[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H768-H772]
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. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the 104th 
Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans all across our 
land: Let me begin tonight by saying to our men and women in uniform 
around the world and especially those helping peace take root in Bosnia 
and to their families, I thank you. America is very, very proud of you.
  My duty tonight is to report on the State of the Union, not the state 
of our government but of our American community, and to set forth our 
responsibilities, in the words of our Founders, to ``form a more 
perfect union.''
  The State of the Union is strong. Our economy is the healthiest it 
has been in three decades. We have the lowest combined rates of 
unemployment and inflation in 27 years. We have created nearly 8 
million new jobs, over a million of them in basic industries like 
construction and automobiles. American is selling more cars than Japan 
for the first time since the 1970s, and for three years in a row we 
have had a record number of new businesses started in our country.
  Our leadership in the world is also strong, bringing hope for new 
peace. And perhaps most important, we are gaining ground and restoring 
our fundamental values. The crime rate, the welfare and food stamp 
rolls, the poverty rate and the teen pregnancy rate are all down. And 
as they go down, prospects for America's future go up.
  We live in an Age of Possibility. A hundred years ago we moved from 
farm to factory. Now we move to an age of technology, information and 
global competition. These changes have opened vast new opportunities 
for our people, but they have also presented them with stiff 
challenges.
  While more Americans are living better, too many of our fellow 
citizens are working harder just to keep up, and they are rightly 
concerned about the security of their families.
  We must answer here three fundamental questions: First, how do we 
make the American dream of opportunity for all a reality for all 
Americans who are willing to work for it? Second, how do we preserve 
our old and enduring values as we move into the future? And third, how 
do we meet these challenges together as one America?
  We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there's 
not a program for every problem. We know and we have worked to give the 
American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. 
And we have to give the American people one that lives within its 
means. The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the 
time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we 
must go forward as one America, one nation, working together to meet 
the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not 
opposing virtues. We must have both.
  I believe our new, smaller government must work in an old-fashioned 
American way, together with all of our citizens through State and local 
governments, in the workplace, in religious, charitable and civic 
associations. Our goal must be to enable all our people to make the 
most of their own lives, with stronger families, more educational 
opportunities, economic security, safer streets, a cleaner environment 
and a safer world.
  To improve the state of our union, we must ask more of ourselves. We 
must expect more of each other and we must face our challenges 
together.
  Here in this place our responsibility begins with balancing the 
budget in a way that is fair to all Americans. There is now broad 
bipartisan agreement that permanent deficit spending must come to an 
end.
  I compliment the Republican leadership and their membership for the 
energy and determination you have brought to this task of balancing the 
budget. And I thank the Democrats for passing the largest deficit 
reduction plan in history in 1993, which has already cut the deficit 
nearly in half in three years.
  Since 1993, we have all begun to see the benefits of deficit 
reduction. Lower interest rates have made it easier for businesses to 
borrow and to invest and to create new jobs. Lower interest rates have 
brought down the cost of home mortgages, car payments and credit card 
rates to ordinary citizens. Now it is time to finish the job and 
balance the budget.
  Though differences remain among us which are significant, the 
combined total of the proposed savings that are common to both plans is 
more than enough, using the numbers from your Congressional Budget 
Office, to balance the budget in 7 years and to provide a modest tax 
cut. These cuts are real. They will require sacrifice from everyone. 
But these cuts do not undermine our fundamental obligations to our 
parents, our children and our future by endangering Medicare or 
Medicaid or education or the environment or by raising taxes on working 
families.
  I have said before, and let me say again, many good ideas have come 
out of our negotiations. I have learned a lot about the way both 
Republicans and Democrats view the debate before us. I have learned a 
lot about the good ideas that each side has that we could all embrace. 
We ought to resolve our remaining differences.
  I am willing to work to resolve them. I am ready to meet tomorrow. 
But I 

