[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 14 (Tuesday, January 24, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H584-H590]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


  THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

  The PRESIDENT. Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 104 this 
Congress, my fellow Americans. Again we are here in the sanctuary of 
democracy and once again our democracy has spoken. So let me begin by 
congratulating all of you here in the 104th Congress and congratulating 
you, Mr. Speaker. If we agree on nothing else tonight, we must agree 
that the American people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 
1994. As I look out at you, I know how some of you must have felt in 
1992. I must say that in both years, we did not hear America singing, 
we heard America shouting. And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats 
alike, must say we hear you. We will work together to earn the jobs you 
have given us. We are the keepers of the sacred trust, and we must be 
faithful to it in this new and very demanding era.
  Over 200 years ago our founders changed the entire course of human 
history by joining together to create a new country based on a single 
powerful idea: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal, endowed by their creator with certain inalienable 
rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of 
happiness.
  It has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea, 
the American idea, and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and 
different times, to Lincoln and to his Congress, to preserve the union 
and to end slavery; to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to 
restrain the abuses and excesses of the Industrial Revolution, and to 
exert our leadership in the world; to Franklin Roosevelt, to fight the 
failure and pain of the Great Depression and to win our country's great 
struggle against fascism; and to all our presidents since, to fight the 
Cold War. Especially I recall two, who struggled to fight that Cold War 
in partnership with Congresses where the majority was of a different 
party. To Harry Truman, who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at 
home and who built the architecture of the Cold War, and to Ronald 
Reagan, who we wish well tonight and who exhorted us to carry on until 
the twilight struggle against communism was won.
  In another time of change and challenge, I had the honor to be the 
first President to be elected in the post-Cold War era, an era marked 
by the global economy, the information revolution, unparalleled change 
and opportunity and in security for the American people.
  I came to this hallowed Chamber two years ago on a mission, to 
restore the American dream for all our people and to make sure that we 
move into the 21st Century still the strongest force for freedom and 
democracy in the entire world. I was determined then to tackle the 
tough problems too long ignored. In this effort I am frank to say 
[[Page H585]] that I have made my mistakes, and I have learned again 
the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I am also proud 
to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was two years ago.
  Record numbers of Americans are succeeding in the new global economy. 
We are at peace and we are a force for peace and freedom throughout the 
world. We have almost 6 million new jobs since I became president, and 
we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25 
years. Our businesses are more productive, and here we have worked to 
bring the deficit down, to expand trade, to put more police on our 
streets, to give our citizens more of the tools they need to get an 
education and to rebuild their own communities.
  But the rising tide is not lifting all boats. While our Nation is 
enjoying peace and prosperity, too many of our people are still working 
harder and harder for less and less. While our businesses are 
restructuring and growing more productive and competitive, too many of 
our people still cannot be sure of having a job next year or even next 
month. And far more than our material riches are threatened, things far 
more precious to us: Our children, our families, our values. Our civil 
life is suffering in America today. Citizens are working together less 
and shouting at each other more. The common bounds of community which 
have been the great strength of our country from its very beginning are 
badly frayed.
  What are we to do about it? More than 60 years ago at the dawn of 
another new era, President Roosevelt told our Nation new conditions 
impose new requirements on government and those who conduct government. 
And from that simple proposition, he shaped a New Deal, which helped to 
restore our Nation to prosperity and defined the relationship between 
our people and their government for half a century. That approach 
worked in its time, but we today, we face a very different time and 
very different conditions.
  We are moving from an industrial age built on gears and sweat, to an 
information age demanding skills and learning and flexibility. Our 
government, once the champion of national purpose, is now seen by many 
as simply a captive of narrow interests, putting more burdens on our 
citizens rather than equipping them to get ahead. The values that used 
to hold us altogether seem to be coming apart.
  So tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges 
of this time. As we enter a new era, we need a new set of 
understandings, not just with government, but, even more important, 
with one another, as Americans.
  That is what I want to talk with you about tonight. I call it the New 
Covenant. But it is grounded in a very, very old idea, that all 
Americans have not just a right, but a solemn responsibility to rise as 
far as their God-given talents and determination can take them, and to 
give something back to their communities and their country in return. 
Opportunity and responsibility, they go hand in hand. We can't have one 
without the other, and our
 national community can't hold together without both.

  Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip 
our people to meet the challenges of the new economy, how we can change 
the way our government works to fit a different time, and, above all, 
how we can repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together 
behind our common purpose. We must have dramatic change in our economy, 
our government, and ourselves.
