[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 10 (Wednesday, January 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1126-S1127]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                  GOV. PETE WILSON'S INAUGURAL ADDRESS

 Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, our former colleague, California's 
Governor Pete Wilson delivered a powerful address on the occasion of 
his second inaugural on January 7, 1995.
  Appropriately titled ``Forging America's Future,'' Governor Wilson's 
address urges a recommitment ``to that miracle we call democracy.''
  Mr. President, Governor Wilson's eloquent speech is timely and 
pertinent for all Americans. I commend it to my colleagues' attention.
  The address follows:

                  California: Forging America's Future

       This is a day of renewal. Today, we recommit ourselves to 
     that miracle we call democracy, and to the spirit and promise 
     we call California.
       That spirit and promise burn brightest not here in the 
     Capitol, but in the hearts and minds of California's people--
     in our factories and on our farms, in our factories and on 
     our farms, in our churches and our temples, in our classrooms 
     and around our kitchen tables.
       This morning's ceremony is a celebration, and also a 
     vindication: a vindication not of an individual or political 
     party, but of a resilient and sturdy people blessed with 
     courage and character. Though tested and tempered in the 
     forge of adversity, they came through the fire, their faith 
     intact, clinging tenaciously to the promise of California.
       When the earth shook and the hills burned, when rivers 
     overflowed and riots scarred our cities, when drought seared 
     the earth and fiscal crises tested our confidence in 
     government itself, a lesser people would have just given up.
       But not Californians. That's not the California Way.
       When confronted with the worst, we respond with our best.
       That is the California Way.
       Californians have always answered adversity with bold 
     thoughts and challenged convention with fresh ideas. They 
     have always dared to dream.
       The poet Carl Sandburg wrote, ``The Republic is a dream. 
     Nothing happens unless first a dream.''
       In the 1850s, a dream led pioneers West in wagon trains 
     across a desolate prairie and over frozen mountains.
       These early pioneers risked their lives crossing the mighty 
     Sierra, till one day they crossed a ridge to find themselves 
     gazing down from the heights upon a golden valley that held 
     the promise of California.
       Most of us are not the lineal descendents of those 
     pioneers. We came later. We came by ship from Asia and by 
     station wagon from Ohio. We came during the Great Depression 
     from the Dust Bowl in pick-ups piled high with our 
     possessions. And we came by jet-liner last year, last month, 
     and last week.
       Today, we too stand on that same ridge, with a valley of 
     promise spread before us, inviting us to partake of the good 
     life.
       But ours is a generation that cannot take for granted the 
     good life, the historically generous bounty of California, 
     unless we are prepared to make dramatic change.
       We must act, and act quickly, because we live in a time of 
     great and accelerating change; because we live in a shrinking 
     and more competitive global marketplace; and because, as we 
     rush toward the 21st century, we are at a crossroads and must 
     choose what kind of California we will have.
       We must choose whether California will be the Golden 
     State--or a welfare state. It can't be both.
       On that, my fellow citizens, there can be no question.
       We must be wise enough, tough-minded and honest enough to 
     repeal programs that fail their stated noble purpose and fail 
     expensively, incurring fiscal and human costs that are 
     unaffordable.
       The people agree. They are out of patience with misfired 
     good intentions that defy sense or fairness.
       They ask: Is it fair that the welfare system taxes working 
     people who can't afford children and pays people who don't 
     work for having more children?
       They ask: Why should federal law reward illegal immigrants 
     for violating the law and punish California taxpayers and 
     needy legal residents?
       They ask: Why have schools that reward poor teachers for 
     promoting--even graduating--students who can't adequately 
     speak and write English?
       And they ask: Why do our laws put dangerous criminals back 
     on our street, and put us behind barred windows and locked 
     doors?
       The last refuge of those who call these questions unfair is 
     to assert their compassion, and to deny ours.
       The ultimate compassion is to build an economy that works, 
     one that grows and provides the jobs working Californians 
     need to feed their families, build their homes and pay their 
     taxes.
