[House Document 106-1]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
106th Congress, 1st Session - - - - - - - - - - - House Document 106-1
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STATE OF THE UNION MESSAGE
__________
COMMUNICATION
from
THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
transmitting
A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE UNION
February 2, 1999.--Referred to the Committee on the Whole House on the
State of the Union and ordered to be printed
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
54-275 WASHINGTON : 1999
To the Congress of the United States:
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress,
honored guests, my fellow Americans, tonight, I have the honor
of reporting to you on the State of the Union.
Let me begin by saluting the new Speaker of the House and
thanking him especially tonight for extending an invitation to
two guests sitting in the gallery with Mrs. Hastert. Lyn Gibson
and Wei Ling Chestnut are the widows of the two brave Capitol
Hill Police Officers who gave their lives to defend freedom's
house.
Mr. Speaker, at your swearing in, you asked us all to work
together in a spirit of civility and bipartisanship. Mr.
Speaker, let's do exactly that.
Tonight I stand before you to report that America has
created the longest peacetime economic expansion in our
history, with nearly 18 million new jobs, wages rising at more
than twice the amount of inflation, the highest home ownership
in history, the smallest welfare rolls in 30 years and the
lowest peacetime unemployment since 1957.
For the first time in 3 decades, the budget is balanced.
From a deficit of $290 billion in 1992, we had a surplus of $70
billion last year, and now we are on course for budget
surpluses for the next 25 years.
Thanks to the pioneering leadership of all of you, we have
the lowest violent crime rate in a quarter of a century. Our
environment is the cleanest in a quarter of a century.
America is a strong force for peace from Northern Ireland,
to Bosnia, to the Middle East.
Thanks to the leadership of Vice President Gore, we have a
government for the Information Age. Once again, our government
is a progressive instrument of the common good, rooted in our
oldest values of opportunity, responsibility and community,
devoted to fiscal responsibility, determined to give our people
the tools they need to make the most of their own lives in the
21st century. A 21st century government for 21st century
America.
My fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight to report
that the state of our union is strong.
America is working again. The promise of our future is
limitless. But we cannot realize that promise if we allow the
hum of our prosperity to lull us into complacency. How we fare
as a nation far into the 21st century depends upon what we do
as a nation today.
So with our budget surplus growing, our economy expanding,
our confidence rising, now is the moment for this generation to
meet our historic responsibility to the 21st century.
Our fiscal discipline gives us an unsurpassed opportunity
to address a remarkable new challenge: the aging of America.
With the number of elderly Americans set to double by 2030,
the Baby Boom will become a Senior Boom.
So first and above all, we must save Social Security for
the 21st century.
Early in this century, being old meant being poor. When
President Roosevelt created Social Security, thousands wrote to
thank him for eliminating what one woman called the ``stark
terror of penniless, helpless old age.'' Even today, without
Social Security, half our Nation's elderly would be forced into
poverty.
Today, Social Security is strong. But by 2013, payroll
taxes will no longer be sufficient to cover monthly payments.
And by 2032, the Trust Fund will be exhausted and Social
Security will be unable to pay the full benefits older
Americans have been promised.
The best way to keep Social Security a rock-solid guarantee
is not to make drastic cuts in benefits; not to raise payroll
tax rates; not to drain resources from Social Security in the
name of saving it.
Instead, I propose that we make the historic decision to
invest the surplus to save Social Security.
Specifically, I propose that we commit 60 percent of the
budget surplus for the next 15 years to Social Security,
investing a small portion in the private sector just as any
private or State government pension would do. This will earn a
higher return and keep Social Security sound for 55 years.
But we must aim higher. We should put Social Security on a
sound footing for the next 75 years. We should reduce poverty
among elderly women, who are nearly twice as likely to be poor
as our other seniors, and we should eliminate the limits on
what seniors on Social Security can earn.
Now, these changes will require difficult but fully
achievable choices over and above the dedication of the
surplus. They must be made on a bipartisan basis. They should
be made this year. So let me say to you tonight, I reach out my
hand to all of you in both Houses and in both parties and ask
that we join together in saying to the American people, we will
save Social Security now.
Last year, we wisely reserved all of the surplus until we
knew what it would take to save Social Security. Again, I say,
we should not spend any of it, not any of it, until after
Social Security is truly saved. First things first.
