[House Document 105-1]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



105th Congress, 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - - House Document 105-1


 
                      STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE

                               __________

                                MESSAGE

                                  from

                   THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                              transmitting

                   A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION




February 4, 1997.--Message 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 105th 
Congress, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans:
    I think I should start by saying thanks for inviting me 
back.
    I come before you tonight with a challenge as great as any 
in our peacetime history, and a plan of action to meet that 
challenge, to prepare our people for the bold new world of the 
21st century.
    We have much to be thankful for. With 4 years of growth, we 
have won back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and 
welfare rolls declining, we are winning back our optimism, the 
enduring faith that we can master any difficulty. With the Cold 
War receding and global commerce at record levels, we are 
helping to win an unrivaled peace and prosperity all across the 
world.
    My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but 
now we must rise to the decisive moment, to make a Nation and a 
world better than any we have ever known. The new promise of 
the global economy, the information age, unimagined new work, 
life-enhancing technology, all these are ours to seize. That is 
our honor and our challenge. We must be shapers of events, not 
observers. For if we do not act, the moment will pass, and we 
will lose the best possibilities of our future.
    We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy: The 
enemy of our time is inaction.
    So tonight I issue a call to action, action by this 
Congress, action by our States, by our people, to prepare 
America for the 21st century. Action to keep our economy and 
our democracy strong and working for all our people; action to 
strengthen education and harness the forces of technology and 
science; action to build stronger families and stronger 
communities and a safer environment; action to keep America the 
world's strongest force for peace, freedom, and prosperity. And 
above all, action to build a more perfect union here at home.
    The spirit we bring to our work will make all the 
difference. We must be committed to the pursuit of opportunity 
for all Americans, responsibility from all Americans, in a 
community of all Americans. And we must be committed to a new 
kind of government, not to solve all our problems for us, but 
to give our people, all our people, the tools they need to make 
the most of their own lives.
    And we must work together. The people of this Nation 
elected us all. They want us to be partners, not partisans. 
They put us all right here in the same boat. They gave us all 
oars, and they told us to row. Now, here is the direction I 
believe we should take. First we must move quickly to complete 
the unfinished business of our country, to balance the budget, 
renew our democracy, and finish the job of welfare reform.
    Over the last 4 years, we have brought new economic growth 
by investing in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our 
deficits, creating over 11 million new jobs, a 4-year record. 
Now we must keep our economy the strongest in the world. We 
here tonight have an historic opportunity. Let this Congress be 
the Congress that finally balances the budget.
    In two days, I will propose a detailed plan to balance the 
budget by 2002. This plan will balance the budget and invest in 
our people while protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education and 
the environment. It will balance the budget and build on the 
Vice President's efforts to make our government work better 
even as it costs less.
    It will balance the budget and provide middle class tax 
relief to pay for education and health care, to help to raise a 
child, to buy and sell a home.
    Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my 
signature. It does not require us to rewrite our Constitution.
    I believe it is both unnecessary and unwise to adopt a 
balanced budget amendment that could cripple our country in 
time of economic crisis and force unwanted results, such as 
judges halting Social Security checks or increasing taxes. Let 
us at least agree we should not pass any measure, no measure 
should be passed that threatens Social Security. Whatever your 
view on that, we all must concede, we do not need a 
constitutional amendment; we need action.
    Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now. 
And then for the long-term health of our society, we must agree 
to a bipartisan process to preserve Social Security and reform 
Medicare for the long run so that these fundamental programs 
will be as strong for our children as they are for our parents.
    And let me say something that is not in my script tonight: 
I know this is not going to be easy, but I really believe one 
of the reasons the American people gave me a second term was to 
take the tough decisions in the next four years that will carry 
our country through the next 50 years. I know it is easier for 
me than for you to say or do, but another reason I was elected 
is to support all of you without regard to party to give you 
what is necessary to join in these decisions. We owe it to our 
country and to our future.
    Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to 
commit ourselves tonight before the eyes of America to finally 
enacting bipartisan campaign finance reform. Senators McCain 
and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan have reached 
across party lines here to craft tough and fair reform. Their 
proposal would curb spending, reduce the role of special 
interests, create a level playing field between challengers and 
incumbents and ban contributions from noncitizens, all 
corporate sources and the other large soft money contributions 
that both parties receive.