  My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise to the 
occasion. Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride. As we 
embark on this new course, let us put our country first, remembering 
that regardless of party label, we are all Americans, and let the final 
test of everything we do be a simple one: Is it good for the American 
people?
  Let me begin by saying that we cannot ask Americans to be better 
citizens if we are not better servants. You made a good start by 
passing that law which applies to Congress all the laws you put on the 
private sector, and I was proud to sign that yesterday. But we have a 
lot more to do before people really trust the way things work around 
here. Three times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors of 
Washington as were here 20 years ago. The American people look at their 
Capitol and they see a city where the well-connected and the well-
protected can work the system. But the interests of ordinary citizens 
are often left out.
  As the new Congress opened its doors, lobbyists were still doing 
business as usual. The gifts, the trips, all the things that people are 
concerned about haven't stopped. Twice this month you missed 
opportunities to stop these practices. I know there were other 
considerations in those votes, but I want to use something I have heard 
my Republican friends say from time to time, there doesn't have to be a 
law for everything. So tonight, I ask you to just stop taking the 
lobbyists' perks. Just stop.
  We don't have to wait for legislation to pass to send a strong signal 
to the American people that things are really changing. But I also hope 
you will send me the strongest possible lobby reform bill, and I will 
sign that too. We should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom 
they work, what they are spending, what they wanted. We should also 
curb the role of big money in elections by capping the costs of 
campaigns and limiting the influence of PAC's.
  As I have said for three years, we should work to open the airwaves 
so that they can be an instrument of democracy, not a weapon of 
destruction, by giving free TV time to candidates for public office. 
When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was 
reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the halls of 
this sacred building and cheered. This year, let's give the folks at 
home something to cheer about.
  More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way 
the government works. Let's make it smaller and less costly and 
smarter, leaner.
  I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine is alive and well.
  The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old 
bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter. The old 
way of governing around here protected organized interests. We should 
look out for the interests of ordinary people. The old way divided us 
by interests, constituency or class. The New Covenant way should unite 
us behind a common vision of what is best for our country. The old way 
dispensed services through large top-down inflexible bureaucracies. The 
New Covenant way should shift these resources and decision making from 
bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and competition and 
individual responsibility into national policy.
  The old way of governing around here actually seemed to reward 
failure. The New Covenant way should have built-in incentives to reward 
success. The old way was centralized here in Washington. The New 
Covenant way must take hold in the communities all across America, and 
we should help them to do that.
  Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower 
people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security 
here at home and abroad.
  We must not ask government to do what we should do for ourselves. We 
should rely on government as a partner to help us to do more for 
ourselves and for each other.
  I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting 
matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion 
that there is somehow a program for every problem on the one hand, and 
the other illusion that the government is the source of every problem 
we have. Our job is to get rid of yesterday's government so that our 
own people can meet today's and tomorrow's needs, and we ought to do it 
together.
  You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say 
they would cut government and how bad it was. But not much happened. We 
actually did it. We cut over one-quarter of a trillion dollars in 
spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions 
from the Federal bureaucracy in the last two years alone. Based on 
decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter 
of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the 
[[Page H586]] smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President by 
the time I come here again next year.
  Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have 
already saved taxpayers $63 billion. The age of the 500 dollar hammer 
and the ashtray you can break on David Letterman is gone. Deadwood 
programs like mohair subsidies are gone. We have streamlined the 
Agriculture Department by reducing it by more than twelve hundred 
offices. We have slashed the small business loan form from an inch 
thick to a single page. We have thrown away the government's
 10,000 page personnel manual. And the government is working better in 
important ways. FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone 
from being a disaster to helping people in disasters.

  You can ask the farmers in the Middle West who fought the flood there 
or the people in California who dealt with floods and earthquakes and 
fires, and they will tell you that.
  Government workers working hand in hand with private business rebuilt 
Southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under 
budget. And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of 
the 5,600 schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business.
  Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want 
to just mention one, because it will be discussed here in the next few 
weeks. The university administrators all across the country have told 
me that they are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now 
because of our Direct College Loan Program, which makes college loans 
cheaper and more affordable with better repayment terms for students, 
costs the government less, and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for 
the government and for the universities. We shouldn't cap that program. 
We should give every college in America the opportunity to be a part of 
it.
  Previous government programs gathered dust. The reinventing 
government report is getting results. And we are not through. There is 
going to be a second round of reinventing government. We propose to cut 
$130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze 
on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to three, 
and rid of over 100 programs we do not need, like the Interstate 
Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve Program.