Second, once we have saved Social Security, we must fulfill
our obligation to save and improve Medicare. Already, we have
extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 10 years, but
we should extend it for at least another decade. Tonight I
propose that we use one out of every six dollars in the surplus
for the next 15 years to guarantee the soundness of Medicare
until the year 2020.
But again, we should aim higher. We must be willing to work
in a bipartisan way and look at new ideas, including the
upcoming report of the bipartisan Medicare commission. If we
work together, we can secure Medicare for the next 2 decades,
and cover the greatest growing need of seniors, affordable
prescription drugs.
Third, we must help all Americans, from their first day on
the job, to save, to invest, to create wealth. From its
beginning, Americans have supplemented Social Security with
private pensions and savings. Yet today, millions of people
retire with little to live on other than Social Security.
Americans living longer than ever simply must save more than
ever.
Therefore, in addition to saving Social Security and
Medicare, I propose a new pension initiative for retirement
security in the 21st century. I propose that we use a little
over 11 percent of the surplus to establish Universal Savings
Accounts, USA Accounts, to give all Americans the means to
save. With these new accounts, Americans can invest as they
choose, and receive funds to match a portion of their savings,
with extra help for those least able to save.
USA Accounts will help all Americans to share in our
Nation's wealth, and to enjoy a more secure retirement. I ask
you to support them.
Fourth, we must invest in long-term care. I propose a tax
credit of $1,000 for the aged, ailing or disabled and the
families who care for them. Long-term care will become a bigger
and bigger challenge with the aging of America, and we must do
more to help our families deal with it.
I was born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom. I can
tell you that one of the greatest concerns of our generation is
our absolute determination not to let our growing old place an
intolerable burden on our children and their ability to raise
our grandchildren. Our economic success and our fiscal
discipline now give us an opportunity to lift that burden from
their shoulders, and we should take it.
Saving Social Security and Medicare, creating USA Accounts,
this is the right way to use the surplus. If we do so, if we do
so, we will still have resources to meet critical needs in
education and defense. And I want to point out that this
proposal is fiscally sound. Listen to this: If we set aside 60
percent of the surplus for Social Security and 16 percent for
Medicare, over the next 15 years, that saving will achieve the
lowest level of publicly held debt since right before World War
I in 1917.
So, with these four measures, saving Social Security,
strengthening Medicare, establishing the USA Accounts,
supporting long-term care, we can begin to meet our
generation's historic responsibility to establish true security
for 21st century seniors.
Now, there are more children from more diverse backgrounds
in our public schools than at any time in our history. Their
education must provide the knowledge and nurture the creativity
that will allow our entire Nation to thrive in the new economy.
Today we can say something we could not say 6 years ago:
With tax credits and more affordable student loans, with more
work study grants and more Pell grants, with education IRAs and
the new HOPE Scholarship tax cut that more than 5 million
Americans will receive this year, we have finally opened the
doors of college to all Americans.
With our support, nearly every State has set higher
academic standards for public schools, and a voluntary national
test is being developed to measure the progress of our
students. With over $1 billion in discounts available this
year, we are well on our way to our goal of connecting every
classroom and library to the Internet.
Last fall, you passed our proposal to start hiring 100,000
new teachers to reduce class size in the early grades. Now I
ask you to finish the job.
You know, our children are doing better. SAT scores are up,
math scores have risen in nearly all grades. But there is a
problem: While our fourth graders outperform their peers in
other countries in math and science, our eighth graders are
around average, and our twelfth graders rank near the bottom.
We must do better. Now, each year, the national government
invests more than $15 billion in our public schools. I believe
we must change the way we invest that money, to support what
works and to stop supporting what does not work.
First, later this year I will send to Congress a plan that
for the first time holds States and school districts
accountable for progress, and rewards them for results. My
Education Accountability Act will require every school district
receiving Federal help to take the following five steps.
First, all schools must end social promotion. No child, no
child should graduate from a high school with a diploma he or
she can't read. We do our children no favors when we allow them
to pass from grade to grade without mastering the material.
But we can't just hold students back because the system
fails them, so mybalanced budget triples the funding for summer
school and after-school programs to keep 1 million children learning.
