last time, with the Republican leaders like Senator Dole, who has a longtime commitment to health care reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year. We ought to make sure that self-employed people in small businesses can buy insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing pools. We ought to help families provide long-term care for a sick parent or a disabled child. We can work to help workers who lose their jobs at least keep their health insurance coverage for a year while they look for work. And we can find a way—it may take some time, but we can find a way—to make sure that our children have health care. You know, I think everybody in this room, without regard to party, can be proud of the fact that our country was rated as having the world's most productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade. But we cannot be proud of the fact that we are the only wealthy country in the world that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their children with health insurance today than we did 10 years ago, the last time we were the most productive economy in the world. So let us work together on this. It is too important for politics as usual. Much of what the American people are thinking about tonight is what we have already talked about. A lot of people think that the security concerns of America today are entirely internal to our borders. They relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and our children, our streets, our health, and protecting those borders. Now that the cold war has passed, it is tempting to believe that all the security issues, with the possible exception of trade, reside here at home. But it is not so. Our security still depends upon our continued world leadership for peace and freedom and democracy. We still cannot be strong at home unless we are strong abroad. The financial crisis in Mexico is a case in point. I know it is not popular to say it tonight, but we have to act, not for the Mexican people but for the sake of the millions of Americans whose livelihoods are tied to Mexico's wellbeing. If we want to secure American jobs, preserve American exports, safeguard America's borders, then we must pass the stabilization program and help to put Mexico back on track. Now let me repeat: It is not a loan. It is not foreign aid. It is not a bailout. We will be given a guarantee like cosigning a note, with good collateral that will cover our risks. This legislation is the right thing for America. That is why the bipartisan leadership has supported it. And I hope you in Congress will pass it quickly. It is in our interest, and we can explain it to the American people because we are going to do it in the right way. You know, tonight, this is the first State of the Union Address ever delivered since the beginning of the cold war when not a single Russian missile is pointed at the children of America. And along with the Russians, we are on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We have come so far so fast in this post-cold-war world that it is easy to take the decline of the nuclear threat for granted. But it is still there, and we are not finished yet. This year I will ask the Senate to approve START II to eliminate weapons that carry 5,000 more warheads. The United States will lead the charge to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to eliminate chemical weapons. To stop and roll back North Korea's potentially deadly nuclear program, we will continue to implement the agreement we have reached with that nation. It is smart. It is tough. It is a deal based on continuing inspection with safeguards for our allies and ourselves. This year I will submit to Congress comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terrorists, whether they strike at home or abroad. As the cowards who bombed the World Trade Center found out, this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice. Just this week, another horrendous terrorist act in Israel killed 19 and injured scores more. On behalf of the American people and all of you, I send our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. I know that in the face of such evil, it is hard for the people in the Middle East to go forward. But the terrorists represent the past, not the future. We must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel and all her neighbors in the Middle East. Accordingly, last night I signed an Executive order that will block the assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that threaten to disrupt the peace process. It prohibits financial transactions with these groups. And tonight I call on all our allies and peace-loving nations throughout the world to join us with renewed fervor in a global effort to combat terrorism. We cannot permit the future to be marred by terror and fear and paralysis. From the day I took the oath of office, I pledged that our Nation would maintain the best equipped, best trained, and best prepared military on Earth. We have, and they are. They have managed the dramatic downsizing of our forces after the cold war with remarkable skill and spirit. But to make sure our military is ready for action and to provide the pay and the quality of life the military and their families deserve, I am asking the Congress to add $25 billion in defense spending over the next 6 years. I have visited many bases at home and around the world since I became President. Tonight I repeat that request with renewed conviction. We ask a very great deal of our Armed Forces. Now that they are smaller in number, we ask more of them. They go out more often to more different places and stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways. And we must give them and their families what the times demand and what they have earned. Just think about what our troops have done in the last year, showing America at its best, helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy back to the people of Haiti. We have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from South Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia, from Latin America to the Middle East. All these endeavors are good in those places, but they make our future more confident and more secure. Well, my fellow Americans, that is my agenda for America's future: expanding opportunity, not bureaucracy; enhancing security at home and abroad; empowering our people to make the most of their own lives. It is ambitious and achievable, but it is not enough. We even need more than new ideas for changing the world or equipping Americans to compete in the new economy, more than a Government that is smaller, smarter, and wiser, more than all of the changes we can make in Government and in the private sector from the outside in. Our fortunes and our posterity also depend upon our ability to answer some questions from within, from the values and voices that speak to our hearts as well as our heads; voices that tell us we have to do more to accept responsibility for ourselves and our families, for our communities, and yes, for our fellow citizens. We see our families and our communities all over this country coming apart, and we feel the common ground shifting from under us. The PTA, the town hall meeting, the ball park, it is hard for a lot of overworked parents to find the time and space for those things that strengthen the bonds of trust and cooperation. Too many of our children do not even have parents and grandparents who can give them those experiences that they need to build their own character and their sense of identity. We all know that while we here in this Chamber can make a difference on those things, that the real differences will be made by our fellow citizens, where they work and where they live and that it will be made almost without regard to party. When I used to go to the softball park in Little Rock to watch my daughter's league and people would come up to me, fathers and mothers, and talk to me, I can honestly say I had no idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans or Democrats. When I visited the relief centers after the floods in California, northern California, last week, a woman came up to me and did something that very few of you would do. She hugged me and said, "Mr. President, I am a Republican, but I am glad you are here." [ ] Now, why? We cannot wait for disasters to act the way we used to act every day, because as we move into this next century, everybody matters. We do not have a person to waste. And a lot of people are losing a lot of chances to do better. That means that we need a New Covenant for everybody. For our corporate and business leaders, we are going to work here to keep bringing the deficit down, to expand markets, to support their success in every possible way. But they have an obligation when they are doing well to keep jobs in our communities and give their workers a fair share of the prosperity they generate. For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud your creativity and your worldwide success, and we support your freedom of expression. But you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time. We have got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem, the epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I have sent to Congress a plan to target schools all over this country with antipregnancy programs that work. But Government can only do so much. Tonight I call on parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference. We can do this, and we must. And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders. You know, I am proud of the fact the United States has more houses of worship per capita than any country in the world. These people who lead our houses of worship can ignite their congregations to carry their faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we hold dear. Because so much of what must be done must come from the inside out and our religious leaders and their congregations can make all the difference, they have a role in the New Covenant as well. There must be more responsibility for all of our citizens. You know, it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the streets and in school. It takes a lot of people to build the Habitat for Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin. It takes a lot of people to provide the people power for all of the civic organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to most of us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach the children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe that they can be whatever they want to be. I know it is hard when you are working harder for less, when you are under great stress, to do these things. A lot of our people do not have the time or the emotional stress, they think, to do the work of citizenship. Most of us in politics have not helped very much. For years, we have mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads either promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and frustrations. And more and more of our citizens now get most of their information in very negative and aggressive ways that are hardly conducive to honest and open conversations. But the truth is, we have got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different views. If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength of America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground. And in this day, everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We simply cannot want for a tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another. I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with the First Lady that represent what I am trying to talk about—citizens. I have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in the last election. But they represent what we ought to be doing. Cindy Perry teaches second graders to read in AmeriCorps in rural Kentucky. She gains when she gives. She is a mother of four. She says that her service inspired her to get her high school equivalency last year. She was married when she was a teenager—stand up, Cindy. She was married when she was a teenager. She had four children. But she had time to serve other people, to get her high school equivalency, and she is going to use her AmeriCorps money to go back to college. Chief Stephen Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He is been a national leader—stand up, Steve. He is been a national leader in using more police in community policing, and he is worked with AmeriCorps to do it. And the crime rate in Kansas City has gone down as a result of what he did. Corporal Gregory Depestre went to Haiti as part of his adopted country's force to help secure democracy in his native land. And I might add, we must be the only country in the world that could have gone to Haiti and taken Haitian-Americans there who could speak the language and talk to the people. And he was one of them, and we are proud of him. The next two folks I have had the honor of meeting and getting to know a little bit, the Reverend John and the Reverend Diana Cherry of the A.M.E. Zion Church in Temple Hills, Maryland. I would like to ask them to stand. I want to tell you about them. In the early eighties, they left Government service and formed a church in a small living room in a small house, in the early eighties. Today that church has 17,000 members. It is one of the three or four biggest churches in the entire United States. It grows by 200 a month. They do it together. And the special focus of their ministry is keeping families together. Two things they did make a big impression on me. I visited their church once, and I learned they were building a new sanctuary closer to the Washington, DC, line in a higher crime, higher drug rate area because they thought it was part of their ministry to change the lives of the people who needed them. The second thing I want to say is that once Reverend Cherry was at a meeting at the White House with some other religious leaders, and he left early to go back to this church to minister to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church from all over America to convince them to come back together, to save their marriages, and to raise their kids. This is the kind of work that citizens are doing in America. We need more of it, and it ought to be lifted up and supported. The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up? Fifty years ago, in the sands of Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas taught and learned the lessons of citizenship. On February 20th, 1945, he and three of his buddies encountered the enemy and two grenades at their feet. Jack Lucas threw himself on both of them. In that moment, he saved the lives of his companions, and miraculously in the next instant, a medic saved his life. He gained a foothold for freedom, and at the age of 17, just a year older than his grandson who is up there with him today— and his son, who is a West Point graduate and a veteran—at 17, Jack Lucas became the youngest Marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. All these years later, yesterday, here is what he said about that day: "It did not matter where you were from or who you were, you relied on one another. You did it for your country." We all gain when we give, and we reap what we sow. That is at the heart of this New Covenant. Responsibility, opportunity, and citizenship, more than stale chapters in some remote civic book, they are still the virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our God-given potential and be like them and also to fulfill the eternal promise of this country, the enduring dream from that first and most sacred covenant. I believe every person in this country still believes that we are created equal and given by our Creator the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is a very, very great country. And our best days are still to come. Thank you, and God bless you all.