  And we are working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and 
making them more sensible. The programs and regulations that have 
outlived their usefulness should go. We have to cut yesterday's 
government to help solve tomorrow's problems, and we need to get 
government closer to the people it is meant to serve. We need to help 
move programs down to the point where states and communities and 
private citizens in the private sector can do a better job. If they can 
do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of the way and let 
them do what they can do better.
  Taking power away from Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to 
communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be 
for. It is time for Congress to stop passing on to the states the cost 
of decisions we make here in Washington.
  I know there are still serious differences over the details of the 
unfunded mandates legislation, but I want to work with you to make sure 
we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interests and 
give justified relief where we need to give it.
  For years Congress concealed in the budget scores pet spending 
projects. Last year was no different. There was $1 million to study 
stress in plants, and $12 million for a tick removal program that 
didn't work. It is hard to remove ticks. Those of us who have them 
know. But I will tell you something, if you will give me the line item 
veto, I will remove some of that unnecessary spending. But I think we 
should all remember, and almost all of us would agree, that government 
still has important responsibilities. Our young people, we should think 
of this when we cut, our young people hold our future in their hands, 
we still owe a debt to our veterans, and our senior citizens have made 
us what we are.
  Now, my budget cuts a lot, but it protects education, veterans, 
Social Security and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. 
You should. I hope you will.
  And when we give more flexibility to the states, let us remember that 
there are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed 
in every state, north and south, east and west. Immunization against 
childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools, Head Start, 
medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants, all these 
things are in the national interest.
  I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary 
regulations. But when we deregulate, let's remember what national 
action in the national interest has given us: Safer food for our 
families, safer toys for our children, safer nursing homes for our 
parents, safer cars and highways, and safer workplaces, cleaner air and 
cleaner water. Do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations? 
You bet we do. But we can have common sense and still provide for safe 
drinking water. We can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps, 
and we ought to do it.
  Should we cut the deficit more? Well, of course we should. But we can 
bring it down in a way that still protects our economic recovery and 
does not unduly punish people who should not be punished, but instead 
should be helped.
  I know many of you in this Chamber support the balanced budget 
amendment. I certainly want to balance the budget. Our administration 
has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a 
very, very long time.
  If you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do, then 
you have to be straight with the American people. They have a right to 
know what you are going to cut, what taxes you are going to raise, how 
it is going to affect them.
  We should be doing things in the open around here. For example, 
everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger Social 
Security. I would oppose that, and I think most Americans would.
  Nothing has done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility 
than our failed welfare system. This is one of the problems we have to 
face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It rewards welfare over 
work. It undermines family values. It lets
 millions of parents get away without paying their child support. It 
keeps a minority, but a significant minority, of the people on welfare 
trapped on it for a very long time.

  I have worked on this problem for a long time, nearly 15 years now. 
As a governor I had the honor of working with the Reagan Administration 
to write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988. In the last two 
years we have made a good start at continuing the work of welfare 
reform. Our administration gave two dozen states the right to slash 
through Federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare 
systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and 
dependency. Last year I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform 
plan ever presented by an administration.
  We have to make welfare what it was meant to be, a second chance, not 
a way of life. We have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly 
as possible, to provide child care and teach them skills, if that is 
what they need, for up to two years. But after that, there ought to be 
a simple hard rule. Anyone who can work must go to work. If a parent 
isn't paying child support, they should be forced to pay. We should 
have their driver's licenses, track them across state lines, and make 
them work off what they owe. That is what we should do. Governments do 
not raise children, people do, and the parents must take responsibility 
for the children they bring into this world.
  I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But 
our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence to 
independence, from welfare to work, from mere child bearing to 
responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because 
they happen to be poor. We should require work and mutual 
responsibility.
  But we shouldn't cut people off just because they are poor, they are 
young, or even because they are unmarried. We should promote 
responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at 
[[Page H587]] home with their parents or in other supervised settings, 
by requiring them to finish school. But we shouldn't put them and their 
children out on the street.
  I know all the arguments pro and con, and I have read and thought 
about this for a long time. I still don't think we can in good 
conscience punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents.
  My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American 
people care about this, without regard to party or race or region. So 
let this be the year we end welfare as we know it.
  But also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this 
issue to divide America. No one is more eager to end welfare. I may be 
the only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a 
welfare office, who has actually spent hours and hours talking to 
people on welfare. And I am telling you, the people who are trapped on 
it know it doesn't work. They also want to get off.