If you doubt this will work, just look at Chicago, which
ended social promotion and made summer school mandatory for
those who don't master the basics. Math and reading scores are
up 3 years running, with some of the biggest gains in some of
the poorest neighborhoods. It will work, and we should do it.
Second, all States and school districts must turn around
their worst performing schools or shut them down. That is the
policy established in North Carolina by Governor Jim Hunt.
North Carolina made the biggest gains in test scores in the
Nation last year. Our budget includes $200 million to help
States turn around their own failing schools.
Third, all States and school districts must be held
responsible for the quality of their teachers. The great
majority of our teachers do a fine job, but in too many schools
teachers don't have college majors, or even minors, in the
subjects they teach. New teachers should be required to pass
performance exams, and all teachers should know the subjects
they are teaching.
This year's balanced budget contains resources to help them
reach higher standards, and to attract talented young teachers
to the toughest assignments, I recommend a six-fold increase in
our program for college scholarships for students who commit to
teach in the inner cities and isolated rural areas and in
Indian communities. Let us bring excellence to every part of
America.
Fourth, we must empower parents with more information and
more choices. In too many communities it is easier to get
information on the quality of local restaurants than on the
quality of the local schools. Every school district should
issue report cards on every school, and parents should be given
more choices in selecting their public schools.
When I became President, there was just one independent
public charter school in all America. With our support, on a
bipartisan basis, today there are 1,100. My budget assures that
early in the next century there will be 3,000.
Fifth, to ensure that our classrooms are truly places of
learning and to respond to what teachers have been asking us to
do for years, we should say that all States and school
districts must both adopt and implement sensible discipline
policies.
Now, let's do one more thing for our children. Today too
many schools are so old they are falling apart, or so
overcrowded students are learning in trailers. Last fall
Congress missed the opportunity to change that. This year, with
53 million children in our schools, Congress must not miss that
opportunity again. I ask you to help our communities build or
modernize 5,000 schools.
Now, if we do these things--end social promotion, turn
around failing schools, build modern ones, support qualified
teachers, promote innovation, competition, and discipline--then
we will begin to meet our generation's historic responsibility
to create 21st century schools.
We also have to do more to support the millions of parents
who give their all every day at home and at work.
The most basic tool of all is a decent income. So let's
raise the minimum wage by $1 an hour over the next 2 years. And
let's make sure that women and men get equal pay for equal work
by strengthening enforcement of the equal pay laws.
That was encouraging, you know. There was more balance on
the seesaw. I like that. Let's give them a hand. That's great.
Working parents also need quality child care. So again this
year I ask Congress to support our plan for tax credits and
subsidies for working families, for improved safety and
quality, for expanded after-school programs.
Our plan also includes a new tax credit for stay-at-home
parents, too. They need support, as well. Parents should never
have to worry about choosing between their children and their
work. The Family and Medical Leave Act, the very first bill I
signed into law, has now, since 1993, helped millions and
millions of Americans to care for a newborn baby or an ailing
relative without risking their jobs. I think it is time, with
all the evidence that it has been so little burdensome to
employers, to extend family leave to 10 million more Americans
working for smaller companies. I hope you will support it.
Finally, on the matter of work, parents should never have
to face discrimination in the workplace. I want to ask Congress
to prohibit companies from refusing to hire or promote workers
simply because they have children. That is not right.
America's families deserve the world's best medical care.
Thanks to bipartisan Federal support for medical research, we
are now on the verge of new treatments to prevent or delay
diseases, from Parkinsons to Alzheimers, from arthritis to
cancer. But as we continue our advances in medical science, we
can't let our medical system lag behind.
Managed care has literally transformed medicine in America,
driving down costs, but threatening to drive down quality as
well. I think we ought to say to every American, you should
have the right to know all your medical options, not just the
cheapest. If you need a specialist, you should have a right to
see one. You have a right to the nearest emergency care, if you
are in an accident. These are things that we ought to say. I
think we ought to say, you should have a right to keep your
doctor during a period of treatment, whether it is a pregnancy
or a chemotherapy treatment or anything else. I believe this.
Now, I have ordered these rights to be extended to the 85
million Americans served by Medicare, Medicaid, and other
Federal health programs. But only Congress can pass a Patients'
Bill of Rights for all Americans. Last year, Congress missed
that opportunity. We must not miss that opportunity again. For
the sake of our families, I ask us to join together across
party lines and pass a strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of
Rights.