    You know and I know that this can be delayed, and you know 
and I know that delay will mean the death of reform. So let us 
set our own deadline. Let us work together to write bipartisan 
campaign finance reform into law and pass McCain-Feingold by 
the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy, July 4th.
    There is a third piece of unfinished business. Over the 
last four years, we moved a record two and a quarter million 
people off the welfare rolls. Then last year, Congress enacted 
landmark welfare reform legislation demanding that all able-
bodied recipients assume the responsibility of moving from 
welfare to work. Now each and every one of us has to fulfill 
our responsibility, indeed our moral obligation, to make sure 
that people who now must work can work.
    Now we must act to meet a new goal, 2 million more people 
off the welfare rolls by the year 2000.
    Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives for 
businesses that hire people off welfare; incentives for job 
placement firms and States to create more jobs for welfare 
recipients; training, transportation and child care to help 
people go to work.
    Now I challenge every State: Turn those welfare checks into 
private sector paychecks. I challenge every religious 
congregation, every community nonprofit, every business to hire 
someone off welfare. And I would like to say especially to 
every employer in our country, whoever criticized the old 
welfare system, you cannot blame that old system anymore. We 
have torn it down. Now do your part. Give someone on welfare 
the chance to go to work.
    Tonight I am pleased to announce that five major 
corporations, Sprint, Monsanto, UPS, Burger King and United 
Airlines, will be the first to join in a new national effort to 
marshal America's businesses, large and small, to create jobs 
so that people can move from welfare to work. We passed welfare 
reform. All of you know I believe we were right to do it. But 
no one can walk out of this Chamber with a clear conscience 
unless you are prepared to finish the job.
    And we must join together to do something else, too, 
something both Republican and Democratic governors have asked 
us to do, to restore basic health and disability benefits when 
misfortune strikes immigrants who came to this country legally, 
who work hard, pay taxes and obey the law. To do otherwise is 
simply unworthy of a great Nation of immigrants.
    Now, looking ahead, the greatest step of all, the high 
threshold of the future we must now cross and my number one 
priority for the next four years is to ensure that all 
Americans have the best education in the world.
    Let us work together to meet these three goals: Every 8-
year-old must be able to read; every 12-year-old must be able 
to log on to the Internet; every 18-year-old must be able to go 
to college; and every adult American must be able to keep on 
learning for a lifetime.
    My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to 
these goals, $51 billion next year. But far more than money is 
required.
    I have a plan, a call to action for American education 
based on these 10 principles.
    First, a national crusade for education standards, not 
Federal Government standards, but national standards 
representing what all of our students must know to succeed in 
the knowledge economy of the 21st century.
    Every State and school must shape the curriculum to reflect 
these standards and train teachers to lift students up to them. 
To help schools meet the standards and measure their progress, 
we will lead an effort over the next 2 years to develop 
national tests of student achievement in reading and math.
    Tonight I issue a challenge to the Nation: Every State 
should adopt high national standards, and by 1999 every State 
should test every fourth grader in reading and every eighth 
grader in math to make sure these standards are met.
    Raising standards will not be easy, and some of our 
children will not be able to meet them at first. The point is 
not to put our children down, but to lift them up. Good tests 
will show us who needs help, what changes in teaching to make, 
and which schools need to improve. They can help us to end 
social promotion, for no child should move from grade school to 
junior high or junior high to high school until he or she is 
ready.
    Last month, our Secretary of Education Dick Riley and I 
visited northern Illinois where eighth grade students from 20 
school districts in a project aptly called ``First in the 
World'' took the Third International Math and Science Study. 
That is a test that reflects the world class standards our 
children must meet for the new era. And those students in 
Illinois tied for first in the world in science and came in 
second in math.
    Two of them, Kristin Tanner and Chris Getsla, are here 
tonight, along with their teacher, Sue Winski. They are up 
there with the First Lady, and they prove that when we aim high 
and challenge our students, they will be the best in the world. 
Let us give them a hand. Stand up, please.
    Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best 
teachers. Most of us in this Chamber would not be here tonight 
without the help of those teachers. I know that I would not be 
here.
