[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H273-H278]
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 105th 
Congress, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans:
  I think I should start by saying thanks for inviting me back.
  I come before you tonight with a challenge as great as any in our 
peacetime history, and a plan of action to meet that challenge, to 
prepare our people for the bold new world of the 21st century.
  We have much to be thankful for. With 4 years of growth, we have won 
back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls 
declining, we are winning back our optimism, the enduring faith that we 
can master any difficulty. With the Cold War receding and global 
commerce at record levels, we are helping to win an unrivaled peace and 
prosperity all across the world.
  My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we 
must rise to the decisive moment, to make a Nation and a world better 
than any we have ever known. The new promise of the global economy, the 
information age, unimagined new work, life-enhancing technology, all 
these are ours to seize. That is our honor and our challenge. We must 
be shapers of events, not observers. For if we do not act, the moment 
will pass, and we will lose the best possibilities of our future.
  We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy: The enemy of our 
time is inaction.
  So tonight I issue a call to action, action by this Congress, action 
by our States, by our people, to prepare America for the 21st century. 
Action to keep our economy and our democracy strong and working for all 
our people; action to strengthen education and harness the forces of 
technology and science; action to build stronger families and stronger 
communities and a safer environment; action to keep America the world's 
strongest force for peace, freedom, and prosperity. And above all, 
action to build a more perfect union here at home.
  The spirit we bring to our work will make all the difference. We must 
be committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans, 
responsibility from all Americans, in a community of all Americans. And 
we must be committed to a new kind of government, not to solve all our 
problems for us, but to give our people, all our people, the tools they 
need to make the most of their own lives.
  And we must work together. The people of this Nation elected us all. 
They

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want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all right here in 
the same boat. They gave us all oars, and they told us to row. Now, 
here is the direction I believe we should take. First we must move 
quickly to complete the unfinished business of our country, to balance 
the budget, renew our democracy, and finish the job of welfare reform.
  Over the last 4 years, we have brought new economic growth by 
investing in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our deficits, 
creating over 11 million new jobs, a 4-year record. Now we must keep 
our economy the strongest in the world. We here tonight have an 
historic opportunity. Let this Congress be the Congress that finally 
balances the budget.
  In two days, I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by 
2002. This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people while 
protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment. It will 
balance the budget and build on the Vice President's efforts to make 
our government work better even as it costs less.
  It will balance the budget and provide middle class tax relief to pay 
for education and health care, to help to raise a child, to buy and 
sell a home.
  Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature. It 
does not require us to rewrite our Constitution.
  I believe it is both unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced 
budget amendment that could cripple our country in time of economic 
crisis and force unwanted results, such as judges halting Social 
Security checks or increasing taxes. Let us at least agree we should 
not pass any measure, no measure should be passed that threatens Social 
Security. Whatever your view on that, we all must concede, we do not 
need a constitutional amendment; we need action.
  Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now. And then 
for the long-term health of our society, we must agree to a bipartisan 
process to preserve Social Security and reform Medicare for the long 
run so that these fundamental programs will be as strong for our 
children as they are for our parents.
  And let me say something that is not in my script tonight: I know 
this is not going to be easy, but I really believe one of the reasons 
the American people gave me a second term was to take the tough 
decisions in the next four years that will carry our country through 
the next 50 years. I know it is easier for me than for you to say or 
do, but another reason I was elected is to support all of you without 
regard to party to give you what is necessary to join in these 
decisions. We owe it to our country and to our future.
  Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit 
ourselves tonight before the eyes of America to finally enacting 
bipartisan campaign finance reform. Senators McCain and Feingold, 
Representatives Shays and Meehan have reached across party lines here 
to craft tough and fair reform. Their proposal would curb spending, 
reduce the role of special interests, create a level playing field 
between challengers and incumbents and ban contributions from 
noncitizens, all corporate sources and the other large soft money 
contributions that both parties receive.