As more of our medical records are stored electronically,
the threats to our privacy increase. Because Congress has given
me the authority to act if it does not do so by August, one way
or another, we can all say to the American people, we will
protect the privacy of medical records, and we will do it this
year.
Two years ago the Congress extended health coverage to up
to 5 million children. Now we should go beyond that. We should
make it easier for small businesses to offer health insurance.
We should give people between the ages of 55 and 65 who lose
their health insurance the chance to buy into Medicare. We
should continue to ensure access to family planning.
No one should have to choose between keeping health care
and taking a job. Therefore, I especially ask you tonight to
join hands to pass the landmark bipartisan legislation proposed
by Senators Kennedy and Jeffords, Roth and Moynihan, to allow
people with disabilities to keep their health insurance when
they go to work.
We need to enable our public hospitals, our community, our
university health centers, to provide basic, affordable care
for all the millions of working families who don't have any
insurance. They do a lot of that today, but much more can be
done, and my balanced budget makes a good down payment toward
that goal. I hope you will think about them and support that
provision.
Let me say, we must step up our efforts to treat and
prevent mental illness. No American should ever be afraid,
ever, to address this disease. This year we will host a White
House Conference on Mental Health. With sensitivity, commitment
and passion, Tipper Gore is leading our efforts here, and I
would like to thank her for what she is doing.
As everyone knows, our children are targets of a massive
media campaign to hook them on cigarettes. I ask this Congress
to resist the tobacco lobby, to reaffirm the FDA's authority to
protect our children from tobacco, and to hold tobacco
companies accountable while protecting tobacco farmers.
Smoking has cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars
under Medicare and other programs. The States have been right
about this, taxpayers shouldn't pay for the cost of lung
cancer, emphysema, and other smoking-related illnesses; the
tobacco companies should. So tonight I announce that the
Justice Department is preparing a litigation plan to take the
tobacco companies to court, and with the funds we recover, to
strengthen Medicare.
Now, if we act in these areas--minimum wage, family leave,
child care, health care, the safety of our children--then we
will begin to meet our generation's historic responsibilities
to strengthen our families for the 21st century.
Today, America is the most dynamic competitive job creating
economy in history.
But we can do even better in building a 21st century
economy that embraces all Americans.
Today's income gap is largely a skills gap. Last year, the
Congress passed a law enabling workers to get a skills grant to
choose the training they need, and I applaud all of you here
who were part of that. This year, I recommend a five-year
commitment to this new system, so that we can provide over the
next 5 years appropriate training opportunities for all
Americans who lose their jobs and expand rapid response teams
to help all towns which have been really hurt when businesses
close. I hope you will support this.
Also, I ask your support for a dramatic increase in Federal
support for adult literacy. We can mount a national campaign,
aimed at helping the millions and millions of working people
who still read at less than a fifth grade level. We need to do
this.
Here is some good news. In the past 6 years, we have cut
the welfare rolls nearly in half. Two years ago, from this
podium, I asked five companies to lead a national effort to
hire people off welfare. Tonight, our Welfare to Work
Partnership includes 10,000 companies who have hired hundreds
of thousands of people. Our balanced budget will help another
200,000 people move to the dignity and pride of work. I hope
you will support it.
We must do more to bring the spark of private enterprise to
every corner of America, to build a bridge from Wall Street to
Appalachia, to the Mississippi Delta, to our Native American
communities, with more support for community development banks,
for empowerment zones, for 100,000 new vouchers for affordable
housing, and I ask Congress to support our bold new plan to
help businesses raise up to $15 billion in private sector
capital to bring jobs and opportunities to our inner cities and
rural areas, with tax credits, loan guarantees, including the
new American Private Investment Companies modeled on our
Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
Now, for years and years and years we have had this OPIC,
this Overseas Private Investment Corporation, because we knew
we had untapped markets overseas. But our greatest untapped
markets are not overseas; they are right here at home, and we
should go after them.
Now, we must work hard to help bring prosperity back to the
familyfarm. You know, as this Congress knows very well,
dropping prices and the loss of foreign markets have devastated too
many family farms. Last year, the Congress provided substantial
assistance to help stave off a disaster in American agriculture, and I
am ready to work with lawmakers of both parties to create a farm safety
net that will include crop insurance reform and farm income assistance.