    For years, many of our educators, led by North Carolina's 
Governor Jim Hunt and the National Board for Professional 
Teaching Standards, have worked very hard to establish 
nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 
Just 500 of these teachers have been certified since 1995. My 
budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification 
as master teachers.
    We should reward and recognize our best teachers. And as we 
reward them, we should quickly and fairly remove those few who 
do not measure up, and we should challenge more of our finest 
young people to consider teaching as a career.
    Third, we must do more to help all our children read. Forty 
percent, 40 percent, of our 8-year-olds cannot read on their 
own. That is why we have just launched the America Reads 
Initiative, to build a citizen army of 1 million volunteer 
tutors to make sure every child can read independently by the 
end of the third grade. We will use thousands of AmeriCorps 
volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. We want at least 
100,000 college students to help.
    And tonight I am pleased that 60 college presidents have 
answered my call, pledging that thousands of their work/study 
students will serve for 1 year as reading tutors.
    This is also a challenge to every teacher and every 
principal: You must use these tutors to help your students 
read. And it is especially a challenge to our parents: You must 
read with our children every night.
    This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the 
first days of life. Scientists are now discovering how young 
children develop emotionally and intellectually from their very 
first days and how important it is for parents to begin 
immediately talking, singing, even reading, to their infants.
    The First Lady has spent years writing about this issue, 
studying it, and she and I are going to convene a White House 
Conference on Early Learning and the Brain this spring to 
explore how parents and educators can best use these startling 
new findings.
    We already know we should start teaching children before 
they start school. That is why this balanced budget expands 
Head Start to 1 million children by 2002. That is why the Vice 
President and Mrs. Gore will host their annual family 
conference this June on what we can do to make sure that 
parents are an active part of their children's learning all the 
way through school.
    They have done a great deal to highlight the importance of 
family in our life, and now they are turning their attention to 
getting more parents involved in their children's learning all 
the way through school. And I thank you, Mr. Vice President, 
and I thank you especially, Tipper, for what you are doing.
    Fifth, every State should give parents the power to choose 
the right public school for their children. Their right to 
choose will foster a competition and innovation that can make 
public schools better. We should also make it possible for more 
parents and teachers to start charter schools, schools that set 
and meet the highest standards and exist only as long as they 
do. Our plan will help America to create 3,000 of these charter 
schools by the next century, nearly seven times as many as 
there are in the country today, so that parents will have even 
more choices in sending their children to the best schools.
    Sixth, character education must be taught in our schools. 
We must teach our children to be good citizens, and we must 
continue to promote order and discipline, supporting 
communities that introduce school uniforms, impose curfews, 
enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive students from the 
classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs in 
schools.
    Seventh, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves 
up in schools that are literally falling down. With the student 
population at an all-time high and record numbers of school 
buildings falling into disrepair, this has now become a serious 
national concern.
    Therefore, my budget includes a new initiative: $5 billion 
to help communities finance $20 billion in school construction 
over the next 4 years.
    Eighth, we must make the 13th and 14th years of education, 
at least 2 years of college, just as universal in America by 
the 21st century as a high school education is today, and we 
must open the doors of college to all Americans.
    To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on 
Georgia's pioneering program, 2 years of a $1,500 tax credit 
for college tuition, enough to pay for the typical community 
college.
    I also propose a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for 
all tuition after high school, an expanded IRA you can withdraw 
from tax free for education, and the largest increase in Pell 
grant scholarships in 20 years.
    This plan will give most families the ability to pay no 
taxes on money they saved for college tuition. I ask you to 
pass it, and give every American who works hard the chance to 
go to college.
    Ninth, in the 21st century, we must expand the frontiers of 
learning across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, 
must have the chance to learn new skills. Most Americans live 
near a community college. The roads that take them there could 
be paths to a better future. My GI bill for America's workers 
will transform the confusing tangle of Federal training 
programs into a simple skill grant to go directly into eligible 
workers' hands. For too long, this bill has been sitting on 
that desk there without action. I ask you to pass it now. Let 
us give more of our workers the ability to learn and to earn 
for a lifetime.
    Tenth, we must bring the power of the Information Age into 
all our schools. Last year, I challenged America to connect 
every classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000, 
so that for the first time in our history, children in the most 
isolated rural towns, the most comfortable suburbs, the poorest 
inner city schools, will have the same access to the same 
universe of knowledge. That is my plan: a call to action for 
American education.
