[House Document 106-160]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]





106th Congress, 2d Session - - - - - - - - - - - House Document 106-160
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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




January 31, 2000.--Referred to the Committee on the Whole House on the 
              State of the Union and ordered to be printed

                                -------                                

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
62-134                     WASHINGTON : 2000       





To the Congress of the United States:
    Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, 
honored guests, my fellow Americans: We are fortunate to be 
alive at this moment in history. Never before has our Nation 
enjoyed, at once, so much prosperity and social progress with 
so little internal crisis and so few external threats. Never 
before have we had such a blessed opportunity and, therefore, 
such a profound obligation to build the more perfect union of 
our founders' dreams.
    We begin the new century with over 20 million new jobs; the 
fastest economic growth in more than 30 years; the lowest 
unemployment rates in 30 years; the lowest poverty rates in 20 
years; the lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment 
rates on record; the first back-to-back surpluses in 42 years.
    Next month, America will achieve the longest period of 
economic growth in our entire history.
    We have built a new economy.
    Our economic revolution has been matched by a revival of 
the American spirit: Crime down by 20 percent, to its lowest 
level in 25 years. Teen births down 7 years in a row. Adoptions 
up by 30 percent. Welfare rolls cut in half to their lowest 
levels in 30 years.
    My fellow Americans, the state of our union is the 
strongest it has ever been.
    As always, the real credit belongs to the American people.
    My gratitude also goes to those of you in this Chamber who 
have worked with us to put progress over partisanship.
    Eight years ago, it was not so clear to most Americans 
there would be much to celebrate in the year 2000. Then our 
Nation was gripped by economic distress, social decline, 
political gridlock. The title of a best-selling book that year 
asked: ``America: What Went Wrong?''
    In the best traditions of our Nation, Americans determined 
to set things right. We restored the vital center, replacing 
outmoded ideologies with a new vision anchored in basic, 
enduring values: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, 
a community of all Americans.
    We reinvented government, transforming it into a catalyst 
for new ideas that stress both opportunity and responsibility, 
and give our people the tools they need to solve their own 
problems.
    With the smallest Federal workforce in 40 years, we turned 
record deficits into record surpluses, and doubled our 
investment in education. We cut crime: with 100,000 community 
police and the Brady Law, which has kept guns out of the hands 
of half a million criminals.
    We ended welfare as we knew it, requiring work while 
protecting health care and nutrition for children, and 
investing more in child care, transportation, and housing to 
help their parents go to work. We have helped parents to 
succeed at home and at work with family leave, which 20 million 
Americans have now used to care for a newborn child or a sick 
loved one. We have engaged 150,000 young Americans in citizen 
service through AmeriCorps, while helping them earn money for 
college.
    In 1992, we just had a roadmap. Today, we have results. 
Even more important, America again has the confidence to dream 
big dreams. But we must not let this confidence drift into 
complacency. For we, all of us, will be judged by the dreams 
and deeds we pass on to our children. And on that score, we 
will be held to a high standard, indeed. Because our chance to 
do good is so great.
    My fellow Americans, we have crossed the bridge we built to 
the 21st century. Now, we must shape a 21st-century American 
revolution, of opportunity, responsibility, and community. We 
must be now, as we were in the beginning, a new Nation.
    At the dawn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt said, 
``The one characteristic more essential than any other is 
foresight. It should be the growing nation with a future that 
takes the long look ahead.''
    Tonight, let us take our long look ahead and set great 
goals for our Nation.
    To 21st century America, let us pledge these things:
    Every child will begin school ready to learn and graduate 
ready to succeed.Every family will be able to succeed at home 
and at work, and no child will be raised in poverty. We will meet the 
challenge of the aging of America. We will assure quality, affordable 
health care at last for all Americans. We will make America the safest 
big country on earth. We will pay off our national debt for the first 
time since 1935. We will bring prosperity to every American community. 
We will reverse the course of climate change and leave a safer, cleaner 
planet. America will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity, 
and the far frontiers of science and technology. And we will become at 
last what our founders pledged us to be so long ago: One Nation, under 
God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
    These are great goals, worthy of a great nation. We will 
not reach them all this year. Not even in this decade. But we 
will reach them. Let us remember that the first American 
revolution was not won with a single shot. The continent was 
not settled in a single year. The lesson of our history, and 
the lesson of the last 7 years, is that great goals are reached 
step by step: always building on our progress, always gaining 
ground.
    Of course, you cannot gain ground if you are standing 
still. For too long this Congress has been standing still on 
some of our most pressing national priorities. So let us begin 
tonight with them.
    Again, I ask you to pass a real Patients' Bill of Rights. I 
ask you to pass common sense gun safety legislation. I ask you 
to pass campaign finance reform. I ask you to vote up or down 
on judicial nominations and other important appointees; and, 
again, I ask you, I implore you, to raise the minimum wage.
    Now, let me try to balance the seesaw here. Two years ago, 
as we reached across party lines to reach our first balanced 
budget, I asked that we meet our responsibility to the next 
generation by maintaining our fiscal discipline. Because we 
refused to stray from that path, we are doing something that 
would have seemed unimaginable 7 years ago. We are actually 
paying down the national debt.
    Now, if we stay on this path, we can pay down the debt 
entirely in just 13 years now and make America debt-free for 
the first time since Andrew Jackson was President in 1835.