I ask you to join with me and do this.
This should not be a political issue. Everyone knows what
an economic problem is going on out there in rural America
today, and we need an appropriate means to address it.
We must strengthen our lead in technology. It was
government investment that led to the creation of the Internet.
I propose a 28 percent increase in long-term computing
research. We also must be ready for the 21st century from its
very first moment, by solving the so-called ``Y2K'' computer
problem.
Now, we had one Member of Congress stand up and applaud,
and we may have about that ratio out there applauding at home
in front of their television sets. But, remember, this is a
big, big problem and we have been working hard on it. Already
we have made sure that the Social Security checks will come on
time, but I want all the folks at home listening to know that
we need every State and local government, every business, large
and small, to work with us to make sure that this Y2K computer
bug will be remembered as the last headache of the 20th
century, not the first crisis of the 21st.
Now, for our own prosperity, we must support economic
growth abroad. Until recently, a third of our economic growth
came from exports, but over the past year and a half, financial
turmoil overseas has put that growth at risk. Today, much of
the world is in recession, with Asia hit especially hard.
This is the most serious financial crisis in half a
century. To meet it, the United States and other nations have
reduced interest rates and strengthened the International
Monetary Fund, and while the turmoil is not over, we have
worked very hard with other nations to contain it.
At the same time, we have to continue to work on the long-
term project, building a global financial system for the 21st
century that promotes prosperity and tames the cycle of boom
and bust that has engulfed so much of Asia.
This June, I will meet with other world leaders to advance
this historic purpose, and I ask all of you to support our
endeavors. I also ask you to support creating a freer and
fairer trading system for 21st century America.
I would like to say something really serious to everyone in
this Chamber and both parties. I think trade has divided us and
divided Americans outside this Chamber for too long. Somehow we
have to find a common ground on which business and workers and
environmentalists and farmers and government can stand
together. I believe these are the things we ought to all agree
on, so let me try.
First, we ought to tear down barriers, open markets and
expand trade, but at the same time we must ensure that ordinary
citizens in all countries actually benefit from trade, a trade
that promotes the dignity of work and the rights of workers and
protects the environment. We must insist that international
trade organizations be more open to public scrutiny, instead of
mysterious secret things subject to wild criticism.
When you come right down to it, now that the world economy
is becoming more and more integrated, we have to do in the
world what we spent the better part of this century doing here
at home. We have got to put a human face on the global economy.
Now, we must enforce our trade laws when imports unlawfully
flood our Nation. I have already informed the Government of
Japan that if that nation's sudden surge of steel imports into
our country is not reversed, America will respond.
We must help all manufacturers, hit hard by the present
crisis, with loan guarantees and other incentives to increase
American exports by nearly $2 billion.
I would like to believe we can achieve a new consensus on
trade based on these principles, and I ask the Congress again
to join me in this common approach and to give the President
the trade authority long used and now overdue and necessary to
advance our prosperity in the 21st century.
Tonight I issue a call to the nations of the world to join
the United States in a new round of global trade negotiation to
expand exports of services, manufacturers and farm products.
Tonight I say, we will work with the International Labor
Organization on a new initiative to raise labor standards
around the world and this year we will lead the international
community to conclude a treaty to ban abusive child labor
everywhere in the world.
If we do these things--invest in our people, our
communities, our technology and lead in the global economy--
then we will begin to meet our historic responsibility to build
a 21st century prosperity for America.
No nation in history has had the opportunity and the
responsibility we now have to shape a world that is more
peaceful, more secure, more free. All Americans can be proud
that our leadership helped to bring peace in Northern Ireland.
All Americans can be proud that our leadership has put Bosnia
on the path to peace, and with our NATO allies, we are pressing
the Serbian Government to stop its brutal repression in Kosovo,
to bring those responsible to justice and to give the people of
Kosovo the self-government they deserve.
All Americans can be proud that our leadership renewed hope
for lasting peace in the Middle East. Some of you were with me
last December as wewatched the Palestinian National Council
completely renounce its call for the destruction of Israel. Now I ask
Congress to provide resources so that all parties can implement the Wye
Agreement, to protect Israel's security, to stimulate the Palestinian
economy, to support our friends in Jordan. We must not, we dare not,
let them down. I hope you will help.