[[Page H769]]
ask you to consider that we should at least enact the savings that both 
plans have in common and give the American people their balanced 
budget, a tax cut, lower interest rates, and a brighter future. We 
should do that now and make permanent deficits yesterday's legacy.
  Now it is time for us to look also to the challenges of today and 
tomorrow, beyond the burdens of yesterday. The challenges are 
significant. But our Nation was built on challenges. America was built 
on challenges, not promises. And when we work together to meet them we 
never fail. That is the key to a more perfect union. Our individual 
dreams must be realized by our common efforts.
  Tonight I want to speak to you about the challenges we all face as a 
people. Our first challenge is to cherish our children and strengthen 
America's families. Families are the foundation of American life. If we 
have stronger families, we will have a stronger America.
  Before I go on, I would like to take just a moment to thank my own 
family and to thank the person who has taught me more than anyone else, 
over 25 years, about the importance of families and children, a 
wonderful wife, a magnificent mother, and a great First Lady. Thank 
you, Hillary.
  All strong families begin with taking more responsibility for our 
children. I have heard Mrs. Gore say that it is hard to be a parent 
today, but it is even harder to be a child. So all of us, not just as 
parents, but all of us in our other roles, our media, our schools, our 
teachers, our communities, our churches and synagogues, our businesses, 
our governments, all of us have a responsibility to help our children 
to make it and to make the most of their lives and their God-given 
capacities.
  To the media, I say you should create movies and CD's and television 
shows you'd want your own children and grandchildren to enjoy.
  I call on Congress to pass the requirement for a ``V chip'' in TV 
sets so that parents can screen out programs they believe are 
inappropriate for their children.
  When parents control what their young children see, that is not 
censorship; that is enabling parents to assume more personal 
responsibility for their children's upbringing, and I urge them to do 
it. The ``V chip'' requirement is part of the important 
telecommunications bill now pending in this Congress. It has bipartisan 
support, and I urge you to pass it now.
  To make the ``V chip'' work, I challenge the broadcast industry to do 
what movies have done: to identify your program in ways that help 
parents to protect their children. And I invite the leaders of major 
media corporations in the entertainment industry to come to the White 
House next month to work with us in a positive way on concrete ways to 
improve what our children see on television. I am ready to work with 
you.
  I say to those who make and market cigarettes, every year a million 
children take up smoking, even though it's against the law. Three 
hundred thousand of them will have their lives shortened as a result. 
Our administration has taken steps to stop the massive marketing 
campaigns that appeal to our children. We are simply saying, ``Market 
your products to adults if you wish, but draw the line on children.''

  I say to those who are on welfare and especially to those who have 
been trapped on welfare for a long time, for too long our welfare 
system has undermined the values of family and work instead of 
supporting them. The Congress and I are near agreement on sweeping 
welfare reform. We agree on time limits, tough work requirements, and 
the toughest possible child support enforcement. But I believe we must 
also provide child care so that mothers who are required to go to work 
can do so without worrying about what is happening to their children.
  I challenge this Congress to send me a bipartisan welfare reform bill 
that will really move people from welfare to work and do the right 
thing by our children. I will sign it immediately.
  Let us be candid about this difficult problem. Passing a law, even 
the best possible law, is only a first step. The next stop is to make 
it work. I challenge people on welfare to make the most of this 
opportunity for independence. I challenge American businesses to give 
people on welfare the chance to move into the work force. I applaud the 
work of religious groups and others who care for the poor. More than 
anyone else in our society, they know the true difficulty of the task 
before us, and they are in a position to help. Every one of us should 
join them. That is the only way we can make real welfare reform a 
reality in the lives of the American people.
  To strengthen the family, we must do everything we can to keep the 
teen pregnancy rate going down. I am gratified, as I am sure all 
Americans are, that it has dropped for 2 years in a row, but we all 
know it is still far too high.
  Tonight I am pleased to announce that a group of prominent Americans 
is responding to that challenge by forming an organization that will 
support grassroots community efforts all across our country in a 
national campaign against teen pregnancy. And I challenge all of us and 
every American to join their efforts.
  I call on American men and women in families to give greater respect 
to one another. We must end the deadly scourge of domestic violence in 
our country.
  And I challenge America's families to work harder to stay together, 
for families that stay together not only do better economically, their 
children do better as well. In particular, I challenge the fathers of 
this country to love and care for their children. If your family has 
separated, you must pay your child support. We are doing more than ever 
to make sure you do, and we are going to do more, but let's all admit 
something about that, too. A check will never substitute for a parent's 
love and guidance, and only you, only you, can make the decision to 
help raise your children. No matter who you are, how low or high your 
station in life, it is the most basic human duty of every American to 
do that job to the best of his or her ability.
  Our second challenge is to provide Americans with the educational 
opportunities we'll all need for this new century. In our schools every 
classroom in America must be connected to the information superhighway 
with computers, and good software, and well-trained teachers. We are 
working with the telecommunications industry, educators and parents, to 
connect 20 percent of California's classrooms by this spring, and every 
classroom and every library in the entire United States by the year 
2000.
  I ask Congress to support this education technology initiative so 
that we can make sure this national partnership succeeds.