  You know and I know that this can be delayed, and you know and I know 
that delay will mean the death of reform. So let us set our own 
deadline. Let us work together to write bipartisan campaign finance 
reform into law and pass McCain-Feingold by the day we celebrate the 
birth of our democracy, July 4th.
  There is a third piece of unfinished business. Over the last four 
years, we moved a record two and a quarter million people off the 
welfare rolls. Then last year, Congress enacted landmark welfare reform 
legislation demanding that all able-bodied recipients assume the 
responsibility of moving from welfare to work. Now each and every one 
of us has to fulfill our responsibility, indeed our moral obligation, 
to make sure that people who now must work can work.
  Now we must act to meet a new goal, 2 million more people off the 
welfare rolls by the year 2000.
  Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives for businesses that 
hire people off welfare; incentives for job placement firms and States 
to create more jobs for welfare recipients; training, transportation 
and child care to help people go to work.
  Now I challenge every State: Turn those welfare checks into private 
sector paychecks. I challenge every religious congregation, every 
community nonprofit, every business to hire someone off welfare. And I 
would like to say especially to every employer in our country, whoever 
criticized the old welfare system, you cannot blame that old system 
anymore. We have torn it down. Now do your part. Give someone on 
welfare the chance to go to work.
  Tonight I am pleased to announce that five major corporations, 
Sprint, Monsanto, UPS, Burger King and United Airlines, will be the 
first to join in a new national effort to marshal America's businesses, 
large and small, to create jobs so that people can move from welfare to 
work. We passed welfare reform. All of you know I believe we were right 
to do it. But no one can walk out of this Chamber with a clear 
conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job.
  And we must join together to do something else, too, something both 
Republican and Democratic governors have asked us to do, to restore 
basic health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes immigrants 
who came to this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes and obey the 
law. To do otherwise is simply unworthy of a great Nation of 
immigrants.
  Now, looking ahead, the greatest step of all, the high threshold of 
the future we must now cross and my number one priority for the next 
four years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in 
the world.
  Let us work together to meet these three goals: Every 8-year-old must 
be able to read; every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the 
Internet; every 18-year-old must be able to go to college; and every 
adult American must be able to keep on learning for a lifetime.
  My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals, 
$51 billion next year. But far more than money is required.
  I have a plan, a call to action for American education based on these 
10 principles.
  First, a national crusade for education standards, not Federal 
Government standards, but national standards representing what all of 
our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st 
century.
  Every State and school must shape the curriculum to reflect these 
standards and train teachers to lift students up to them. To help 
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an 
effort over the next 2 years to develop national tests of student 
achievement in reading and math.
  Tonight I issue a challenge to the Nation: Every State should adopt 
high national standards, and by 1999 every State should test every 
fourth grader in reading and every eighth grader in math to make sure 
these standards are met.
  Raising standards will not be easy, and some of our children will not 
be able to meet them at first. The point is not to put our children 
down, but to lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs help, what 
changes in teaching to make, and which schools need to improve. They 
can help us to end social promotion, for no child should move from 
grade school to junior high or junior high to high school until he or 
she is ready.
  Last month, our Secretary of Education Dick Riley and I visited 
northern Illinois where eighth grade students from 20 school districts 
in a project aptly called ``First in the World'' took the Third 
International Math and Science Study. That is a test that reflects the 
world class standards our children must meet for the new era. And those 
students in Illinois tied for first in the world in science and came in 
second in math.
  Two of them, Kristin Tanner and Chris Getsla, are here tonight, along 
with their teacher, Sue Winski. They are up there with the First Lady, 
and they prove that when we aim high and challenge our students, they 
will be the best in the world. Let us give them a hand. Stand up, 
please.
  Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. 
Most of us in this Chamber would not be here tonight without the help 
of those teachers. I know that I would not be here.
  For years, many of our educators, led by North Carolina's Governor 
Jim

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Hunt and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have 
worked very hard to establish nationally accepted credentials for 
excellence in teaching. Just 500 of these teachers have been certified 
since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national 
certification as master teachers.