    In 1993, we began to put our fiscal house in order with the 
Deficit Reduction Act, which you will all remember won passages 
in both Houses by just a single vote. Your former colleague, my 
first Secretary of the Treasury, led that effort and sparked 
our long boom. He is here with us tonight. Lloyd Bentsen, you 
have served America well; and we thank you.
    Beyond paying off the debt, we must ensure that the 
benefits of debt reduction go to preserving two of the most 
important guarantees we make to every American, Social Security 
andMedicare. Tonight I ask you to work with me to make a 
bipartisan down payment on Social Security reform by crediting the 
interest savings from debt reduction to the Social Security Trust Fund 
so that it will be strong and sound for the next 50 years.
    But this is just the start of our journey. We must also 
take the right steps toward reaching our great goals.
    First and foremost, we need a 21st century revolution in 
education, guided by our faith that every single child can 
learn. Because education is more important than ever, more than 
ever the key to our children's future, we must make sure all of 
our children have that key. That means quality pre-school and 
afterschool, the best trained teachers in the classroom and 
college opportunities for all our children.
    For 7 years now, we have worked hard to improve our 
schools, with opportunity and responsibility: Investing more, 
but demanding more in return.
    Reading, math and college entrance scores are up. Some of 
the most impressive gains are in schools in very poor 
neighborhoods. But all successful schools have followed the 
same proven formula: higher standards, more accountability and 
extra help so children who need it can get it to reach those 
standards.
    I have sent Congress a reform plan based on that formula. 
It holds States and school districts accountable for progress 
and rewards them for results. Each year our national government 
invests more than $15 billion in our schools. It is time to 
support what works and stop supporting what does not.
    Now, as we demand more from our schools, we should also 
invest more in our schools. Let us double our investment to 
help States and districts turn around their worst-performing 
schools, or shut them down. Let us double our investment in 
afterschool and summer school programs which boost achievement 
and keep people off the street and out of trouble. If we do 
this, we can give every single child in every failing school in 
America, everyone, the chance to meet high standards.
    Since 1993, we have nearly doubled our investment in Head 
Start and improved its quality. Tonight, I ask you for another 
$1 billion for Head Start, the largest increase in the history 
of the program.
    We know that children learn best in smaller classes with 
good teachers. For 2 years in a row, Congress has supported my 
plan to hire 100,000 new qualified teachers to lower class size 
in the early grades. I thank you for that, and I ask you to 
make it three in a row.
    And to make sure all teachers know the subjects they teach, 
tonight I propose a new teacher quality initiative, to recruit 
more talented people into the classroom, reward good teachers 
for staying there and give all teachers the training they need.
    We know charter schools provide real public school choice. 
When I becamePresident, there was just one independent public 
charter school in all America. Today, thanks to you, there are 1,700. I 
ask you now to help us meet our goal of 3,000 charter schools by next 
year.
    We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet, 
and we are getting there. In 1994, only 3 percent of our 
classrooms were connected. Today, with the help of the Vice 
President's E-rate program, more than half of them are; and 90 
percent of our schools have at least one Internet connection.
    But we cannot finish the job when a third of all our 
schools are in serious disrepair. Many of them have walls and 
wires so old they are too old for the Internet. So tonight I 
propose to help 5,000 schools a year to make immediate and 
urgent repairs and again to help build or modernize 6,000 more, 
to get students out of trailers and into high-tech classrooms.
    I ask all of you to help me double our bipartisan GEAR UP 
program, which provides mentors for disadvantaged young people. 
If we double it, we can provide mentors for 1.4 million of 
them. Let us also offer these kids from disadvantaged 
backgrounds the same chance to take the same college test-prep 
courses wealthier students use to boost their test scores.
    Thank you.
    To make the American dream achievable for all, we must make 
college affordable for all. For 7 years, on a bipartisan basis, 
we have taken action toward that goal: larger Pell grants, more 
affordable student loans, education IRAs and our HOPE 
scholarships which have already benefited 5 million young 
people. Now, 67 percent of high school graduates are going on 
to college. That is up 10 percent since 1993. Yet millions of 
families still strain to pay college tuition. They need help.
    So I propose a landmark $30 billion college opportunity tax 
cut, a middle-class tax deduction for up to $10,000 in college 
tuition costs. The previous actions of this Congress have 
already made 2 years of college affordable for all. It is time 
to make 4 years of college affordable for all.
    If we take all of these steps, we will move a long way 
toward making sure every child starts school ready to learn and 
graduates ready to succeed.
    We also need a 21st century revolution to reward work and 
strengthen families by giving every parent the tools to succeed 
at work and at the most important work of all, raising 
children. That means making sure every family has health care 
and the support to care for aging parents, the tools to bring 
their children up right and that no child grows up in poverty.
    From my first days as President, we have worked to give 
families better access to better health care. In 1997, we 
passed the Children's Health Insurance Program, CHIP, so that 
workers who do not have coverage through their employers at 
least can get it for their children. So far, we have enrolled 
2million children. We are well on our way to our goal of 5 million, but 
there are still more than 40 million of our fellow Americans without 
health insurance, more than there were in 1993.
    Tonight I propose that we follow Vice President Gore's 
suggestion to make low-income parents eligible for the 
insurance that covers their children. Together with our 
children's initiative, think of this, together with our 
children's initiative, this action would enable us to cover 
nearly a quarter of all the uninsured people in America.