  Every diploma ought to mean something. I challenge every community, 
every school, and every State to adopt national standards of 
excellence, to measure whether schools are meeting those standards, to 
cut bureaucratic red tape so that schools and teachers have more 
flexibility for grassroots reform, and to hold them accountable for 
results. That's what our Goals 2000 initiative is all about.
  I challenge every State to give all parents the right to choose which 
public school their children will attend and to let teachers form new 
schools with a charter they can keep only if they do a good job.
  I challenge all our schools to teach character education, to teach 
good values and good citizenship, and if it means that teenagers will 
stop killing each other over designers jackets, then our public schools 
should be able to require their students to wear school uniforms.
  I challenge our parents to become their children's first teachers, 
turn off the TV, see that the homework is done, and visit your 
children's classroom. No program, no teacher, no one else can do that 
for you.
  My fellow Americans, higher education is more important today than 
ever before. We've created a new student loan program that has made it 
easier to borrow and repay those loans, and we have dramatically cut 
the student loan default rate. That is something we should all be proud 
of because it was unconscionably high just a few years ago. Through 
AmeriCorps, our national service program, this year 25,000 young people 
will earn college money by serving their local communities to improve 
the lives of their friends and neighbors.
  These initiatives are right for America, and we should keep them 
going, and we should also work hard to open the doors of college even 
wider.

[[Page H770]]

  I challenge Congress to expand work study and help 1 million young 
Americans work their way through college by the year 2000, to provide a 
$1,000 merit scholarship for the top 5 percent of graduates in every 
high school in the United States, to expand Pell grant scholarships for 
deserving and needy students, and to make up to $10,000 a year of 
college tuition tax deductible. It is a good idea for America.
  Our third challenge is to help every American who is willing to work 
for it achieve economic security in this new age. People who work hard 
still need support to get ahead in the new economy, they need education 
and training for a lifetime, they need more support for families 
raising children, they need retirement security, they need access to 
health care. More and more Americans are finding that the education of 
their childhood simply doesn't last a lifetime. So I challenge Congress 
to consolidate 70 overlapping, antiquated job training programs into a 
simple voucher worth $2,600 for unemployed or underemployed workers to 
use as they please for community college tuition or other training. 
This is a GI bill for America's workers we should all be able to agree 
on.
  More and more Americans are working hard without a raise. Congress 
sets the minimum wage. Within a year the minimum wage will fall to a 
40-year low in purchasing power. Four dollars and twenty-five cents an 
hour is no longer a minimum wage, but millions of Americans and their 
children are trying to live on it. I challenge you to raise their 
minimum wage.
  In 1993 Congress cut the taxes of 15 million hard-pressed working 
families to make sure that no parents who work full time would have to 
raise their children in poverty and to encourage people to move from 
welfare to work. This expanded Earned Income Tax Credit is now worth 
about $1,800 a year to a family of four living on $20,000. The budget 
bill I vetoed would have reversed this achievement and raised taxes on 
nearly 8 million of these people. We should not do that. We should not 
do that.
  But I also agree that the people who are helped under this initiative 
are not all those in our country who are working hard to do a good job 
raising their children and that work. I agree that we need a tax credit 
for working families with children. That's one of the things most of us 
in this Chamber, I hope, can agree on. I know it is strongly supported 
by the Republican majority, and it should be part of any final budget 
agreement.
  I want to challenge every business that can possibly afford it to 
provide pensions for your employees, and I challenge Congress to pass a 
proposal recommended by the White House Conference on Small Business 
that would make it easier for small businesses and farmers to establish 
their own pension plans. That is something we should all agree on.