    Some may say that it is unusual for a President to pay this 
kind of attention to education. Some may say it is simply 
because the President and his wonderful wife have been obsessed 
with this subject for more years than they can recall. That is 
not what is driving these proposals. We must understand the 
significance of this endeavor. One of the greatest sources of 
our strength throughout the Cold War was a bipartisan foreign 
policy. Because our future was at stake, politics stopped at 
the water's edge. Now I ask you, and I ask all our Nation's 
governors, I ask parents, teachers and citizens all across 
America, for a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because 
education is a critical national security issue for our future, 
and politics must stop at the schoolhouse door.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness 
the powerful forces of science and technology to benefit all 
Americans.
    This is the first State of the Union carried live in video 
over the Internet. But we have only begun to spread the 
benefits of a technology revolution that should become the 
modern birthright of every citizen.
    Our effort to connect every classroom is just the 
beginning. Now we should connect every hospital to the 
Internet, so doctors can instantly share data about their 
patients with the best specialists in the field. And I 
challenge the private sector tonight to start by connecting 
every children's hospital as soon as possible, so that a child 
in bed can stay in touch with school, family and friends. A 
sick child need no longer be a child alone.
    We must build the second generation of the Internet so our 
leading universities and national laboratories can communicate 
in speeds a thousand times faster than today, to develop new 
medical treatments, new sources of energy, new ways of working 
together.
    But we cannot stop there. As the Internet becomes our new 
town square, a computer in every home, a teacher of all 
subjects, a connection to all cultures, this will no longer be 
a dream, but a necessity. And over the next decade, that must 
be our goal.
    We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with 
the Mars probes and the international space station, both of 
which will have practical applications for our everyday living.
    We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. 
The human genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries 
of life. American scientists have discovered genes linked to 
breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication that stops a 
stroke in progress and begins to reverse its effects, and 
treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with 
HIV and AIDS.
    Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the 
National Institutes of Health has increased dramatically, to 
$1.5 billion. With new resources, NIH will now become the most 
powerful discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine, working with 
other scientists to finally end the threat of AIDS. Remember 
that every year we move up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine 
will save millions of lives around the world. We must reinforce 
our commitment to medical science.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build 
stronger families.
    Over the past 4 years, the family and medical leave law has 
helped millions of Americans to take time off to be with their 
families. With new pressures on people in the way they work and 
live, I believe we must expand family leave so that workers can 
take time off for teacher conferences and a child's medical 
checkup. We should pass flextime so workers can choose to be 
paid for overtime in income, or trade it in for time off to be 
with their families.
    We must continue, step by step, to give more families 
access to affordable, quality health care. Forty million 
Americans still lack health insurance. Ten million children 
still lack health insurance. Eighty percent of them have 
working parents who pay taxes. That is wrong. My balanced 
budget will extend health coverage to up to 5 million of those 
children. Since nearly half of all children who lose their 
insurance do so because their parents lose or change a job, my 
budget will also ensure that people who temporarily lose their 
jobs can still afford to keep their health insurance. No child 
should be without a doctor just because a parent is without a 
job.
    My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of 
the trust fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care 
for the many families with loved ones afflicted with 
Alzheimer's, and for the first time it would fully pay for 
annual mammograms.
    Just as we ended drive-through deliveries of babies last 
year, we must now end the dangerous and demeaning practice of 
forcing women home from the hospital only hours after a 
mastectomy. I ask your support for bipartisan legislation to 
guarantee that a woman can stay in the hospital for 48 hours 
after a mastectomy. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a 
Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice spurred a 
national movement and inspired this legislation. I would like 
her to stand so we can thank her for her efforts. Dr. Zarfos, 
thank you.
    In the last 4 years, we have increased child support 
collections by 50 percent. Now we should go further and do 
better, by making it a felony for any parent to cross a State 
line in an attempt to flee from this, his or her most sacred 
obligation.
    Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm 
in our determination to ban the advertising and marketing of 
cigarettes that endanger their lives.
    To prepare America for the 21st century we must build 
stronger communities. We should start with safe streets. 