    Again, I want to ask you to let people between the ages of 
55 and 65, the fastest growing group of uninsured, buy into 
Medicare. And this year I propose to give them a tax credit to 
make that choice an affordable one. I hope you will support 
that, as well.
    When the Baby Boomers retire, Medicare will be faced with 
caring for twice as many of our citizens. Yet, it is far from 
ready to do so. My generation must not ask our children's 
generation to shoulder our burden. We simply must act now to 
strengthen and modernize Medicare.
    My budget includes a comprehensive plan to reform Medicare 
to make it more efficient and more competitive. And it 
dedicates nearly $400 billion of our balanced budget surplus to 
keep Medicare solvent past 2025; and, at long last, it also 
provides funds to give every senior a voluntary choice of 
affordable coverage for prescription drugs.
    Lifesaving drugs are an indispensable part of modern 
medicine. No one creating a Medicare program today would even 
think of excluding coverage for prescription drugs. Yet, more 
than three in five of our seniors now lack dependable drug 
coverage which can lengthen and enrich their lives. Millions of 
older Americans who need prescription drugs the most pay the 
highest prices for them.
    In good conscience, we cannot let another year pass without 
extending to all our seniors this lifeline of affordable 
prescription drugs.
    Record numbers of Americans are providing for aging or 
ailing loved ones at home. It is a loving but a difficult and 
often very expensive choice. Last year, I proposed a $1,000 tax 
credit for long-term care. Frankly, it was not enough. This 
year, let us triple it to $3,000, but this year, let us pass 
it.
    We also have to make needed investments to expand access to 
mental health care. I want to take a moment to thank the person 
who led our first White House Conference on Mental Health last 
year, and who for 7 years has led all our efforts to break down 
the barriers to decent treatment of people with mental illness. 
Thank you, Tipper Gore.
    Taken together, these proposals would mark the largest 
investment in health care in the 35 years since Medicare was 
created, the largest investment in 35 years. That would be a 
big step toward assuring quality healthcare for all Americans, 
young and old, and I ask you to embrace them and pass them.
    We must also make investments that reward work and support 
families. Nothing does that better than the earned income tax 
credit, the EITC. The E in the EITC is about earning, working, 
taking responsibility, and being rewarded for it. In my very 
first address to you, I asked Congress to greatly expand this 
credit, and you did. As a result, in 1998 alone, the EITC 
helped more than 4.3 million Americans work their way out of 
poverty toward the middle class. That is double the number in 
1993.
    Tonight, I propose another major expansion of the EITC, to 
reduce the marriage penalty, to make sure it rewards marriage 
as it rewards work, and also to expand the tax credit for 
families that have more than two children. It punishes those 
with more than two children today. Our proposal would allow 
families with three or more children to get up to $1,100 more 
in tax relief. These are working families. Their children 
should not be in poverty.
    We also cannot reward work and family unless men and women 
get equal pay for equal work. Today the female unemployment 
rate is the lowest it has been in 46 years. Yet, women still 
only earn about 75 cents for every dollar men earn. We must do 
better by providing the resources to enforce present equal pay 
laws, training more women for high-paying, high-tech jobs, and 
passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.
    Many working parents spend up to a quarter, a quarter of 
their income on child care. Last year we helped parents provide 
child care for about 2 million children. My child care 
initiative before you now, along with funds already secured in 
welfare reform, would make child care better, safer, and more 
affordable for another 400,000 children. I ask you to pass 
that. They need it out there in America.
    For hard-pressed middle-income families, we should also 
expand the child care tax credit, and I believe strongly we 
should take the next big step and make that tax credit 
refundable for low-income families. For people making under 
$30,000, that could mean up to $2,400 for child care costs. We 
all say we are pro-work and pro-family. Passing this proposal 
would prove it.
    Tens of millions of Americans live from paycheck to 
paycheck. As hard as they work, they still do not have the 
opportunity to save. Too few can make use of IRAs and 401(k) 
plans. We should do more to help all working families save and 
accumulate wealth. That is the idea behind the so-called 
Individual Development Accounts, the IDAs.
    I ask you to take that idea to a new level, with new 
retirement savings accounts that enable every low- and 
moderate-income family in America to save for retirement, a 
first home, a medical emergency, or a college education. I 
propose to match their contributions, however small, dollar 
fordollar, every year they save. And I propose to give a major new tax 
credit to any small business that will provide a meaningful pension to 
its workers. Those people ought to have retirement as well as the rest 
of us.
    Nearly one in three American children grows up without a 
father. These children are five times more likely to live in 
poverty than children with both parents at home. Clearly, 
demanding and supporting responsible fatherhood is critical to 
lifting all of our children out of poverty. We have doubled 
child support collections since 1992, and I am proposing to use 
tough new measures to hold still more fathers responsible.
    But we should recognize that a lot of fathers want to do 
right by their children, but need help to do it. Carlos Rosas 
of St. Paul, Minnesota, wanted to do right by his son, and he 
got the help to do it. Now he has a good job and he supports 
his little boy. My budget will help 40,000 more fathers make 
the same choices Carlos Rosas did. I thank him for being here 
tonight. Stand up, Carlos. Thank you.
    If there is any single issue on which we should be able to 
reach across party lines, it is in our common commitment to 
reward work and strengthen families. Let us remember what we 
did last year. We came together to help people with 
disabilities keep their health insurance when they go to work. 
