[House Document 104-1]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




        104th Congress, 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - - - - House 
Document 104-1



 
                      STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE

                               __________

                                MESSAGE

                                  from

                   THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                              transmitting

                   A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION




  January 24, 1995.--Message and accompanying papers referred to the 
 Committee of the Whole House on the State of the Union and ordered to 
                              be printed.
To the Congress of the United States:
    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. 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. We are the keepers of the sacred trust, and 
we must be faithful to it in this new and very demanding era.
    Over 200 years ago our founders changed the entire course 
of human history by joining together to create a new country 
based on a single powerful idea: We hold these truths to be 
self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their 
Creator with certain inalienable rights, 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 exert 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, who 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 in security 
for the American people.
    I came to this hallowed Chamber two years ago on a mission, 
to restore the American dream for all our people and to make 
sure that we move into the 21st Century still the strongest 
force for freedom and democracy in the entire world. I was 
determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored. 
In this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, 
and I have learned 
again the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I 
am also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than 
it was two years ago.
    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 bounds 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 a New Deal, which helped to restore our Nation to 
prosperity and defined the relationship between our people and 
their government for half a century. That approach worked in 
its time, but 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 the 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 
altogether 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 can't have one without 
the other, and our national community can't hold together 
without both.
    Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we 
can equip our people to meet the challenges of the new economy, 
how we can change the way our government works to fit a 
different time, and, above all, how we can repair the damaged 
bonds in our 
society and come together behind our common purpose. We must 
have dramatic change in our economy, our government, and 
ourselves.
    My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise 
to the occasion. Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness 
and pride. As we embark on this 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 
that 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 
Capitol 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 I have 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 will sign that, too. We 
should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work, 
what they are spending, what they wanted. We should also curb 
the role of big money in elections by capping the costs of 
campaigns and limiting the influence of PAC's.
    As I have said for three 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 and less 
costly and smarter, leaner.
    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 interests, 
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 decision making from bureaucrats to citizens, 
injecting choice and competition and individual responsibility 
into national policy.
    The old way of governing around here actually seemed to 
reward failure. The New Covenant way should have built-in 
incentives to reward success. The old way was centralized here 
in Washington. The New Covenant way must take hold in the 
communities all across America, and we should help them to do 
that.
    Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to 
empower people to make the most of their own lives, and to 
enhance our security here at home and abroad.
    We must not ask government to do what we should do for 
ourselves. We should rely on government as a partner to help us 
to do more for ourselves and for each other.
    I hope very much that as we debate these specific and 
exciting matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion 
between the illusion that there is somehow a program for every 
problem on the one hand, and the other illusion that the 
government is the source of every problem 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 one-quarter 
of a trillion dollars in spending, more than 300 domestic 
programs, more than 100,000 positions from the Federal 
bureaucracy in the last two years alone. Based on decisions 
already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter 
of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it 
the smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President by 
the time I come here again next year.
    Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our 
initiatives have already saved taxpayers $63 billion. The age 
of the $500 hammer and the ashtray you can break on David 
Letterman is gone. Deadwood programs like mohair subsidies are 
gone. We 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 10,000-page personnel 
manual. And the government is working better in important ways. 
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from 
being a disaster to helping people in disasters.
    You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the 
flood there or the people in California who 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. The university administrators all 
across 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 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, and 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 different. There was $1 
million to study stress in plants, and $12 million for a tick 
removal program that didn't work. It is hard to remove ticks. 
Those of us who have them know. But I will tell you something, 
if you will give me the 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. I hope you will.
    And when we give more flexibility to the states, let us 
remember that there are certain fundamental national needs that 
should be addressed in every state, north and south, east and 
west. Immunization against childhood disease, school lunches in 
all our schools, Head Start, medical care and nutrition for 
pregnant women and infants, all these things are in the 
national interest.
    I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary 
regulations. But when we deregulate, let's remember what 
national action in the national interest has given us: Safer 
food for our families, safer toys for our children, safer 