  So we can promote together education and work and good parenting. I 
have no problem with punishing bad behavior, or the refusal to be a 
worker or a student or a responsible parent. I just don't want to 
punish poverty and past mistakes. All of us have made our mistakes, and 
none of us can change our yesterdays. But every one of us can change 
our tomorrows. And America's best example of that may be Lynn Woolsey, 
who worked her way off welfare to become a Congresswoman from the State 
of California.
  I know the Members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as are 
all the citizens of our country. I remind you that last year we passed 
a very tough crime bill, longer sentences, three-strikes-and-you're-
out, almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons, more 
prevention, 100,000 more police. And we paid for it all by reducing the 
size of the Federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local 
communities to lower the crime rate.
  There may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime, to be 
smarter with crime, to help to lower that rate further. Well, if there 
are, let's talk about them and let's do them. But let's not go back on 
the things that we did last year that we know work, that we know work 
because the local law enforcement officers tell us that we did the 
right thing, because local community leaders who have worked for years 
and years to lower the crime rate tell us that they work.
  Let's look at the experience of our cities and our rural areas where 
the crime rate has gone down and ask the people who did it how they did 
it. And if what we did last year supports the decline in the crime 
rate, and I am convinced that it does, let's not go back on it. Let's 
stick with it, implement it. We have got four more hard years of work 
to do to do that.
  I don't want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the 
country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that divided this body 
greatly last year. The last Congress also passed the Brady Bill, and in 
the crime bill the ban on 19 assault weapons. I don't think it is a 
secret to anybody in this room that several members of the last 
Congress who voted for that aren't here tonight because they voted for 
it. And I know, therefore, that some of you who are here because they 
voted for it are under enormous pressure to repeal it.
  I just have to tell you how I feel about it. The Members of Congress 
who voted for that bill and I would never do anything to infringe on 
the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to engage in other 
appropriate sporting activities. I have done it since I was a boy and I 
am going to keep right on doing it until I can't do it anymore.
  But a lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so that police 
officers and kids wouldn't have to lay down their lives under a hail of 
assault weapon attack. And I will not let that be repealed.
  I would like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal 
with. I want us to cut more spending, but I hope we won't cut 
government programs that help to prepare us for the new economy, 
promote responsibility and are organized from the grassroots up and not 
by Federal bureaucracy. The very best example of this is the National 
Service Corps of America. It passed with strong bipartisan support, and 
now there are 20,000 Americans, more than ever served in one year in 
the Peace Corps, working all over this country, helping people person-
to-person in local grassroots volunteer groups, solving problems, and 
in the process earning some money for their education.
  This is citizenship at its best. It is good for the AmeriCorps 
members, but it is good for the rest of us too. It is the essence of 
the New Covenant, and we shouldn't stop it.
  All Americans, not only in the states most heavily affected, but in 
every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers 
of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might 
otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service 
they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
  That is why our administration has moved
   aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of 
new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever 
before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, and by barring welfare 
benefits to illegal aliens.

  In the budget I will present to you, we will try to do more to speed 
the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to 
better identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the 
commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan.
  We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. It 
is wrong and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to 
permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent 
years, and we must do more to stop it.
  The most important job of our government in this new era is to 
empower the American people to succeed in the global economy. America 
has always been a land of opportunity, a land where if you work hard, 
you can get ahead. We have become a great middle class country. Middle 
class values sustain us. We must expand that middle class and shrink 
the under class even as we do everything we can to support the millions 
of Americans who are already successful in the new economy.
  America is once again the world's strongest economic power, almost 6 
million new jobs in the last two years, exports booming, inflation 
down, high wage jobs are coming back. A record number of American 
entrepreneurs are living the American dream. If we want it to stay that 
way, those who work and lift our Nation must have more of its benefits. 
Today too many of those people are being left out. They are working 
harder for less, they have less security, less income, less certainty 
that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids 
or retirement for themselves.
  We cannot let this continue. If we don't act, our economy will 
probably do what it has been doing since about 1978, when the income 
growth began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale, and 
the people in the vast middle got very little growth, and people who 
worked like crazy but were on the bottom end fell even further and 
further behind in the years afterward no matter how hard they worked.