I thank you for that.
    Thanks to overwhelming bipartisan support from this 
Congress, we have improved foster care. We have helped those 
young people who leave it when they turn 18, and we have 
dramatically increased the number of foster care children going 
into adoptive homes. I thank all of you for all of that.
    Of course, I am forever grateful to the person who has led 
our efforts from the beginning, and who has worked so 
tirelessly for children and families for 30 years now: my wife, 
Hillary. Thank you, Hillary.
    If we take the steps I have just discussed, we can go a 
long, long way toward empowering parents to succeed at home and 
at work, and ensuring that no child is raised in poverty. We 
can make these vital investments in health care, education, 
support for working families, and still offer tax cuts to help 
pay for college, for retirement, to care for aging parents, to 
reduce the marriage penalty. We can do these things without 
forsaking the path of fiscal discipline that got us here 
tonight.
    Indeed, we must make these investments and these tax cuts 
in the context of a balanced budget that strengthens and 
extends the life of social security and Medicare and pays down 
the national debt.
    Crime in America has dropped for the past 7 years. That is 
the longest decline on record, thanks to a national consensus 
we helped to forge on community police, sensible gun safety 
laws, and effective prevention.
    But nobody, nobody here, nobody in America, believes we are 
safe enough.So again, I ask you to set a higher goal. Let us 
make this country the safest big country in the world.
    Now, last fall Congress supported my plan to hire, in 
addition to the 100,000 community police we have already 
funded, 50,000 more, concentrated in high crime neighborhoods. 
I ask your continued support for that.
    Soon after the Columbine tragedy, Congress considered 
common-sense gun legislation to require Brady background checks 
at the gun shows, child safety locks for new handguns and a ban 
on the importation of large-capacity ammunition clips. With 
courage, and a tie-breaking vote for the Vice President, the 
Senate faced down the gun lobby, stood up for the American 
people and passed this legislation. But the House failed to 
follow suit.
    Now, we have all seen what happens when guns fall into the 
wrong hands. Daniel Mauser was only 15 years old when he was 
gunned down at Columbine. He was an amazing kid, a straight-A 
student, a good skier. Like all parents who lose their 
children, his father, Tom, has borne unimaginable grief. 
Somehow he has found the strength to honor his son by 
transforming his grief into action.
    Earlier this month, he took a leave of absence from his job 
to fight for tougher gun safety laws. I pray that his courage 
and wisdom will at long last move this Congress to make common-
sense gun legislation the very next order of business. Tom 
Mauser, stand up. We thank you for being here tonight, Tom. 
Thank you, Tom.
    We must strengthen our gun laws and enforce those already 
on the books better. Federal gun crime prosecutions are up 16 
percent since I took office, but we must do more. I propose to 
hire more Federal and local gun prosecutors and more ATF agents 
to crack down on illegal gun traffickers and bad-apple dealers 
and we must give them the enforcement tools that they need. 
Tools to trace every gun and every bullet used in every gun 
crime in the United States. I ask you to help us do that.
    Every State in this country already requires hunters and 
automobile drivers to carry a license. I think they ought to do 
the same thing for handgun purchases. Now, specifically, I 
propose a plan to ensure that all new handgun buyers must first 
have a photo license from their State showing they passed the 
Brady background check and a gun safety course before they get 
the gun. I hope you will help me pass that in this Congress.
    Listen to this: the accidental gun death rate of children 
under 15 in the United States is nine times higher than in the 
other 25 industrialized countries combined. Technologies now 
exist that could lead to guns that could only be fired by the 
adults who own them. I ask Congress to fund research into Smart 
Gun technology to save these children's lives. I ask 
responsible leaders in the gun industry to work with us on 
smart guns and other steps to keepguns out of the wrong hands 
and keep our children safe.
    Every parent I know worries about the impact of violence in 
the media on their children. I want to begin by thanking the 
entertainment industry for accepting my challenge to put 
voluntary ratings on TV programs and video and Internet games. 
But, frankly, the ratings are too numerous, diverse and 
confusing to be really useful to parents. So tonight I ask the 
industry to accept the First Lady's challenge, to develop a 
single voluntary rating system for all children's entertainment 
that is easier for parents to understand and enforce.
    The steps I outline will take us well on our way to making 
America the safest big country in the world.
    Now, to keep our historic economic expansion going, the 
subject of a lot of discussion in this community and others, I 
believe we need a 21st century revolution to open new markets, 
start new businesses, hire new workers right here in America. 
In our inner-cities, poor, rural areas and Native American 
reservations.
    Our Nation's prosperity has not yet reached these places. 
Over the last 6 months I have traveled to a lot of them, joined 
by many of you and many farsighted businesspeople, to shine a 
spotlight on the enormous potential in communities from 
Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta, from Watts to the Pine 
Ridge Reservation. Everywhere I have gone I have met talented 
people eager for opportunity and able to work. Tonight I ask 
you: Let us put them to work.
    For business, it is the smart thing to do. For America, it 
is the right thing to do. And let me ask you something. If we 
do not do this now, when in the wide world will we ever get 
around to it?
    So I ask Congress to give businesses the same incentives to 
invest in America's new markets they now have to invest in 
markets overseas. Tonight, I propose a large New Markets Tax 
Credit and other incentives to spur $22 billion in private 
sector capital to create new businesses and new investments in 
our inner-cities and rural areas.