president speaker members of the 104th congress my fellow americans again we are here in the sanctuary of democracy and once again our democracy has spoken so let me begin by congratulating all of you here in the 104th congress and congratulating you speaker if we agree on nothing else tonight we must agree that the american people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 1994 and as i look out at you i know how some of you must have felt in 1992 i must say that in both years we did not hear america singing we heard america shouting and now all of us republicans and democrats alike must say we hear you we will work together to earn the jobs you have given us for we are the keepers of a sacred trust and we must be faithful to it in this new and very demanding era over 200 years ago our founders changed the entire course of human history by joining together to create a new country based on a single powerful idea we hold these truths to be that all men are created equal endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights and among these are life liberty and the pursuit of happiness it has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea the american idea and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and different times to lincoln and to his congress to preserve the union and to end slavery to theodore roosevelt and woodrow wilson to restrain the abuses and excesses of the industrial revolution and to assert our leadership in the world to franklin roosevelt to fight the failure and pain of the great depression and to win our country great struggle against fascism and to all our presidents since to fight the cold war especially i recall two who struggled to fight that cold war in partnership with congresses where the majority was of a different party to harry truman who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at home and who built the architecture of the cold war and to ronald reagan whom we wish well tonight and who exhorted us to carry on until the twilight struggle against communism was won in another time of change and challenge i had the honor to be the first president to be elected in the era an era marked by the global economy the information revolution unparalleled change and opportunity and insecurity for the american people i came to this hallowed chamber 2 years ago on a mission to restore the american dream for all our people and to make sure that we move into the 21st century still the strongest force for freedom and democracy in the entire world i was determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored in this effort i am frank to say that i have made my mistakes and i have learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor but i am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was 2 years ago thank you record numbers of americans are succeeding in the new global economy we are at peace and we are a force for peace and freedom throughout the world we have almost 6 million new jobs since i became president and we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25 years our businesses are more productive and here we have worked to bring the deficit down to expand trade to put more police on our streets to give our citizens more of the tools they need to get an education and to rebuild their own communities but the rising tide is not lifting all boats while our nation is enjoying peace and prosperity too many of our people are still working harder and harder for less and less while our businesses are restructuring and growing more productive and competitive too many of our people still can not be sure of having a job next year or even next month and far more than our material riches are threatened things far more precious to us our children our families our values our civil life is suffering in america today citizens are working together less and shouting at each other more the common bonds of community which have been the great strength of our country from its very beginning are badly frayed what are we to do about it more than 60 years ago at the dawn of another new era president roosevelt told our nation new conditions impose new requirements on government and those who conduct government and from that simple proposition he shaped the new deal which helped to restore our nation to prosperity and define the relationship between our people and their government for half a century that approach worked in its time but we today we face a very different time and very different conditions we are moving from an industrial age built on gears and sweat to an information age demanding skills and learning and flexibility our government once a champion of national purpose is now seen by many as simply a captive of narrow interests putting more burdens on our citizens rather than equipping them to get ahead the values that used to hold us all together seem to be coming apart so tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges of this time as we enter a new era we need a new set of understandings not just with government but even more important with one another as americans that is what i want to talk with you about tonight i call it the new covenant but it is grounded in a very very old idea that all americans have not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as their talents and determination can take them and to give something back to their communities and their country in return opportunity and responsibility they go hand in hand we can not have one without the other and our national community can not hold together without both our new covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip our people to meet the challenges of a new economy how we can change the way our government works to fit a different time and above all how we can repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together behind our common purpose we must have dramatic change in our economy our government and ourselves my fellow americans without regard to party let us rise to the occasion let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride as we embark on this new course let us put our country first remembering that regardless of party label we are all americans and let the final test of everything we do be a simple one is it good for the american people let me begin by saying that we can not ask americans to be better citizens if we are not better servants you made a good start by passing that law which applies to congress all the laws you put on the private sector and i was proud to sign it yesterday but we have a lot more to do before people really trust the way things work around here three times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors of washington as were here 20 years ago the american people look at their capital and they see a city where the and the can work the system but the interests of ordinary citizens are often left out as the new congress opened its doors lobbyists were still doing business as usual the gifts the trips all the things that people are concerned about have not stopped twice this month you missed opportunities to stop these practices i know there were other considerations in those votes but i want to use something that i have heard my republican friends say from time to time there does not have to be a law for everything so tonight i ask you to just stop taking the lobbyists perks just stop we do not have to wait for legislation to pass to send a strong signal to the american people that things are really changing but i also hope you will send me the strongest possible lobby reform bill and i will sign that too we should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work what they are spending what they want we should also curb the role of big money in elections by capping the cost of campaigns and limiting the influence of pac and as i have said for 3 years we should work to open the airwaves so that they can be an instrument of democracy not a weapon of destruction by giving free tv time to candidates for public office when the last congress killed political reform last year it was reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the halls of this sacred building and cheered this year let us give the folks at home something to cheer about more important i think we all agree that we have to change the way the government works let us make it smaller less costly and smarter leaner not meaner i just told the speaker the equal time doctrine is alive and well the new covenant approach to governing is as different from the old bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter the old way of governing around here protected organized interests we should look out for the interests of ordinary people the old way divided us by interest constituency or class the new covenant way should unite us behind a common vision of what is best for our country the old way dispensed services through large inflexible bureaucracies the new covenant way should shift these resources and decisionmaking from bureaucrats to citizens injecting choice and competition and individual responsibility into national policy the old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward failure the new covenant way should have incentives to reward success the old way was centralized here in washington the new covenant way must take hold in the communities all across america and we should help them to do that our job here is to expand opportunity not bureaucracy to empower people to make the most of their own lives and to enhance our security here at home and abroad we must not ask government to do what we should do for ourselves we should rely on government as a partner to help us to do more for ourselves and for each other i hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting matters we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion that there is somehow a program for every problem on the one hand and the other illusion that the government is a source of every problem we have our job is to get rid of yesterday government so that our own people can meet today and tomorrow needs and we ought to do it together you know for years before i became president i heard others say they would cut government and how bad it was but not much happened we actually did it we cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in spending more than 300 domestic programs more than positions from the federal bureaucracy in the last 2 years alone based on decisions already made we will have cut a total of more than a quarter of a million positions from the federal government making it the smallest it has been since john kennedy was president by the time i come here again next year under the leadership of vice president gore our initiatives have already saved taxpayers 63 billion the age of the 500 hammer and the ashtray you can break on david letterman is gone deadwood programs like mohair subsidies are gone we have streamlined the agriculture department by reducing it by more than offices we have slashed the small business loan form from an inch thick to a single page we have thrown away the government personnel manual and the government is working better in important ways fema the federal emergency management agency has gone from being a disaster to helping people in disasters you can ask the farmers in the middle west who fought the flood there or the people in california who have dealt with floods and earthquakes and fires and they will tell you that government workers working hand in hand with private business rebuilt southern california fractured freeways in record time and under budget and because the federal government moved fast all but one of the schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business now there are a lot of other things that i could talk about i want to just mention one because it will be discussed here in the next few weeks university administrators all over the country have told me that they are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our direct college loan program which makes college loans cheaper and more affordable with better repayment terms for students costs the government less and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the government and for the universities we should not cap that program we should give every college in america the opportunity to be a part of it previous government programs gathered dust the reinventing government report is getting results and we are not through there is going to be a second round of reinventing government we propose to cut 130 billion in spending by shrinking departments extending our freeze on domestic spending cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3 getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need like the interstate commerce commission and the helium reserve program and we are working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making them more sensible the programs and regulations that have outlived their usefulness should go we have to cut yesterday government to help solve tomorrow problems and we need to get government closer to the people it is meant to serve we need to help move programs down to the point where states and communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better job if they can do it we ought to let them do it we should get out of the way and let them do what they can do better taking power away from federal bureaucracies and giving it back to communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be for it is time for congress to stop passing on to the states the cost of decisions we make here in washington i know there are still serious differences over the details of the unfunded mandates legislation but i want to work with you to make sure we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interests and give justified relief where we need to give it for years congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending projects last year was no difference there was a 1 million to study stress in plants and 12 million for a tick removal program that did not work it is hard to remove ticks those of us who have had them know but i will tell you something if you will give me veto i will remove some of that unnecessary spending but i think we should all remember and almost all of us would agree that government still has important responsibilities our young should think of this when we our young people hold our future in their hands we still owe a debt to our veterans and our senior citizens have made us what we are now my budget cuts a lot but it protects education veterans social security and medicare and i hope you will do the same thing you should and i hope you will and when we give more flexibility to the states let us remember that there are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed in every state north and south east and west immunization against childhood disease school lunches in all our schools head start medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants