[House Document 105-178]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



105th Congress, 2d Session  - - - - - - - - - - House Document 105-178


 
                      STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE

                               __________

                                MESSAGE

                                  from

                   THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

                              transmitting

                   A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION





  January 27, 1998.--Message and accompanying papers referred to the 
 Committee on 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, my fellow Americans, since the 
last time we met in this Chamber, America has lost two patriots 
and fine public servants. Though they sat on opposite sides of 
the aisle, Representatives Walter Capps and Sonny Bono shared a 
deep love for this House and an unshakable commitment to 
improving the lives of all our people.
    In the past few weeks, they have both been eulogized. 
Tonight I think we should begin by sending a message to their 
families and their friends that we celebrate their lives and 
give thanks to their service to our Nation.
    For 209 years, it has been the President's duty to report 
to you on the State of the Union. Because of the hard work and 
high purpose of the American people, these are good times for 
America. We have more than 14 million new jobs. The lowest 
unemployment in 24 years. The lowest core inflation in 30 
years. Incomes are rising, and we have the highest 
homeownership in history. Crime has dropped for a record five 
years in a row and the welfare rolls are at their lowest level 
in 27 years. Our leadership in the world is unrivaled. Ladies 
and gentlemen, the state of our union is strong.
    But with barely 700 days left in the 20th Century, this is 
not a time to rest; it is a time to build, to build the America 
within our reach.
    An America where everybody has a chance to get ahead with 
hard work. Where every citizen can live in a safe community. 
Where families are strong, schools are good, and all our young 
people can go on to college. An America where scientists find 
cures for diseases from diabetes to Alzheimer's to AIDS. An 
America where every child can stretch a hand across a keyboard 
and reach every book ever written, every painting ever painted, 
every symphony ever composed. Where government provides the 
opportunity and citizens honor the responsibility to give 
something back to their communities. An America which leads the 
world to new heights of peace and prosperity.
    This is the America we have begun to build; this is the 
America we can leave to our children if we join together to 
finish the work at hand. Let us strengthen our Nation for the 
21st Century.
    Rarely have Americans lived through so much change, in so 
many ways, in so short a time. Quietly but with gathering 
force, the ground has shifted beneath our feet, as we have 
moved into an Information Age, a global economy, a truly new 
world.
    For five years now, we have met the challenge of these 
changes, as Americans have at every turning point in our 
history, by renewing the very idea of America: widening the 
circle of opportunity, deepening the meaning of our freedom, 
forging a more perfect union.
    We have shaped a new kind of government for the Information 
Age. I thank the Vice President for his leadership and the 
Congress for its support in building a government that is 
leaner, more flexible, a catalyst for new ideas. And most of 
all, a government thatgives the American people the tools they 
need to make the most of their own lives.
    We have moved past the sterile debate between those who say 
government is the enemy and those who say government is the 
answer. My fellow Americans, we have found a third way. We have 
the smallest government in 35 years, but a more progressive 
one. We have a smaller government, but a stronger Nation.
    We are moving steadily toward an even stronger America in 
the 21st Century. An economy that offers opportunity. A society 
rooted in responsibility. And a Nation that lives as a 
community.
    First, Americans in this Chamber and across our Nation have 
pursued a new strategy for prosperity: Fiscal discipline to cut 
interest rates and spur growth; investments in education and 
skills in science and technology and transportation to prepare 
our people for the new economy; new markets for American 
products and American workers.
    When I took office, the deficit for 1998 was projected to 
be $357 billion, and heading higher. This year, our deficit is 
projected to be $10 billion, and heading lower. For three 
decades, six presidents have come before you to warn of the 
damage deficits pose to our Nation. Tonight, I come before you 
to announce that the Federal deficit, once so incomprehensibly 
large that it had 11 zeros, will be simply zero.
    I will submit to Congress for 1999 the first balanced 
budget in 30 years. And if we hold fast to fiscal discipline, 
we may balance the budget this year, 4 years ahead of schedule. 
You can all be proud of that because turning a sea of red ink 
into black is no miracle. It is the product of hard work by the 
American people and of two visionary actions in Congress: the 
courageous vote in 1993 that led to a cut in the deficit of 90 
percent and the truly historic bipartisan balanced budget 
agreement passed by this Congress.
