[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S939-S943]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   REPORT OF THE STATE OF THE UNION--MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT--PM 9

  The PRESIDING OFFICER laid before the Senate the following message 
from the President of the United States, together with an accompanying 
report, which was ordered to lie on the table.

  The PRESIDENT. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105th 
Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans:
  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 four years of growth, we have 
won back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare 
rolls declining, we are winning back our basic 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 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 
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, by our 
states, by all 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 and freedom and prosperity. And above all, 
action to build a more perfect union here at home.
  The spirit we bring to our work will determine its success. We must 
all be committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans, and 
responsibility for all Americans, in a community of all Americans, and 
to a new kind of government--not to solve all our problems for us, but 
to give all our people the tools to make the most of their own lives.
  And we must work together. The people of this nation elected us all. 
They want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all here in the 
same boat, they gave us all oars, and they told us to row. Here's the 
direction I think we should take.
  First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business of 
our country--to balance our budget, renew our democracy, and finish the 
job of welfare reform.

  Over the last four years, we brought new economic growth by investing 
in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our deficits, creating 
over 11 million new jobs. 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 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 
unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment that could 
cripple our country in time of crisis later on, and force unwanted 
results such as judges halting Social Security checks or increasing 
taxes. Let us agree: We should not pass any measure that threatens 
Social Security. We don't 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, so that these 
fundamental programs will be as strong for our children as they are for 
our parents.
  Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit 
ourselves tonight, before the eyes of America, to enacting bipartisan 
campaign finance reform.
  Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan, have 
reached across party lines to craft tough and fair campaign 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 and all corporate 
sources, and the other large soft money contributions that both parties 
receive.
  You know and I know that delay will mean the death of reform. So 
let's set our own deadline. Let's 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 the 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 we enacted landmark welfare reform, 
demanding that 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 must work, 
can work. Now we must act to meet a new goal: two million more people 
off the welfare rolls by the Year 2000.
  Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that 
hire people off welfare. Incentives for job placement firms and for 
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 non-profit, and every business: hire someone off welfare. And 
I say especially to every employer in this country who has ever 
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 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 people on welfare can move to work.
  We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one can walk 
out

[[Page S940]]

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.
  Next, the greatest step of all--the high threshold to the future we 
now must cross--and my number one priority as President for the next 
four years--is to ensure that Americans have the best education in the 
world.
  Let's work together to meet these 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.
  My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals--
$51 billion dollars next year. But far more than money is required.
  I have a plan, a Call to Action for American Education, based on 
these ten 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 meet them. 
To help schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will 
lead an effort over the next two 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 4th 
grader in reading and every 8th 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 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, Secretary of Education Dick Riley and I visited Northern 
Illinois, where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in a 
project called ``First in the World,'' took the Third International 
Math and Science Study--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, with their 
teacher, Sue Winski. They prove that when we aim high and challenge our 
students, they will be the best in the world.
  Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. 
Most of us would not be here tonight without the help of such teachers. 
I know I wouldn't be. For years, many educators, led by North 
Carolina's Governor Jim Hunt and the National Board for Professional 
Teaching Standards, have worked hard to establish nationally accepted 
credentials for excellence in teaching. Just 500 of these master 
teachers have been certified since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 
more to seek national certification as master teachers. We should 
reward our best teachers, quickly and fairly remove those few who don't 
measure up, and challenge our finest young people to consider teaching 
as a career.
  Third: we must do more to help all our children read. 40% of our 8 
year olds cannot read on their own. That's why we have just launched 
the America Reads initiative--to build a citizen army of one million 
volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read independently by the 
end of the 3rd 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 one year as reading tutors.
  This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal: use 
these tutors to help students read. And it is especially a challenge to 
our parents: Read with your 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 first days, and, therefore, 
how important it is for parents to begin immediately talking, singing, 
even reading to their infants. The First Lady has spent years studying 
and writing about this issue. She and I will 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 
schools. That's why my budget expands Head Start to one million 
children by 2002. And, in June, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will 
host their annual family conference. This one will focus on the 
importance of parents' involvement throughout a child's education.
  Fifth, every state should give parents the power to choose the right 
public school for their children. Their right to choose will foster the 
competition and innovation that can make our 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 
survive only as long as they do. Our plan will help America create 
3,000 of these charter schools by the next century--nearly seven times 
as many as there are today--so that parents will have even more choices 
in sending their children to the best public 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.
  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. My budget 
includes a new initiative: $5 billion to help communities finance $20 
billion in school construction over the next four years.
  Eighth: We must make the 13th and 14th years of education--at least 
two years of college--just as universal in America as a high school 
education is today, and we must open the doors of college to all.
  To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Georgia's 
pioneering program: two 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 saved for college tuition. I ask you to pass it--to 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 a chance 
to learn new skills. Most Americans live near a community college. The 
roads that take them there can be paths to a better future. My G.I. 
Bill for Workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal 
training programs into a simple skill grant that will go directly into 
eligible workers' hands. For too long, this bill has been sitting on 
that desk down there without action--and I ask you to pass it now. 
Let's give more of our workers the ability to learn and to earn.
  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 history, a child in the most isolated rural town, the most 
comfortable suburb, the poorest inner city school, will have the same 
access to the same universe of knowledge. I ask your support to 
complete this historic mission.