As we work for peace, we must also meet threats to our
Nation's security, including increased dangers from outlaw
nations and terrorism. We will defend our security wherever we
are threatened, as we did this summer when we struck at Osama
bin Laden's network of terror. The bombing of our embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania reminds us again of the risks faced every
day by those who represent America to the world. So let us give
them the support they need, the safest possible workplaces, and
the resources they must have so America can continue to lead.
We must work to keep terrorists from disrupting computer
networks. We must work to prepare local communities for
biological and chemical emergencies, to support research into
vaccines and treatments.
We must increase our efforts to restrain the spread of
nuclear weapons and missiles from Korea to India and Pakistan.
We must expand our work with Russia, Ukraine and other former
Soviet nations to safeguard nuclear materials and technology so
they never fall into the wrong hands.
Our balanced budget will increase funding for these
critical efforts by almost two-thirds over the next 5 years.
With Russia, we must continue to reduce our nuclear arsenals.
The START II Treaty and the framework we have already agreed to
for START III could cut them by 80 percent from their Cold War
height.
It has been 2 years since I signed the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty. If we do not do the right thing, other nations will
not either. I ask the Senate to take this vital step: Approve
the Treaty now to make it harder for other nations to develop
nuclear arms and to make sure we can end nuclear testing
forever.
For nearly a decade, Iraq has defied its obligations to
destroy its weapons of terror and the missiles to deliver them.
America will continue to contain Saddam and we will work for
the day when Iraq has a government worthy of its people.
Last month, in our action over Iraq, our troops were
superb. Their mission was so flawlessly executed that we risk
taking for granted the bravery and the skill it required.
Captain Jeff Taliaferro, a 10-year veteran of the Air Force,
flew a B-1B bomber over Iraq as we attacked Saddam's war
machine. He is here with us tonight. I would like to ask you to
honor him and all the 33,000 men and women of Operation Desert
Fox.
It is time to reverse the decline in defense spending that
began in 1985. Since April, together we have added nearly $6
billion to maintain our military readiness. My balanced budget
calls for a sustained increase over the next 6 years for
readiness, for modernization and for pay and benefits for our
troops and their families.
We are the heirs of a legacy of bravery represented in
every community in America by millions of our veterans.
America's defenders today still stand ready at a moment's
notice to go where comforts are few and dangers are many, to do
what needs to be done as no one else can. They always come
through for America. We must come through for them.
The new century demands new partnerships for peace and
security.
The United Nations plays a crucial role, with allies
sharing burdens America might otherwise bear alone. America
needs a strong and effective UN. I want to work with this new
Congress to pay our dues and our debts.
We must continue to support security and stability in
Europe and Asia, expanding NATO and defining its new missions,
maintaining our alliance with Japan, with Korea, with our other
Asian allies, and engaging China.
In China last year, I said to the leaders and the people
what I would like to say again tonight. Stability can no longer
be bought at the expense of liberty. But I would also like to
say again to the American people, it is important not to
isolate China. The more we bring China into the world, the more
the world will bring change and freedom to China.
Last spring, with some of you, I traveled to Africa, where
I saw democracy and reform rising but still held back by
violence and disease. We must fortify African democracy and
peace by launching radio democracy for Africa, supporting the
transition to democracy now beginning to take place in Nigeria,
and passing the African Trade and Development Act.
We must continue to deepen our ties to the Americas and the
Caribbean, our common work to educate children, fight drugs,
strengthen democracy, and increase trade.
In this hemisphere, every government but one is freely
chosen by its people. We are determined that Cuba, too, will
know the blessings of liberty.
The American people have opened their hearts and their arms
to our Central American and Caribbean neighbors who have been
so devastated by the recent hurricanes. Working with Congress,
I am committed to help them rebuild.
When the First Lady and Tipper Gore visited the region,
they saw thousands of our troops and thousands of American
volunteers. In the Dominican Republic, Hillary helped to
rededicate a hospital that had been rebuilt by Dominicans and
Americans working side by side.
With her was someone else who has been very important to
the relief efforts. You know, sports records aremade and sooner
or later they are broken. But making other people's lives better and
showing our children the true meaning of brotherhood, that lasts
forever. So for far more than baseball, Sammy Sosa, you are a hero of
two countries.