    Here is the really good news. If we maintain our resolve, 
we will produce balanced budgets as far as the eye can see. We 
must not go back to unwise spending or untargeted tax cuts that 
risk reopening the deficit. Last year, together, we enacted 
targeted tax cuts so that the typical middle class family will 
now have the lowest tax rates in 20 years.
    My plan to balance the budget next year includes both new 
investments and new tax cuts targeted to the needs of working 
families: for education, for child care, for the environment.
    But whether the issue is tax cuts or spending, I ask all of 
you to meet this test: approve only those priorities that can 
actually be accomplished without adding a dime to the deficit.
    Now, if we balance the budget for next year, it is 
projected that we will then have a sizable surplus in the years 
that immediately follow. What should we do with this projected 
surplus? I have a simple, four-word answer: save Social 
Security first.
    Tonight I propose that we reserve 100 percent of the 
surplus, that is every penny of any surplus, until we have 
taken all the necessary measures to strengthen the Social 
Security system for the 21st century. Let us say, let us say to 
all Americans watching tonight, whether you are 70 or 50 or 
whether you just started paying into the system, Social 
Security will be there when you need it.
    Let us make this commitment: Social Security first. Let's 
do that together.
    I also want to say that all the American people who are 
watching us tonight should be invited to join in this 
discussion, in facing these issues squarely and forming a true 
consensus on how we should proceed.
    We will start by conducting nonpartisan forums in every 
region of the country, and I hope that lawmakers of both 
parties will participate. We will hold the White House 
conference on Social Security in December, and one year from 
now I will convene the leaders of Congress to craft historic 
bipartisan legislation to achieve a landmark for our 
generation, a Social Security system that is strong in the 21st 
century.
    In an economy that honors opportunity, all Americans must 
be able to reap the reward of prosperity. Because these times 
are good, we can afford to take one simple, sensible step to 
help millions of workers struggling to provide for their 
families. We should raise the minimum wage.
    The information age is first and foremost an education age 
in which education must start at birth and continue throughout 
a lifetime.
    Last year from this podium I said that education has to be 
our highest priority. I laid out a ten-point plan to move us 
forward and urged all of us to let politics stop at the 
schoolhouse door. Since then, this Congress, across party 
lines, and the American people have responded in the most 
important year for education in a generation, expanding public 
school choice, opening the way to 3,000 new charter schools, 
working to connect every classroom in the country to the 
information superhighway, committing to expand Head Start to a 
million children, launching America Reads, sending literally 
thousands of college students into our elementary schools to 
make sure all our 8-year-olds can read.
    Last year I proposed and you passed 220,000 new Pell Grant 
scholarships for deserving students. Student loans are already 
less expensive and easier to repay. Now you get to deduct the 
interest. Families all over America now can put their savings 
into new tax-free education IRAs. And this year for the first 2 
years of college families will get a $1,500 tax credit, a Hope 
Scholarship that will cover the cost of most community college 
tuition. And for junior and senior year, graduate school and 
job training, there is a lifetime learning credit. You did that 
and you should be very proud of it.
    And because of these actions, I have something to say to 
every family listening to us tonight: Your children can go on 
to college. If you know a child from a poor family, tell her 
not to give up. She can go on to college. If you know a young 
couple struggling with bills, worried they won't be able to 
send their children to college, tell them not to give up. Their 
children can go on to college. If you know somebody who's 
caught in a dead-end job and afraid he can't afford the classes 
necessary to get better jobs for the rest of his life, tell him 
not to give up. He can go on to college.
    Because of the things that have been done, we can make 
college as universal in the 21st century as high school is 
today. And, my friends, that will change the face and future of 
America.
    We have opened wide the doors of the world's best system of 
higher education. Now we must make our public elementary and 
secondary schools the world's best as well by raising 
standards, raising expectations and raising accountability.
    Thanks to the actions of this Congress last year, we will 
soon have, for the very first time, a voluntary national test 
based on national standards in 4th grade reading and 8th grade 
math.
    Parents have a right to know whether their children are 
mastering the basics, and every parent already knows the key: 
good teachers and small classes. Tonight I propose the first 
ever national effort to reduce class size in the early grades. 
My balanced budget will help to hire 100,000 new teachers who 
have passed a State competency test. Now, with these teachers, 
listen, with these teachers we will actually be able to reduce 
class size in the first, second and third grades to an average 
of 18 students a class all across America.