       To produce that economy and all the work our people need, 
     we must lift the burdens that government has placed on risk-
     takers, on the people who create California's jobs. If we 
     over-tax and over-regulate, if our workers are not well-
     educated and our streets are not safe, we will drive these 
     job-creators to other states.
       California can't afford to do that. If we do, we will 
     deserve to lose the talent, the entrepreneurial drive, the 
     energy and innovation that make California all that it is.
       So we will not put up with bad schools, or violence on our 
     streets, or regulations that impose costs greater than their 
     benefits, or taxes that dwarf those levied by our neighbors.
       We must free our people, and release their creative energy.
       By lifting from them the restraints, regulations, and 
     burdens that government has imposed, we free them to seize 
     opportunity and create more.
       [[Page S1127]] And they will.
       And all of California will succeed.
       So, we will deliberately shrink government to expand 
     opportunity.
       We will demand that all citizens meet the test of common 
     decency, respecting the rights of others, and we will demand 
     that those who can, pull their own weight and meet the test 
     of personal responsibility.
       We will make clear that welfare is to be a safety net, not 
     a hammock--and absolutely not a permanent way of life.
       We will correct our laws to make clear that bringing a 
     child into the world is an awesome personal responsibility 
     for both the mother and the father.
       The costs are simply too high for society to continue 
     tolerating the promiscuity and irresponsibility that have 
     produced generations of unwed teen mothers.
       It is monstrously unfair to the children; to their sad, 
     ill-equipped teen mothers; and certainly to working 
     taxpayers, who must support them at a cost to their own 
     children.
       We will insist that those who receive public assistance 
     earn it. We will give them help and support to escape from 
     dependency to the independence and self-respect of work. We 
     want them to see in the eyes of their children that special 
     look of respect and pride that only working parents can know.
       We will not tolerate the selfishness of ``dead-beat dads'' 
     who casually father a child and walk away from their 
     responsibility. Their child is their obligation, not the 
     taxpayer's.
       If they lack the basic decency to send love to their child, 
     they must at least send money. If they don't, we will track 
     them down and dock their pay for child support.
       We will demand accountability and personal responsibility. 
     Now the teen predator who does violence to his victim will be 
     prosecuted not as a juvenile, but as an adult.
       But as I said four years ago--how much better it is to 
     prevent crime than to punish it.
       That kind of prevention is fundamentally a father's 
     responsibility. Too often the fatherless child of a teen 
     mother becomes a teen predator, and the trigger man for his 
     gang.
       We are paying for too many prisons because absent fathers 
     have failed to take responsibility to socialize and civilize 
     their children. That must change.
       For those who become so brutalized that they can't respect 
     themselves or the rights of others, prison must be the answer 
     to violence.
       The fundamental right of every Californian is not to become 
     a crime victim, and it is the first responsibility of 
     government to safeguard that right.
       We will do so. Those who commit violent crimes will pay 
     heavily for their brutality.
       But we must at the same time work to alter the behavior of 
     parents who default on their responsibility as parents. When 
     we succeed, we can build more laboratories and libraries--and 
     fewer prisons.
       We must also change our schools. Something's wrong with our 
     schools. Something important and basic.
       Some are superb. Too many are not. Despite the dedication 
     and skill of many teachers, the quality of our schools is 
     erratic.
       Our schools must be safe: free of guns and drugs and free 
     of kids who bring them.
       We must insist on order and discipline in the classroom, or 
     teaching and learning cannot occur.
       Recognizing the enormous importance and the influence of 
     good teaching in a child's life, we must recognize and reward 
     excellence, and removed from the classroom those teachers 
     whose performance is inadequate.
       Children must learn the basics. And we must be assured that 
     they have learned by standardized tests that measure 
     individual student performance.
       We must raise our standards high enough to challenge our 
     children to meet the competition they will all too soon 
     encounter in the international marketplace. The standards we 
     enforce must be high and clear, not imprecise and politically 
     correct.
       And if our kids have not learned what they must know to 
     compete in this increasingly demanding job market, we must 
     not do them the serious disservice of pretending that they 
     have.