  We have got to have a government that can be a real partner in making 
this new economy work for all of our people, a government that helps 
each and every one of us to get an education and to have the 
opportunity to renew our skills. That is why we worked so hard to 
increase educational opportunities in the last two years, from Head 
Start, to public schools, to apprenticeships for young people who don't 
go to college, to making college loans more available and more 
affordable. That is the first thing we have to do. We have got to do 
something to empower people to improve their skills.
  The second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes 
immediately by lowering their taxes. We took the first step in 1993 
with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes 
under $27,000, a tax cut that this year will average about $1,000 a 
family, and we also gave tax reductions to most small and new 
businesses. Before we could do more than that, we first had to bring 
down the deficit we inherited and we had to get economic growth up.
  [[Page H588]] Now we have done both, and now we can cut taxes in a 
more comprehensive way. But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our 
first obligation, to empower our citizens through education and 
training to make the most of their own lives. The spotlight should 
shine on those who make the right choices for themselves, their 
families, and their communities.
  I have proposed a Middle Class Bill of Rights, which should properly 
be called the Bill of Rights and Responsibilities, because its 
provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise 
their children and to educate themselves. It will therefore give needed 
tax relief and raise incomes in both the short run and the long run in 
a way that benefits all of us.
  There are four provisions. First, a tax deduction for all education 
and training after high school. If you think about it, we permit 
businesses to deduct their investment. We permit individuals to deduct 
interest on their home mortgages. But today an education is even more 
important to the economic well-being of our whole country than even 
those things are. We should do everything we can to encourage it, and I 
hope you will support it.
  Second, we ought to cut taxes $500 for families with children under 
13.
  Third, we ought to foster more savings and personal responsibility by 
permitting people to establish an independent retirement account and 
withdraw from it tax-free for the cost of education, health care, 
first-time home buying, or the care of a parent.
  And, fourth, we should pass a GI Bill for America's workers. We 
propose to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money 
to the states, but give the money directly to the American people, or 
vouchers to them, so that they, if they are laid off or if they are 
working for a very low wage, can get a voucher worth $2,600 a year for 
up to two years to go to their local community colleges or wherever 
else they want to get the skills they need to improve their lives. 
Let's empower people in this way. Move it from the government directly 
to the workers of America.
  Any one of us can call for a tax cut, but I won't accept one that 
explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk. We ought to pay for 
our tax cuts fairly and honestly. Just two years ago it was an open 
question whether we would find the strength to cut the deficit. Thanks 
to the courage of the people who were here then, many of whom didn't 
return, we did cut the deficit. We began to do what others said would 
not be done. We cut the deficit by over $600 billion, about $10,000 for 
every family in this country. It is coming down three years in a row 
for the first time since Mr. Truman was president, and I don't think 
anybody in America wants us to let it explode again.
  In the budget I will send you, the Middle Class Bill of Rights is 
fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in programs, cuts in 
special interest subsidies. And the spending cuts will more than double 
the tax cuts. My budget pays for the Middle Class Bill of Rights 
without any cuts in Medicare, and I will oppose any attempts to pay for 
tax cuts with Medicare cuts. That is not the right thing to do.
  I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief, and 
some of them I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all 
of you. My test for our proposals will be, will it create jobs and 
raise incomes, will it strengthen our families and support our 
children, is it paid for, will it build a middle class and shrink the 
under class? If it does, I will support it. But if it doesn't, I won't.
  The goal of building the middle class and strengthening the under 
class is also why I believe
 that you should raise the minimum wage. It rewards work. Two-and-a-
half million Americans, two-and-a-half million Americans, often women 
with children, are working out there today for four and a quarter an 
hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year that minimum wage 
will be at a 40 year low. That is not my idea of how the new economy 
ought to work.

  Now, I have studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a 
minimum wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a 
modest increase does not cost jobs, and may even lure people back into 
the job market. But the most important thing is, you can't make a 
living on $4.25 an hour, especially if you have children, even with the 
working family's tax cut we passed last year.
  In the past the minimum wage has been a bipartisan issue, and I think 
it should be again. So I want to challenge you to have honest hearings 
on this, to get together to find a way to make the minimum wage a 
living wage.
  Members of Congress have been here less than a month, but by the end 
of the week, 28 days into the new year, every Member of Congress will 
have earned as much in Congressional salary as a minimum wage worker 
makes all year long.
  Everybody else here, including the President, has something else that 
too many Americans do without, and that is health care. Now, last year 
we almost came to blows over health care. But we didn't do anything. 