                             {time}   2140

  We should also protect existing pension plans. Two years ago, with 
bipartisan support, it was almost unanimous on both sides of the aisle, 
we moved to protect the pensions of 8 million working people and to 
stabilize the pension of 32 million more. Congress should not now let 
companies endanger those workers' pension funds.
  I know the proposal to liberalize the ability of employers to take 
money out of the pension funds for other purposes would raise money for 
the Treasury, but I believe it is false economy. I vetoed that proposal 
last year, and I would have to do so again.
  Finally, if our working families are going to succeed in the new 
economy, they must be able to buy health insurance policies that they 
do not lose when they change jobs or when someone in their family gets 
sick. Over the past two years, over 1 million Americans in working 
families have lost their health insurance. We have to do more to make 
health care available to every American, and Congress should start by 
passing the bipartisan bill sponsored by Senator Kennedy and Senator 
Kassebaum that would require insurance companies to stop dropping 
people when they switch jobs and stop denying coverage for preexisting 
conditions. Let's all do that.
  And even as we enact savings in these programs, we must have a common 
commitment to preserve the basic protections of Medicare and Medicaid, 
not just to the poor, but to people in working families, including 
children, people with disabilities, people with AIDS, senior citizens 
in nursing homes. In the past three years, we have saved $15 billion 
just by fighting health care fraud and abuse.
  We have all agreed to save much more. We have all agreed to stabilize 
the Medicare Trust Fund, but we must not abandon our fundamental 
obligations to the people who need Medicare and Medicaid. America 
cannot become stronger if they become weaker.
  The GI Bill for Workers, tax relief for education and child-rearing, 
pension availability and protection, access to health care, 
preservation of Medicare and Medicaid, these things, along with the 
Family and Medical Leave Act passed in 1993, these things will help 
responsible, hard-working American families to make the most of their 
own lives.
  But employers and employees must do their part as well, as they are 
doing in so many of our finest companies: working together, putting the 
long-term prosperity ahead of the short-term gain. As workers increase 
their hours and their productivity, employers should make sure they get 
the skills they need and share the benefits of the good years as well 
as the burdens of the bad ones. When companies and workers work as a 
team, they do better, and so does America.

  Our fourth great challenge is to take our streets back from crime and 
gangs and drugs. At last we have begun to find a way to reduce crime, 
forming community partnerships with local police forces to catch 
criminals and prevent crime.
  This strategy, called community policing, is clearly working. Violent 
crime is coming down all across America. In New York City, murders are 
down 25 percent; in St. Louis, 18 percent; and in Seattle, 32 percent. 
But we still have a long way to go before our streets are safe and our 
people are free from fear.
  The Crime Bill of 1994 is critical to the success of community 
policing. It provides funds for 100,000 new police in communities of 
all sizes. We are already a third of the way there, and I challenge the 
Congress to finish the job. Let us stick with a strategy that is 
working and keep the crime rate coming down.
  Community policing also requires bonds of trust between citizens and 
police. I ask all Americans to respect and support our law enforcement 
officers, and to our police I say, our children need you as role models 
and heroes. Don't let them down.
  The Brady Bill has already stopped 44,000 people with criminal 
records from buying guns. The assault weapons ban is keeping 19 kinds 
of assault weapons out of the hands of violent gangs. I challenge the 
Congress to keep those laws on the books.
  Our next step in the fight against crime is to take on gangs the way 
we once took on the mob. I am directing the FBI and other investigative 
agencies to target gangs that involve juveniles and violent crime, and 
to seek authority to prosecute as adults teenagers who maim and kill 
like adults. And I challenge local housing authorities and tenant 
associations: Criminal gang members and drug dealers are destroying the 
lives of decent tenants. From now on, the rule for residents who commit 
crime and peddle drugs should be, one strike and you're out.
  I challenge every State to match Federal policy to assure that 
serious violent criminals serve at least  85 percent of their sentence. 
More police and punishment are important, but they are not enough. We 
have got to keep more of our young people out of trouble with 
prevention strategies not dictated by Washington, but developed in 
communities. I challenge all of our communities, all of our adults, to 
give our children futures to say yes to, and I challenge Congress not 
to abandon the Crime Bill's support of these grassroots prevention 
efforts.