all these things all these things are in the national interest i applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations but when we deregulate let us remember what national action in the national interest has given us safer food for our families safer toys for our children safer nursing homes for our parents safer cars and highways and safer workplaces cleaner air and cleaner water do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations you bet we do but we can have common sense and still provide for safe drinking water we can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps and we ought to do it should we cut the deficit more well of course we should of course we should but we can bring it down in a way that still protects our economic recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be punished but instead should be helped i know many of you in this chamber support the balanced budget amendment i certainly want to balance the budget our administration has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a very very long time if you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do then you have to be straight with the american people they have a right to know what you are going to cut what taxes you are going to raise and how it is going to affect them we should be doing things in the open around here for example everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger social security i would oppose that and i think most americans would nothing has done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility than our failed welfare system this is one of the problems we have to face here in washington in our new covenant it rewards welfare over work it undermines family values it let us millions of parents get away without paying their child support it keeps a minority but a significant minority of the people on welfare trapped on it for a very long time i have worked on this problem for a long time nearly 15 years now as a governor i had the honor of working with the reagan administration to write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988 in the last 2 years we made a good start at continuing the work of welfare reform our administration gave two dozen states the right to slash through federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and dependency last year i introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever presented by an administration we have to make welfare what it was meant to be a second chance not a way of life we have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly as possible to provide child care and teach them skills if that is what they need for up to 2 years and after that there ought to be a simple hard rule anyone who can work must go to work if a parent is not paying child support they should be forced to pay we should suspend drivers license track them across state lines make them work off what they owe that is what we should do governments do not raise children people do and the parents must take responsibility for the children they bring into this world i want to work with you with all of you to pass welfare reform but our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence to independence from welfare to work from mere childbearing to responsible parenting our goal should not be to punish them because they happen to be poor we should we should require work and mutual responsibility but we should not cut people off just because they are poor they are young or even because they are unmarried we should promote responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other supervised settings by requiring them to finish school but we should not put them and their children out on the street and i know all the arguments pro and con and i have read and thought about this for a long time i still do not think we can in good conscience punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents my fellow americans every single survey shows that all the american people care about this without regard to party or race or region so let this be the year we end welfare as we know it but also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this issue to divide america no one is more eager to end may be the only president who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare office who is actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare and i am telling you the people who are trapped on it know it does not work they also want to get off so we can promote together education and work and good parenting i have no problem with punishing bad behavior or the refusal to be a worker or a student or a responsible parent i just do not want to punish poverty and past mistakes all of us have made our mistakes and none of us can change our yesterdays but every one of us can change our tomorrows and america best example of that may be lynn woolsey who worked her way off welfare to become a congresswoman from the state of california i know the members of this congress are concerned about crime as are all the citizens of our country and i remind you that last year we passed a very tough crime bill longer sentences three strikes and you are out almost 60 new capital punishment offenses more prisons more prevention more police and we paid for it all by reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local communities to lower the crime rate there may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime to be smarter with crime to help to lower that rate first well if there are let us talk about them and let us do them but let us not go back on the things that we did last year that we know work that we know work because the local law enforcement officers tell us that we did the right thing because local community leaders who have worked for years and years to lower the crime rate tell us that they work let us look at the experience of our cities and our rural areas where the crime rate has gone down and ask the people who did it how they did it and if what we did last year supports the decline in the crime and i am convinced that it us not go back on it let us stick with it implement it we have got 4 more hard years of work to do to do that i do not want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the country tonight but i have to mention one issue that divided this body greatly last year the last congress also passed the brady bill and in the crime bill the ban on 19 assault weapons i do not think it is a secret to anybody in this room that several members of the last congress who voted for that are not here tonight because they voted for it and i know therefore that some of you who are here because they voted for it are under enormous pressure to repeal it i just have to tell you how i feel about it the members of congress who voted for that bill and i would never do anything to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in other appropriate sporting activities i have done it since i was a boy and i am going to keep right on doing it until i can not do it anymore but a lot of people laid down their seats in congress so that police officers and kids would not have to lay down their lives under a hail of assault weapon attack and i will not let that be repealed i will not let it be repealed i would like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal with i want us to cut more spending but i hope we will not cut government programs that help to prepare us for the new economy promote responsibility and are organized from the grassroots up not by federal bureaucracy the very best example of this is the national service corps americorps it passed with strong bipartisan support and now there are americans more than ever served in one year in the peace corps working all over this country helping people in local grassroots volunteer groups solving problems and in the process earning some money for their education this is citizenship at its best it is good for the americorps members but it is good for the rest of us too it is the essence of the new covenant and we should not stop it all americans not only in the states most heavily affected but in every place in this country are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country the jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants the public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers that is why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before by cracking down on illegal hiring by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens in the budget i will present to you we will try to do more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes to better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the commission headed by former congresswoman barbara jordan we are a nation of immigrants but we are also a nation of laws it is wrong and ultimately for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years and we must do more to stop it the most important job of our government in this new era is to empower the american people to succeed in the global economy america has always been a land of opportunity a land where if you work hard you can get ahead we have become a great middle class country middle class values sustain us we must expand that middle class and shrink the under class even as we do everything we can to support the millions of americans who are already successful in the new economy america is once again the world strongest economic power almost 6 million new jobs in the last 2 years exports booming inflation down jobs are coming back a record number of american entrepreneurs are living the american dream if we want it to stay that way those who work and lift our nation must have more of its benefits today too many of those people are being left out they are working harder for less they have less security less income less certainty that they can even afford a vacation much less college for their kids or retirement for themselves we can not let this continue if we do not act our economy will probably keep doing what it is been doing since about 1978 when the income growth began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale and the people in the vast middle got very little growth and people who worked like crazy but were on the bottom then fell even further and further behind in the years afterward no matter how hard they worked we have got to have a government that can be a real partner in making this new economy work for all of our people a government that helps each and every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity to renew our skills that is why we worked so hard to increase educational opportunities in the last 2 years from head start to public schools to apprenticeships for young people who do not go to college to making college loans more available and more affordable that is the first thing we have to do we have got to do something to empower people to improve their skills the second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes immediately by lowering their taxes we took the first step in 1993 with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes under a tax cut that this year will average about a family and we also gave tax reductions to most small and new businesses before we could do more than that we first had to bring down the deficit we inherited and we had to get economic growth up now we have done both and now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way but tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation to empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of their own lives the spotlight should shine on those who make the right choices for themselves their families and their communities i have proposed the middle class bill of rights which should properly be called the bill of rights and responsibilities because its provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their children and to educate themselves it will therefore give needed tax relief and raise incomes in both the short run and the long run in a way that benefits all of us there are four provisions first a tax deduction for all education and training after high school if you think about it we permit businesses to deduct their investment we permit individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages but today an education is even more important to the economic of our whole country than even those things are we should do everything we can to encourage it and i hope you will support it second we ought to cut taxes 500 for families with children under 13 third we ought to foster more savings and personal responsibility by permitting people to establish an individual retirement account and withdraw from it for the cost of education health care homebuying or the care of a parent and fourth we should pass a gi bill for america workers we propose to collapse nearly 70 federal programs and not give the money to the states but give the money directly to the american people offer vouchers to them so that they if they are laid off or if they are working for a very low wage can get a voucher worth a year for up to 2 years to go to their local community colleges or wherever else they want to get the skills they need to improve their lives let us empower people in this way move it from the government directly to the workers of america now any one of us can call for a tax cut but i will not accept one that explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk we ought to pay for our tax cuts fully and honestly just 2 years ago it was an open question whether we would find the strength to cut the deficit thanks to the courage of the people who were here then many of whom did not return we did cut the deficit we began to do what others said would not be done we cut the deficit by over 600 billion about for every family in this country it is coming down 3 years in a row for the first time since truman was president and i do not think anybody in america wants us to let it explode again in the budget i will send you the middle class bill of rights is fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy cuts in programs cuts in special interest subsidies and the spending cuts will more than double the tax cuts my budget pays for the middle class bill of rights without any cuts in medicare and i will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts with medicare cuts that is not the right thing to do i know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief and some of them i find quite interesting i really want to work with all of you my test for our proposals will be will it create jobs and raise incomes will it strengthen our families and support our children is it paid for will it build the middle class and shrink the under class if it does i will support it but if it does not i will not the goal of building the middle class and shrinking the under class is also why i believe that you should raise the minimum wage it rewards work two and a half million americans two and a half million americans often women with children are working out there today for an hour in terms of real buying power by next year that minimum wage will be at a low that is not my idea of how the new economy ought to work now i have studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a minimum wage increase i believe the weight of the evidence is that a modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into the job