And the cold hard fact is that since last year, since I was here, 
another 1.1 million Americans in working families have lost their 
health care, and the cold hard fact is that many millions more, most of 
them farmers and small business people and self-employed people have 
seen their premiums skyrocket, their co-payments, deductibles go up. 
There is a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics 
have health insurance, but really what they have got is a piece of 
paper that says they won't lose their home if they get sick.
  Now, I still believe our country has got to move toward providing 
health security for every American family. But I know that last year, 
as the evidence indicates, we bit off more than we could chew. So I am 
asking you that we work together. Let's do it step by step. Let's do 
whatever we have to do to get something done. Let's at least pass 
meaningful insurance reform, so that no American risks losing coverage 
for facing skyrocketing prices, that nobody loses their coverage 
because they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change 
jobs, or lose a job, or a family member gets sick.
  I want to work together with all of you who have an interest in this, 
with the Democrats who worked on it last time, with the Republican 
leaders like Senator Dole, who has a long time commitment to welfare 
reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year.
  We ought to make sure that self-employed people and small businesses 
can buy insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing 
pools. We ought to help families provide long-term care for a sick 
parent or disabled child. We can work to help workers who lose their 
jobs at least keep their health insurance coverage for a year while 
they look for work.
  We can find a way. It may take sometime, but we can find a way to 
make sure that our children have health care.
  I think everybody in this room, without regard to party, can be proud 
of the fact that our country was rated as having the world's most 
productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade, but we can't 
be proud of the fact that we are the only wealthy country in the world 
that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their children with 
health insurance today than we did 10 years ago, the last time we were 
the most productive economy in the world.
  So, let's work together on this. It is too important for politics as 
usual.
  Much of what the American people are thinking about tonight is what 
we have already talked about. A lot of people think that the security 
concerns of American today are entirely internal to our borders. They 
relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and 
our children, our streets, our health, in protecting those borders.
  Now that the Cold War has passed, it is tempting to believe that all 
the security issues, with the possible exception of trade, reside here 
at home. But it is not so. Our security still depends upon our 
continued world leadership for peace and freedom and democracy. We 
still can't be strong at home unless we are strong abroad.
  The financial crisis in Mexico is a case in point. I know it is not 
popular to say it tonight, but we have to act, not for the Mexican 
people, but for the sake of the millions of Americans 
[[Page H589]] whose livelihoods are tied to Mexico's well-being. If we 
want to secure American jobs, preserve American exports, safeguard 
America's borders, then we must pass the stabilization program and help 
to put Mexico back on track.
  Now, let me repeat, it is not a loan, it is not foreign aid, it is 
not a bailout. We will be given a guarantee like cosigning a note with 
good collateral that will cover our risk. This legislation is the right 
thing for America. That is why the bipartisan leadership has supported 
it, and I hope you in Congress will pass it quickly. It is in our 
interest, and we can explain it to the American people, because we are 
going to do it in the right way.
  You know, tonight this is the first State of the Union address ever 
delivered since the beginning of the Cold War when not a single Russian 
missile is pointed at the children of America. And along with the 
Russians we are on our way to destroying the missiles and bombers that 
carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We have come so far so fast in this post-
Cold War world that it is easy to take the decline of a nuclear threat 
for granted, but it is still there and we aren't finished yet.
  This year I will ask the Senate to include START II, which will 
eliminate weapons that carry 5,000 more warheads. The United States 
will lead the charge to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Non-
proliferation Treaty, to enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to 
eliminate chemical weapons. To stop and roll back North Korea's 
potentially deadly nuclear program, we will continue to implement the 
agreement we have reached with that nation. It is smart, it is tough, 
it is a deal based on continuing inspection, with safeguards for our 
allies and ourselves.
  This year I will submit to Congress comprehensive legislation to 
strengthen our hand in combatting terrorists, whether they strike at 
home or abroad. The cowards who bombed the World Trade Center found out 
this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice.
  Just this week another horrendous terrorist act in Israel killed 19 
and injured scores more. On behalf of the American people and all of 
you, I send our
 deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. I know that in the 
face of such evil, it is hard for the people in the Middle East to go 
forward, where the terrorists represent the past, not the future. We 
must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel and all of 
her neighbors in the Middle East.

  Accordingly, last night I signed an Executive Order that will block 
the assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that 
threaten to disrupt the peace process and prohibits financial 
transactions with these groups. Tonight I call on all our allies and 
peace loving nations throughout the world to join us with renewed 
fervor in a global effort to combat terrorism. We cannot permit the 
future to be marred by terror and fear and paralysis.
