[House Document 104-168]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
104th Congress, 2d Session - - - - - - - - - - - - House
Document 104-168
STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE
__________
MESSAGE
from
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
transmitting
A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION
January 23, 1996.--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. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the 104th
Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans all across
our land: Let me begin tonight by saying to our men and women
in uniform around the world and especially those helping peace
take root in Bosnia and to their families, I thank you. America
is very, very proud of you.
My duty tonight is to report on the State of the Union, not
the state of our government but of our American community, and
to set forth our responsibilities, in the words of our
Founders, to ``form a more perfect union.''
The State of the Union is strong. Our economy is the
healthiest it has been in three decades. We have the lowest
combined rates of unemployment and inflation in 27 years. We
have created nearly 8 million new jobs, over a million of them
in basic industries like construction and automobiles. America
is selling more cars than Japan for the first time since the
1970s, and for three years in a row we have had a record number
of new businesses started in our country.
Our leadership in the world is also strong, bringing hope
for new peace. And perhaps most important, we are gaining
ground and restoring our fundamental values. The crime rate,
the welfare and food stamp rolls, the poverty rate and the teen
pregnancy rate are all down. And as they go down, prospects for
America's future go up.
We live in an Age of Possibility. A hundred years ago we
moved from farm to factory. Now we move to an age of
technology, information and global competition. These changes
have opened vast new opportunities for our people, but they
have also presented them with stiff challenges.
While more Americans are living better, too many of our
fellow citizens are working harder just to keep up, and they
are rightly concerned about the security of their families.
We must answer here three fundamental questions: First, how
do we make the American dream of opportunity for all a reality
for all Americans who are willing to work for it? Second, how
do we preserve our old and enduring values as we move into the
future? And third, how do we meet these challenges together as
one America?
We know big government does not have all the answers. We
know there's not a program for every problem. We know and we
have worked to give the American people a smaller, less
bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the
American people one that lives within its means. The era of big
government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our
citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go
forward as one America, one nation, working together to meet
the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are
not opposing virtues. We must have both.
I believe our new, smaller government must work in an old-
fashioned American way, together with all of our citizens
through State and local governments, in the workplace, in
religious, charitable and civic associations. Our goal must be
to enable all our people to make the most of their own lives,
with stronger families, more educational opportunities,
economic security, safer streets, a cleaner environment and a
safer world.
To improve the state of our union, we must ask more of
ourselves. We must expect more of each other and we must face
our challenges together.
Here in this place our responsibility begins with balancing
the budget in a way that is fair to all Americans. There is now
broad bipartisan agreement that permanent deficit spending must
come to an end.
I compliment the Republican leadership and their membership
for the energy and determination you have brought to this task
of balancing the budget. And I thank the Democrats for passing
the largest deficit reduction plan in history in 1993, which
has already cut the deficit nearly in half in three years.
Since 1993, we have all begun to see the benefits of
deficit reduction. Lower interest rates have made it easier for
businesses to borrow and to invest and to create new jobs.
Lower interest rates have brought down the cost of home
mortgages, car payments and credit card rates to ordinary
citizens. Now it is time to finish the job and balance the
budget.
Though differences remain among us which are significant,
the combined total of the proposed savings that are common to
both plans is more than enough, using the numbers from your
Congressional Budget Office, to balance the budget in 7 years
and to provide a modest tax cut. These cuts are real. They will
require sacrifice from everyone. But these cuts do not
undermine our fundamental obligations to our parents, our
children and our future by endangering Medicare or Medicaid or
education or the environment or by raising taxes on working
families.
I have said before, and let me say again, many good ideas
have come out of our negotiations. I have learned a lot about
the way both Republicans and Democrats view the debate before
us. I have learned a lot about the good ideas that each side
has that we could all embrace. We ought to resolve our
remaining differences.
I am willing to work to resolve them. I am ready to meet
tomorrow. But I ask you to consider that we should at least
enact the savings that both plans have in common and give the
American people their balanced budget, a tax cut, lower
interest rates, and a brighter future. We should do that now
and make permanent deficits yesterday's legacy.