market but the most important thing is you can not make a living on an hour especially if you have children even with the working families tax cut we passed last year in the past the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue and i think it should be again so i want to challenge you to have honest hearings on this to get together to find a way to make the minimum wage a living wage members of congress have been here less than a month but by the end of the week 28 days into the new year every member of congress will have earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum wage worker makes all year long everybody else here including the president has something else that too many americans do without and that is health care now last year we almost came to blows over health care but we did not do anything and the cold hard fact is that since last year since i was here another million americans in working families have lost their health care and the cold hard fact is that many millions more most of them farmers and small business people and people have seen their premiums skyrocket their copays and deductibles go up there is a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics have health insurance but really what they have got is a piece of paper that says they will not lose their home if they get sick now i still believe our country has got to move toward providing health security for every american family but i know that last year as the evidence indicates we bit off more than we could chew so i am asking you that we work together let us do it step by step let us do whatever we have to do to get something done let us at least pass meaningful insurance reform so that no american risks losing coverage for facing skyrocketing prices that nobody loses their coverage because they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change jobs or lose a job or a family member gets sick i want to work together with all of you who have an interest in this with the democrats who worked on it last time with the republican leaders like senator dole who has a longtime commitment to health care reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year we ought to make sure that people in small businesses can buy insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing pools we ought to help families provide care for a sick parent or a disabled child we can work to help workers who lose their jobs at least keep their health insurance coverage for a year while they look for work and we can find a may take some time but we can find a make sure that our children have health care you know i think everybody in this room without regard to party can be proud of the fact that our country was rated as having the world most productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade but we can not be proud of the fact that we are the only wealthy country in the world that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their children with health insurance today than we did 10 years ago the last time we were the most productive economy in the world so let us work together on this it is too important for politics as usual much of what the american people are thinking about tonight is what we have already talked about a lot of people think that the security concerns of america today are entirely internal to our borders they relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and our children our streets our health and protecting those borders now that the cold war has passed it is tempting to believe that all the security issues with the possible exception of trade reside here at home but it is not so our security still depends upon our continued world leadership for peace and freedom and democracy we still can not be strong at home unless we are strong abroad the financial crisis in mexico is a case in point i know it is not popular to say it tonight but we have to act not for the mexican people but for the sake of the millions of americans whose livelihoods are tied to mexico wellbeing if we want to secure american jobs preserve american exports safeguard america borders then we must pass the stabilization program and help to put mexico back on track now let me repeat it is not a loan it is not foreign aid it is not a bailout we will be given a guarantee like cosigning a note with good collateral that will cover our risks this legislation is the right thing for america that is why the bipartisan leadership has supported it and i hope you in congress will pass it quickly it is in our interest and we can explain it to the american people because we are going to do it in the right way you know tonight this is the first state of the union address ever delivered since the beginning of the cold war when not a single russian missile is pointed at the children of america and along with the russians we are on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers that carry nuclear warheads we have come so far so fast in this world that it is easy to take the decline of the nuclear threat for granted but it is still there and we are not finished yet this year i will ask the senate to approve start ii to eliminate weapons that carry more warheads the united states will lead the charge to extend indefinitely the nuclear treaty to enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban and to eliminate chemical weapons to stop and roll back north korea potentially deadly nuclear program we will continue to implement the agreement we have reached with that nation it is smart it is tough it is a deal based on continuing inspection with safeguards for our allies and ourselves this year i will submit to congress comprehensive legislation to strengthen our hand in combating terrorists whether they strike at home or abroad as the cowards who bombed the world trade center found out this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice just this week another horrendous terrorist act in israel killed 19 and injured scores more on behalf of the american people and all of you i send our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims i know that in the face of such evil it is hard for the people in the middle east to go forward but the terrorists represent the past not the future we must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between israel and all her neighbors in the middle east accordingly last night i signed an executive order that will block the assets in the united states of terrorist organizations that threaten to disrupt the peace process it prohibits financial transactions with these groups and tonight i call on all our allies and nations throughout the world to join us with renewed fervor in a global effort to combat terrorism we can not permit the future to be marred by terror and fear and paralysis from the day i took the oath of office i pledged that our nation would maintain the best equipped best trained and best prepared military on earth we have and they are they have managed the dramatic downsizing of our forces after the cold war with remarkable skill and spirit but to make sure our military is ready for action and to provide the pay and the quality of life the military and their families deserve i am asking the congress to add 25 billion in defense spending over the next 6 years i have visited many bases at home and around the world since i became president tonight i repeat that request with renewed conviction we ask a very great deal of our armed forces now that they are smaller in number we ask more of them they go out more often to more different places and stay longer they are called to service in many many ways and we must give them and their families what the times demand and what they have earned just think about what our troops have done in the last year showing america at its best helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in rwanda moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to kuwait giving freedom and democracy back to the people of haiti we have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from south africa to northern ireland from central and eastern europe to asia from latin america to the middle east all these endeavors are good in those places but they make our future more confident and more secure well my fellow americans that is my agenda for america future expanding opportunity not bureaucracy enhancing security at home and abroad empowering our people to make the most of their own lives it is ambitious and achievable but it is not enough we even need more than new ideas for changing the world or equipping americans to compete in the new economy more than a government that is smaller smarter and wiser more than all of the changes we can make in government and in the private sector from the outside in our fortunes and our posterity also depend upon our ability to answer some questions from within from the values and voices that speak to our hearts as well as our heads voices that tell us we have to do more to accept responsibility for ourselves and our families for our communities and yes for our fellow citizens we see our families and our communities all over this country coming apart and we feel the common ground shifting from under us the pta the town hall meeting the ball park it is hard for a lot of overworked parents to find the time and space for those things that strengthen the bonds of trust and cooperation too many of our children do not even have parents and grandparents who can give them those experiences that they need to build their own character and their sense of identity we all know that while we here in this chamber can make a difference on those things that the real differences will be made by our fellow citizens where they work and where they live and that it will be made almost without regard to party when i used to go to the softball park in little rock to watch my daughter league and people would come up to me fathers and mothers and talk to me i can honestly say i had no idea whether 90 percent of them were republicans or democrats when i visited the relief centers after the floods in california northern california last week a woman came up to me and did something that very few of you would do she hugged me and said president i am a republican but i am glad you are here now why we can not wait for disasters to act the way we used to act every day because as we move into this next century everybody matters we do not have a person to waste and a lot of people are losing a lot of chances to do better that means that we need a new covenant for everybody for our corporate and business leaders we are going to work here to keep bringing the deficit down to expand markets to support their success in every possible way but they have an obligation when they are doing well to keep jobs in our communities and give their workers a fair share of the prosperity they generate for people in the entertainment industry in this country we applaud your creativity and your worldwide success and we support your freedom of expression but you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant repetitive mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates our media all the time we have got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem the epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage i have sent to congress a plan to target schools all over this country with antipregnancy programs that work but government can only do so much tonight i call on parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference we can do this and we must and i would like to say a special word to our religious leaders you know i am proud of the fact the united states has more houses of worship per capita than any country in the world these people who lead our houses of worship can ignite their congregations to carry their faith into action can reach out to all of our children to all of the people in distress to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we hold dear because so much of what must be done must come from the inside out and our religious leaders and their congregations can make all the difference they have a role in the new covenant as well there must be more responsibility for all of our citizens you know it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the streets and in school it takes a lot of people to build the habitat for humanity houses that the speaker celebrates on his lapel pin it takes a lot of people to provide the people power for all of the civic organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to most of us when we were kids it takes every parent to teach the children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe that they can be whatever they want to be i know it is hard when you are working harder for less when you are under great stress to do these things a lot of our people do not have the time or the emotional stress they think to do the work of citizenship most of us in politics have not helped very much for years we have mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the tv ads either promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and frustrations and more and more of our citizens now get most of their information in very negative and aggressive ways that are hardly conducive to honest and open conversations but the truth is we have got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different views if you go back to the beginning of this country the great strength of america as de tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time ago has always been our ability to associate with people who were different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground and in this day everybody has a responsibility to do more of that we simply can not want for a tornado a fire or a flood to behave like americans ought to behave in dealing with one another i want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with the first lady that represent what i am trying to talk i have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in the last election but they represent what we ought to be doing cindy perry teaches second graders to read in americorps in rural kentucky she gains when she gives she is a mother of four she says that her service inspired her to get her high school equivalency last year she was married when she was a up cindy she was married when she was a teenager she had four children but she had time to serve other people to get her high school equivalency and she is going to use her americorps money to go back to college chief stephen bishop is the police chief of kansas city he is been a national up steve he is been a national leader in using more police in community policing and he is worked with americorps to do it and the crime rate in kansas city has gone down as a result of what he did corporal gregory depestre went to haiti as part of his adopted country force to help secure democracy in his native land and i might add we must be the only country in the world that could have gone to haiti and taken there who could speak the language and talk to the people and he was one of them and we are proud of him the next two folks i have had the honor of meeting and getting to know a little bit the reverend john and the reverend diana cherry of the zion church in temple hills maryland i would like to ask them to stand i want to tell you about them in the early eighties they left government service and formed a