    Now, if I have got the math right, more teachers teaching 
smaller classes requires more classrooms. So I also propose a 
school construction tax cut to help communities modernize or 
build 5,000 schools.
    We must also demand greater accountability. When we promote 
a child from grade to grade who hasn't mastered the work, we 
don't do that child any favors. It is time to end social 
promotion in America's schools.
    Last year, last year in Chicago, they made that decision, 
not to hold our children back but to lift them up. Chicago 
stopped social promotion and started mandatory summer school to 
help students who are behind to catch up. I propose, I propose 
to help other communities follow Chicago's lead. Let's say to 
them, stop promoting children who don't learn and we will give 
you the tools to make sure they do.
    I also ask this Congress to support our efforts to enlist 
colleges and universities to reach out to disadvantaged 
children starting in the 6th grade so that they can get the 
guidance and hope they need so they can know that they too will 
be able to go on to college.
    As we enter the 21st century, the global economy requires 
us to seek opportunity not just at home but in all the markets 
of the world. We must shape this global economy, not shrink 
from it. In the last 5 years we have led the way in opening new 
markets with 240 trade agreements that remove foreign barriers 
to products bearing the proud stamp ``Made in the USA''.
    Today, record high exports account for fully one-third of 
our economic growth. I want to keep them going, because that's 
the way to keep America growing and to advance a safer, more 
stable world.
    Now, all of you know, whatever your views are, that I think 
this is a great opportunity for America. I know there is 
opposition to more comprehensive trade agreements. I have 
listened carefully, and I believe that the opposition is rooted 
in two fears: first, that our trading partners will have lower 
environmental and labor standards which will give them an 
unfair advantage in our market and do their own people no 
favors even if there's more business; and, second, that if we 
have more trade, more of our workers will lose their jobs and 
have to start over.
    I think we should seek to advance worker and environmental 
standards around the world. I have made it abundantly clear 
that it should be a part of our trade agenda, but we cannot 
influence other countries' decisions if we send them a message 
that we're backing away from trade with them. This year I will 
send legislation to Congress and ask other nations to join us 
to fight the most intolerable labor practice of all: Abusive 
child labor.
    We should also offer help and hope to those Americans 
temporarily left behind by the global marketplace or by the 
march of technology, which may have nothing to do with trade. 
That's why we have more than doubled funding for training 
dislocated workers since 1993. And if my new budget is adopted, 
we will triple funding. That's why we must do more, and more 
quickly, to help workers who lose their jobs for whatever 
reason. You know, we help communities in a special way when 
their military base closes. We ought to help them in the same 
way if their factory closes.
    Again, I ask the Congress to continue its bipartisan work 
to consolidate the tangle of training programs we have today 
into one single GI bill for workers, a simple skills grant so 
people can, on their own, move quickly to new jobs, to higher 
incomes and brighter futures.
    Now, we all know in every way in life change is not always 
easy, but we have to decide whether we're going to try to hold 
it back and hide from it or reap its benefits. And remember the 
big picture here. While we've been entering into hundreds of 
new trade agreements,we've been creating millions of new jobs. 
So this year we will forge new partnerships with Latin America, Asia 
and Europe, and we should pass the new African Trade Act. It has 
bipartisan support.
    I will also renew my request for the fast track negotiating 
authority necessary to open more new markets, create more new 
jobs, which every President has had for two decades.
    You know, whether we like it or not, in ways that are 
mostly positive, the world's economies are more and more 
interconnected and interdependent. Today an economic crisis 
anywhere can affect economies everywhere. Recent months have 
brought serious financial problems to Thailand, Indonesia, 
South Korea and beyond.
    Now, why should Americans be concerned about this? First, 
these countries are our customers. If they sink into recession, 
they won't be able to buy the goods we'd like to sell them. 
Second, they are also our competitors. So if their currencies 
lose their value and go down, then the price of their goods 
will drop, flooding our market and others with much cheaper 
goods, which makes it a lot tougher for our people to compete. 
And finally, they are our strategic partners. Their stability 
bolsters our security.
    The American economy remains sound and strong, and I want 
to keep it that way. But because the turmoil in Asia will have 
an impact on all the world's economies, including ours, making 
that negative impact as small as possible is the right thing to 
do for America, and the right thing to do for a safer world.