So I say to all of you, if we do these things, if we pursue
peace, fight terrorism, increase our strength, renew our
alliances, we will begin to meet our Nation's historic
responsibility to build a stronger 21st century America in a
freer, more peaceful world.
As the world has changed, so have our own communities. We
must make them safer, more livable and more united. This year
we will reach our goal of 100,000 community police officers
ahead of schedule and under budget.
The Brady Bill has stopped a quarter million felons,
fugitives, and stalkers from buying handguns. Now the murder
rate is the lowest in 30 years, and the crime rate has dropped
for 6 straight years.
Tonight I propose a 21st century crime bill to deploy the
latest technologies and tactics to make our communities even
safer. Our balanced budget will help to put up to 50,000 more
police on the street in the areas hardest hit by crime and to
equip them with new tools, from crime-mapping computers to
digital mug shots.
We must break the deadly cycle of drugs and crime. Our
budget expands support for drug testing and treatment, saying
to prisoners, if you stay on drugs, you have to stay behind
bars. And to those on parole, if you want to keep your freedom,
you must stay free of drugs.
I ask Congress to restore the 5-day waiting period for
buying a handgun and extend the Brady Bill to prevent juveniles
who commit violent crimes from buying a gun.
We must do more to keep our schools the safest places in
our communities. Last year, every American was horrified and
heartbroken by the tragic killings in Jonesboro, Paducah,
Pearl, Edinboro, and Springfield.
We were deeply moved by the courageous parents now working
to keep guns out of the hands of children and making efforts so
that other parents do not have to live through their loss.
After she lost her daughter, Suzann Wilson of Jonesboro,
Arkansas, came here to the White House with a powerful plea.
She said, ``Please, please for the sake of your children, lock
up your guns. Don't let what happened in Jonesboro happen in
your town.'' It is a message she is passionately advocating
every day.
Suzann is here with us tonight with the First Lady. I would
like to thank her for her courage and her commitment. Thank
you.
In memory of all the children who lost their lives to
school violence, I ask you to strengthen the Safe and Drug-Free
School Act, to pass legislation to require child trigger locks,
to do everything possible to keep our children safe.
A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt defined our
``great central task'' as ``leaving this land even a better
land for our descendants than it is for us.''
Today we are restoring the Florida Everglades, saving
Yellowstone, preserving the red-rock canyons of Utah,
protecting California's redwoods and our precious coasts. But
our most fateful new challenge is the threat of global warming.
1998 was the warmest year ever recorded. Last year's heat
waves, floods, and storms are but a hint of what future
generations may endure if we do not act now.
Tonight, I propose a new Clean Air Fund to help communities
reduce greenhouse and other pollution, and tax incentives and
investment to spur clean energy technology, and I want to work
with Members of Congress in both parties to reward companies
who take early, voluntary action to reduce greenhouse gases.
Now, all our communities face a preservation challenge as
they grow, and green space shrinks. Seven thousand acres of
farmland and open space are lost every day.
In response, I propose two major initiatives: first, a $1
billion Livability Agenda to help communities save open space,
ease traffic congestion and grow in ways that enhance every
citizen's quality of life; and, second, a $1 billion Lands
Legacy Initiative to preserve places of natural beauty all
across America, from the most remote wilderness to the nearest
city park.
These are truly landmark initiatives, which could not have
been developed without the visionary leadership of the Vice
President, and I want to thank him very much for his commitment
here. Thank you.
Now, to get the most out of your community, you have to
give something back. That is why we created AmeriCorps, our
national service program, that gives today's generation a
chance to serve their communities and earn money for college.
So far, in just 4 years, 100,000 young Americans have built
low-income homes with Habitat for Humanity, helped to tutor
children, with churches, worked with FEMA to ease the burden of
natural disasters, and performed countless other acts of
service that have made America better. I ask Congress to give
more young Americans the chance to follow their lead and serve
America in AmeriCorps.
Now, we must work to renew our national community as well
for the 21st century. Last year, the House passed the
bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation sponsored by
Representatives Shays and Meehan and Senators McCain and
Feingold. But a partisan minority in the Senate blocked reform.
So I would like to say to the House, pass it again, quickly;
and I would like to say to the Senate,I hope you will say yes
to a stronger American democracy in the year 2000.