Now it is time for us to look also to the challenges of
today and tomorrow, beyond the burdens of yesterday. The
challenges are significant. But our Nation was built on
challenges. America was built on challenges, not promises. And
when we work together to meet them we never fail. That is the
key to a more perfect union. Our individual dreams must be
realized by our common efforts.
Tonight I want to speak to you about the challenges we all
face as a people. Our first challenge is to cherish our
children and strengthen America's families. Families are the
foundation of American life. If we have stronger families, we
will have a stronger America.
Before I go on, I would like to take just a moment to thank
my own family and to thank the person who has taught me more
than anyone else, over 25 years, about the importance of
families and children, a wonderful wife, a magnificent mother,
and a great First Lady. Thank you, Hillary.
All strong families begin with taking more responsibility
for our children. I have heard Mrs. Gore say that it is hard to
be a parent today, but it is even harder to be a child. So all
of us, not just as parents, but all of us in our other roles,
our media, our schools, our teachers, our communities, our
churches and synagogues, our businesses, our governments, all
of us have a responsibility to help our children to make it and
to make the most of their lives and their God-given capacities.
To the media, I say you should create movies and CD's and
television shows you'd want your own children and grandchildren
to enjoy.
I call on Congress to pass the requirement for a ``V chip''
in TV sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe
are inappropriate for their children.
When parents control what their young children see, that is
not censorship; that is enabling parents to assume more
personal responsibility for their children's upbringing, and I
urge them to do it. The ``V chip'' requirement is part of the
important telecommunications bill now pending in this Congress.
It has bipartisan support, and I urge you to pass it now.
To make the ``V chip'' work, I challenge the broadcast
industry to do what movies have done: to identify your program
in ways that help parents to protect their children. And I
invite the leaders of major media corporations in the
entertainment industry to come to the White House next month to
work with us in a positive way on concrete ways to improve what
our children see on television. I am ready to work with you.
I say to those who make and market cigarettes, every year a
million children take up smoking, even though it's against the
law. Three hundred thousand of them will have their lives
shortened as a result. Our administration has taken steps to
stop the massive marketing campaigns that appeal to our
children. We are simply saying, ``Market your products to
adults if you wish, but draw the line on children.''
I say to those who are on welfare and especially to those
who have been trapped on welfare for a long time, for too long
our welfare system has undermined the values of family and work
instead of supporting them. The Congress and I are near
agreement on sweeping welfare reform. We agree on time limits,
tough work requirements, and the toughest possible child
support enforcement. But I believe we must also provide child
care so that mothers who are required to go to work can do so
without worrying about what is happening to their children.
I challenge this Congress to send me a bipartisan welfare
reform bill that will really move people from welfare to work
and do the right thing by our children. I will sign it
immediately.
Let us be candid about this difficult problem. Passing a
law, even the best possible law, is only a first step. The next
step is to make it work. I challenge people on welfare to make
the most of this opportunity for independence. I challenge
American businesses to give people on welfare the chance to
move into the work force. I applaud the work of religious
groups and others who care for the poor. More than anyone else
in our society, they know the true difficulty of the task
before us, and they are in a position to help. Every one of us
should join them. That is the only way we can make real welfare
reform a reality in the lives of the American people.
To strengthen the family, we must do everything we can to
keep the teen pregnancy rate going down. I am gratified, as I
am sure all Americans are, that it has dropped for 2 years in a
row, but we all know it is still far too high.
Tonight I am pleased to announce that a group of prominent
Americans is responding to that challenge by forming an
organization that will support grassroots community efforts all
across our country in a national campaign against teen
pregnancy. And I challenge all of us and every American to join
their efforts.
I call on American men and women in families to give
greater respect to one another. We must end the deadly scourge
of domestic violence in our country.