church in a small living room in a small house in the early eighties today that church has members it is one of the three or four biggest churches in the entire united states it grows by 200 a month they do it together and the special focus of their ministry is keeping families together two things they did make a big impression on me i visited their church once and i learned they were building a new sanctuary closer to the washington dc line in a higher crime higher drug rate area because they thought it was part of their ministry to change the lives of the people who needed them the second thing i want to say is that once reverend cherry was at a meeting at the white house with some other religious leaders and he left early to go back to this church to minister to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church from all over america to convince them to come back together to save their marriages and to raise their kids this is the kind of work that citizens are doing in america we need more of it and it ought to be lifted up and supported the last person i want to introduce is jack lucas from hattiesburg mississippi jack would you stand up fifty years ago in the sands of iwo jima jack lucas taught and learned the lessons of citizenship on february 20th 1945 he and three of his buddies encountered the enemy and two grenades at their feet jack lucas threw himself on both of them in that moment he saved the lives of his companions and miraculously in the next instant a medic saved his life he gained a foothold for freedom and at the age of 17 just a year older than his grandson who is up there with him and his son who is a west point graduate and a 17 jack lucas became the youngest marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the congressional medal of honor all these years later yesterday here is what he said about that day it did not matter where you were from or who you were you relied on one another you did it for your country we all gain when we give and we reap what we sow that is at the heart of this new covenant responsibility opportunity and citizenship more than stale chapters in some remote civic book they are still the virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our potential and be like them and also to fulfill the eternal promise of this country the enduring dream from that first and most sacred covenant i believe every person in this country still believes that we are created equal and given by our creator the right to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness this is a very very great country and our best days are still to come thank you and god bless you all
president speaker members 104th congress fellow americans sanctuary democracy democracy spoken let begin congratulating 104th congress congratulating speaker agree nothing else tonight must agree american people certainly voted change 1992 1994 look know must felt 1992 must say years hear america singing heard america shouting us republicans democrats alike must say hear work together earn jobs given us keepers sacred trust must faithful new demanding era 200 years ago founders changed entire course human history joining together create new country based single powerful idea hold truths men created equal endowed creator certain unalienable rights among life liberty pursuit happiness fallen every generation since preserve idea american idea deepen expand meaning new different times lincoln congress preserve union end slavery theodore roosevelt woodrow wilson restrain abuses excesses industrial revolution assert leadership world franklin roosevelt fight failure pain great depression win country great struggle fascism presidents since fight cold war especially recall two struggled fight cold war partnership congresses majority different party harry truman summoned us unparalleled prosperity home built architecture cold war ronald reagan wish well tonight exhorted us carry twilight struggle communism another time change challenge honor first president elected era era marked global economy information revolution unparalleled change opportunity insecurity american people came hallowed chamber 2 years ago mission restore american dream people make sure move 21st century still strongest force freedom democracy entire world determined tackle tough problems long ignored effort frank say made mistakes learned importance humility human endeavor also proud say tonight country stronger 2 years ago thank record numbers americans succeeding new global economy peace force peace freedom throughout world almost 6 million new jobs since became president lowest combined rate unemployment inflation 25 years businesses productive worked bring deficit expand trade put police streets give citizens tools need get education rebuild communities rising tide lifting boats nation enjoying peace prosperity many people still working harder harder less less businesses restructuring growing productive competitive many people still sure job next year even next month far material riches threatened things far precious us children families values civil life suffering america today citizens working together less shouting common bonds community great strength country beginning badly frayed 60 years ago dawn another new era president roosevelt told nation new conditions impose new requirements government conduct government simple proposition shaped new deal helped restore nation prosperity define relationship people government half century approach worked time today face different time different conditions moving industrial age built gears sweat information age demanding skills learning flexibility government champion national purpose seen many simply captive narrow interests putting burdens citizens rather equipping get ahead values used hold us together seem coming apart tonight must forge new social compact meet challenges time enter new era need new set understandings government even important one another americans want talk tonight call new covenant grounded old idea americans right solemn responsibility rise far talents determination take give something back communities country return opportunity responsibility go hand hand one without national community hold together without new covenant new set understandings equip people meet challenges new economy change way government works fit different time repair damaged bonds society come together behind common purpose must dramatic change economy government fellow americans without regard party let us rise occasion let us put aside partisanship pettiness pride embark new course let us put country first remembering regardless party label americans let final test everything simple one good american people let begin saying ask americans better citizens better servants made good start passing law applies congress laws put private sector proud sign yesterday lot people really trust way things work around three times many lobbyists streets corridors washington 20 years ago american people look capital see city work system interests ordinary citizens often left new congress opened doors lobbyists still business usual gifts trips things people concerned stopped twice month missed opportunities stop practices know considerations votes want use something heard republican friends say time time law everything tonight ask stop taking lobbyists perks stop wait legislation pass send strong signal american people things really changing also hope send strongest possible lobby reform bill sign require lobbyists tell people work spending want also curb role big money elections capping cost campaigns limiting influence pac said 3 years work open airwaves instrument democracy weapon destruction giving free tv time candidates public office last congress killed political reform last year reported press lobbyists actually stood halls sacred building cheered year let us give folks home something cheer important think agree change way government works let us make smaller less costly smarter leaner meaner told speaker equal time doctrine alive well new covenant approach governing different old bureaucratic way computer manual typewriter old way governing around protected organized interests look interests ordinary people old way divided us interest constituency class new covenant way unite us behind common vision best country old way dispensed services large inflexible bureaucracies new covenant way shift resources decisionmaking bureaucrats citizens injecting choice competition individual responsibility national policy old way governing around actually seemed reward failure new covenant way incentives reward success old way centralized washington new covenant way must take hold communities across america help job expand opportunity bureaucracy empower people make lives enhance security home abroad must ask government rely government partner help us hope much debate specific exciting matters go beyond sterile discussion illusion somehow program every problem one hand illusion government source every problem job get rid yesterday government people meet today tomorrow needs ought together know years became president heard others say would cut government bad much happened actually cut quarter trillion dollars spending 300 domestic programs positions federal bureaucracy last 2 years alone based decisions already made cut total quarter million positions federal government making smallest since john kennedy president time come next year leadership vice president gore initiatives already saved taxpayers 63 billion age 500 hammer ashtray break david letterman gone deadwood programs like mohair subsidies gone streamlined agriculture department reducing offices slashed small business loan form inch thick single page thrown away government personnel manual government working better important ways fema federal emergency management agency gone disaster helping people disasters ask farmers middle west fought flood people california dealt floods earthquakes fires tell government workers working hand hand private business rebuilt southern california fractured freeways record time budget federal government moved fast one schools damaged earthquake back business lot things could talk want mention one discussed next weeks university administrators country told saving weeks weeks bureaucratic time direct college loan program makes college loans cheaper affordable better repayment terms students costs government less cuts paperwork bureaucracy government universities cap program give every college america opportunity part previous government programs gathered dust reinventing government report getting results going second round reinventing government propose cut 130 billion spending shrinking departments extending freeze domestic spending cutting 60 public housing programs 3 getting rid 100 programs need like interstate commerce commission helium reserve program working getting rid unnecessary regulations making sensible programs regulations outlived usefulness go cut yesterday government help solve tomorrow problems need get government closer people meant serve need help move programs point states communities private citizens private sector better job ought let get way let better taking power away federal bureaucracies giving back communities individuals something everyone able time congress stop passing states cost decisions make washington know still serious differences details unfunded mandates legislation want work make sure pass reasonable bill protect national interests give justified relief need give years congress concealed budget scores pet spending projects last year difference 1 million study stress plants 12 million tick removal program work hard remove ticks us know tell something give veto remove unnecessary spending think remember almost us would agree government still important responsibilities young think young people hold future hands still owe debt veterans senior citizens made us budget cuts lot protects education veterans social security medicare hope thing hope give flexibility states let us remember certain fundamental national needs addressed every state north south east west immunization childhood disease school lunches schools head start medical care nutrition pregnant women infants things things national interest applaud desire get rid costly unnecessary regulations deregulate let us remember national action national interest given us safer food families safer toys children safer nursing homes parents safer cars highways safer workplaces cleaner air cleaner water need common sense fairness regulations bet common sense still provide safe drinking water fairness still clean toxic dumps ought cut deficit well course course bring way still protects economic recovery unduly punish people punished instead helped know many chamber support balanced budget amendment certainly want balance budget administration done bring budget save money long time believe passing amendment right thing straight american people right know going cut taxes going raise going affect things open around example everybody ought know proposal going endanger social security would oppose think americans would nothing done undermine sense common responsibility failed welfare system one problems face washington new covenant rewards welfare work undermines family values let us millions parents get away without paying child support keeps minority significant minority people welfare trapped long time worked problem long time nearly 15 years governor honor working reagan administration write last welfare reform bill back 1988 last 2 years made good start continuing work welfare reform administration gave two dozen states right slash federal rules regulations reform welfare systems try promote work responsibility welfare dependency last year introduced sweeping welfare reform plan ever presented administration make welfare meant second chance way life help welfare move work quickly possible provide child care teach skills need 2 years ought simple hard rule anyone work must go work parent paying child support forced pay suspend drivers license track across state lines make work owe governments raise children people parents must take responsibility children bring world want work pass welfare reform goal must liberate people lift dependence independence welfare work mere childbearing responsible parenting goal punish happen poor require work mutual responsibility cut people poor young even unmarried promote responsibility requiring young mothers live home parents supervised settings requiring finish school put children street know arguments pro con read thought long time still think good conscience punish poor children mistakes parents fellow americans every single survey shows american people care without regard party race region let year end welfare know also let year able stop using issue divide america one eager end may president actually opportunity sit welfare office actually spent hours hours talking people welfare telling people trapped know work also want get promote together education work good parenting problem punishing bad behavior refusal worker student responsible parent want punish poverty past mistakes us made mistakes none us change yesterdays every one us change tomorrows america best example may lynn woolsey worked way welfare become congresswoman state california know members congress concerned crime citizens country remind last year passed tough crime bill longer sentences three strikes almost 60 new capital punishment offenses prisons