    I also, because empowerment zones have been creating these 
opportunities for 5 years now, I also ask you to increase 
incentives to invest in them and to create more of them. And 
let me say to all of you again what I have tried to say at 
every turn: This is not a Democratic or a Republican issue. 
Giving people a chance to live their dreams is an American 
issue.
    Mr. Speaker, it was a powerful moment last November when 
you joined the Reverend Jesse Jackson and me in your home State 
of Illinois and committed to working toward our common goal by 
combining the best ideas from both sides of the aisle. I want 
to thank you again and to tell you, Mr. Speaker, I look forward 
to working with you. This is a worthy joint endeavor. Thank 
you.
    I also ask you to make special efforts to address the areas 
of our Nation with the highest rates of poverty, our Native 
American reservations and the Mississippi Delta. My budget 
includes a $110 million initiative to promote economic 
development in the Delta; and $1 billion to increase economic 
opportunity, health care, education and law enforcement for our 
Native American communities.
    Now, in this new century, we should begin this new century 
by honoring our historic responsibility to empower the first 
Americans. And I want to thank tonight the leaders and the 
Members from both parties who have expressed to me an interest 
in working with us on these efforts. They are profoundly 
important.
    There is another part of our American community in trouble 
tonight, our family farmers. When I signed the Farm Bill in 
1996, I said there was great danger it would work well in good 
times but not in bad. Well, droughts, floods and historically 
low prices have made these times very bad for the farmers. We 
must work together to strengthen the farm safety net, invest in 
land conservation, and create some new markets for them by 
expanding our programs for bio-based fuels and products. 
Please, they need help. Let us do it together.
    Opportunity for all requires something else today: having 
access to a computer and knowing how to use it. That means we 
must close the digital divide between those who have the tools 
and those who do not.
    Connecting classrooms and libraries to the Internet is 
crucial, but it is just a start. My budget ensures that all new 
teachers are trained to teach 21st century skills and it 
creates technology centers in 1,000 communities to serve 
adults. This spring, I will invite high-tech leaders to join me 
on another New Markets tour to close the digital divide and 
open opportunity for our people.
    I want to thank the high-tech companies that already are 
doing so much in this area, and I hope the new tax incentives I 
have proposed will get all the rest of them to join us. This is 
a national crusade. We have got to do this and do it quickly.
    Now, again, I say to you these are steps, but step by step 
we can go a long way toward our goal of bringing opportunity to 
every community.
    To realize the full possibilities of this economy, we must 
reach beyond our own borders to shape the revolution that is 
tearing down barriers and building new networks among nations 
and individuals, economies, and cultures: Globalization. It is 
the central reality of our time.
    Of course, change this profound is both liberating and 
threatening to people. But there is no turning back. And our 
open, creative society stands to benefit more than any other if 
we understand and act on the realities of interdependence. We 
have to be at the center of every vital global network asa good 
neighbor and a good partner. We have to recognize that we cannot build 
our future without helping others to build theirs.
    The first thing we have got to do is to forge a new 
consensus on trade. Those of us who believe passionately in the 
power of open trade, we have to ensure that it lifts both our 
living standards and our values, never tolerating abusive child 
labor or a race to the bottom in the environment and worker 
protection. But others must recognize that open markets and 
rules-based trade are the best engines we know of for raising 
living standards, reducing global poverty and environmental 
destruction, and assuring the free flow of ideas.
    I believe as strongly tonight as I did the first day I got 
here, the only direction for America on trade is to keep going 
forward. I ask you to help me forge that consensus.
    We have to make developing economies our partners in 
prosperity. That is why I would like to ask you again to 
finalize our ground-breaking African and Caribbean Basin trade 
initiatives.
    But globalization is about more than economics. Our purpose 
must be to bring together the world around freedom, democracy, 
and peace and to oppose those who would tear it apart.
    Here are the fundamental challenges I believe America must 
meet to shape the 21st century world:
    First, we must continue to encourage our former 
adversaries, Russia and China, to emerge as stable, prosperous, 
democratic nations. Both are being held back today from 
reaching their full potential, Russia by the legacy of 
communism, an economy in turmoil, a cruel and self-defeating 
war in Chechnya; China by the illusion that it can buy 
stability at the expense of freedom.
    But think how much has changed in the past decade. Five 
thousand former Soviet nuclear weapons taken out of commission, 
Russian soldiers actually served with us in the Balkans, 
Russian people electing their leaders for the first time in 
1,000 years. In China, an economy more open to the world than 
ever before. Of course no one, not a single person in this 
Chamber tonight, can know for sure what direction these great 
nations will take. But we do know for sure that we can choose 
what we do. We should do everything in our power to increase 
the chance that they will choose wisely, to be constructive 
members of our global community.
    That is why we should support those Russians who are 
struggling for a democratic, prosperous future, continue to 
reduce both our nuclear arsenals and help Russia to safeguard 
weapons and materials that remain.
    That is why I believe Congress should support the agreement 
we negotiated to bring China into the WTO by passing permanent 
normal trade relations with China as soon as possible this 
year.
    I think you ought to do it for two reasons. First of all, 
our markets arealready open to China. This agreement will open 
China's markets to us. Second, it will plainly advance the cause of 
peace in Asia and promote the cause of change in China.
    No, we do not know where it is going. All we can do is 
decide what we are going to do. But when all is said and done, 
we need to know we did everything we possibly could to maximize 
the chance that China will choose the right future.