And I challenge America's families to work harder to stay
together, for families that stay together not only do better
economically, their children do better as well. In particular,
I challenge the fathers of this country to love and care for
their children. If your family has separated, you must pay your
child support. We are doing more than ever to make sure you do,
and we are going to do more, but let's all admit something
about that, too. A check will never substitute for a parent's
love and guidance, and only you, only you, can make the
decision to help raise your children. No matter who you are,
how low or high your station in life, it is the most basic
human duty of every American to do that job to the best of his
or her ability.
Our second challenge is to provide Americans with the
educational opportunities we'll all need for this new century.
In our schools every classroom in America must be connected to
the information superhighway with computers, and good software,
and well-trained teachers. We are working with the
telecommunications industry, educators and parents, to connect
20 percent of California's classrooms by this spring, and every
classroom and every library in the entire United States by the
year 2000.
I ask Congress to support this education technology
initiative so that we can make sure this national partnership
succeeds.
Every diploma ought to mean something. I challenge every
community, every school, and every State to adopt national
standards of excellence, to measure whether schools are meeting
those standards, to cut bureaucratic red tape so that schools
and teachers have more flexibility for grassroots reform, and
to hold them accountable for results. That's what our Goals
2000 initiative is all about.
I challenge every State to give all parents the right to
choose which public school their children will attend and to
let teachers form new schools with a charter they can keep only
if they do a good job.
I challenge all our schools to teach character education,
to teach good values and good citizenship, and if it means that
teenagers will stop killing each other over designers jackets,
then our public schools should be able to require their
students to wear school uniforms.
I challenge our parents to become their children's first
teachers, turn off the TV, see that the homework is done, and
visit your children's classroom. No program, no teacher, no one
else can do that for you.
My fellow Americans, higher education is more important
today than ever before. We've created a new student loan
program that has made it easier to borrow and repay those
loans, and we have dramatically cut the student loan default
rate. That is something we should all be proud of because it
was unconscionably high just a few years ago. Through
AmeriCorps, our national service program, this year 25,000
young people will earn college money by serving their local
communities to improve the lives of their friends and
neighbors.
These initiatives are right for America, and we should keep
them going, and we should also work hard to open the doors of
college even wider.
I challenge Congress to expand work study and help 1
million young Americans work their way through college by the
year 2000, to provide a $1,000 merit scholarship for the top 5
percent of graduates in every high school in the United States,
to expand Pell grant scholarships for deserving and needy
students, and to make up to $10,000 a year of college tuition
tax deductible. It is a good idea for America.
Our third challenge is to help every American who is
willing to work for it achieve economic security in this new
age. People who work hard still need support to get ahead in
the new economy, they need education and training for a
lifetime, they need more support for families raising children,
they need retirement security, they need access to health care.
More and more Americans are finding that the education of their
childhood simply doesn't last a lifetime. So I challenge
Congress to consolidate 70 overlapping, antiquated job training
programs into a simple voucher worth $2,600 for unemployed or
underemployed workers to use as they please for community
college tuition or other training. This is a GI bill for
America's workers we should all be able to agree on.
More and more Americans are working hard without a raise.
Congress sets the minimum wage. Within a year the minimum wage
will fall to a 40-year low in purchasing power. Four dollars
and twenty-five cents an hour is no longer a minimum wage, but
millions of Americans and their children are trying to live on
it. I challenge you to raise their minimum wage.
In 1993 Congress cut the taxes of 15 million hard-pressed
working families to make sure that no parents who work full
time would have to raise their children in poverty and to
encourage people to move from welfare to work. This expanded
Earned Income Tax Credit is now worth about $1,800 a year to a
family of four living on $20,000. The budget bill I vetoed
would have reversed this achievement and raised taxes on nearly
8 million of these people. We should not do that. We should not
do that.
But I also agree that the people who are helped under this
initiative are not all those in our country who are working
hard to do a good job raising their children and that work. I
agree that we need a tax credit for working families with
children. That's one of the things most of us in this Chamber,
I hope, can agree on. I know it is strongly supported by the
Republican majority, and it should be part of any final budget
agreement.