prevention police paid reducing size federal bureaucracy giving money back local communities lower crime rate may things tougher crime smarter crime help lower rate first well let us talk let us let us go back things last year know work know work local law enforcement officers tell us right thing local community leaders worked years years lower crime rate tell us work let us look experience cities rural areas crime rate gone ask people last year supports decline crime convinced us go back let us stick implement got 4 hard years work want destroy good atmosphere room country tonight mention one issue divided body greatly last year last congress also passed brady bill crime bill ban 19 assault weapons think secret anybody room several members last congress voted tonight voted know therefore voted enormous pressure repeal tell feel members congress voted bill would never anything infringe right keep bear arms hunt engage appropriate sporting activities done since boy going keep right anymore lot people laid seats congress police officers kids would lay lives hail assault weapon attack let repealed let repealed would like talk couple issues deal want us cut spending hope cut government programs help prepare us new economy promote responsibility organized grassroots federal bureaucracy best example national service corps americorps passed strong bipartisan support americans ever served one year peace corps working country helping people local grassroots volunteer groups solving problems process earning money education citizenship best good americorps members good rest us essence new covenant stop americans states heavily affected every place country rightly disturbed large numbers illegal aliens entering country jobs hold might otherwise held citizens legal immigrants public service use impose burdens taxpayers administration moved aggressively secure borders hiring record number new border guards deporting twice many criminal aliens ever cracking illegal hiring barring welfare benefits illegal aliens budget present try speed deportation illegal aliens arrested crimes better identify illegal aliens workplace recommended commission headed former congresswoman barbara jordan nation immigrants also nation laws wrong ultimately nation immigrants permit kind abuse immigration laws seen recent years must stop important job government new era empower american people succeed global economy america always land opportunity land work hard get ahead become great middle class country middle class values sustain us must expand middle class shrink class even everything support millions americans already successful new economy america world strongest economic power almost 6 million new jobs last 2 years exports booming inflation jobs coming back record number american entrepreneurs living american dream want stay way work lift nation must benefits today many people left working harder less less security less income less certainty even afford vacation much less college kids retirement let continue act economy probably keep since 1978 income growth began go top economic scale people vast middle got little growth people worked like crazy bottom fell even behind years afterward matter hard worked got government real partner making new economy work people government helps every one us get education opportunity renew skills worked hard increase educational opportunities last 2 years head start public schools apprenticeships young people go college making college loans available affordable first thing got something empower people improve skills second thing ought help people raise incomes immediately lowering taxes took first step 1993 working family tax cut 15 million families incomes tax cut year average family also gave tax reductions small new businesses could first bring deficit inherited get economic growth done cut taxes comprehensive way tax cuts reinforce promote first obligation empower citizens education training make lives spotlight shine make right choices families communities proposed middle class bill rights properly called bill rights responsibilities provisions benefit working educate raise children educate therefore give needed tax relief raise incomes short run long run way benefits us four provisions first tax deduction education training high school think permit businesses deduct investment permit individuals deduct interest home mortgages today education even important economic whole country even things everything encourage hope support second ought cut taxes 500 families children 13 third ought foster savings personal responsibility permitting people establish individual retirement account withdraw cost education health care homebuying care parent fourth pass gi bill america workers propose collapse nearly 70 federal programs give money states give money directly american people offer vouchers laid working low wage get voucher worth year 2 years go local community colleges wherever else want get skills need improve lives let us empower people way move government directly workers america one us call tax cut accept one explodes deficit puts recovery risk ought pay tax cuts fully honestly 2 years ago open question whether would find strength cut deficit thanks courage people many return cut deficit began others said would done cut deficit 600 billion every family country coming 3 years row first time since truman president think anybody america wants us let explode budget send middle class bill rights fully paid budget cuts bureaucracy cuts programs cuts special interest subsidies spending cuts double tax cuts budget pays middle class bill rights without cuts medicare oppose attempts pay tax cuts medicare cuts right thing know lot ideas tax relief find quite interesting really want work test proposals create jobs raise incomes strengthen families support children paid build middle class shrink class support goal building middle class shrinking class also believe raise minimum wage rewards work two half million americans two half million americans often women children working today hour terms real buying power next year minimum wage low idea new economy ought work studied arguments evidence minimum wage increase believe weight evidence modest increase cost jobs may even lure people back job market important thing make living hour especially children even working families tax cut passed last year past minimum wage bipartisan issue think want challenge honest hearings get together find way make minimum wage living wage members congress less month end week 28 days new year every member congress earned much congressional salary minimum wage worker makes year long everybody else including president something else many americans without health care last year almost came blows health care anything cold hard fact since last year since another million americans working families lost health care cold hard fact many millions farmers small business people people seen premiums skyrocket copays deductibles go whole bunch people country statistics health insurance really got piece paper says lose home get sick still believe country got move toward providing health security every american family know last year evidence indicates bit could chew asking work together let us step step let us whatever get something done let us least pass meaningful insurance reform american risks losing coverage facing skyrocketing prices nobody loses coverage face high prices unavailable insurance change jobs lose job family member gets sick want work together interest democrats worked last time republican leaders like senator dole longtime commitment health care reform made constructive proposals area last year ought make sure people small businesses buy insurance affordable rates voluntary purchasing pools ought help families provide care sick parent disabled child work help workers lose jobs least keep health insurance coverage year look work find may take time find make sure children health care know think everybody room without regard party proud fact country rated world productive economy first time nearly decade proud fact wealthy country world smaller percentage work force children health insurance today 10 years ago last time productive economy world let us work together important politics usual much american people thinking tonight already talked lot people think security concerns america today entirely internal borders relate security jobs homes incomes children streets health protecting borders cold war passed tempting believe security issues possible exception trade reside home security still depends upon continued world leadership peace freedom democracy still strong home unless strong abroad financial crisis mexico case point know popular say tonight act mexican people sake millions americans whose livelihoods tied mexico wellbeing want secure american jobs preserve american exports safeguard america borders must pass stabilization program help put mexico back track let repeat loan foreign aid bailout given guarantee like cosigning note good collateral cover risks legislation right thing america bipartisan leadership supported hope congress pass quickly interest explain american people going right way know tonight first state union address ever delivered since beginning cold war single russian missile pointed children america along russians way destroying missiles bombers carry nuclear warheads come far fast world easy take decline nuclear threat granted still finished yet year ask senate approve start ii eliminate weapons carry warheads united states lead charge extend indefinitely nuclear treaty enact comprehensive nuclear test ban eliminate chemical weapons stop roll back north korea potentially deadly nuclear program continue implement agreement reached nation smart tough deal based continuing inspection safeguards allies year submit congress comprehensive legislation strengthen hand combating terrorists whether strike home abroad cowards bombed world trade center found country hunt terrorists bring justice week another horrendous terrorist act israel killed 19 injured scores behalf american people send deepest sympathy families victims know face evil hard people middle east go forward terrorists represent past future must pursue comprehensive peace israel neighbors middle east accordingly last night signed executive order block assets united states terrorist organizations threaten disrupt peace process prohibits financial transactions groups tonight call allies nations throughout world join us renewed fervor global effort combat terrorism permit future marred terror fear paralysis day took oath office pledged nation would maintain best equipped best trained best prepared military earth managed dramatic downsizing forces cold war remarkable skill spirit make sure military ready action provide pay quality life military families deserve asking congress add 25 billion defense spending next 6 years visited many bases home around world since became president tonight repeat request renewed conviction ask great deal armed forces smaller number ask go often different places stay longer called service many many ways must give families times demand earned think troops done last year showing america best helping save hundreds thousands people rwanda moving lightning speed head another threat kuwait giving freedom democracy back people haiti proudly supported peace prosperity freedom south africa northern ireland central eastern europe asia latin america middle east endeavors good places make future confident secure well fellow americans agenda america future expanding opportunity bureaucracy enhancing security home abroad empowering people make lives ambitious achievable enough even need new ideas changing world equipping americans compete new economy government smaller smarter wiser changes make government private sector outside fortunes posterity also depend upon ability answer questions within values voices speak hearts well heads voices tell us accept responsibility families communities yes fellow citizens see families communities country coming apart feel common ground shifting us pta town hall meeting ball park hard lot overworked parents find time space things strengthen bonds trust cooperation many children even parents grandparents give experiences need build character sense identity know chamber make difference things real differences made fellow citizens work live made almost without regard party used go softball park little rock watch daughter league people would come fathers mothers talk honestly say idea whether 90 percent republicans democrats visited relief centers floods california northern california last week woman came something would hugged said president republican glad wait disasters act way used act every day move next century everybody matters person waste lot people losing lot chances better means need new covenant everybody corporate business leaders going work keep bringing deficit expand markets support success every possible way obligation well keep jobs communities give workers fair share prosperity generate people entertainment industry country applaud creativity worldwide success support freedom expression responsibility assess impact work understand damage comes incessant repetitive mindless violence irresponsible conduct permeates media time got ask community leaders kinds organizations help us stop serious social problem epidemic teen pregnancies births marriage sent congress plan target schools country antipregnancy programs work government much tonight call parents leaders across country join together national campaign teen pregnancy make difference must would like say special word religious leaders know proud fact united states houses worship per capita country world people lead houses worship ignite congregations carry faith action reach children people distress savaged breakdown hold dear much must done must come inside religious leaders congregations make difference role new covenant well must responsibility citizens know takes lot people help kids trouble stay streets school takes lot people build habitat humanity houses speaker celebrates lapel pin takes lot people provide people power civic organizations country made communities mean much us kids takes every parent teach children difference right wrong encourage learn grow say wrong things also believe whatever want know hard working harder less great stress things lot people time emotional stress think work citizenship us politics helped much years mostly treated citizens like consumers spectators sort political couch potatoes supposed watch tv ads either promise something nothing play fears frustrations citizens get information negative aggressive ways hardly conducive honest open conversations truth got stop seeing enemies different views go back beginning country great strength america de tocqueville pointed came long time ago always ability associate people different work together find common ground day everybody responsibility simply want tornado fire flood behave like americans ought behave dealing one another want finish pointing folks first lady represent trying talk idea party affiliation voted last election represent ought cindy perry teaches second graders read americorps rural kentucky gains gives mother four says service inspired get high school equivalency last year married cindy married teenager four children time serve people get high school equivalency going use americorps money go back college chief stephen bishop police chief kansas city national steve national leader using police community policing worked americorps crime rate kansas city gone result corporal gregory depestre went haiti part adopted country force help secure democracy native land might add must country world could gone haiti taken could speak language talk people one proud next two folks honor meeting getting know little bit reverend john reverend diana cherry zion church temple hills maryland would like ask stand want tell early eighties left government service formed church small living room small house early eighties today church members one three four biggest churches entire united states grows 200 month together special focus ministry keeping families together two things make big impression visited church learned building new sanctuary closer washington dc line higher crime higher drug rate area thought part ministry change lives people needed second thing want say reverend cherry meeting white house religious leaders left early go back church minister 150 couples brought back church america convince come back together save marriages raise kids kind work citizens america need ought lifted supported last person want introduce jack lucas hattiesburg mississippi jack would stand fifty years ago sands iwo jima jack lucas taught learned lessons citizenship february 20th 1945 three buddies encountered enemy two grenades feet jack lucas threw moment saved lives companions miraculously next instant medic saved life gained foothold freedom age 17 year older grandson son west point graduate 17 jack lucas became youngest marine history youngest soldier century win congressional medal honor years later yesterday said day matter relied one another country gain give reap sow heart new covenant responsibility opportunity citizenship stale chapters remote civic book still virtue fulfill reach potential like also fulfill eternal promise country enduring dream first sacred covenant believe every person country still believes created equal given creator right life liberty pursuit happiness great country best days still come thank god bless