  We should reward and recognize our best teachers. And as we reward 
them, we should quickly and fairly remove those few who do not measure 
up, and we should challenge more of our finest young people to consider 
teaching as a career.
  Third, we must do more to help all our children read. Forty percent, 
40 percent, of our 8-year-olds cannot read on their own. That is why we 
have just launched the America Reads Initiative, to build a citizen 
army of 1 million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read 
independently by the end of the third grade. We will use thousands of 
AmeriCorps volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. We want at least 
100,000 college students to help.
  And tonight I am pleased that 60 college presidents have answered my 
call, pledging that thousands of their work/study students will serve 
for 1 year as reading tutors.
  This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal: You 
must use these tutors to help your students read. And it is especially 
a challenge to our parents: You must read with our children every 
night.
  This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the first days 
of life. Scientists are now discovering how young children develop 
emotionally and intellectually from their very first days and how 
important it is for parents to begin immediately talking, singing, even 
reading, to their infants.
  The First Lady has spent years writing about this issue, studying it, 
and she and I are going to convene a White House Conference on Early 
Learning and the Brain this spring to explore how parents and educators 
can best use these startling new findings.
  We already know we should start teaching children before they start 
school. That is why this balanced budget expands Head Start to 1 
million children by 2002. That is why the Vice President and Mrs. Gore 
will host their annual family conference this June on what we can do to 
make sure that parents are an active part of their children's learning 
all the way through school.
  They have done a great deal to highlight the importance of family in 
our life, and now they are turning their attention to getting more 
parents involved in their children's learning all the way through 
school. And I thank you, Mr. Vice President, and I thank you 
especially, Tipper, for what you are doing.
  Fifth, every State should give parents the power to choose the right 
public school for their children. Their right to choose will foster a 
competition and innovation that can make public schools better. We 
should also make it possible for more parents and teachers to start 
charter schools, schools that set and meet the highest standards and 
exist only as long as they do. Our plan will help America to create 
3,000 of these charter schools by the next century, nearly seven times 
as many as there are in the country today, so that parents will have 
even more choices in sending their children to the best schools.
  Sixth, character education must be taught in our schools. We must 
teach our children to be good citizens, and we must continue to promote 
order and discipline, supporting communities that introduce school 
uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive 
students from the classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs 
in schools.
  Seventh, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in 
schools that are literally falling down. With the student population at 
an all-time high and record numbers of school buildings falling into 
disrepair, this has now become a serious national concern.
  Therefore, my budget includes a new initiative: $5 billion to help 
communities finance $20 billion in school construction over the next 4 
years.
  Eighth, we must make the 13th and 14th years of education, at least 2 
years of college, just as universal in America by the 21st century as a 
high school education is today, and we must open the doors of college 
to all Americans.
  To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Georgia's 
pioneering program, 2 years of a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition, 
enough to pay for the typical community college.
  I also propose a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for all 
tuition after high school, an expanded IRA you can withdraw from tax 
free for education, and the largest increase in Pell grant scholarships 
in 20 years.
  This plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on 
money they saved for college tuition. I ask you to pass it, and give 
every American who works hard the chance to go to college.
  Ninth, in the 21st century, we must expand the frontiers of learning 
across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have the 
chance to learn new skills. Most Americans live near a community 
college. The roads that take them there could be paths to a better 
future. My GI bill for America's workers will transform the confusing 
tangle of Federal training programs into a simple skill grant to go 
directly into eligible workers' hands. For too long, this bill has been 
sitting on that desk there without action. I ask you to pass it now. 
Let us give more of our workers the ability to learn and to earn for a 
lifetime.
  Tenth, we must bring the power of the Information Age into all our 
schools. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and 
library to the Internet by the year 2000, so that for the first time in 
our history, children in the most isolated rural towns, the most 
comfortable suburbs, the poorest inner city schools, will have the same 
access to the same universe of knowledge. That is my plan: a call to 
action for American education.