I want to challenge every business that can possibly afford
it to provide pensions for your employees, and I challenge
Congress to pass a proposal recommended by the White House
Conference on Small Business that would make it easier for
small businesses and farmers to establish their own pension
plans. That is something we should all agree on.
We should also protect existing pension plans. Two years
ago, with bipartisan support, it was almost unanimous on both
sides of the aisle, we moved to protect the pensions of 8
million working people and to stabilize the pensions of 32
million more. Congress should not now let companies endanger
those workers' pension funds.
I know the proposal to liberalize the ability of employers
to take money out of the pension funds for other purposes would
raise money for the Treasury, but I believe it is false
economy. I vetoed that proposal last year, and I would have to
do so again.
Finally, if our working families are going to succeed in
the new economy, they must be able to buy health insurance
policies that they do not lose when they change jobs or when
someone in their family gets sick. Over the past two years,
over 1 million Americans in working families have lost their
health insurance. We have to do more to make health care
available to every American, and Congress should start by
passing the bipartisan bill sponsored by Senator Kennedy and
Senator Kassebaum that would require insurance companies to
stop dropping people when they switch jobs and stop denying
coverage for preexisting conditions. Let's all do that.
And even as we enact savings in these programs, we must
have a common commitment to preserve the basic protections of
Medicare and Medicaid, not just to the poor, but to people in
working families, including children, people with disabilities,
people with AIDS, senior citizens in nursing homes. In the past
three years, we have saved $15 billion just by fighting health
care fraud and abuse.
We have all agreed to save much more. We have all agreed to
stabilize the Medicare Trust Fund, but we must not abandon our
fundamental obligations to the people who need Medicare and
Medicaid. America cannot become stronger if they become weaker.
The GI Bill for Workers, tax relief for education and
child-rearing, pension availability and protection, access to
health care, preservation of Medicare and Medicaid, these
things, along with the Family and Medical Leave Act passed in
1993, these things will help responsible, hard-working American
families to make the most of their own lives.
But employers and employees must do their part as well, as
they are doing in so many of our finest companies: working
together, putting the long-term prosperity ahead of the short-
term gain. As workers increase their hours and their
productivity, employers should make sure they get the skills
they need and share the benefits of the good years as well as
the burdens of the bad ones. When companies and workers work as
a team, they do better, and so does America.
Our fourth great challenge is to take our streets back from
crime and gangs and drugs. At last we have begun to find a way
to reduce crime, forming community partnerships with local
police forces to catch criminals and prevent crime.
This strategy, called community policing, is clearly
working. Violent crime is coming down all across America. In
New York City, murders are down 25 percent; in St. Louis, 18
percent; and in Seattle, 32 percent. But we still have a long
way to go before our streets are safe and our people are free
from fear.
The Crime Bill of 1994 is critical to the success of
community policing. It provides funds for 100,000 new police in
communities of all sizes. We are already a third of the way
there, and I challenge the Congress to finish the job. Let us
stick with a strategy that is working and keep the crime rate
coming down.
Community policing also requires bonds of trust between
citizens and police. I ask all Americans to respect and support
our law enforcement officers, and to our police I say, our
children need you as role models and heroes. Don't let them
down.
The Brady Bill has already stopped 44,000 people with
criminal records from buying guns. The assault weapons ban is
keeping 19 kinds of assault weapons out of the hands of violent
gangs. I challenge the Congress to keep those laws on the
books.
Our next step in the fight against crime is to take on
gangs the way we once took on the mob. I am directing the FBI
and other investigative agencies to target gangs that involve
juveniles and violent crime, and to seek authority to prosecute
as adults teenagers who maim and kill like adults. And I
challenge local housing authorities and tenant associations:
Criminal gang members and drug dealers are destroying the lives
of decent tenants. From now on, the rule for residents who
commit crime and peddle drugs should be, one strike and you're
out.