Since 1997, our Initiative on Race has sought to bridge the
divides between and among our people. In its report last fall,
the Initiative's Advisory Board found that Americans really do
want to bring our people together across racial lines. We know
it has been a long journey. For some it goes back to before the
beginning of our Republic; for others, back since the Civil
War; for others, throughout the 20th century. But for most of
us alive today, in a very real sense, this journey began 43
years ago, when a woman named Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in
Alabama and wouldn't get up. She is sitting down with the First
Lady tonight, and she may get up or not as she chooses. We
thank her.
We know that our continuing racial problems are aggravated,
as the Presidential Initiative said, by opportunity gaps. The
initiative I have outlined tonight will help to close them. But
we know that the discrimination gap has not been fully closed
either. Discrimination or violence because of race or religion,
ancestry or gender, disability or sexual orientation, is wrong,
and it ought to be illegal. Therefore, I ask Congress to make
the Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the Hate Crimes
Prevention Act the law of the land.
You know, since every person in America counts, every
American ought to be counted. We need a census that uses modern
scientific methods to do that.
Our new immigrants must be part of our One America. After
all, they are revitalizing our cities, they are energizing our
culture, they are building up our economy. We have a
responsibility to make them welcome here, and they have a
responsibility to enter the mainstream of American life. That
means learning English and learning about our democratic system
of government.
There are now long waiting lines of immigrants that are
trying to do just that. Therefore, our budget significantly
expands our efforts to help them meet their responsibility. I
hope you will support it.
Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower or on
slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los
Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land 1,000
years ago, our great challenge for the 21st century is to find
a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges,
if we can go forward as One America.
You know, barely more than 300 days from now, we will cross
that bridge into the new millennium. This is a moment, as the
First Lady has said, to honor the past and imagine the future.
I would like to take just a minute to honor her for leading our
Millennium Project, for all she has done for our children, for
all she has done in her historic role to serve our Nation and
our best ideals at home and abroad. I honor her.
Last year, I called on Congress and every citizen to mark
the millennium by saving America's treasures. Hillary has
traveled all across the country to inspire recognition and
support for saving places like Thomas Edison's invention
factory and Harriet Tubman's home.
Now we have to preserve our treasures in every community,
and tonight, before I close, I want to invite every town, every
city, every community, to become a nationally recognized
millennium community, by launching projects that save our
history, promote our arts and humanities, prepare our children
for the 21st century.
Already the response has been remarkable, and I want to say
a special word of thanks to our private sector partners and to
Members in Congress of both parties for their support. Just one
example: Because of you, the Star Spangled Banner will be
preserved for the ages.
In ways large and small, as we look to the millennium, we
are keeping alive what George Washington called ``the sacred
fire of liberty.''
Six years ago, I came to office in a time of doubt for
America, with our economy troubled, our deficit high, our
people divided. Some even wondered whether our best days were
behind us.
But across this country, in 1,000 neighborhoods, I had
seen, even amidst the pain and uncertainty of recession, the
real heart and character of America. I knew then that we
Americans could renew this country.
Tonight, as I deliver the last State of the Union address
of the 20th century, no one anywhere in the world can doubt the
enduring resolve and boundless capacity of the American people
to work toward that ``more perfect union'' of our founders'
dream.
We are now at the end of a century when generation after
generation of Americans answered the call to greatness,
overcoming Depression, lifting up the dispossessed, bringing
down barriers to racial prejudice, building the largest middle
class in history, winning two World Wars in the ``long twilight
struggle'' of the Cold War. We must all be profoundly grateful
for the magnificent achievements of our forebears in this
century.
Yet perhaps in the daily press of events, in the clash of
controversy, we don't see our own time for what it truly is, a
new dawn for America. Ten years from tonight, another American
President will stand in this place and report on the State of
the Union. He, or she, will look back on a 21st century shaped
in so many ways by the decisions we make here and now.
So let it be said of us then that we were thinking not only
of our time, but of their time; that we reached as high as our
ideals; that we put aside our divisions and found a new hour of
healing and hopefulness; that we joined together to serve and
strengthen the land we love.
My fellow Americans, this is our moment. Let us lift our
eyes as one nation, and from the mountain top of this American
century, look ahead to the next one, asking God's blessing on
our endeavors and on our beloved country.
Thank you, and good evening.