  Some may say that it is unusual for a President to pay this kind of 
attention to education. Some may say it is simply because the President 
and his wonderful wife have been obsessed with this subject for more 
years than they can recall. That is not what is driving these 
proposals. We must understand the significance of this endeavor. One of 
the greatest sources of our strength throughout the Cold War was a 
bipartisan foreign policy. Because our future was at stake, politics 
stopped at the water's edge. Now I ask you, and I ask all our Nation's 
governors, I ask parents, teachers and citizens all across America, for 
a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because education is a 
critical national security issue for our future, and politics must stop 
at the schoolhouse door.
  To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful 
forces of science and technology to benefit all Americans.
  This is the first State of the Union carried live in video over the 
Internet. But we have only begun to spread the benefits of a technology 
revolution that should become the modern birthright of every citizen.
  Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. Now we 
should connect every hospital to the Internet, so doctors can instantly 
share data about their patients with the best specialists in the field. 
And I challenge the private sector tonight to start by connecting every 
children's hospital as soon as possible, so that a child in bed can 
stay in touch with school, family and friends. A sick child need no 
longer be a child alone.
  We must build the second generation of the Internet so our leading 
universities and national laboratories can communicate in speeds a 
thousand times faster than today, to develop new medical treatments, 
new sources of energy, new ways of working together.
  But we cannot stop there. As the Internet becomes our new town 
square, a computer in every home, a teacher of all subjects, a 
connection to all cultures, this will no longer be a dream, but a 
necessity. And over the next decade, that must be our goal.
  We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars 
probes and the international space station, both of which will have 
practical applications for our everyday living.
  We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The human 
genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life. American 
scientists have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian 
cancer, and medication that stops a stroke in

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progress and begins to reverse its effects, and treatments that 
dramatically lengthen the lives of people with HIV and AIDS.
  Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National 
Institutes of Health has increased dramatically, to $1.5 billion. With 
new resources, NIH will now become the most powerful discovery engine 
for an AIDS vaccine, working with other scientists to finally end the 
threat of AIDS. Remember that every year we move up the discovery of an 
AIDS vaccine will save millions of lives around the world. We must 
reinforce our commitment to medical science.
  To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build stronger 
families.
  Over the past 4 years, the family and medical leave law has helped 
millions of Americans to take time off to be with their families. With 
new pressures on people in the way they work and live, I believe we 
must expand family leave so that workers can take time off for teacher 
conferences and a child's medical checkup. We should pass flextime so 
workers can choose to be paid for overtime in income, or trade it in 
for time off to be with their families.
  We must continue, step by step, to give more families access to 
affordable, quality health care. Forty million Americans still lack 
health insurance. Ten million children still lack health insurance. 
Eighty percent of them have working parents who pay taxes. That is 
wrong. My balanced budget will extend health coverage to up to 5 
million of those children. Since nearly half of all children who lose 
their insurance do so because their parents lose or change a job, my 
budget will also ensure that people who temporarily lose their jobs can 
still afford to keep their health insurance. No child should be without 
a doctor just because a parent is without a job.
  My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the trust 
fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many 
families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer's, and for the first 
time it would fully pay for annual mammograms.
  Just as we ended drive-through deliveries of babies last year, we 
must now end the dangerous and demeaning practice of forcing women home 
from the hospital only hours after a mastectomy. I ask your support for 
bipartisan legislation to guarantee that a woman can stay in the 
hospital for 48 hours after a mastectomy. With us tonight is Dr. 
Kristen Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice 
spurred a national movement and inspired this legislation. I would like 
her to stand so we can thank her for her efforts. Dr. Zarfos, thank 
you.
  In the last 4 years, we have increased child support collections by 
50 percent. Now we should go further and do better, by making it a 
felony for any parent to cross a State line in an attempt to flee from 
this, his or her most sacred obligation.
  Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm in our 
determination to ban the advertising and marketing of cigarettes that 
endanger their lives.
  To prepare America for the 21st century we must build stronger 
communities. We should start with safe streets. Serious crime has 
dropped 5 years in a row. The key has been community policing. We must 
finish the job of putting 100,000 community police on the streets of 
the United States.