I challenge every State to match Federal policy to assure
that serious violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of
their sentence. More police and punishment are important, but
they are not enough. We have got to keep more of our young
people out of trouble with prevention strategies not dictated
by Washington, but developed in communities. I challenge all of
our communities, all of our adults, to give our children
futures to say yes to, and I challenge Congress not to abandon
the Crime Bill's support of these grassroots prevention
efforts.
Finally, to reduce crime and violence, we have to reduce
the drug problem. The challenge begins in our homes with
parents talking to their children openly and firmly, and
embraces our churches and synagogues, our youth groups and our
schools. I challenge Congress not to cut our support for drug-
free schools. People like these DARE officers are making a real
impression on grade school children that will give them the
strength to say no when the time comes.
Meanwhile, we continue our efforts to cut the flow of drugs
into America. For the last two years, one man in particular has
been on the front lines of that effort. Tonight I am nominating
him, a hero of the Persian Gulf War and the Commander in Chief
of the United States military's Southern Command, General Barry
McCaffrey as America's new drug czar.
General McCaffrey has earned three Purple Hearts and two
Silver Stars fighting for this country. Tonight I ask that he
lead our Nation's battle against drugs at home and abroad. To
succeed, he needs a force far larger than he has ever commanded
before. He needs all of us, every one of us has a role to play
on this team. Thank you, General McCaffrey, for agreeing to
serve your country one more time.
Our fifth challenge, to leave our environment safe and
clean for the next generation. Because of a generation of
bipartisan effort, we do have cleaner water and air; lead
levels in children's blood has been cut by 70 percent; toxic
emissions from factories, cut in half. Lake Erie was dead and
now it is a thriving resource. But 10 million children under 12
still live within four miles of a toxic waste dump. A third of
us breathe air that endangers our health, and in too many
communities, the water is not safe to drink.
We still have much to do. Yet Congress has voted to cut
environmental enforcement by 25 percent. That means more toxic
chemicals in our water, more smog in our air, more pesticides
in our food. Lobbyists for our polluters have been allowed to
write their own loopholes into bills to weaken laws that
protect the health and safety of our children.
Some say that the taxpayers should pick up the tab for
toxic waste and let polluters who can afford to fix it off the
hook. I challenge Congress to reexamine those policies and to
reverse them. This issue has not been a partisan issue. The
most significant environmental gains in the last 30 years were
made under a Democratic Congress and President Richard Nixon.
We can work together.
We have to believe some basic things. Do you believe we can
expand the economy without hurting the environment? I do. Do
you believe we can create more jobs over the long run by
cleaning the environment up? I know we can. That should be our
commitment.
We must challenge businesses and communities to take more
initiative in protecting the environment, and we have to make
it easier for them to do it. To businesses, this administration
is saying, if you can find a cheaper, more efficient way than
government regulations require to meet tough pollution
standards, do it, as long as you do it right. To communities we
say, we must strengthen community right-to-know laws requiring
polluters to disclose their emissions, but you have to use the
information to work with business to cut pollution. People do
have a right to know that their air and their water are safe.
Our sixth challenge is to maintain America's leadership in
the fight for freedom and peace throughout the world. Because
of American leadership, more people than ever before live free
and at peace, and Americans have known 50 years of prosperity
and security.
We owe thanks especially to our veterans of World War II. I
would like to say to Senator Bob Dole and to all others in this
Chamber who fought in World War II; and to all others on both
sides of the aisle who have fought bravely in all of our
conflicts since, I salute your service and so do the American
people.
All over the world, even after the Cold War, people still
look to us and trust us to help them seek the blessings of
peace and freedom. But as the Cold War fades in the memory,
voices of isolation say, America should retreat from its
responsibilities. I say they are wrong.
The threats we face today as Americans respect no Nation's
borders. Think of them: terrorism, the spread of weapons of
mass destruction, organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic and
religious hatred, aggression by rogue states, environmental
degradation. If we fail to address these threats today, we will
suffer the consequences in all our tomorrows.