    Our policy is clear: No nation can recover if it does not 
reform itself. But when nations are willing to undertake 
serious economic reform, we should help them do it. So I call 
on Congress to renew America's commitment to the International 
Monetary Fund. I think we should say to all the people we are 
trying to represent here that preparing for a far-off storm 
that may reach our shores is far wiser than ignoring the 
thunder until the clouds are just overhead.
    A strong Nation rests on the rock of responsibility. A 
society rooted in responsibility must first promote the value 
of work, not welfare. We can be proud that after decades of 
finger-pointing and failure, together we ended the old welfare 
system, and we are now replacing welfare checks with paychecks.
    Last year, after a record 4-year decline in welfare rolls, 
I challenged our Nation to move 2 million more Americans off 
welfare by the year 2000. I am pleased to report we have also 
met that goal, 2 full years ahead of schedule.
    This is a grand achievement, the sum of many acts of 
individual courage, persistence and hope. For 13 years, Elaine 
Kinslow of Indianapolis, Indiana, was on and off welfare. 
Today, she is a dispatcher with a van company, she saved enough 
money to move her family into a good neighborhood, and she is 
helping other welfare recipients go to work.
    Elaine Kinslow and all those like her are the real heroes 
of the welfare revolution. There are millions like her all 
across America, and I am happy she could join the First Lady 
tonight.
    Elaine, we are very proud of you. Please stand up.
    We still have a lot more to do, all of us, to make welfare 
reform a success, providing child care, helping families move 
closer to available jobs, challenging more companies to join 
our welfare-to-work partnership, increasing child support 
collections from deadbeat parents who have a duty to support 
their own children.
    I also want to thank Congress for restoring some of the 
benefits to immigrants who are here legally and working hard, 
and I hope you will finish that job this year.
    We have to make it possible for all hard-working families 
to meet their most important responsibilities. Two years ago, 
we helped guarantee that Americans can keep their health 
insurance when they change jobs. Last year, we extended health 
care to up to 5 million children. This year, I challenge 
Congress to take the next historic steps.
    One hundred sixty million of our fellow citizens are in 
managed care plans. These plans save money, and they can 
improve care. But medical decisions ought to be made by medical 
doctors, not insurance company accountants. I urge this 
Congress to reach across the aisle and write into law a 
Consumer Bill of Rights that says this: You have the right to 
know all your medical options, not just the cheapest. You have 
the right to choose the doctor you want for the care you need. 
You have the right to emergency room care, wherever and 
whenever you need it. You have the right to keep your medical 
records confidential. Now, traditional care or managed care, 
every American deserves quality care.
    Millions of Americans between the ages of 55 and 65 have 
lost their health insurance. Some are retired, some are laid 
off, some lose their coverage when their spouses retire. After 
a lifetime of work, they are left with nowhere to turn. So I 
ask the Congress, let these hard-working Americans buy into the 
Medicare system. It will not add a dime to the deficit, but the 
peace of mind it will provide will be priceless.
    Next, we must help parents protect their children from the 
gravest health threat that they face, an epidemic of teen 
smoking, spread by multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. I 
challenge Congress, let's pass bipartisan, comprehensive 
legislation that will improve public health, protect our 
tobacco farmers, and change the way tobacco companies do 
business forever. Let's do what it takes to bring teen smoking 
down. Let's raise the price of cigarettes by up to $1.50 a pack 
over the next 10 years, with penalties on the tobacco industry 
if it keeps marketing to our children. Now, tomorrow, like 
every day, 3,000 children will start smoking, and 1,000 will 
die early as a result. Let this Congress be remembered as the 
Congress that saved their lives.
    In the new economy, most parents work harder than ever. 
They face a constant struggle to balance their obligations to 
be good workers, and their even more important obligations to 
be good parents.
    The Family and Medical Leave Act was the very first bill I 
was privileged to sign into law as President in 1993. Since 
then, about 15 million people have taken advantage of it, and I 
have met a lot of them all across this country. I ask you to 
extend that law to cover 10 million more workers and to give 
parents time off when they have to go see their children's 
teachers or take them to the doctor.
    Child care is the next frontier we must face to enable 
people to succeed at home and at work. Last year I cohosted the 
very first White House Conference on Child Care with one of our 
foremost experts, America's First Lady. From all corners of 
America we heard the same message without regard to region or 
income or political affiliation: We have to raise the quality 
of child care. We have to make it safer. We have to make it 
more affordable.