  From the day I took the oath of office, I pledged that our Nation 
would maintain the best equipped, best trained, and best prepared 
military on Earth. We have, and they are. They have managed the 
dramatic downsizing of our forces after the Cold War with remarkable 
skill and spirit. But to make sure our military is ready for action and 
to provide the pay and quality of life the military and their families 
deserve, I am asking the Congress to add $25 billion in defense 
spending over the next six years.
  I have visited many bases at home and around the world since I became 
President. Tonight I repeat that request with renewed conviction. We 
ask a very great deal of our Armed Forces. Now that they are smaller in 
number, we ask more of them. They go out more often, to more different 
places, and stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways. 
And we must give them and their families what the times demand and what 
they have earned.
  Just think about what our troops have done in the last year, showing 
America at its best, helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in 
Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to 
Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy back to the people of Haiti.
  We have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from South 
Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia, 
from Latin America to the Middle East. All of these endeavors are good 
in those places. But they make our future more confident and more 
secure.
  Well, my fellow Americans, that is my agenda for America's future. 
Expanding opportunity, not bureaucracy, enhancing security at home and 
abroad, empowering our people to make the most of their own lives. It 
is ambitious and achievable, but it is not enough. We even need more 
than new ideas for changing the world or equipping Americans to compete 
in the new economy, more than a government that is smaller, smarter and 
wiser, more than all the changes we can make in government and in the 
private sector from the outside in.
  Our fortunes and our prosperity also depend upon our ability to 
answer some questions from within, the values and voices that speak to 
our hearts as well as our heads, voices that tell us we have to do more 
to accept responsibility for ourselves and our families, for our 
communities, and, yes, for our fellow citizens.
  We see our families and our communities all over this country coming 
apart, and we feel the common ground shifting from under us. The PTA, 
the town hall meeting, the ballpark, it is hard for a lot of over 
worked parents to find the time and space for those things that 
strengthen the bonds of trust and cooperation. Too many of our children 
don't even have parents and grandparents who can give them those 
experiences that they need to build their own character, their sense of 
identity. We all know that what we hear in this Chamber can make a 
difference on those things, that the real differences will be made by 
our fellow citizens, where they work and where they live. And they will 
be made almost without regard to party. When I used to go to the 
softball park in Little Rock to watch my daughter's league and people 
would come up to me, fathers and mothers, and talk to me, I can 
honestly say I had no idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans 
or Democrats.
  When I visited the relief centers after the floods in California, in 
Northern California last week, a woman came up to me and did something 
that very few of you would do. She hugged me and said, ``Mr. President, 
I am a Republican, but I am glad you're here.''
  Now, why? We can't wait for disasters to act the way we used to act 
everyday, because as we move into this next century, everybody matters. 
We don't have a person to waste, and a lot of people are losing a lot 
of chances to do better. That means that we need a New Covenant for 
everybody. For our corporate and business leaders, we are going to work 
here to keep bringing the deficit down, to expand markets, to support 
their success in every possible way. But they have an obligation when 
they are doing well to keep jobs in our communities and give their 
workers a fair share of the prosperity they generate.
  For the people in the entertainment industry in this country, we 
applaud your creativity and your worldwide success, and we support your 
freedom of expression. But you do have a responsibility to assess the 
impact of your work and to understand the damage that comes from the 
incessant, repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that 
permeates the media all the time.
  We have got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of 
organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem, the 
epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I 
have sent to Congress a plan that targets schools all over this country 
with anti-pregnancy programs that work. But government can only do so 
much. Tonight I call on parents and leaders all across this country to 
join together in a national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a 
difference. We can do this, and we must.
  And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders. You 
know, I am proud of the fact that the United States has more houses of 
worship per capita than any other country in the world. These people 
who lead our houses of worship can ignite their congregations to carry 
their faith into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all 
of the people in distress, to those who have been savaged by the 
[[Page H590]] breakdown of all we hold dear, because so much of what 
must be done must come from the inside out, and our religious leaders 
and their congregations can make all the difference. They have a role 
in the New Covenant as well. There must be more responsibility for all 
of our citizens.
  You know, it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble 
stay off the streets and in school. It takes a lot of people to build 
the Habitat for Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his 
lapel pin. It takes a lot of people to provide the people power for all 
the civic organizations in this country that made our communities mean 
so much to most of us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach 
the children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage 
them to learn and grow, and to say no to the wrong things, but also to 
believe that
 they can be whatever they want to be.