Serious crime has dropped 5 years in a row. The key has been 
community policing. We must finish the job of putting 100,000 
community police on the streets of the United States.
    We should pass the victims rights amendment to the 
Constitution, and I ask you to mount a full-scale assault on 
juvenile crime with legislation that declares war on gangs, 
with new prosecutors and tougher penalties, extends the Brady 
bill so violent teen criminals will not be able to buy 
handguns, requires child safety locks on handguns to prevent 
unauthorized use and helps to keep our schools open after hours 
on weekends and in the summer so our young people will have 
some place to go and something to say yes to.
    This balanced budget includes the largest antidrug effort 
ever to stop drugs at their source, punish those who push them 
and teach our young people that drugs are wrong, drugs are 
illegal and drugs will kill them. I hope you will support it.
    Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and 
rural neighborhoods, but we must do more to empower them to 
create the conditions in which all families can flourish and to 
create jobs through investment by business and loans by banks.
    We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have 
already brought so much hope to communities like Detroit, where 
the unemployment rate has been cut in half in 4 years.
    We should restore contaminated urban land and buildings to 
productive use. We should expand the network of community 
development banks, and together we must pledge tonight that we 
will use this empowerment approach, including private sector 
tax incentives, to renew our capital city so that Washington is 
a great place to work and live and once again the proud face 
America shows the world.
    We must protect our environment in every community. In the 
last 4 years we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many in 
the previous 12. Now we should clean up 500 more so that our 
children grow up next to parks, not poison. I urge you to pass 
my proposal to make big polluters live by a simple rule: If you 
pollute our environment, you should pay to clean it up.
    In the last 4 years we strengthened our Nation's safe food 
and cleaning drinking water laws, we protected some of 
America's rarest and most beautiful land in Utah's Red Rocks 
region, created three new national parks in the California 
desert and began to restore the Florida Everglades. Now we must 
be as vigilant with our rivers as we are with our lands.
    Tonight I announce that this year I will designate 10 
American Heritage rivers to help communities alongside them 
revitalize their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the 
rivers, proving once again we can grow the economy as we 
protect the environment.
    We must also protect our global environment, working to ban 
the worst toxic chemicals and to reduce the greenhouse gases 
that challenge our health even as they change our climate.
    Now, we all know that in all of our communities some of our 
children simply do not have what they need to grow and learn in 
their own homes or schools or neighborhoods and that means the 
rest of us must do more, for they are our children too. That is 
why President Bush, General Colin Powell, former Housing 
Secretary Henry Cisneros will join the Vice President and me to 
lead the President's Summit of Service in Philadelphia in 
April.
    Our national service program, AmeriCorps, has already 
helped 70,000 young people to work their way through college as 
they serve America. Now we intend to mobilize millions of 
Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Citizen service is an 
American responsibility which all Americans should embrace, and 
I ask your support for that endeavor.
    I would like to make just one last point about our national 
community. Our economy is measured in numbers and statistics 
and is very important. But the enduring worth of our Nation 
lies in our shared values and our soaring spirit. So instead of 
cutting back on our modest efforts to support the arts and 
humanities I believe we should stand by them and challenge our 
artists, musicians and writers, challenge our museums, 
libraries and theaters.
    We should challenge all Americans in the arts and 
humanities to join with their fellow citizens to make the year 
2000 a national celebration of the American spirit in every 
community, a celebration of our common culture in the century 
that is passed and in the new one to come in a new millennium 
so that we can remain the world's beacon, not only of liberty 
but of creativity long after the fireworks have faded.
    To prepare America for the 21st century we must master the 
forces of change in the world and keep American leadership 
strong and sure for a uncharted time.
    Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the 
institutions that secured victory in the Cold War and built a 
growing world economy. As a result, today more people than ever 
embrace our ideals and share our interests. Already we have 
dismantled many of the blocs and barriers that divided our 
parents' world. For the first time more people live under 
democracy than dictatorship, including every Nation in our own 
hemisphere but one, and its day too will come.
    Now we stand at another moment of change and choice and 
another time to be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years 
of security and prosperity. In this endeavor our first task is 
to help to build for the very first time an undivided 
democratic Europe. When Europe is stable, prosperous and at 
peace, America is more secure. To that end we must expand NATO 
by 1999 so that countries that were once our adversaries can 
become our allies. At the special NATO summit this summer that 
is what we will begin to do. We must strengthen NATO's 
partnership for peace with non-member allies and we must build 
a stable partnership between NATO and a democratic Russia.