    So here is my plan: Help families to pay for child care for 
1 million more children. Scholarships and background checks for 
child care workers, and a new emphasis on early learning. Tax 
credits for businesses that provide child care for their 
employees. And the larger child care tax credit for working 
families.
    Now, if you pass my plan, what this means is that a family 
of 4 with an income of $35,000 and high child care costs will 
no longer pay a single penny of Federal income tax.
    You know, I think this is such a big issue with me because 
of my own personal experience. I have often wondered how my 
mother when she was a young widow would have been able to go 
away to school and get an education and come back and support 
me if my grandparents had not been able to take care of me. She 
and I were really very lucky. How many other families have 
never had that same opportunity? The truth is, we do not know 
the answer to that question, but we do know what the answer 
should be. Not a single American family should ever have to 
choose between the job they need and the child they love.
    A society rooted in responsibility must provide safe 
streets, safe schools, and safe neighborhoods. We pursued a 
strategy of more police, tougher punishment and smarter 
prevention, with crime fighting partnerships with local law 
enforcement and citizen groups where the rubber hits the road. 
I can report to you tonight that it is working. Violent crime 
is down, robbery is down, assault is down, burglary is down for 
five years in a row all across America. Now we need to finish 
the job of putting 100,000 more police on our streets.
    Again, I ask Congress to pass a juvenile crime bill that 
provides more prosecutors and probation officers to crack down 
on gangs and guns and drugs and bar violent juveniles from 
buying guns for life. And, I ask you to dramatically expand our 
support for after-school programs. I think every American 
should know that most juvenile crime is committed between the 
hours of 3 in the afternoon and 8 at night. We can keep so many 
of our children out of trouble in the first place if we give 
them some place to go other than the streets, and we ought to 
do it.
    Drug use is on the decline. I thank General McCaffrey for 
his leadership, and I thank this Congress for passing the 
largest antidrug budget in history. Now I ask you to join me in 
a groundbreaking effort to hire 1,000 new Border Patrol agents 
and to deploy the most sophisticated available new technologies 
to help close the door on drugs at our borders. Police, 
prosecutors and prevention programs, as good as they are, they 
cannot work if our court system does not work. Today there are 
large numbers of vacancies in our Federal courts. Here is what 
the Chief Justice of the United States wrote: Judicial 
``vacancies cannot remain at such high levels indefinitely 
without eroding the quality of justice.'' I simply ask the 
United States Senate to heed this plea and vote on the highly 
qualified nominees before you up or down.
    We must exercise responsibility not just at home, but 
around the world. On the eve of a new century, we have the 
power and the duty to build a new era of peace and security. 
But make no mistake about it, today's possibilities are not 
tomorrow's guarantees. America must stand against the poisoned 
appeals of extreme nationalism. We must combat an unholy axis 
of new threats from terrorists, international criminals and 
drug traffickers. These 21st century predators feed on 
technology and the free flow of information and ideas and 
people, and they will be all the more lethal if weapons of mass 
destruction fall into their hands.
    To meet these challenges, we are helping to write 
international rules of the road for the 21st century, 
protecting those who join the family of nations, and isolating 
those who do not.
    Within days, I will ask the Senate for its advice and 
consent to make Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic the 
newest members of NATO. For 50 years, NATO contained communism 
and kept America and Europe secure. Now these three formerly 
Communist countries have said yes to democracy. I ask the 
Senate to say yes to them, our new allies. By taking in new 
members and working closely with new partners, including Russia 
and Ukraine, NATO can help to assure that Europe is a 
stronghold for peace in the 21st century.
    Next, I will ask Congress to continue its support for our 
troops and their mission in Bosnia. This Christmas, Hillary and 
I traveled to Sarajevo with Senator and Mrs. Dole and a 
bipartisan congressional delegation. We saw children playing in 
the streets where two years ago they were hiding from snipers 
and shells. The shops were filled with food, the cafes were 
alive with conversation.
    The progress there is unmistakable, but it is not yet 
irreversible. To take firm root, Bosnia's fragile peace still 
needs the support of American and allied troops when the 
current NATO mission ends in June. I think Senator Dole 
actually said it best. He said, this is like being ahead in the 
fourth quarter of a football game. Now is not the time to walk 
off the field and forfeit the victory.
    I wish all of you could have seen our troops in Tuzla. They 
are very proud of what they are doing in Bosnia and we are all 
very proud of them.