Of course we can't be everywhere; of course we can't do
everything. But where our interests and our values are at stake
and where we can make a difference, America must lead. We must
not be isolationists, we must not be the world's policeman, but
we can and should be the world's very best peacemaker.
By keeping our military strong, by using diplomacy where we
can and force where we must, by working with others to share
the risk and the cost of our efforts, America is making a
difference for people here and around the world. For the first
time since the dawn of the nuclear age, for the first time
since the dawn of the nuclear age, there is not a single
Russian missile pointed at America's children.
North Korea has now frozen its dangerous nuclear weapons
program. In Haiti, the dictators are gone, democracy has a new
day, the flow of desperate refugees to our shores has subsided.
Through tougher trade deals for America, over 80 of them, we
have opened markets abroad, and now exports are at an all-time
high, growing faster than imports and creating good American
jobs.
We stood with those taking risks for peace, in Northern
Ireland where Catholic and Protestant children now tell their
parents, violence must never return; in the Middle East where
Arabs and Jews who once seemed destined to fight forever now
share knowledge and resources and even dreams.
And we stood up for peace in Bosnia. Remember the skeletal
prisoners, the mass graves, the campaigns of rape and torture,
the endless lines of refugees, the threat of a spreading war.
All of these threats, all these horrors, have now begun to give
way to the promise of peace. Now our troops and a strong NATO,
together with our new partners from Central Europe and
elsewhere, are helping that peace to take hold. As all of you
know, I was just there with a bipartisan congressional group,
and I was so proud not only of what our troops were doing, but
of the pride they evidenced in what they were doing. They knew
what America's mission in this world is, and they were proud to
be carrying it out.
Through these efforts, we have enhanced the security of the
American people. But make no mistake about it, important
challenges remain. The START II treaty with Russia will cut our
nuclear stockpiles by another 25 percent. I urge the Senate to
ratify it now. We must end the race to create new nuclear
weapons by signing a truly comprehensive nuclear test ban
treaty this year.
As we remember what happened in the Japanese subway, we can
outlaw poison gas forever if the Senate ratifies the Chemical
Weapons Convention this year.
We can intensify the fight against terrorists and organized
criminals at home and abroad, if Congress passes the anti-
terrorism legislation I proposed after the Oklahoma City
bombing now. We can help more people move from hatred to hope
all across the world in our own interest if Congress gives us
the means to remain the world's leader for peace.
My fellow Americans, the six challenges I have just
discussed are for all of us. Our seventh challenge is really
America's challenge to those of us in this hallowed hall
tonight, to reinvent our government and make our democracy work
for them.
Last year this Congress applied to itself the laws it
applies to everyone else. This Congress banned gifts and meals
from lobbyists. This Congress forced lobbyists to disclose who
pays them and what legislation they are trying to pass or kill.
This Congress did that and I applaud you for it.
Now I challenge Congress to go further, to curb special
interest influence in politics by passing the first truly
bipartisan campaign finance reform bill in a generation. You,
Republicans and Democrats alike, can show the American people
that we can limit spending and we can open the airwaves to all
candidates.
I also appeal to Congress to pass the line item veto you
promised the American people.
Our administration is working hard to give the American
people a government that works better and costs less. Thanks to
the work of Vice President Gore we are eliminating 16,000 pages
of unnecessary rules and regulations, shifting more
decisionmaking out of Washington back to States and local
communities. As we move into the era of balanced budgets and
smaller government, we must work in new ways to enable people
to make the most of their own lives. We are helping America's
communities not with more bureaucracy but with more
opportunities.
Through our successful empowerment zones and community
development banks, we are helping people to find jobs, to start
businesses. And with tax incentives for companies that clean up
abandoned industrial properties, we can bring jobs back to
places that desperately, desperately need them. But there are
some areas that the Federal Government should not leave and
should address and address strongly.
One of these areas is the problem of illegal immigration.