[[Page S941]]

  That is my plan--a Call to Action for American Education.
  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--I ask all our nation's 
governors--and I ask teachers, parents and citizens all across 
America--for a new nonpartisan commitment to education--because 
education is one of the critical national security issues for our 
future--and politics must stop at the classroom door.
  I pledge to take this Call to Action to our country, so that 
together, we can make American education, like America itself, the envy 
of the world.
  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 over the Internet. 
But we have only begun to spread the benefits of a technology 
revolution that should be 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 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 at speeds 1000 
times faster than today, to develop new medical treatments, new sources 
of energy, and 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 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. Every year we move up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine, 
we can save millions of lives around the world.
  To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger 
families.
  Over the past 4 years, the Family and Medical Leave Act has helped 
millions of Americans take time off to be with their families. With new 
pressures on people in the way they work and live, we should 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 for time off to 
be with their families.
  We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to 
affordable, quality health care. 40 million Americans still lack health 
insurance. 10 million children still lack health insurance. 80% of them 
have working parents who pay taxes. That is wrong. My balanced budget 
will extend health coverage to up to five million of those children. 
Since nearly half of all children who lose their insurance do so 
because their parents lose or change jobs, 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 Alzheimers--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 women 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. We thank her for her efforts.

  In the last four years, we have increased child support collections 
by 50%. Now, we should go further, and make it a felony for any parent 
to cross state lines 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 five 
years in a row. The key has been community policing--and we must finish 
the job of putting 100,000 community police on our streets. We should 
pass the Victims' Rights Amendment to the Constitution.
  And I ask you to join me in mounting 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 never 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 young 
people will have someplace to go and something to say yes to.
  My balanced budget includes the largest anti-drug 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.
  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 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 hope to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate 
has been cut in half in four 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 live and work, 
and is once again the proud face America shows to the world.
  We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four 
years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous 
twelve. Now we should clean up 500 more of them, so that our children 
grow up next to parks, not poison. Big polluters must live by this 
simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you pay to clean it up.

  In the last four years, we strengthened the nation's safe food and 
clean drinking water laws. We protected some of America's rarest, most 
beautiful land in Utah's Red Rocks region, created three new national 
parks in the California desert, and began to restore Florida's 
Everglades. Now we must be as vigilant with our rivers as we are with 
our land. 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 that 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 gasses that challenge our 
health even as they change our climate.

[[Page S942]]

  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 homes, or 
schools, or neighborhoods. The rest of us must do more, for they are 
our children too. That is why President Bush, General Colin Powell, and 
former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join Vice President Gore 
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 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.
  I'd like to make one last point about our national community. Our 
economy is measured in numbers and statistics, and it's very important. 
But the enduring worth of our nation lies in our 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, our museums, libraries and 
theaters, to join with all Americans 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 has passed, and in the new one 
to come in the new millennium, so that we can remain the world's beacon 
of liberty and 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 an 
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 hemisphere 
but one--and its day too will come.

  Now, we stand at another moment of change and choice--and another 
time to be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years of security and 
prosperity.
  Our first task is to help build, for the 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 the West. Our 
security demands it: Americans have fought three wars in Asia 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. But we must not let our progress there 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. And 
I call on this 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 
common challenges like ending nuclear testing--and to deal frankly with 
fundamental differences like human rights.
  Third, 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, the two 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. We have 
the best workers and the best products. In a truly open market, and we 
can out-compete anyone in the world.
  But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can 
advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the world.
  We should all be proud that America led the effort to rescue our 
neighbor Mexico from its economic crisis--and we should all be proud 
that last month, Mexico repaid the United States, three years ahead of 
schedule, with a half a billion dollars profit for us. And today our 
exports to Mexico are at an all time high.
  Fourth, 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 has 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 for our troops there. They are 
doing a remarkable job for America--and America must do right by them.
  Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. In 
the past four years, we agreed to ban nuclear testing. With Russia, we 
dramatically cut our nuclear arsenal; we stopped targeting each others 
citizens. We are acting to rid the world of landmines, and prevent 
nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands. We are working 
with other nations, with renewed intensity, to stop terrorists and drug 
traffickers before they act, and to hold them fully accountable if they 
do.
  Now, we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical 
Weapons Convention. 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 alike--and Republican and 
Democratic Members of Congress alike--and already approved by 68 
nations. If we do not act by April 29--when this Convention goes into 
force, with us 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 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 one percent of the 
federal budget--a tiny 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 fifty years. And it can do so for another fifty years. But a 
shortsighted

[[Page S943]]

America will soon find its words falling on deaf ears all around the 
world.
  Almost exactly fifty years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War, 
President Harry Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called 
upon our country to meet its responsibilities of leadership. This was 
his warning: ``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 fifty 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 fifty 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 believe that 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 greatness, as long as we give all of our 
citizens, whatever their background, an opportunity to achieve their 
greatness.
  We are not there yet. We still see evidence of abiding bigotry and 
intolerance, in ugly words and awful violence, in burned churches and 
bombed buildings. We must fight against this, in our country and in our 
hearts.
  A few days before my second inauguration, one of America's best known 
pastors, Rev. Robert Schuller, suggested that I read Isaiah 58:12. 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. We may not share a common past, but surely 
we share a common future.
  I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us the way to 
that common future. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a 
proud American whose family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. 
He earned 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 in this chamber. We are grateful for 
his service and honored to have his mother, Lillie Tejeda, with us 
tonight.
  Gary Locke, the newly elected Governor of Washington State, is our 
first Chinese-American Governor, the proud son of two of the millions 
of Asian-American immigrants who have strengthened America with their 
hard work, family values, and good citizenship.
  Rev. Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, along with Kristin 
Tanner, Chris Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen Zarfos--all Americans 
from different roots, whose lives reflect our shared values and the 
best of what we can become when we are one America.
  Building that one America is our most important mission, ``the 
foundation of many generations,'' of every other strength we must build 
for the new century. Money cannot buy it. Power cannot compel it. 
Technology cannot create it. It must rise from the human spirit.
  America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful 
idea in the history of nations. 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 
of America, will be because of what we do now to build a new century.
  We don't have a moment to waste. Tomorrow morning, 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. My fellow Americans, we have work to do. 
Let us seize the days and the century.
  Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

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