    One of those brave soldiers is sitting with the First Lady 
tonight, Army Sergeant Michael Tolbert. His father was a 
decorated Vietnam vet. After college in Colorado, he joined the 
Army. Last year, he led an Infantry unit that stopped a mob of 
extremists from taking over a radio station that is a voice of 
democracy and tolerance in Bosnia.
    Thank you very much, Sergeant, for what you represent. 
Please stand up.
    In Bosnia, and around the world, our men and women in 
uniform always do their mission well. Our mission must be to 
keep them well-trained and ready, to improve their quality of 
life, and to provide the 21st Century weapons they need to 
defeat any enemy.
    I ask Congress to join me in pursuing an ambitious agenda 
to reduce the serious threat of weapons of mass destruction. 
This year, four decades after it was first proposed by 
President Eisenhower, a comprehensive nuclear test ban is 
within reach. By ending nuclear testing we can help to prevent 
the development of new and more dangerous weapons and make it 
more difficult for non-nuclear states to build them.
    I am pleased to announce that four former chairmen of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff, Generals John Shalikashvili, Colin 
Powell, David Jones and Admiral William Crowe, have endorsed 
this treaty, and I ask the Senate to approve it this year.
    Together, we must also confront the new hazards of chemical 
and biological weapons and the outlaw states, terrorists, and 
organized criminals seeking to acquire them.
    Saddam Hussein has spent the better part of this decade and 
much of his nation's wealth not on providing for the Iraqi 
people but on developing nuclear, chemical and biological 
weapons and the missiles to deliver them. The United Nations 
weapons inspectors have done a truly remarkable job, finding 
and destroying more of Iraq's arsenal than was destroyed during 
the entire Gulf War. Now, Saddam Hussein wants to stop them 
from completing their mission.
    I know I speak for everyone in this chamber, Republicans 
and Democrats, when I say to Saddam Hussein: You cannot defy 
the will of the world. And when I say to him: You have used 
weapons of mass destruction before. We are determined to deny 
you the capacity to use them again.
    Last year, the Senate ratified the Chemical Weapons 
Convention to protect our soldiers and citizens from poison 
gas. Now we must act to prevent the use of disease as a weapon 
of war and terror. The Biological Weapons Convention has been 
in effect for 23 years now. The rules are good, but the 
enforcement is weak. We must strengthen it with a new 
international inspection system to detect and deter cheating.
    In the months ahead, I will pursue our security strategy 
with old allies in Asia and Europe, and new partners from 
Africa to India and Pakistan, from South America to China. And 
from Belfast to Korea to the Middle East, America will continue 
to stand with those who stand for peace.
    Finally, it is long past time to make good on our debt to 
the United Nations. More and more, we are working with other 
Nations to achieve common goals. If we want America to lead, we 
have got to set a good example. As we see so clearly in Bosnia, 
allies who share our goals can also share our burdens.
    In this new era, our freedom and independence are actually 
enriched, not weakened, by our increasing interdependence with 
other nations, but we have to do our part.
    Our Founders set America on a permanent course toward ``a 
more perfect union.'' To all of you I say it is a journey we 
can only make together, living as one community.
    First, we have to continue to reform our government, the 
instrument of our national community.
    Everyone knows elections have become too expensive, fueling 
a fund-raising arms race. This year, by March the 6th, at long 
last the Senate will actually vote on bipartisan campaign 
finance reform proposed by Senators McCain and Feingold. Let us 
be clear: A vote against McCain-Feingold is a vote for soft 
money and for the status quo. I ask you to strengthen our 
democracy and pass campaign reform this year.
    But at least equally important, we have to address the real 
reason for the explosion in campaign costs: the high cost of 
media advertising. For the folks watching at home, those were 
the groans of pain in the audience.
    I will formally request that the Federal Communications 
Commission act to provide free or reduced-cost television time 
for candidates who observe spending limits voluntarily. The 
airwaves are a public trust and broadcasters also have to help 
us in this effort to strengthen our democracy.
    Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have 
reduced the Federal payroll by 300,000 workers, cut 16,000 
pages of regulation, eliminated hundreds of programs, and 
improved the operations of virtually every government agency. 
But we can do more.
    Like every taxpayer, I am outraged by the reports of abuses 
by the IRS. We need some changes there: New citizen advocacy 
panels, a stronger taxpayer advocate, phone lines open 24 hours 
a day, relief for innocent taxpayers. Last year, by an 
overwhelming bipartisan margin, the House of Representatives 
passed sweeping IRS reforms. This bill must not now languish in 
the Senate. Tonight I ask the Senate: Follow the House. Pass 
the bipartisan package as your first order of business.