    An expanded NATO is good for America and a Europe in which 
all democracies define their future, not in terms of what they 
can do to each other but in terms of what they can do together 
for the good of all, that kind of Europe is good for America.
    Second, America must look to the East no less than to the 
West. Our security demands it. Americans fought 3 wars in Asia 
in this century. Our prosperity requires it. More than 2 
million American jobs depend upon trade with Asia. There, too, 
we are helping to shape an Asian Pacific community of 
cooperation, not conflict.
    Let our progress there not mask the peril that remains. 
Together with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with 
North Korea and bridge the Cold War's last divide. I call on 
Congress to fund our share of the agreement under which North 
Korea must continue to freeze and then dismantle its nuclear 
weapons program.
    We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China for the sake of 
our interests and our ideals. An isolated China is not good for 
America. A China playing its proper role in the world is. I 
will go to China, and I have invited China's President to come 
here, not because we agree on everything, but because engaging 
China is the best way to work on our common challenges like 
ending nuclear testing, and to deal frankly with our 
fundamental differences like human rights.
    The American people must prosper in the global economy. We 
have worked hard to tear down trade barriers abroad so that we 
can create good jobs at home. I am proud to say that today 
America is once again the most competitive Nation and the 
number one exporter in the world. Now we must act to expand our 
exports, especially to Asia and Latin America, two of the 
fastest growing regions on earth, or be left behind as these 
emerging economies forge new ties with other nations.
    That is why we need the authority now to conclude new trade 
agreements that open markets to our goods and services even as 
we preserve our values. We need not shrink from the challenge 
of the global economy. After all, we have the best workers and 
the best products. In a truly open market we can outcompete 
anyone, anywhere on earth.
    But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, 
we can advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the 
world. There is no better example of this truth than Latin 
America, where democracy and open markets are on the march 
together. That is why I will visit there in the spring, to 
reinforce our important ties.
    We should all be proud that America led the effort to 
rescue our neighbor, Mexico, from its economic crisis. We 
should all be proud that last month Mexico repaid the United 
States, 3 full years ahead of schedule, with a half a billion 
dollar profit to us.
    America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace, 
from the Middle East to Haiti, from Northern Ireland to Africa. 
Taking reasonable risks for peace keeps us from being drawn 
into far more costly conflicts later.
    With American leadership, the killing is stopped in Bosnia. 
Now the habits of peace must take hold. The new NATO force will 
allow reconstruction and reconciliation to accelerate. Tonight 
I ask Congress to continue its strong support of our troops. 
They are doing a remarkable job there for America, and America 
must do right by them.
    Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our 
security. In the past 4 years we agreed to ban, we led the way 
to a worldwide agreement to ban nuclear testing. With Russia, 
we dramatically cut nuclear arsenals, and we stopped targeting 
each other's citizens. We are acting to prevent nuclear 
materials from falling into the wrong hands, and to rid the 
world of landmines.
    We are working with other nations, with renewed intensity, 
to fight drug traffickers and to stop terrorists before they 
act, and hold them fully accountable if they do.
    Now we must rise to a new test of leadership, ratifying the 
Chemical Weapons Convention. Make no mistake about it, it will 
make our troops safer from chemical attack. It will help us to 
fight terrorism.
    We have no more important obligations, especially in the 
wake of what we now know about the Gulf War. This treaty has 
been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by Republican and 
Democratic administrations, and Republican and Democratic 
Members of Congress, and already approved by 68 nations. But if 
we do not act by April the 29th, when this convention goes into 
force with or without us, we will lose the chance to have 
Americans leading and enforcing this effort. Together, we must 
make the Chemical Weapons Convention law, so that at last we 
can begin to outlaw poison gas from the earth.
    Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these 
challenges.
    We must maintain a strong and ready military. We must 
increase funding for weapons modernization by the year 2000, 
and we must take good care of our men and women in uniform. 
They are the world's finest.