  We should pass the victims rights amendment to the Constitution, and 
I ask you to mount a full-scale assault on juvenile crime with 
legislation that declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and 
tougher penalties, extends the Brady bill so violent teen criminals 
will not be able to buy handguns, requires child safety locks on 
handguns to prevent unauthorized use and helps to keep our schools open 
after hours on weekends and in the summer so our young people will have 
some place to go and something to say yes to.
  This balanced budget includes the largest antidrug effort ever to 
stop drugs at their source, punish those who push them and teach our 
young people that drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal and drugs will 
kill them. I hope you will support it.
  Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and rural 
neighborhoods, but we must do more to empower them to create the 
conditions in which all families can flourish and to create jobs 
through investment by business and loans by banks.
  We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have already 
brought so much hope to communities like Detroit, where the 
unemployment rate has been cut in half in 4 years.
  We should restore contaminated urban land and buildings to productive 
use. We should expand the network of community development banks, and 
together we must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment 
approach, including private sector tax incentives, to renew our capital 
city so that Washington is a great place to work and live and once 
again the proud face America shows the world.
  We must protect our environment in every community. In the last 4 
years we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many in the previous 12. 
Now we should clean up 500 more so that our children grow up next to 
parks, not poison. I urge you to pass my proposal to make big polluters 
live by a simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you should pay 
to clean it up.
  In the last 4 years we strengthened our Nation's safe food and 
cleaning drinking water laws, we protected some of America's rarest and 
most beautiful land in Utah's Red Rocks region, created three new 
national parks in the California desert and began to restore the 
Florida Everglades. Now we must be as vigilant with our rivers as we 
are with our lands.
  Tonight I announce that this year I will designate 10 American 
Heritage rivers to help communities alongside them revitalize their 
waterfronts and clean up pollution in the rivers, proving once again we 
can grow the economy as we protect the environment.
  We must also protect our global environment, working to ban the worst 
toxic chemicals and to reduce the greenhouse gases that challenge our 
health even as they change our climate.
  Now, we all know that in all of our communities some of our children 
simply do not have what they need to grow and learn in their own homes 
or schools or neighborhoods and that means the rest of us must do more, 
for they are our children too. That is why President Bush, General 
Colin Powell, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join the 
Vice President and me to lead the President's Summit of Service in 
Philadelphia in April.
  Our national service program, AmeriCorps, has already helped 70,000 
young people to work their way through college as they serve America. 
Now we intend to mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands 
of ways. Citizen service is an American responsibility which all 
Americans should embrace, and I ask your support for that endeavor.
  I would like to make just one last point about our national 
community. Our economy is measured in numbers and statistics and is 
very important. But the enduring worth of our Nation lies in our shared 
values and our soaring spirit. So instead of cutting back on our modest 
efforts to support the arts and humanities I believe we should stand by 
them and challenge our artists, musicians and writers, challenge our 
museums, libraries and theaters.
  We should challenge all Americans in the arts and humanities to join 
with their fellow citizens to make the year 2000 a national celebration 
of the American spirit in every community, a celebration of our common 
culture in the century that is passed and in the new one to come in a 
new millennium so that we can remain the world's beacon, not only of 
liberty but of creativity long after the fireworks have faded.
  To prepare America for the 21st century we must master the forces of 
change in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for a 
uncharted time.
  Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the 
institutions that secured victory in the Cold War and built a growing 
world economy. As a result, today more people than ever embrace our 
ideals and share our interests. Already we have dismantled many of the 
blocs and barriers that divided our parents' world. For the first time 
more people live under democracy than dictatorship, including every 
Nation in our own hemisphere but one, and its day too will come.
  Now we stand at another moment of change and choice and another time 
to

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be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years of security and 
prosperity. In this endeavor our first task is to help to build for the 
very first time an undivided democratic Europe. When Europe is stable, 
prosperous and at peace, America is more secure. To that end we must 
expand NATO by 1999 so that countries that were once our adversaries 
can become our allies. At the special NATO summit this summer that is 
what we will begin to do. We must strengthen NATO's partnership for 
peace with non-member allies and we must build a stable partnership 
between NATO and a democratic Russia.