    I hope to goodness before I finish I can think of something 
to say ``Follow the Senate'' on so I will be out of trouble.
    A nation that lives as a community must value all its 
communities.
    For the past five years, we have worked to bring the spark 
of private enterprise to inner-city and poor rural areas with 
community development banks, more commercial loans into poor 
neighborhoods, cleanups of polluted sites for development.
    Under the continued leadership of the Vice President, we 
proposed to triple the number of empowerment zones to give 
business incentives to invest in those areas. We should also 
give poor families more help to move into homes of their own, 
and we should use tax cuts to spur the construction of more 
low-income housing.
    Last year this Congress took strong action to help the 
District of Columbia. Let us renew our resolve to make our 
capital city a great city for all who live and visit here.
    Our cities are the vibrant hubs of great metropolitan 
areas. They are still the gateways for new immigrants from 
every continent who come here to work for their own American 
dreams. Let's keep our cities going strong into the 21st 
century. They are a very important part of our future.
    Our communities are only as healthy as the air our children 
breathe, the water they drink, the Earth they will inherit.
    Last year we put in place the toughest ever controls on 
smog and soot. We moved to protect Yellowstone, the Everglades, 
Lake Tahoe. We expanded every community's right to know about 
toxics that threaten their children.
    Just yesterday our food safety plan took effect, using new 
signs to protect consumers from dangers like e-coli and 
salmonella.
    Tonight I ask you to join me in launching a new clean water 
initiative, a far-reaching effort to clean our rivers, our 
lakes and our coastal waters for our children.
    Our overriding environmental challenge tonight is the 
worldwide problem of climate change, global warming, the 
gathering crisis that requires worldwide action.
    The vast majority of scientists have concluded 
unequivocally that if we do not reduce the emission of 
greenhouse gases at some point in the next century, we will 
disrupt our climate and put our children and grandchildren at 
risk.
    This past December, America led the world to reach a 
historic agreement, committing our Nation to reduce greenhouse 
gas emissions through market forces, new technologies, energy 
efficiency.
    We have it in our power to act right here, right now. I 
propose $6 billion in tax cuts and research and development to 
encourage innovation, renewable energy, fuel-efficient cars, 
energy-efficient homes.
    Every time we have acted to heal our environment, 
pessimists told us it would hurt the economy. Well, today our 
economy is the strongest in a generation. And our environment 
is the cleanest in a generation. We have always found a way to 
clean the environment and grow the economy at the same time. 
And when it comes to global warming, we will do it again.
    Finally, communities means living by the defining American 
value, the ideal heard round the world, that we are all created 
equal. Throughout our history we haven't always honored that 
ideal, and we have never fully lived up to it.
    Often it is easier to believe that our differences matter 
more than what we have in common. It may be easier, but it is 
wrong. What must we do in our day and generation to make sure 
that America truly becomes one Nation? What do we have to do? 
We are becoming more and more diverse. Do you believe we can 
become one Nation?
    The answer cannot be to dwell on our differences but to 
build on our shared values. We all cherish family and faith, 
freedom and responsibility. We all want our children to grow up 
in a world where their talents are matched by their 
opportunities.
    I have launched this national initiative on race to help us 
recognize our common interests and to bridge the opportunity 
gaps that are keeping us from becoming one America.
    Let us begin by recognizing what we still must overcome. 
Discrimination against any American is un-American. We must 
vigorously enforce the laws that make it illegal.
    I ask your help to end the backlog at the Equal Employment 
Opportunity Commission. Sixty thousand of our fellow citizens 
are waiting in line for justice, and we should act now to end 
their wait.
    We should also recognize that the greatest progress we can 
make toward building one America lies in the progress we make 
for all Americans without regard to race. When we open the 
doors of college to all Americans, when we rid all our streets 
of crime, when there are jobs available to peoplefrom all our 
neighborhoods, when we make sure all parents have the child care they 
need, we are helping to build one Nation.
    We, in this Chamber and in this government, must do all we 
can to address the continuing American challenge to build one 
America. But we will only move forward if all our fellow 
citizens, including every one of you at home watching tonight, 
is also committed to this cause. We must work together, learn 
together, live together, serve together. On the forge of common 
enterprise, Americans of all backgrounds can hammer out a 
common identity.