       Social promotion is the worst form of false kindness. We 
     must not promote them.
       If they can't do arithmetic, don't understand rudimentary 
     science, and especially if they cannot read, write and speak 
     English, our children won't be hired, much less promoted.
       Much is written and spoken about the importance of self-
     esteem to a child's success. Self-esteem is important. But it 
     cannot be conferred. It must be earned by performance, by 
     meeting standards, and by having been honestly tested and 
     honestly judged to have met or exceeded clear, high 
     standards.
       Anything less is not honest, and not fair. It is deception, 
     and cannot be the basis for success. Not for a school child, 
     not even for a nation-state that boasts the world's seventh 
     largest economy.
       We must reward effort and achievement. We must honor those 
     who work hard, who meet life's test playing by the rules; who 
     respect themselves and the rights of others; who honor their 
     obligations as parents and citizens; who raise their children 
     to obey the law.
       And just as we demand that citizens meet these standards of 
     decency and responsibility, we must demand at least as much 
     from government--in Sacramento and in Washington.
       California will not submit its destiny to faceless federal 
     bureaucrats or even Congressional barons.
       We declare to Washington that California is a proud and 
     sovereign state, not a colony of the federal government.
       We will set our own course.
       We will return both dollars and decisions to Californians 
     who are working hard this very day to build a better future.
       We will perform radical surgery to undo two decades of 
     mischief, which, though wrought with good intentions, have 
     imposed an intolerable burden on our people.
       We will break the bonds of restraint which government has 
     placed on those strong enough to create opportunity, and 
     break the chains of dependency on those addicted to 
     government's largesse.
       We will make these changes and empower Californians.
       We will meet the challenge of building the first society to 
     embrace every culture, every language, every ethnic group on 
     the planet.
       We will not allow ourselves to be divided into divergent 
     interests who simply rub up against one another like the 
     tectonic plates of the San Andreas fault.
       We will meet the tests that lie ahead, as a people proud of 
     our many pasts, who now share a common future, a proud 
     future.
       And what makes our success all the more critical is that a 
     nation--indeed a world--challenged by constant change looks 
     to us for new lessons in democratic renewal.
       America has always asked a special role from California: to 
     seek out the American future by trying new ideas, rejecting 
     what doesn't work, and building on what does.
       The historian Kevin Starr wrote, ``California [is] the 
     prism through which America glimpses its unfolding 
     identity.''
       The California Way has always been to shape the future with 
     courage and creativity, embracing change, while still 
     clinging to the unchanging values of faith and family, of 
     individual effort and personal responsibility without which 
     no republic can long endure.
       Our role, our responsibility, is to assure that California 
     chooses greatness, to guarantee those seeking opportunity 
     that we will provide it, and that we can and will take the 
     steps required to do so.
       This, then, is the California Way: seeing possibilities 
     where others see only problems, forging a new future of 
     opportunity from the flames of adversity. Where others suffer 
     change, or patiently await it, California will invent the 
     future--and export it.
       In a time of grave peril Abraham Lincoln declared: ``The 
     occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with 
     the occasion.''
       Time and again, America has seen California rise with the 
     occasion and triumph over peril. Through every difficulty, 
     California has offered a dream to be realized. We will make 
     real again the dream of a republic where work is respected 
     and rewarded, where every right is balanced by 
     responsibility, where freedom thrives and opportunity burns 
     bright.
       We choose to be victors, not victims.
       We are, after all Californians.
       California's favorite son, Ronald Reagan, has for all his 
     life embodied that special unbridled optimism that is at the 
     heart of the California dream. He is again teaching us new 
     lessons about courage, candor and dignity.
       In his moving letter to the American people, President 
     Reagan wrote:
       ``For America, there will always be a bright dawn ahead.''
       My friends, let us vow that we will keep faith with Ronald 
     Reagan's vision for America.
       Let us assure him and our children that we will make 
     California that shining city on the hill, where America's 
     bright dawn is always breaking.
     

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