  An expanded NATO is good for America and a Europe in which all 
democracies define their future, not in terms of what they can do to 
each other but in terms of what they can do together for the good of 
all, that kind of Europe is good for America.
  Second, America must look to the East no less than to the West. Our 
security demands it. Americans fought 3 wars in Asia in this century. 
Our prosperity requires it. More than 2 million American jobs depend 
upon trade with Asia. There, too, we are helping to shape an Asian 
Pacific community of cooperation, not conflict.
  Let our progress there not mask the peril that remains. Together with 
South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge 
the Cold War's last divide. I call on Congress to fund our share of the 
agreement under which North Korea must continue to freeze and then 
dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
  We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China for the sake of our 
interests and our ideals. An isolated China is not good for America. A 
China playing its proper role in the world is. I will go to China, and 
I have invited China's President to come here, not because we agree on 
everything, but because engaging China is the best way to work on our 
common challenges like ending nuclear testing, and to deal frankly with 
our fundamental differences like human rights.
  The American people must prosper in the global economy. We have 
worked hard to tear down trade barriers abroad so that we can create 
good jobs at home. I am proud to say that today America is once again 
the most competitive Nation and the number one exporter in the world. 
Now we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and Latin 
America, two of the fastest growing regions on earth, or be left behind 
as these emerging economies forge new ties with other nations.
  That is why we need the authority now to conclude new trade 
agreements that open markets to our goods and services even as we 
preserve our values. We need not shrink from the challenge of the 
global economy. After all, we have the best workers and the best 
products. In a truly open market we can outcompete anyone, anywhere on 
earth.
  But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can 
advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the world. There is 
no better example of this truth than Latin America, where democracy and 
open markets are on the march together. That is why I will visit there 
in the spring, to reinforce our important ties.
  We should all be proud that America led the effort to rescue our 
neighbor, Mexico, from its economic crisis. We should all be proud that 
last month Mexico repaid the United States, 3 full years ahead of 
schedule, with a half a billion dollar profit to us.
  America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace, from the 
Middle East to Haiti, from Northern Ireland to Africa. Taking 
reasonable risks for peace keeps us from being drawn into far more 
costly conflicts later.
  With American leadership, the killing is stopped in Bosnia. Now the 
habits of peace must take hold. The new NATO force will allow 
reconstruction and reconciliation to accelerate. Tonight I ask Congress 
to continue its strong support of our troops. They are doing a 
remarkable job there for America, and America must do right by them.
  Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. In 
the past 4 years we agreed to ban, we led the way to a worldwide 
agreement to ban nuclear testing. With Russia, we dramatically cut 
nuclear arsenals, and we stopped targeting each other's citizens. We 
are acting to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the wrong 
hands, and to rid the world of landmines.
  We are working with other nations, with renewed intensity, to fight 
drug traffickers and to stop terrorists before they act, and hold them 
fully accountable if they do.
  Now we must rise to a new test of leadership, ratifying the Chemical 
Weapons Convention. Make no mistake about it, it will make our troops 
safer from chemical attack. It will help us to fight terrorism.
  We have no more important obligations, especially in the wake of what 
we now know about the Gulf War. This treaty has been bipartisan from 
the beginning, supported by Republican and Democratic administrations, 
and Republican and Democratic Members of Congress, and already approved 
by 68 nations. But if we do not act by April the 29th, when this 
convention goes into force with or without us, we will lose the chance 
to have Americans leading and enforcing this effort. Together, we must 
make the Chemical Weapons Convention law, so that at last we can begin 
to outlaw poison gas from the earth.
  Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.
  We must maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase 
funding for weapons modernization by the year 2000, and we must take 
good care of our men and women in uniform. They are the world's finest.