  Finally, to reduce crime and violence, we have to reduce the drug 
problem. The challenge begins in our homes with parents talking to 
their children openly and firmly, and embraces our churches and 
synagogues, our youth groups and our schools. I challenge Congress not 
to cut our support for drug-free schools. People like these DARE 
officers are making a real impression on grade school children that 

[[Page H771]]
will give them the strength to say no when the time comes.
  Meanwhile, we continue our efforts to cut the flow of drugs into 
America. For the last two years, one man in particular has been on the 
front lines of that effort. Tonight I am nominating him, a hero of the 
Persian Gulf War and the Commander in Chief of the United States 
military's Southern Command, General Barry McCaffrey as America's new 
drug czar.
  General McCaffrey has earned three Purple Hearts and two Silver Stars 
fighting for this country. Tonight I ask that he lead our Nation's 
battle against drugs at home and abroad. To succeed, he needs a force 
far larger than he has ever commanded before. He needs all of us, every 
one of us has a role to play on this team. Thank you, General 
McCaffrey, for agreeing to serve your country one more time.
  Our fifth challenge, to leave our environment safe and clean for the 
next generation. Because of a generation of bipartisan effort, we do 
have cleaner water and air; lead levels in children's blood has been 
cut by 70 percent; toxic emissions from factories, cut in half. Lake 
Erie was dead and now it is a thriving resource. But 10 million 
children under 12 still live within fur miles of a toxic waste dump. A 
third of us breathe air that endangers our health, and in too many 
communities, the water is not safe to drink.
  We still have much to do. Yet Congress has voted to cut environmental 
enforcement by 25 percent. That means more toxic chemicals in our 
water, more smog in our air, more pesticides in our food. Lobbyists for 
our polluters have been allowed to write their own loopholes into bills 
to weaken laws that protect the health and safety of our children.

  Some say that the taxpayers should pick up the tab for toxic waste 
and let polluters who can afford to fix it off the hook. I challenge 
Congress to reexamine those policies and to reverse them. This issue 
has not been a partisan issue. The most significant environmental gains 
in the last 30 years were made under a Democratic Congress and 
President Richard Nixon. We can work together.
  We have to believe some basic things. Do you believe we can expand 
the economy without hurting the environment? I do. Do you believe we 
can create more jobs over the long run by cleaning the environment up? 
I know we can. That should be our commitment.
  We must challenge businesses and communities to take more initiative 
in protecting the environment, and we have to make it easier for them 
to do it. To businesses, this administration is saying, if you can find 
a cheaper, more efficient way than government regulations require to 
meet tough pollution standards, do it, as long as you do it right. To 
communities we say, we must strengthen community right-to-know laws 
requiring polluters to disclose their emissions, but you have to use 
the information to work with business to cut pollution. People do have 
a right to know that their air and their water are safe.
  Our sixth challenge is to maintain America's leadership in the fight 
for freedom and peace throughout the world. Because of American 
leadership, more people than ever before live free and at peace, and 
Americans have known 50 years of prosperity and security.
  We owe thanks especially to our veterans of World War II. I would 
like to say to Senator Bob Dole and to all others in this Chamber who 
fought in World War II; and to all others on both sides of the aisle 
who have fought bravely in all of our conflicts since, I salute your 
service and so do the American people.
  All over the world, even after the Cold War, people still look to us 
and trust us to help them seek the blessings of peace and freedom. But 
as the Cold War fades in the memory, voices of isolation say, America 
should retreat from its responsibilities. I say they are wrong.
  The threats we face today as Americans respect no Nation's borders. 
Think of them: terrorism, the spread of weapons of mass destruction, 
organized crime, drug trafficking, ethnic and religious hatred, 
aggression by rogue states, environmental degradation. If we fail to 
address these threats today, we will suffer the consequences in all our 
tomorrows.

