[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 6 (Wednesday, February 4, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E99]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           STATE OF THE UNION

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 4, 1998

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to insert my Washington 
Report for Wednesday, February 4, 1998 into the Congressional Record.

                     The State Of The Union Address

       Washington took a time out from all of the scandal talk to 
     listen to the President's State of the Union address. This 
     was hardly a normal State of the Union address. I've never 
     seen the House gallery so packed with media. But everyone was 
     on their best behavior for his annual ritual of American 
     democracy.
       The President's speech was long, about 72 minutes, 
     interrupted by applause a hundred times. Hoosiers can take 
     some pride that one of the special guests was a mother of 
     four from Indianapolis who served as an example of successful 
     welfare-to-work efforts. As expected, the President said the 
     State of the Union is strong. He struck several themes that 
     have now become the hallmark of his presidency: a smaller but 
     more progressive government; an economy that offers 
     opportunity; a society rooted in responsibility; and a nation 
     that lives as a community. All of the 35 proposals in the 
     State of the Union address had been skillfully crafted over 
     the last few months while the president controlled the 
     political environment with Congress out of Washington.
       The most dramatic moment in the address was the President's 
     stern and direct warning to Saddam Hussein: ``You cannot defy 
     the will of the world.'' With the increasing feeling that the 
     diplomatic options have been exhausted in preventing Iraq 
     from producing weapons of mass destruction, the President's 
     words were taken very seriously by everybody in the chamber 
     if not in the world. The President also emphasized several 
     other international initiatives that face very tough fights 
     in Congress. He urged us to make good on our debt to the 
     United Nations. He urged an expanded commitment to the 
     International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with the Asian 
     crisis, arguing that this was the right thing to do for a 
     safer world. He renewed his plea for fast track authority to 
     negotiate trade pacts, and urged the Senate to ratify the 
     treaty expanding NATO.
       In domestic policy, education occupied a principal place in 
     the President's address. He wants to reduce class size in 
     grades one through three by spending over $12 billion over 
     seven years to hire 100,000 new teachers, and proposed 
     programs to help modernize or build some new schools. The 
     President also proposed a $22 billion 5-year initiative to 
     make child care more available and affordable. He wants to 
     use the money from the proposed tobacco settlement to finance 
     some of these initiatives, going outside the normal 
     appropriations process.
       President Clinton said he would submit a balanced budget 
     for 1999, three years earlier than required under the budget 
     agreement struck last year. He proposed raising the minimum 
     wage and asked Congress to give him a bipartisan campaign 
     finance reform bill. And he advocated reform of the IRS, with 
     new citizen advocacy panels, a stronger taxpayer advocate, 
     and phone lines open 24 hours a day.
       Probably the President's most important initiative is to 
     set aside the expected budget surplus as a reserve for the 
     long-term deficit in the Social Security system. The 
     President did not present a detailed plan to preserve Social 
     Security, but called for conferences around the nation to 
     discuss the issue. He also launched a new clean water 
     initiative and pleaded for action to deal with the crisis of 
     global warming. He was adamant that it is possible to grow 
     the economy and clean the environment at the same time as we 
     have often done in the past. He said, ``Discrimination 
     against any American is un-American,'' and urged everyone to 
     ``Work together, learn together, live together, and serve 
     together.''
       The President gave us some tantalizing glimpses of the 21st 
     Century. The entire store of human knowledge doubles every 
     five years. All the phone calls on Mother's Day can be 
     carried on a single strand of fiber the width of a human 
     hair. A child born this year may well live to see the 22nd 
     Century. So he proposed a 21st Century research fund for 
     groundbreaking scientific inquiry and the largest funding 
     increase in history for the National Institutes of Health and 
     the National Science Foundation. He urged a ban on the 
     cloning of human beings.
       At the end of the speech there was a touching moment when 
     the President wished John Glenn Godspeed on his upcoming 
     space trip.
       There was not much doubt that President Clinton achieved 
     one of his principal purposes, which was to come across as 
     presidential, an engaged Chief Executive eager to move on 
     with the national agenda. The President was disciplined, 
     dignified, and presented a constructive agenda for the 
     American people to consider. I left the Capitol impressed 
     that there is too much work to do to waste a lot of time 
     speculating about the scandals. We will simply have to let 
     the facts unfold.
       Of course, the test lies ahead, and it will take unusually 
     skillful presidential leadership to enact even a small part 
     of the President's proposals. It is, for example, by no means 
     clear that he can emerge with the government's fiscal 
     integrity intact with all of the pressures for additional tax 
     cuts and spending increases. Using the projected budget 
     surpluses to shore up Social Security could slow the push for 
     tax cuts. Whatever the merits of the President's Social 
     Security proposal, it's good to get a dialogue going on a 
     very important problem.
       The education and child care proposals are worthy, but how 
     the President would fund them demands more examination. I am 
     troubled by his linking domestic spending proposals to a 
     tobacco settlement and a large increase in the federal 
     cigarette tax. I look upon the tobacco settlement as 
     essentially a one-shot revenue increase but not a sustained 
     way to finance programs. Moreover, the settlement's prospects 
     for congressional approval are very uncertain. The 
     President's plan to extend Medicare to retirees aged 62 to 64 
     needs to be examined very carefully for its affordability and 
     for the precedent it might set for a costly expansion of the 
     program in coming years. Extraordinary presidential 
     leadership will be needed to get the increase in the U.S. 
     contribution to the IMF or to get the approval of Congress 
     for fast track authority. All in all a real test of 
     leadership lies ahead for the President.
       Like most State of the Union speeches this was a wish list, 
     but the President understands as well as anybody that he 
     proposes and Congress disposes. Both Houses in Congress are 
     controlled by the opposition party and the President's 
     influence with members of his own party is limited. Congress 
     and the President must concentrate on moving forward with the 
     important work of the nation.



     

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