nursing homes for our parents, safer cars and highways, and 
safer workplaces, cleaner air and cleaner water. Do we need 
common sense and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. 
But we can have common sense and still provide for safe 
drinking water. We can have fairness and still clean up toxic 
dumps, and we ought to do it.
    Should we cut the deficit more? Well, of course we should. 
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, 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 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 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 two years we have 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 two 
years. But after that, there ought to be a simple hard rule. 
Anyone who can work must go to work. If a parent isn't paying 
child support, they should be forced to pay. We should suspend 
their drivers' licenses, track them across state lines, and 
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 child-bearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should 
not be to punish them because they happen to be poor. We should 
require work and mutual responsibility.
    But we shouldn't 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 shouldn't put them and 
their children out on the street.
    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 has 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. 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 further. 
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's not go back on it. Let's stick with it, implement it. We 
have got four more hard years of work to do to do that.
    I don't want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or 
in the country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that 
divided this body greatly last year. The last Congress also 
passed the Brady Bill, and in the crime bill the ban on 19 
assault weapons. I don't think it is 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 have done it 
since I was a boy and I am 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 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 
won't cut government programs that help to prepare us for the 
new economy, promote responsibility and are organized from the 
grassroots up and not by Federal bureaucracy. The very best 
example of this is the National Service Corps of America. It 
passed with strong bipartisan support, and now there are 20,000 
Americans, more than ever served in 1 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 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 services 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, and 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 don't act, our economy 
will probably do what it has 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 end 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 don't 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 a Middle Class Bill of Rights, which should 
properly be called the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, 
because its provisions only benefit those who are working to 
educate and raise their children and to educate themselves. It 
will therefore give needed tax relief and raise incomes in both 
the short run and the long run in a way that benefits all of 
us.
    There are four provisions. First, a tax deduction for all 
education and training after high school. If you think about 
it, we permit businesses to deduct their investment. We permit 
individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages. But 
today an education is even more important to the economic well-
being of our whole country than even those things are. We 
should do everything we can to encourage it, and I hope you 
will support it.
    Second, we ought to cut taxes $500 for families with 
children under 13.
    Third, we ought to foster more savings and personal 
responsibility by permitting people to establish an independent 
retirement account and withdraw from it tax-free for the cost 
of education, health care, first-time home buying, or the care 
of a parent.
    And, fourth, we should pass a 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, or 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 two years to go 
to their local community colleges or wherever else they want to 
get the skills they need to improve their lives. Let's empower 
people in this way. Move it from the government directly to the 
workers of America.
    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 fairly and honestly. Just two 
years ago it was an open question whether we would find the 
strength to cut the deficit. Thanks to the courage of the 
people who were here then, many of whom didn't return, we did 
cut the deficit. We began to do what others said would not be 
done. We cut the deficit by over $600 billion, about $10,000 
for every family in this country. It is coming down three years 
in a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was president, and 
I don't think anybody in America wants us to let it explode 
again.
    In the budget I will send you, the Middle Class Bill of 
Rights is fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in 
programs, cuts in special interest subsidies. And the spending 
cuts will more than double the tax cuts. My budget pays for the 
Middle Class Bill of Rights without any cuts in Medicare, and I 
will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts with Medicare 
cuts. That 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 a middle class and shrink the under class? If it does, I 
will support it. But if it doesn't, I won't.
    The goal of building the middle class and strengthening 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 four and a quarter an 
hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year that minimum 
wage will be at a 40 year low. That 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't make a living on $4.25 an hour, 
especially if you have children, even with the working family's 
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 didn't do anything. And the cold hard fact is that since 
last year, since I was here, another 1.1 million Americans in 
working families have lost their health care, and the cold hard 
fact is that many millions more, most of them farmers and small 
business people and self-employed people have seen their 
premiums skyrocket, their co-payments, 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 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 am 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 welfare reform and made some 
constructive proposals in this area last year.
    We ought to make sure that self-employed people and 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 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.
    We can find a way. It may take sometime, but we can find a 
way to make sure that our children have health care.
    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 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'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 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, in 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't 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 well-being. If 