president speaker member 104th congress fellow american sanctuary democracy democracy speak let begin congratulate 104th congress congratulate speaker agree nothing else tonight must agree american people certainly vote change 1992 1994 look know must felt 1992 must say year hear america sing heard america shout u republican democrat alike must say hear work together earn job give u keeper sacred trust must faithful new demand era 200 year ago founder change entire course human history join together create new country base single powerful idea hold truths men create equal endow creator certain unalienable right among life liberty pursuit happiness fall every generation since preserve idea american idea deepen expand mean new different time lincoln congress preserve union end slavery theodore roosevelt woodrow wilson restrain abuse excesses industrial revolution assert leadership world franklin roosevelt fight failure pain great depression win country great struggle fascism president since fight cold war especially recall two struggle fight cold war partnership congresses majority different party harry truman summon u unparalleled prosperity home build architecture cold war ronald reagan wish well tonight exhort u carry twilight struggle communism another time change challenge honor first president elect era era mark global economy information revolution unparalleled change opportunity insecurity american people come hallowed chamber 2 year ago mission restore american dream people make sure move 21st century still strong force freedom democracy entire world determine tackle tough problem long ignore effort frank say make mistake learn importance humility human endeavor also proud say tonight country strong 2 year ago thank record number american succeed new global economy peace force peace freedom throughout world almost 6 million new job since become president low combined rate unemployment inflation 25 year business productive work bring deficit expand trade put police street give citizen tool need get education rebuild community rise tide lift boat nation enjoy peace prosperity many people still work hard hard less less business restructure grow productive competitive many people still sure job next year even next month far material rich threaten thing far precious u child family value civil life suffer america today citizens work together less shouting common bond community great strength country begin badly fray 60 year ago dawn another new era president roosevelt tell nation new condition impose new requirement government conduct government simple proposition shape new deal help restore nation prosperity define relationship people government half century approach work time today face different time different condition move industrial age build gear sweat information age demand skill learn flexibility government champion national purpose see many simply captive narrow interest put burden citizen rather equip get ahead value use hold u together seem come apart tonight must forge new social compact meet challenge time enter new era need new set understandings government even important one another americans want talk tonight call new covenant ground old idea american right solemn responsibility rise far talents determination take give something back communities country return opportunity responsibility go hand hand one without national community hold together without new covenant new set understandings equip people meet challenge new economy change way government work fit different time repair damage bond society come together behind common purpose must dramatic change economy government fellow american without regard party let u rise occasion let u put aside partisanship pettiness pride embark new course let u put country first remember regardless party label american let final test everything simple one good american people let begin say ask american better citizen good servant make good start pass law applies congress law put private sector proud sign yesterday lot people really trust way thing work around three time many lobbyist street corridor washington 20 year ago american people look capital see city work system interest ordinary citizen often leave new congress open door lobbyist still business usual gift trip thing people concerned stop twice month miss opportunity stop practice know consideration vote want use something heard republican friend say time time law everything tonight ask stop take lobbyist perk stop wait legislation pas send strong signal american people thing really change also hope send strong possible lobby reform bill sign require lobbyist tell people work spend want also curb role big money election cap cost campaign limit influence pac say 3 year work open airwave instrument democracy weapon destruction give free tv time candidate public office last congress kill political reform last year report press lobbyist actually stand hall sacred building cheer year let u give folk home something cheer important think agree change way government work let u make small less costly smarter lean meaner tell speaker equal time doctrine alive well new covenant approach govern different old bureaucratic way computer manual typewriter old way govern around protect organize interest look interest ordinary people old way divide u interest constituency class new covenant way unite u behind common vision best country old way dispense service large inflexible bureaucracy new covenant way shift resource decisionmaking bureaucrat citizen inject choice competition individual responsibility national policy old way govern around actually seem reward failure new covenant way incentive reward success old way centralize washington new covenant way must take hold community across america help job expand opportunity bureaucracy empower people make life enhance security home abroad must ask government rely government partner help u hope much debate specific excite matter go beyond sterile discussion illusion somehow program every problem one hand illusion government source every problem job get rid yesterday government people meet today tomorrow need ought together know year become president heard others say would cut government bad much happen actually cut quarter trillion dollar spend 300 domestic program position federal bureaucracy last 2 year alone base decision already make cut total quarter million position federal government make small since john kennedy president time come next year leadership vice president gore initiative already save taxpayer 63 billion age 500 hammer ashtray break david letterman go deadwood program like mohair subsidy go streamlined agriculture department reduce office slash small business loan form inch thick single page throw away government personnel manual government work well important way fema federal emergency management agency go disaster help people disaster ask farmer middle west fought flood people california dealt flood earthquake fire tell government worker work hand hand private business rebuilt southern california fracture freeway record time budget federal government move fast one school damage earthquake back business lot thing could talk want mention one discuss next week university administrator country tell save week week bureaucratic time direct college loan program make college loan cheaper affordable well repayment term student costs government less cuts paperwork bureaucracy government university cap program give every college america opportunity part previous government program gather dust reinventing government report get result go second round reinvent government propose cut 130 billion spending shrink department extend freeze domestic spending cut 60 public housing program 3 get rid 100 program need like interstate commerce commission helium reserve program work get rid unnecessary regulation make sensible program regulation outlive usefulness go cut yesterday government help solve tomorrow problem need get government closer people mean serve need help move program point state community private citizen private sector well job ought let get way let good take power away federal bureaucracy give back community individual something everyone able time congress stop pass state cost decision make washington know still serious difference detail unfunded mandate legislation want work make sure pas reasonable bill protect national interest give justified relief need give year congress concealed budget score pet spend project last year difference 1 million study stress plant 12 million tick removal program work hard remove tick u know tell something give veto remove unnecessary spending think remember almost u would agree government still important responsibility young think young people hold future hand still owe debt veteran senior citizen make u budget cut lot protect education veteran social security medicare hope thing hope give flexibility state let u remember certain fundamental national need address every state north south east west immunization childhood disease school lunch school head start medical care nutrition pregnant woman infant thing thing national interest applaud desire get rid costly unnecessary regulation deregulate let u remember national action national interest give u safer food family safer toys child safer nursing home parent safer car highway safer workplace clean air clean water need common sense fairness regulation bet common sense still provide safe drinking water fairness still clean toxic dump ought cut deficit well course course bring way still protect economic recovery unduly punish people punish instead help know many chamber support balance budget amendment certainly want balance budget administration do bring budget save money long time believe pass amendment right thing straight american people right know go cut tax go raise go affect thing open around example everybody ought know proposal go endanger social security would oppose think american would nothing do undermine sense common responsibility fail welfare system one problem face washington new covenant reward welfare work undermines family value let u million parent get away without pay child support keep minority significant minority people welfare trap long time work problem long time nearly 15 year governor honor work reagan administration write last welfare reform bill back 1988 last 2 year make good start continue work welfare reform administration give two dozen state right slash federal rule regulation reform welfare system try promote work responsibility welfare dependency last year introduce sweeping welfare reform plan ever present administration make welfare meant second chance way life help welfare move work quickly possible provide child care teach skill need 2 year ought simple hard rule anyone work must go work parent pay child support force pay suspend driver license track across state line make work owe government raise child people parent must take responsibility child bring world want work pas welfare reform goal must liberate people lift dependence independence welfare work mere childbearing responsible parent goal punish happen poor require work mutual responsibility cut people poor young even unmarried promote responsibility require young mother live home parent supervise setting require finish school put child street know argument pro con read think long time still think good conscience punish poor child mistake parent fellow american every single survey show american people care without regard party race region let year end welfare know also let year able stop use issue divide america one eager end may president actually opportunity sit welfare office actually spend hour hour talk people welfare tell people trap know work also want get promote together education work good parenting problem punish bad behavior refusal worker student responsible parent want punish poverty past mistake u make mistake none u change yesterdays every one u change tomorrow america best example may lynn woolsey worked way welfare become congresswoman state california know member congress concern crime citizen country remind last year pass tough crime bill longer sentence three strike almost 60 new capital punishment offenses prison prevention police pay reduce size federal bureaucracy give money back local community low crime rate may thing tough crime smarter crime help lower rate first well let u talk let u let u go back thing last year know work know work local law enforcement officer tell u right thing local community leader work year year low crime rate tell u work let u look experience city rural area crime rate go ask people last year support decline crime convince u go back let u stick implement get 4 hard year work want destroy good atmosphere room country tonight mention one issue divide body greatly last year last congress also pass brady bill crime bill ban 19 assault weapon think secret anybody room several member last congress vote tonight vote know therefore voted enormous pressure repeal tell feel member congress voted bill would never anything infringe right keep bear arm hunt engage appropriate sporting activity do since boy go keep right anymore lot people lay seat congress police officer kid would lay life hail assault weapon attack let repeal let repeal would like talk couple issue deal want u cut spend hope cut government program help prepare u new economy promote responsibility organize grassroots