    A second challenge we have got is to protect our own 
security from conflicts that pose the risk of wider war and 
threaten our common humanity. We cannot prevent every conflict 
or stop every outrage. But where our interests are at stake and 
we can make a difference, we should be and we must be 
peacemakers.
    We should be proud of our role in bringing the Middle East 
closer to a lasting peace, building peace in Northern Ireland, 
working for peace in East Timor and Africa, promoting 
reconciliation between Greece and Turkey and in Cyprus, working 
to defuse these crises between India and Pakistan and defending 
human rights and religious freedom.
    We should be proud of our men and women in our armed forces 
and those of our allies who stopped the ethnic cleansing in 
Kosovo, enabling a million people to return to their homes.
    When Slobodan Milosevic unleashed his terror on Kosovo, 
Captain John Cherrey was one of the brave airmen who turned the 
tide. When another American plane was shot down over Serbia, he 
flew into the teeth of enemy air defenses to bring his fellow 
pilot home. Thanks to our armed forces' skill and bravery, we 
prevailed in Kosovo without losing a single American in combat.
    I want to introduce Captain Cherrey to you. We honor 
Captain Cherrey. We promise you, Captain, we will finish the 
job you began. Stand up so we can see you.
    A third challenge we have is to keep this inexorable march 
of technology from giving terrorists and potentially hostile 
nations the means to undermine our defenses. Keep in mind the 
same technological advances that have shrunk cell phones to fit 
in the palms of our hands can also make weapons of terror 
easier to conceal and easier to use.
    We must meet this threat by making effective agreements to 
restrain nuclear and missile programs in North Korea, curbing 
the flow of lethal technology to Iran, preventing Iraq from 
threatening its neighbors, increasing our preparedness against 
chemical and biological attack, protecting our vital computer 
systems from hackers and criminals, and developing a system to 
defend against new missile threats while working to preserve 
our ABM missile treaty with Russia.
    We must do all these things. I predict to you, when most of 
us are long gone but sometime in the next 10 to 20years, the 
major security threat this country will face will come from the enemies 
of the nation's state, the narcotraffickers, the terrorists and 
organized criminals who will be organized together, working together 
with increasing access to ever more sophisticated chemical and 
biological weapons.
    I want to thank the Pentagon and others for doing what they 
are doing right now to try to help protect us and plan for that 
so our defenses will be strong. I ask for your support so that 
they can succeed.
    I also want to ask you for a constructive bipartisan 
dialogue this year to work to build a consensus which I hope 
will eventually lead to the ratification of the comprehensive 
nuclear test ban treaty.
    I hope we can also have a constructive effort to meet the 
challenge that is presented to our planet by the huge gulf 
between rich and poor. We cannot accept a world in which part 
of humanity lives on the cutting edge of a new economy and the 
rest live on the bare edge of survival. I think we have to do 
our part to change that with expanded trade, expanded aid, and 
the expansion of freedom.
    This is interesting. From Nigeria to Indonesia, more people 
fought for the right to choose their leaders in 1999 than in 
1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. We have got to stand by these 
democracies, including, and especially tonight, Colombia, which 
is fighting narcotraffickers for its own people's lives and for 
our children's lives.
    I have proposed a strong 2-year package to help Colombia 
win this fight. I want to thank the leaders and both parties in 
both Houses for listening to me and the President of Colombia 
about it. We have got to pass this. I want to ask your help. A 
lot is riding on it. It is so important for the long-term 
stability of our country and for what happens in Latin America.
    I also want you to know I am going to send you new 
legislation to go after what these drug barons value the most, 
their money. And I hope you will pass that as well.
    Now, in a world where over a billion people live on less 
than a dollar a day, we also have got to do our part in the 
global endeavor to reduce the debts of the poorest countries so 
they can invest in education, health care and economic growth. 
That is what the Pope and other religious leaders have urged us 
to do. Last year, Congress made a down payment on America's 
share. I ask you to continue that. I thank you for what you did 
and ask you to stay the course.
    I also want to say that America must help more nations to 
break the bonds of disease. Last year, in Africa, 10 times as 
many people died from AIDS as were killed in wars, 10 times. 
The budget I give you invests $150 million more in the fight 
against this and other infectious killers. Today, I propose a 
tax credit to speed the development of vaccines to diseases 
like malaria, TB, and AIDS. I ask the privatesector and our 
partners around the world to join us in embracing this cause. We can 
save millions of lives together, and we ought to do it.
    I also want to mention our final challenge which, as 
always, is the most important. I ask you to pass a national 
security budget that keeps our military the best trained and 
best equipped in the world, with heightened readiness and 21st 
century weapons, which raises salaries for our service men and 
women, which protects our veterans, which fully funds the 
diplomacy that keeps our soldiers out of war, which makes good 
on our commitment to our UN dues and arrears. I ask you to pass 
this budget.
    I also want to say something, if I might, very personal 
tonight. The American people watching us at home, with the help 
of all the commentators, can tell from who stands and who sits 
and who claps and who does not that there is still modest 
differences of opinion in this room.
    But I want to thank you for something, every one of you. I 
want to thank you for the extraordinary support you have given, 
Republicans and Democrats alike, to our men and women in 
uniform. I thank you for it.