  We must also renew our commitment to America's diplomacy, and pay our 
debts and dues to international financial institutions like the World 
Bank, and to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar, every dollar we 
devote to preventing conflicts, to promoting democracy, to stopping the 
spread of disease and starvation, brings a sure return in security and 
savings. Yet international affairs spending today is just 1 percent of 
the Federal budget, a small fraction of what America invested in 
diplomacy to choose leadership over escapism at the start of the Cold 
War. If America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead 
America simply must find the will to pay our way.
  A farsighted America moved the world to a better place over these 
last 50 years, and so it can be for another 50 years. But a 
shortsighted America will soon find its words falling on deaf ears all 
around the world.
  Almost exactly 50 years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War, 
President Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon our 
country to meet its responsibilities of leadership. This was his 
warning. He said, ``If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the 
world--and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation.'' That 
Congress, led by Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered 
President Truman's call. Together, they made the commitments that 
strengthened our country for 50 years. Now let us do the same. Let us 
do what it takes to remain the indispensable Nation, to keep America 
strong, secure, and prosperous for another 50 years.
  In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out 
of the power of our example here at home, out of our ability to remain 
strong as one America.
  All over the world people are being torn asunder by racial, ethnic, 
and religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and terror. We are the 
world's most diverse democracy, and the world looks to us to show that 
it is possible to live and advance together across those kinds of 
differences.
  America has always been a Nation of immigrants. From the start, a 
steady stream of people, in search of freedom and opportunity, have 
left their own lands to make this land their home. We started as an 
experiment in democracy fueled by Europeans. We have grown into an 
experiment in democratic diversity fueled by openness and promise.
  My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our diversity 
is a weakness. It is our greatest strength.
  Americans speak every language, know every country. People on every 
continent can look to us and see the reflection of their own great 
potential. And they always will, as long as we strive to give all of 
our citizens, whatever their background, an opportunity to achieve 
their own greatness.
  We are not there yet. We still see evidence of abiding bigotry and 
intolerance and ugly words and awful violence

[[Page H278]]

in burned churches and bombed buildings. We must fight against this in 
our country and in our hearts.
  Just a few days, before my second inauguration, one of our country's 
best known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, suggested that I read 
Isaiah 58:12. Here is what it says: ``Thou shalt raise up the 
foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called, the repairer 
of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.''
  I placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office on 
behalf of all Americans, for no matter what our differences in our 
faiths, our backgrounds, our politics, we must all be repairers of the 
breach.
  I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us how. 
Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud American whose 
family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. He was awarded the 
Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fighting for his 
country in Vietnam, and he went on to serve Texas and America fighting 
for our future here in this Chamber. We are grateful for his service 
and honored that his mother, Lillie Tejeda, and his sister Mary Alice, 
have come from Texas to be with us here tonight, and we welcome them.
  Gary Locke, the newly elected Governor of Washington State, is the 
first Chinese American Governor in the history of our country. He is 
the proud son of two of the millions of Asian American immigrants who 
strengthened America with their hard work, family values and good 
citizenship. He represents the future we can all achieve. Thank you, 
Governor, for being here.
  Reverend Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, along with 
Kristin Tanner and Chris Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen Zarfos, 
they are all Americans from different roots whose lives reflect the 
best of what we can become when we are one America.
  We may not share a common past, but we surely do share a common 
future. Building one America is our most important mission, the 
foundation of many generations, of every other strength we must build 
for this new century. Money cannot buy it. Power cannot compel it. 
Technology cannot create it. It can only come from the human spirit.
  America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful 
idea in the history of nations. And all of us in this Chamber, we are 
now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. 
A child born tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th century. 
Everything that child will know about America will be because of what 
we do now to build a new century.
  We do not have a moment to waste. Tomorrow there will be just over 
1,000 days until the year 2000; 1,000 days to prepare our people; 1,000 
days to work together; 1,000 days to build a bridge to a land of new 
promise.
  My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize those days and 
the century.
  Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.
  (Applause, the Members rising.)
  At 10 o'clock and 20 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 Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United 
States; the Acting Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.

                          ____________________