we want to secure American jobs, preserve American exports, 
safeguard America's borders, then we must pass the 
stabilization program and help to put Mexico back on track.
    Now, let me repeat, it 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 risk. 
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 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 a nuclear threat 
for granted, but it is still there and we aren't finished yet.
    This year I will ask the Senate to include START II, which 
will 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 combatting terrorists, 
whether they strike at home or abroad. 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, 
where the terrorists represent the past, not the future. We 
must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel 
and all of 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 and 
prohibits financial transactions with these groups. 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 quality 
of life the military and their families deserve, I am asking 
the Congress to add $25 billion in defense spending over the 
next six years.
    I have visited many bases at home and around the world 
since I became President. Tonight I repeat that request with 
renewed conviction. We ask a very great deal of our Armed 
Forces. Now that they are smaller in number, we ask more of 
them. They go out more often, to more different places, and 
stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways. And 
we must give them and their families what the times demand and 
what they have earned.
    Just think about what our troops have done in the last 
year, showing America at its best, helping to save hundreds of 
thousands of people in Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to 
head off another threat to Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy 
back to the people of Haiti.
    We have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom 
from South Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern 
Europe to Asia, from Latin America to the Middle East. All of 
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 the changes we can make in government and in the 
private sector from the outside in.
    Our fortunes and our prosperity also depend upon our 
ability to answer some questions from within, 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 ballpark, 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 don't even have parents 
and grandparents who can give them those experiences that they 
need to build their own character, 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 they 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, in 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'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 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 the 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 the 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 that targets schools 
all over this country with anti-pregnancy programs that work. 
But government can only do so much. Tonight I call on parents 
and leaders all across this country to join together in a 
national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference. 
We can do this, and we must.
    And I would like to say a special word to our religious 
leaders. You know, I am proud of the fact that the United 
States has more houses of worship per capita than any other 
country in the world. These people who lead our houses of 
worship can ignite their congregations to carry their faith 
into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of 
the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the 
breakdown of all we hold dear, because so much of what must be 
done must come from the inside out, and our religious leaders 
and their congregations can make all the difference. They have 
a role in the New Covenant as well. There must be more 
responsibility for all of our citizens.
    You know, it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in 
trouble stay off the streets and in school. It takes a lot of 
people to build the Habitat for Humanity houses that the 
Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin. It takes a lot of people 
to provide the people power for all the civic organizations in 
this country that made our communities mean so much to most of 
us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach the 
children the difference between right and wrong and to 
encourage them to learn and grow, and to say no to the wrong 
things, but also to believe that they can be whatever they want 
to be.
    I know it is hard when you are working harder for less, 
when you are under great stress to do these things. A lot of 
our people don't have the time or the emotional strength, they 
think, to do the work of citizenship.
    Most of us in politics haven't helped very much. For years 
we mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or 
spectators, sort of political couch potatoes who were supposed 
to watch the TV ads either promising something for nothing or 
playing 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 wait for a 
tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like Americans ought to 
behave in dealing with one another.
    I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that 
are up with the First Lady that represent what I am trying to 
talk about, citizens. I have no idea what their party 
affiliation is or who they voted for in the last elections. 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.
    Stephen Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He has 
been a national leader--stand up, Stephen--he has been a 
national leader in using more police in community policing, and 
he has 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. 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 made a big impression on me. I visited 
their church once, and I learned they were building a new 
sanctuary closer to the Washington, D.C., line in a higher 
crime, higher drug rate area, because they thought it was part 
of their ministry to change the lives of the people who needed 
them.
    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 his church to minister 
to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church from all 
over America to convince them to come back together to save 
their marriages and to raise their kids. This is the kind of 
work that citizens are doing in America. We need more of it, 
and it ought to be lifted up and supported.
    The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from 
Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up?
    Fifty years ago, in the sands of Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas 
taught and learned the lessons of citizenship. On February 
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 here 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 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 civics 
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.

                               

                                     
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