    I also want to thank especially two people. First, I want 
to thank our Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen for symbolizing 
our bipartisan commitment to national security. Thank you so 
much. Even more, I want to thank his wife Janet who, more than 
any other American citizen, has tirelessly traveled this world 
to show the support we all feel for our troops. Thank you, 
Janet Cohen. I appreciate it. Thank you.
    These are the challenges we have to meet so that we can 
lead the world toward peace and freedom in an era of 
globalization.
    I want to tell you that I am very grateful for many things 
as President. But one of the things I am grateful for is the 
opportunity that the Vice President and I have had to finally 
put to rest the bogus idea that you cannot grow the economy and 
protect the environment at the same time.
    As our economy has grown, we have rid more than 500 
neighborhoods of toxic waste, ensured cleaner air and water for 
millions of people. In the past 3 months alone, we have helped 
preserve 40 million acres of roadless lands in the National 
Forests, created three new national monuments.
    But as our communities grow, our commitment to conservation 
must continue to grow. Tonight I propose creating a permanent 
conservation fund to restore our wildlife, protect coastlines, 
save natural treasures, from the California redwoods to the 
Florida Everglades. This Lands Legacy endowment would represent 
by far the most enduring investment and land preservation ever 
proposed in this House.
    I hope we can get together with all the people with 
different ideas and do this. This is a gift we should give to 
our children and grandchildren for alltime across party lines. 
We can make an agreement to do this.
    Last year, the Vice President launched a new effort to make 
communities more liberal--livable. Liberal, I know. No. Wait a 
minute. I have got a punch line now. That is this year's 
agenda. Last year was livable, right? That is what Senator Lott 
is going to say in the commentary afterwards.
    To make our communities more livable. This is big business. 
This is a big issue. What does that mean? You ask anybody that 
lives in an unlivable community, and they will tell you. They 
want their kids to grow up next to parks, not parking lots. The 
parents do not want to have to spend all their time stalled in 
traffic when they can be home with their children.
    Tonight I ask you to support new funding for the following 
things to make American communities more liberal--livable. I 
have done pretty well with this speech, but I cannot say that 
right.
    One, I want to help us to do three things. We need more 
funding for advanced transit systems. We need more funding for 
saving open spaces in places of heavy development. And we need 
more funding, this ought to have bipartisan appeal, we need 
more funding for helping major cities around the Great Lakes 
protect their waterways and enhance their quality of life. We 
need these things, and I want you to help us.
    Now, the greatest environmental challenge in the new 
century is global warming. The scientists tell us the 1990s 
were the hottest decade of the entire millennium. If we fail to 
reduce the emission of greenhouse gases, deadly heatwaves and 
droughts will become more frequent, coastal areas will flood, 
and economies will be disrupted. That is going to happen unless 
we act.
    Many people in the United States, some people in this 
Chamber, and lots of folks around the world still believe you 
cannot cut greenhouse gas emissions without slowing economic 
growth.
    In the Industrial Age that may well have been true. But in 
this digital economy, it is not true anymore. New technologies 
make it possible to cut harmful emissions and provide even more 
growth.
    For example, just last week, automakers unveiled cars that 
get 70 to 80 miles a gallon, the fruits of a unique research 
partnership between government and industry. Before you know 
it, efficient production of biofuels will give us the 
equivalent of hundreds of miles from a gallon of gasoline.
    To speed innovation in these kinds of technologies, I think 
we should give a major tax incentive to business for the 
production of clean energy and the families for buying energy 
saving homes and appliances and the next generation of super-
efficient cars when they hit the showroom floor.
    I also ask the auto industry to use the available 
technologies to make allnew cars more fuel efficient right 
away. And I ask this Congress to do something else. Please help us make 
more of our clean energy technology available to the developing world. 
That will create cleaner growth abroad and a lot more new jobs here in 
the United States of America.
    Now, in the new century innovations in science and 
technology will be key not only to the health of the 
environment but to miraculous improvements in the quality of 
our lives and advances in the economy.
    Later this year, researchers will complete the first draft 
of the entire human genome, the very blueprint of life. It is 
important for all our fellow Americans to recognize that 
Federal tax dollars have funded much of this research and that 
this and otherwise investments in science are leading to a 
revolution in our ability to detect, treat, and prevent 
disease.
    For example, researchers have identified genes that cause 
Parkinson's, diabetes, and certain kinds of cancer. They are 
designing precision therapies that will block the harmful 
effects of these genes for goods.
    Researchers already are using this new technique to target 
and destroy cells that cause breast cancer. Soon we may be able 
to use it to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's.
    Scientists are also working on an artificial retina to help 
many blind people to see. And listen to this. Microchips that 
would actually directly stimulate damaged spinal cords in a way 
that could allow people now paralyzed to stand up and walk.
    These kinds of innovations are also propelling our 
remarkable prosperity. Information technology only includes 8 
percent of our employment. But now it accounts for a third of 
our economic growth, along with jobs that pay, by the way, 
about 80 percent above the private sector average.
    Again, we ought to keep in mind government funded research 
brought supercomputers to the Internet and communication 
satellites into being. Soon researchers will bring us devices 
that can translate foreign languages as fast as you can talk; 
materials 10 times stronger than steel at a fraction of the 
weight; and this is unbelievable to me, molecular computers the 
size of a teardrop with the power of today's fastest 
supercomputers.
    To accelerate the march of discovery across all these 
disciplines of science and technology, I ask you to support my 
recommendation of an unprecedented $3 billion in the 21st 
century research fund, the largest increase in civilian 
research in a generation. We owe it to our future.