  Of course we can't be everywhere; of course we can't do everything. 
But where our interests and our values are at stake and where we can 
make a difference, America must lead. We must not be isolationists, we 
must not be the world's policeman, but we can and should be the world's 
very best peacemaker.
  By keeping our military strong, by using diplomacy where we can and 
force where we must, by working with others to share the risk and the 
cost of our efforts, America is making a difference for people here and 
around the world. For the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, 
for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there is not a 
single Russian missile pointed at America's children.
  North Korea has now frozen its dangerous nuclear weapons program. In 
Haiti, the dictators are gone, democracy has a new day, the flow of 
desperate refugees to our shores has subsided. Through tougher trade 
deals for America, over 80 of them, we have opened markets abroad, and 
now exports are at an all-time high, growing faster than imports and 
creating good American jobs.
  We stood with those taking risks for peace, in Northern Ireland where 
Catholic and Protestant children now tell their parents, violence must 
never return; in the Middle East where Arabs and Jews who once seemed 
destined to fight forever now share knowledge and resources and even 
dreams.
  And we stood up for peace in Bosnia. Remember the skeletal prisoners, 
the mass graves, the campaigns of rape and torture, the endless lines 
of refugees, the threat of a spreading war. All of these threats, all 
these horrors, have now begun to give way to the promise of peace. Now 
our troops and a strong NATO, together with our new partners from 
Central Europe and elsewhere, are helping that peace to take hold. As 
all of you know, I was just there with a bipartisan congressional 
group, and I was so proud not only of what our troops were doing, but 
of the pride they evidenced in what they were doing. They knew what 
America's mission in this world is, and they were proud to be carrying 
it out.
  Through these efforts, we have enhanced the security of the American 
people. But make no mistake about it, important challenges remain. The 
START II treaty with Russia will cut our nuclear stockpiles by another 
25 percent. I urge the Senate to ratify it now. We must end the race to 
create new nuclear weapons by signing a truly comprehensive nuclear 
test ban treaty this year.
  As we remember what happened in the Japanese subway, we can outlaw 
poison gas forever if the Senate ratifies the Chemical Weapons 
Convention this year.
  We can intensify the fight against terrorists and organized criminals 
at home and abroad, if Congress passes the anti-terrorism legislation I 
proposed after the Oklahoma City bombing now. We can help more people 
move from hatred to hope all across the world in our own interest if 
Congress gives us the means to remain the world's leader for peace.
  My fellow Americans, the six challenges I have just discussed are for 
all of us. Our seventh challenge is really America's challenge to those 
of us in this hallowed hall tonight, to reinvent our government and 
make our democracy work for them.
  Last year this Congress applied to itself the laws it applies to 
everyone else. This Congress banned gifts and meals from lobbyists. 
This Congress forced lobbyists to disclose who pays them and what 
legislation they are trying to pass or kill. This Congress did that and 
I applaud you for it.
  Now I challenge Congress to go further, to curb special interest 
influence in politics by passing the first truly bipartisan campaign 
finance reform bill in a generation. You, Republicans and Democrats 
alike, can show the American people that we can limit spending and we 
can open the airwaves to all candidates.
  I also appeal to Congress to pass the line item veto you promised the 
American people.
  Our administration is working hard to give the American people a 
government that works better and costs less. Thanks to the work of Vice 
President Gore we are eliminating 16,000 pages of unnecessary rules and 
regulations, 