  I know it is hard when you are working harder for less, when you are 
under great stress to do these things. A lot of our people don't have 
the time or the emotional strength they think to do the work of 
citizenship.
  Most of us in politics haven't helped very much. For years we mostly 
treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of 
political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads either 
promising something for nothing or playing on their fears and 
frustrations, and more and more of our citizens now get most of their 
information in very negative and aggressive ways that are hardly 
conducive to honest and open conversations. But the truth is, we have 
got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different 
views.
  If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength 
of America as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time 
ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were 
different from ourselves, and to work together to find common ground. 
And in this day everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We 
simply cannot wait for a tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like 
Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another.
  I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with 
the First Lady that represent what I am trying to talk about, citizens. 
I have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in 
the last elections. But they represent what we ought to be doing.
  Cindy Perry teaches second graders to read in AmeriCorps in rural 
Kentucky. She gains when she gives. She is a mother of four. She says 
that her service inspired her to get her high school equivalency last 
year. She was married when she was a teenager--stand up, Cindy--she was 
married when she was a teenager, she had four children, but she had 
time to serve other people, to get her high school equivalency, and she 
is going to use her AmeriCorps money to go back to college.
  Stephen Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He has been a 
national leader--stand up, Stephen--he has been a national leader in 
using more police in community policing, and he has worked with 
AmeriCorps to do it, and the crime rate in Kansas City has gone down as 
a result of what he did.
  Corporal Gregory Depestre went to Haiti as part of his adopted 
country's force to help secure democracy in his native land: And I 
might add, we must be the only country in the world that could have 
gone to Haiti and taken Haitian Americans there who could speak the 
language and talk to the people, and he was one of them, and we are 
proud of him.
  The next two folks I have had the honor of meeting and getting to 
know a little bit. The Reverend John and the Reverend Diana Cherry of 
the A.M.E. Zion Church in Temple Hills, Maryland. I would like to ask 
them to stand. I want to tell you about them. In the early eighties 
they left government service and formed a church in a small living room 
in a small house in the early eighties. Today that church as 17,000 
members. It is one of the three or four biggest churches in the entire 
United States. It grows by 200 a month. They do it together, and the 
special focus of their ministry is keeping families together.
  Two things they did make a big impression on me. I visited their 
church once, and I learned they were building a new sanctuary closer to 
the Washington, D.C. line in a higher crime, higher drug rate area, 
because they thought it was part of their ministry to change the lives 
of the people who needed them.
  The second thing I want to say is that once Reverend Cherry was at a 
meeting at the White House with some other religious leaders, and he 
left early to go back to his church to minister to 150 couples that he 
had brought back to his church from all over America to convince them 
to come back together to save their marriages and to raise their kids. 
This is the kind of work that citizens are doing in America. We need 
more of it, and it ought to be lifted up and supported.
  The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up?
  Fifty years ago, in the sands of Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas taught and 
learned the lessons of citizenship. On February 20th, 1945, he and 
three of his buddies encountered the enemy and two grenades at their 
feet. Jack Lucas threw himself on both of them.
  In that moment, he saved the lives of his companions and 
miraculously, in the next instant a medic saved his life. He gained a 
foothold for freedom, and at the age of 17, just a year older than his 
grandson--who is up here with him today, and his son, who is a West 
Point graduate and a veteran--at 17, Jack Lucas became the youngest 
marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the 
Congressional Medal of Honor.
  All these years later, yesterday, here is what he said about that 
day: ``It didn't matter where you were from or who you were. You relied 
on one another. You did it for your country.''
  We all gain when we give, and we reap what we sow. That's at the 
heart of this New Covenant: Responsibility, opportunity, and 
citizenship. More than stale chapters in some remote civic book, they 
are still the virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our 
God-given potential and be like them, and also to fulfill the eternal 
promise of this country, the enduring dream from that first and most 
sacred covenant.
  I believe every person in this country still believes that we are 
created equal, and given by our Creator the right to life, liberty and 
the pursuit of happiness.
  This is a very, very great country, and our best days are still to 
come.
  Thank you, and God bless you.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 10 o'clock and 35 minutes p.m., the President of the United 
States, accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the Hall 
of the House of Representatives.
  The Assistant to the Sergeant at Arms escorted the invited guests 
from the Chamber in the following order:
  The members of the President's Cabinet.
  The Chief Justice of the United States and the Associate Justices of 
the Supreme Court.
  The Ambassadors, Ministers, and Charge d'Affaires of foreign 
governments.

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