    Now, these new breakthroughs have to be used in ways that 
reflect our values. First and foremost, we have to safeguard 
our citizens' privacy.
    Last year, we proposed to protect every citizen's medical 
records. This year we will finalize those rules. We have also 
taken the first steps to protect the privacy of banks and 
credit cardrecords and other financial statements. Soon I will 
send legislation to you to finish that job.
    We must also act to prevent any genetic discrimination 
whatever by employers or insurers. I hope you will support 
that.
    These steps will allow us to lead toward the far frontiers 
of science and technology. They will enhance our health, the 
environment, the economy in ways we cannot even imagine today.
    But we all know that at a time when science technology and 
the forces of globalization are bringing so many changes into 
all our lives, it is more important than ever that we 
strengthen the bonds that root us in our local communities and 
in our national community. No tie binds different people 
together like citizen service.
    There is a new spirit of service in America, a movement we 
try to support with AmeriCorps, expanded Peace Corps, 
unprecedented new partnerships with businesses, foundations, 
community groups, partnerships, for example, like the one that 
enlisted 12,000 companies which have now moved 650,000 of our 
fellow citizens from welfare to work, partnerships to battle 
drug abuse, AIDS, teach young people to read, save America's 
treasures, strengthen the arts, fight teen pregnancy, prevent 
violence among young people, promote racial healing.
    The American people are working together. But we should do 
more to help Americans help each other. First, we should help 
faith-based organizations to do more to fight poverty and drug 
abuse and help people get back on the right track with 
initiatives like second chance homes that do so much to help 
unwed teen mothers.
    Second, we should support Americans who tithe and 
contribute to charities but do not earn enough to claim a tax 
deduction for it.
    Tonight I propose new tax incentives that would allow low- 
and middle-income citizens who do not itemize to get that 
deduction. It is nothing but fair, and it will get more people 
to give.
    We should do more to help new immigrants to fully 
participate in our community. That is why I recommend spending 
more to teach them civics and English. And since everybody in 
our community counts, we have got to make sure everyone is 
counted in this year's census.
    Now, within 10 years, just 10 years, there will be no 
majority race in our largest State of California. In a little 
more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in America. 
In a more interconnected world, this diversity can be our 
greatest strength.
    Just look around this Chamber, look around. We have Members 
in this Congress from virtually every racial, ethnic, and 
religious background. And I think you would agree that America 
is stronger because of it. But you will also have to agree that 
all those differences you just clapped for all too often spark 
hatred and division, even here at home.
    Just in the last couple of years, we have seen a man 
dragged to death in Texas just because he was black. We saw a 
young man murdered in Wyoming just because he was gay. Last 
year we saw the shootings of African Americans, Asian 
Americans, and Jewish children just because of who they were.
    This is not the American way, and we must draw the line. I 
ask you to draw that line by passing without delay the Hate 
Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. 
And I ask you to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.
    Finally, tonight I propose the largest ever investment in 
our civil rights laws for enforcement because no American 
should be subjected to discrimination in finding a home, 
getting a job, going to school, or securing a loan. Protections 
in law should be protections in fact.
    Last February, because I thought this was so important, I 
created the White House Office of One America to promote racial 
reconciliation. That is what one of my personal heroes, Hank 
Aaron, has done all his life. From his days as our all-time 
homerun king to his recent acts of healing, he has always 
brought people together. We should follow his example. We are 
honored to have him with us tonight. Stand up, Hank Aaron.
    I just want to say one more thing about this, and I want 
every one of you to think about this the next time you get mad 
at one of your colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This 
fall, at the White House, Hillary had one of her millennium 
dinners and we had this very distinguished scientist there who 
was an expert in this whole work in the human genome; and he 
said that we are all, regardless of race, genetically 99.9 
percent the same.
    Now, you may find that uncomfortable when you look around 
here. But it is worth remembering. We can laugh about this, but 
you think about it. Modern science has confirmed what ancient 
fates has also taught us, the most important fact of life is 
our common humanity. Therefore, we should do more than just 
tolerate our diversity. We should honor it and celebrate it.
    Thank you.
    My fellow Americans, every time I prepare for the State of 
the Union, I approach it with hope and expectation and 
excitement for our Nation. But tonight is very special, because 
we stand on the mountaintop of a new millennium. Behind us, we 
can look back and see the great expanse of American 
achievement, and before us we can see even greater, grander 
frontiers of possibility. We should, all of us, be filled with 
gratitude and humility for our present progress and prosperity. 
We should be filled with awe and joy at what lies over the 
horizon, and we should be filled with absolute determination to 
make the most of it.
    You know, when the framers finished crafting our 
Constitution in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin stood in 
Independence Hall and he reflected on the carving of the sun. 
It was on the back of a chair he saw. The sun was low on the 
horizon, so he said this. He said, I have often wondered 
whether that sun was rising or setting. Today, Franklin said, I 
have the happiness to know it is a rising sun.
    Today, because each succeeding generation of Americans has 
kept the fire of freedom burning brightly, lighting those 
frontiers of possibility, we all still bask in the glow and the 
warmth of Mr. Franklin's rising sun. After 224 years, the 
American revolution continues. We remain a new Nation. And as 
long as our dreams outweigh our memories, America will be 
forever young. That is our destiny. And this is our moment.
    Thank you, God bless you. And God bless America.

                                

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