[[Page H772]]
shifting more decisionmaking out of Washington back to States and local 
communities. As we move into the era of balanced budgets and smaller 
government, we must work in new ways to enable people to make the most 
of their own lives. We are helping America's communities not with more 
bureaucracy but with more opportunities.
  Through our successful empower- ment zones and community development 
banks, we are helping people to find jobs, to start businesses. And 
with tax incentives for companies that clean up abandoned industrial 
properties, we can bring jobs back to places that desperately, 
desperately need them. But there are some areas that the Federal 
Government should not leave and should address and address strongly.
  One of these areas is the problem of illegal immigration. After years 
of neglect, this administration has taken a strong stand to stiffen the 
protection of our borders. We are increasing border controls by 50 
percent. We are increasing inspections to prevent the hiring of illegal 
immigrants. And tonight I announce I will sign an executive order to 
deny Federal contracts to businesses that hire illegal immigrants.
  Let me be very clear about this. We are still a nation of immigrants. 
We should be proud of it. We should honor every legal immigrant here 
working hard to be a good citizen, working hard to become a new 
citizen. But we are also a nation of laws.
  I want to say a special word now to those who work for our Federal 
Government. Today the Federal work force is 200,000 employees smaller 
than it was the day I took office as President. Our Federal Government 
today is the smallest it has been in 30 years, and it is getting 
smaller every day. Most of our fellow Americans probably don't know 
that. There's a good reason, a good reason. The remaining Federal work 
force is composed of hard-working Americans who are now working harder 
and working smarter than ever before to make sure the quality of our 
services does not decline.
  I would like to give you one example. His name is Richard Dean. He is 
a 49-year-old Vietnam veteran who has worked for the Social Security 
Administration for 22 years now. Last year he was hard at work in the 
Federal building in Oklahoma City, when the blast killed 169 people and 
brought the rubble down all around him. He reentered that building four 
times. He saved the lives of three women. He is here with us this 
evening and I want to recognize Richard and applaud both his public 
service and his extraordinary personal heroism.

  But Richard Dean's story doesn't end there. This last November, he 
was forced out of his office when the government shut down. And the 
second time the government shut down, he continued helping Social 
Security recipients, but he was working without pay.
  On behalf of Richard Dean and his family and all the other people who 
are out there working every day doing a good job for the American 
people, I challenge all of you in this Chamber, never, ever shut the 
Federal Government down again.
  On behalf of all Americans, especially those who need their Social 
Security payments at the beginning of March, I also challenge the 
Congress to preserve the full faith and credit of the United States, to 
honor the obligations of this great nation as we have for 220 years, to 
rise above partisanship and pass a straightforward extension of the 
debt limit and show the people America keeps its word.
  I know that this evening I have asked a lot of Congress and even more 
from America, but I am confident. When Americans work together in their 
homes, their schools, their churches and synagogues, their civic 
groups, their workplace, they can meet any challenge.
  I say again, the era of big government is over, but we can't go back 
to the era of fending for yourself. We have to go forward to the era of 
working together as a community, as a team, as one America, with all of 
us reaching across these lines that divide us, the division, the 
discrimination, the rancor, we have to reach across it to find common 
ground. We have got to work together, if we want America to work.
  I want you to meet two more people tonight who do just that. Lucius 
Wright is a teacher in the Jackson, Mississippi public school system. A 
Vietnam veteran, he has created groups to help inner city children turn 
away from gangs and build futures they can believe in.
  Sergeant Jennifer Rogers is a police officer in Oklahoma City. Like 
Richard Dean she helped to pull her fellow citizens out of the rubble 
and deal with that awful tragedy. She reminds us that in their response 
to that atrocity, the people of Oklahoma City lifted all of us with 
their basic sense of decency and community.
  Lucius Wright and Jennifer Rogers are special Americans, and I have 
the honor to announce tonight that they are the very first of several 
thousand Americans who will be chosen to carry the Olympic torch on its 
long journey from Los Angeles to the centennial of the modern Olympics 
in Atlanta this summer, not because they are star athletes but because 
they are star citizens, community heroes meeting America's challenges. 
They are our real champions. Please stand up.
  Now each of us must hold high the torch of citizenship in our own 
lives. None of us can finish the race alone. We can only achieve our 
destiny together, one hand, one generation, one American connecting to 
another.
  There have always been things we could do together, dreams we could 
make real which we could never have done on our own. We Americans have 
forged our identity, our very union, from the very point of view that 
we can accommodate every point on the planet, every different opinion. 
But we must be bound together by a faith more powerful than any 
doctrine that divides us, by our belief in progress, our love of 
liberty and our relentless search for common ground. America has always 
sought and always risen to every challenge.

  Who would say that having come so far together we will not go forward 
from here? Who would say that this Age of Possibility is not for all 
Americans?
  Our country is and always has been a great and good nation, but the 
best is yet to come, if we all do our part.
  Thank you, God bless you, and God bless the United States of America.
  [Applause, the Members rising.]
  At 10 o'clock and 13 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 and Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the 
United States.
  The Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

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