After years of neglect, this administration has taken a strong
stand to stiffen the protection of our borders. We are
increasing border controls by 50 percent. We are increasing
inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal immigrants. And
tonight I announce I will sign an executive order to deny
Federal contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
Let me be very clear about this. We are still a nation of
immigrants. We should be proud of it. We should honor every
legal immigrant here working hard to be a good citizen, working
hard to become a new citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.
I want to say a special word now to those who work for our
Federal Government. Today the Federal work force is 200,000
employees smaller than it was the day I took office as
President. Our Federal Government today is the smallest it has
been in 30 years, and it is getting smaller every day. Most of
our fellow Americans probably don't know that. There's a good
reason, a good reason. The remaining Federal work force is
composed of hard-working Americans who are now working harder
and working smarter than ever before to make sure the quality
of our services does not decline.
I would like to give you one example. His name is Richard
Dean. He is a 49-year-old Vietnam veteran who has worked for
the Social Security Administration for 22 years now. Last year
he was hard at work in the Federal building in Oklahoma City,
when the blast killed 169 people and brought the rubble down
all around him. He reentered that building four times. He saved
the lives of three women. He is here with us this evening and I
want to recognize Richard and applaud both his public service
and his extraordinary personal heroism.
But Richard Dean's story doesn't end there. This last
November, he was forced out of his office when the government
shut down. And the second time the government shut down, he
continued helping Social Security recipients, but he was
working without pay.
On behalf of Richard Dean and his family and all the other
people who are out there working every day doing a good job for
the American people, I challenge all of you in this Chamber,
never, ever shut the Federal Government down again.
On behalf of all Americans, especially those who need their
Social Security payments at the beginning of March, I also
challenge the Congress to preserve the full faith and credit of
the United States, to honor the obligations of this great
nation as we have for 220 years, to rise above partisanship and
pass a straightforward extension of the debt limit and show the
people America keeps its word.
I know that this evening I have asked a lot of Congress and
even more from America, but I am confident. When Americans work
together in their homes, their schools, their churches and
synagogues, their civic groups, their workplace, they can meet
any challenge.
I say again, the era of big government is over, but we
can't go back to the era of fending for yourself. We have to go
forward to the era of working together as a community, as a
team, as one America, with all of us reaching across these
lines that divide us, the division, the discrimination, the
rancor, we have to reach across it to find common ground. We
have got to work together, if we want America to work.
I want you to meet two more people tonight who do just
that. Lucius Wright is a teacher in the Jackson, Mississippi
public school system. A Vietnam veteran, he has created groups
to help inner city children turn away from gangs and build
futures they can believe in.
Sergeant Jennifer Rogers is a police officer in Oklahoma
City. Like Richard Dean she helped to pull her fellow citizens
out of the rubble and deal with that awful tragedy. She reminds
us that in their response to that atrocity, the people of
Oklahoma City lifted all of us with their basic sense of
decency and community.
Lucius Wright and Jennifer Rogers are special Americans,
and I have the honor to announce tonight that they are the very
first of several thousand Americans who will be chosen to carry
the Olympic torch on its long journey from Los Angeles to the
centennial of the modern Olympics in Atlanta this summer, not
because they are star athletes but because they are star
citizens, community heroes meeting America's challenges. They
are our real champions. Please stand up.
Now each of us must hold high the torch of citizenship in
our own lives. None of us can finish the race alone. We can
only achieve our destiny together, one hand, one generation,
one American connecting to another.
There have always been things we could do together, dreams
we could make real which we could never have done on our own.
We Americans have forged our identity, our very union, from the
very point of view that we can accommodate every point on the
planet, every different opinion. But we must be bound together
by a faith more powerful than any doctrine that divides us, by
our belief in progress, our love of liberty and our relentless
search for common ground. America has always sought and always
risen to every challenge.
Who would say that having come so far together we will not
go forward from here? Who would say that this Age of
Possibility is not for all Americans?
Our country is and always has been a great and good nation,
but the best is yet to come, if we all do our part.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States
of America.