    We see it today in the United States military, in the Peace 
Corps, in AmeriCorps. Wherever people of all races and 
backgrounds come together in a shared endeavor and get a fair 
chance, we do just fine. With shared values and meaningful 
opportunities and honest communication and citizen service, we 
can unite a diverse people in freedom and mutual respect. We 
are many. We must be one.
    In that spirit, let us lift our eyes to the new millennium. 
How will we mark that passage? It just happens once every 
thousand years.
    This year Hillary and I launched the White House Millennium 
Program to promote America's creativity and innovation and to 
preserve our heritage and culture into the 21st century. Our 
culture lives in every community, and every community has 
places of historic value that tell our stories as Americans. We 
should protect them. I am proposing a public-private 
partnership to advance our arts and humanities and to celebrate 
the millennium by saving America's treasures, great and small.
    And while we honor the past, let us imagine the future.
    Think about this, the entire store of human knowledge now 
doubles every 5 years. In the 1980s, scientists identified the 
gene causing cystic fibrosis. It took 9 years.
    Last year scientists located the gene that causes 
Parkinson's disease in only 9 days. Within a decade, gene chips 
will offer a road map for prevention of illnesses throughout a 
lifetime. Soon we will be able to carry all the phone calls on 
Mother's Day on a single strand of fiber the width of a human 
hair. A child born in 1998 may well live to see the 22nd 
century.
    Tonight, as part of our gift to the millennium, I propose a 
21st Century Research Fund for path-breaking scientific 
inquiry, the largest funding increase in history for the 
National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, 
the National Cancer Institute.
    We have already discovered genes for breast cancer and 
diabetes. I ask you to support this initiative so ours will be 
the generation that finally wins the war against cancer and 
begins a revolution in our fight against all deadly diseases.
    As important as all this scientific progress is, we must 
continue to see that science serves humanity, not the other way 
around. We must prevent the misuse of genetic tests to 
discriminate against any American. And we must ratify the 
ethical consensus of the scientific and religious communities 
and ban the cloning of human beings.
    We should enable all the world's people to explore the far 
reaches of cyberspace. Think of this: The first time I made a 
State of the Union speech to you, only a handful of physicists 
used the Worldwide Web. Literally just a handful of people. 
Now, in schools and libraries, homes and businesses, millions 
and millions of Americans surf the net everyday.
    We must give parents the tools they need to help protect 
their children from inappropriate material on the Internet, but 
we also must make sure that we protect the exploding global 
commercial potential of the internet.
    We can do the kinds of things that we need to do and still 
protect our kids. For one thing, I ask Congress to step up 
support for building the next generation Internet. It's getting 
kind of clogged, you know, and the next generation Internet 
will operate at speeds up to a thousand times faster than 
today.
    Even as we explore this innerspace in the new millennium, 
we're going to open new frontiers in outer space. Throughout 
all history humankind has had only one place to call home: Our 
planet earth. Beginning this year, 1998, men and women from 16 
countries will build a foothold in the heavens. The 
International Space Station, with its vast expanses, scientists 
and engineers will actually set sail on an uncharted sea of 
limitless mystery and unlimited potential, and this October a 
true American hero, a veteran pilot of 149 combat missions and 
one five-hour space flight that changed the world will return 
to the heavens. Godspeed, John Glenn.
    John, you will carry with you America's hopes. And on your 
uniform once again you will carry America's flag, marking the 
unbroken connection between the deeds of America's past and the 
daring of America's future.
    Nearly 200 years ago a tattered flag, its broad stripes and 
bright stars still gleaming through the smoke of a fierce 
battle moved Francis Scott Key to scribble a few word on the 
back of an envelope, the words that became our national anthem. 
Today that Star Spangled Banner, along with the Declaration of 
Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are on 
display just a short walk from here. They are America's 
treasures and we must also save them for the ages.
    I ask all Americans to support our project to restore all 
our treasures so that the generations of the 21st century can 
see for themselves the images and the words that are the old 
and continuing glory of America, an America that has continued 
to rise through every age, against every challenge, of people 
of great works and greater possibilities who have always, 
always found the wisdom and strength to come together as one 
nation, to widen the circle of opportunity, to deepen the 
meaning of our freedom, to form that more perfect union. Let 
that be our gift to the 21st century. God bless you and God 
bless the United States.

                                
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