    We must also renew our commitment to America's diplomacy, 
and pay our debts and dues to international financial 
institutions like the World Bank, and to a reforming United 
Nations. Every dollar, every dollar we devote to preventing 
conflicts, to promoting democracy, to stopping the spread of 
disease and starvation, brings a sure return in security and 
savings. Yet international affairs spending today is just 1 
percent of the Federal budget, a small fraction of what America 
invested in diplomacy to choose leadership over escapism at the 
start of the Cold War. If America is to continue to lead the 
world, we here who lead America simply must find the will to 
pay our way.
    A farsighted America moved the world to a better place over 
these last 50 years, and so it can be for another 50 years. But 
a shortsighted America will soon find its words falling on deaf 
ears all around the world.
    Almost exactly 50 years ago, in the first winter of the 
Cold War, President Truman stood before a Republican Congress 
and called upon our country to meet its responsibilities of 
leadership. This was his warning. He said, ``If we falter, we 
may endanger the peace of the world--and we shall surely 
endanger the welfare of this nation.'' That Congress, led by 
Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered President 
Truman's call. Together, they made the commitments that 
strengthened our country for 50 years. Now let us do the same. 
Let us do what it takes to remain the indispensable Nation, to 
keep America strong, secure, and prosperous for another 50 
years.
    In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership 
grows out of the power of our example here at home, out of our 
ability to remain strong as one America.
    All over the world people are being torn asunder by racial, 
ethnic, and religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and 
terror. We are the world's most diverse democracy, and the 
world looks to us to show that it is possible to live and 
advance together across those kinds of differences.
    America has always been a Nation of immigrants. From the 
start, a steady stream of people, in search of freedom and 
opportunity, have left their own lands to make this land their 
home. We started as an experiment in democracy fueled by 
Europeans. We have grown into an experiment in democratic 
diversity fueled by openness and promise.
    My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our 
diversity is a weakness. It is our greatest strength.
    Americans speak every language, know every country. People 
on every continent can look to us and see the reflection of 
their own great potential. And they always will, as long as we 
strive to give all of our citizens, whatever their background, 
an opportunity to achieve their own greatness.
    We are not there yet. We still see evidence of abiding 
bigotry and intolerance and ugly words and awful violence in 
burned churches and bombed buildings. We must fight against 
this in our country and in our hearts.
    Just a few days, before my second inauguration, one of our 
country's best known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, 
suggested that I read Isaiah 58:12. Here is what it says: 
``Thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations, and 
thou shalt be called, the repairer of the breach, the restorer 
of paths to dwell in.''
    I placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of 
office on behalf of all Americans, for no matter what our 
differences in our faiths, our backgrounds, our politics, we 
must all be repairers of the breach.
    I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us 
how. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud 
American whose family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years 
old. He was awarded the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the 
Purple Heart fighting for his country in Vietnam, and he went 
on to serve Texas and America fighting for our future here in 
this Chamber. We are grateful for his service and honored that 
his mother, Lillie Tejeda, and his sister Mary Alice, have come 
from Texas to be with us here tonight, and we welcome them.
    Gary Locke, the newly elected Governor of Washington State, 
is the first Chinese American Governor in the history of our 
country. He is the proud son of two of the millions of Asian 
American immigrants who strengthened America with their hard 
work, family values and good citizenship. He represents the 
future we can all achieve. Thank you, Governor, for being here.
    Reverend Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, 
along with Kristin Tanner and Chris Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. 
Kristen Zarfos, they are all Americans from different roots 
whose lives reflect the best of what we can become when we are 
one America.
    We may not share a common past, but we surely do share a 
common future. Building one America is our most important 
mission, the foundation of many generations, of every other 
strength we must build for this new century. Money cannot buy 
it. Power cannot compel it. Technology cannot create it. It can 
only come from the human spirit.
    America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most 
powerful idea in the history of nations. And all of us in this 
Chamber, we are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great 
people into a new world. A child born tonight will have almost 
no memory of the 20th century. Everything that child will know 
about America will be because of what we do now to build a new 
century.
    We do not have a moment to waste. Tomorrow there will be 
just over 1,000 days until the year 2000; 1,000 days to prepare 
our people; 1,000 days to work together; 1,000 days to build a 
bridge to a land of new promise.
    My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize those 
days and the century.
    Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.

                                
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