federal bureaucracy best example national service corp americorps pass strong bipartisan support american ever serve one year peace corp work country help people local grassroots volunteer group solve problem process earn money education citizenship best good americorps member good rest u essence new covenant stop american state heavily affect every place country rightly disturb large number illegal alien enter country job hold might otherwise hold citizen legal immigrant public service use impose burden taxpayer administration move aggressively secure border hire record number new border guard deport twice many criminal alien ever crack illegal hire bar welfare benefit illegal alien budget present try speed deportation illegal alien arrest crime well identify illegal alien workplace recommend commission head former congresswoman barbara jordan nation immigrant also nation law wrong ultimately nation immigrant permit kind abuse immigration law see recent year must stop important job government new era empower american people succeed global economy america always land opportunity land work hard get ahead become great middle class country middle class value sustain u must expand middle class shrink class even everything support million american already successful new economy america world strong economic power almost 6 million new job last 2 year export boom inflation job come back record number american entrepreneur live american dream want stay way work lift nation must benefit today many people leave work hard less less security less income less certainty even afford vacation much less college kid retirement let continue act economy probably keep since 1978 income growth begin go top economic scale people vast middle get little growth people work like crazy bottom fell even behind year afterward matter hard work got government real partner make new economy work people government help every one u get education opportunity renew skill work hard increase educational opportunity last 2 year head start public school apprenticeships young people go college make college loan available affordable first thing get something empower people improve skill second thing ought help people raise income immediately lower tax take first step 1993 work family tax cut 15 million family income tax cut year average family also give tax reduction small new business could first bring deficit inherit get economic growth do cut tax comprehensive way tax cut reinforce promote first obligation empower citizen education train make life spotlight shine make right choice family community propose middle class bill right properly call bill right responsibility provision benefit work educate raise child educate therefore give need tax relief raise incomes short run long run way benefit u four provision first tax deduction education training high school think permit business deduct investment permit individual deduct interest home mortgage today education even important economic whole country even thing everything encourage hope support second ought cut tax 500 family child 13 third ought foster saving personal responsibility permit people establish individual retirement account withdraw cost education health care homebuying care parent fourth pas gi bill america worker propose collapse nearly 70 federal program give money state give money directly american people offer voucher lay work low wage get voucher worth year 2 year go local community college wherever else want get skill need improve life let u empower people way move government directly worker america one u call tax cut accept one explode deficit put recovery risk ought pay tax cut fully honestly 2 year ago open question whether would find strength cut deficit thanks courage people many return cut deficit begin others say would do cut deficit 600 billion every family country come 3 year row first time since truman president think anybody america want u let explode budget send middle class bill right fully pay budget cut bureaucracy cut program cut special interest subsidy spend cut double tax cut budget pay middle class bill right without cut medicare oppose attempt pay tax cut medicare cut right thing know lot idea tax relief find quite interesting really want work test proposal create job raise income strengthen family support child pay build middle class shrink class support goal build middle class shrink class also believe raise minimum wage reward work two half million american two half million american often woman child work today hour term real buying power next year minimum wage low idea new economy ought work studied argument evidence minimum wage increase believe weight evidence modest increase cost job may even lure people back job market important thing make live hour especially child even work family tax cut pass last year past minimum wage bipartisan issue think want challenge honest hearing get together find way make minimum wage living wage member congress less month end week 28 day new year every member congress earn much congressional salary minimum wage worker make year long everybody else include president something else many american without health care last year almost come blow health care anything cold hard fact since last year since another million american work family lose health care cold hard fact many million farmer small business people people see premium skyrocket copays deductible go whole bunch people country statistic health insurance really get piece paper say lose home get sick still believe country get move toward provide health security every american family know last year evidence indicate bit could chew ask work together let u step step let u whatever get something do let u least pas meaningful insurance reform american risk lose coverage face skyrocket price nobody lose coverage face high price unavailable insurance change job lose job family member get sick want work together interest democrat work last time republican leader like senator dole longtime commitment health care reform make constructive proposal area last year ought make sure people small business buy insurance affordable rate voluntary purchasing pool ought help family provide care sick parent disable child work help worker lose job least keep health insurance coverage year look work find may take time find make sure child health care know think everybody room without regard party proud fact country rat world productive economy first time nearly decade proud fact wealthy country world small percentage work force child health insurance today 10 year ago last time productive economy world let u work together important politics usual much american people think tonight already talk lot people think security concern america today entirely internal border relate security job home incomes child streets health protect border cold war pass tempt believe security issue possible exception trade reside home security still depend upon continued world leadership peace freedom democracy still strong home unless strong abroad financial crisis mexico case point know popular say tonight act mexican people sake million american whose livelihood tie mexico wellbeing want secure american job preserve american export safeguard america border must pass stabilization program help put mexico back track let repeat loan foreign aid bailout give guarantee like cosign note good collateral cover risk legislation right thing america bipartisan leadership support hope congress pas quickly interest explain american people go right way know tonight first state union address ever deliver since begin cold war single russian missile point child america along russian way destroy missile bomber carry nuclear warhead come far fast world easy take decline nuclear threat grant still finish yet year ask senate approve start ii eliminate weapon carry warhead united state lead charge extend indefinitely nuclear treaty enact comprehensive nuclear test ban eliminate chemical weapon stop roll back north korea potentially deadly nuclear program continue implement agreement reach nation smart tough deal base continue inspection safeguard ally year submit congress comprehensive legislation strengthen hand combat terrorist whether strike home abroad coward bomb world trade center find country hunt terrorist bring justice week another horrendous terrorist act israel kill 19 injured score behalf american people send deep sympathy family victim know face evil hard people middle east go forward terrorists represent past future must pursue comprehensive peace israel neighbor middle east accordingly last night sign executive order block asset united state terrorist organization threaten disrupt peace process prohibit financial transaction group tonight call ally nation throughout world join u renew fervor global effort combat terrorism permit future mar terror fear paralysis day take oath office pledge nation would maintain best equipped best trained best prepared military earth manage dramatic downsizing force cold war remarkable skill spirit make sure military ready action provide pay quality life military family deserve ask congress add 25 billion defense spending next 6 year visit many base home around world since become president tonight repeat request renew conviction ask great deal arm force small number ask go often different place stay longer call service many many way must give family time demand earn think troop do last year show america best help save hundred thousand people rwanda move lightning speed head another threat kuwait give freedom democracy back people haiti proudly support peace prosperity freedom south africa northern ireland central eastern europe asia latin america middle east endeavor good place make future confident secure well fellow american agenda america future expand opportunity bureaucracy enhance security home abroad empower people make live ambitious achievable enough even need new idea change world equip american compete new economy government small smarter wiser change make government private sector outside fortune posterity also depend upon ability answer question within value voice speak heart well head voice tell u accept responsibility family community yes fellow citizen see family community country come apart feel common ground shift u pta town hall meeting ball park hard lot overwork parent find time space thing strengthen bond trust cooperation many child even parent grandparent give experience need build character sense identity know chamber make difference thing real difference make fellow citizen work live make almost without regard party use go softball park little rock watch daughter league people would come father mother talk honestly say idea whether 90 percent republican democrat visit relief center flood california northern california last week woman come something would hug say president republican glad wait disaster act way use act every day move next century everybody matter person waste lot people lose lot chance well mean need new covenant everybody corporate business leader go work keep bring deficit expand market support success every possible way obligation well keep job community give worker fair share prosperity generate people entertainment industry country applaud creativity worldwide success support freedom expression responsibility assess impact work understand damage come incessant repetitive mindless violence irresponsible conduct permeate medium time get ask community leader kinds organization help u stop serious social problem epidemic teen pregnancy birth marriage send congress plan target school country antipregnancy program work government much tonight call parent leader across country join together national campaign teen pregnancy make difference must would like say special word religious leader know proud fact united state house worship per caput country world people lead house worship ignite congregation carry faith action reach child people distress savage breakdown hold dear much must do must come inside religious leader congregation make difference role new covenant well must responsibility citizen know take lot people help kid trouble stay street school take lot people build habitat humanity house speaker celebrate lapel pin take lot people provide people power civic organization country make community mean much u kid take every parent teach child difference right wrong encourage learn grow say wrong thing also believe whatever want know hard work harder less great stress thing lot people time emotional stress think work citizenship u politics help much year mostly treat citizen like consumer spectator sort political couch potato suppose watch tv ad either promise something nothing play fear frustration citizen get information negative aggressive way hardly conducive honest open conversation truth get stop see enemy different view go back begin country great strength america de tocqueville point come long time ago always ability associate people different work together find common ground day everybody responsibility simply want tornado fire flood behave like american ought behave deal one another want finish point folk first lady represent try talk idea party affiliation vote last election represent ought cindy perry teach second grader read americorps rural kentucky gain give mother four say service inspire get high school equivalency last year marry cindy married teenager four child time serve people get high school equivalency go use americorps money go back college chief stephen bishop police chief kansa city national steve national leader use police community police work americorps crime rate kansa city go result corporal gregory depestre go haiti part adopt country force help secure democracy native land might add must country world could go haiti take could speak language talk people one proud next two folk honor meet get know little bit reverend john reverend diana cherry zion church temple hill maryland would like ask stand want tell early eighty leave government service form church small living room small house early eighty today church member one three four big church entire united state grow 200 month together special focus ministry keep family together two thing make big impression visit church learn build new sanctuary closer washington dc line high crime high drug rate area think part ministry change live people need second thing want say reverend cherry meet white house religious leader leave early go back church minister 150 couple bring back church america convince come back together save marriage raise kid kind work citizen america need ought lift support last person want introduce jack lucas hattiesburg mississippi jack would stand fifty year ago sand iwo jima jack lucas taught learn lesson citizenship february 20th 1945 three buddy encounter enemy two grenade foot jack lucas threw moment save life companion miraculously next instant medic save life gain foothold freedom age 17 year old grandson son west point graduate 17 jack lucas become young marine history young soldier century win congressional medal honor year later yesterday say day matter rely one another country gain give reap sow heart new covenant responsibility opportunity citizenship stale chapter remote civic book still virtue fulfill reach potential like also fulfill eternal promise country endure dream first sacred covenant believe every person country still believe create equal give creator right life liberty pursuit happiness great country best day still come thank god bless