[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[January 24, 1995]
[Pages 75-86]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union
January 24, 1995

    Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the 104th Congress, my fellow 
Americans: Again we are here in the sanctuary of democracy, and once 
again our democracy has spoken. So let me begin by congratulating all of 
you here in the 104th Congress and congratulating you, Mr. Speaker.
    If we agree on nothing else tonight, we must agree that the American 
people certainly voted for change in 1992 and in 1994. And as I look out 
at you, I know how some of you must have felt in 1992. [Laughter]
    I must say that in both years we didn't hear America singing, we 
heard America shouting. And now all of us, Republicans and Democrats 
alike, must say, ``We hear you. We will work together to earn the jobs 
you have given us.'' For we are the keepers of a sacred trust, and we 
must be faithful to it in this new and very demanding era.

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    Over 200 years ago, our Founders changed the entire course of human 
history by joining together to create a new country based on a single 
powerful idea: ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 
are created equal, . . . endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of 
Happiness.''
    It has fallen to every generation since then to preserve that idea, 
the American idea, and to deepen and expand its meaning in new and 
different times: to Lincoln and to his Congress to preserve the Union 
and to end slavery; to Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to restrain 
the abuses and excesses of the industrial revolution and to assert our 
leadership in the world; to Franklin Roosevelt to fight the failure and 
pain of the Great Depression and to win our country's great struggle 
against fascism; and to all our Presidents since to fight the cold war. 
Especially, I recall two who struggled to fight that cold war in 
partnership with Congresses where the majority was of a different party: 
to Harry Truman, who summoned us to unparalleled prosperity at home and 
who built the architecture of the cold war; and to Ronald Reagan, whom 
we wish well tonight and who exhorted us to carry on until the twilight 
struggle against communism was won.
    In another time of change and challenge, I had the honor to be the 
first President to be elected in the post-cold-war era, an era marked by 
the global economy, the information revolution, unparalleled change and 
opportunity and insecurity for the American people. I came to this 
hallowed Chamber 2 years ago on a mission, to restore the American dream 
for all our people and to make sure that we move into the 21st century 
still the strongest force for freedom and democracy in the entire world. 
I was determined then to tackle the tough problems too long ignored. In 
this effort I am frank to say that I have made my mistakes, and I have 
learned again the importance of humility in all human endeavor. But I am 
also proud to say tonight that our country is stronger than it was 2 
years ago. [Applause] Thank you.
    Record numbers of Americans are succeeding in the new global 
economy. We are at peace, and we are a force for peace and freedom 
throughout the world. We have almost 6 million new jobs since I became 
President, and we have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and 
inflation in 25 years. Our businesses are more productive. And here we 
have worked to bring the deficit down, to expand trade, to put more 
police on our streets, to give our citizens more of the tools they need 
to get an education and to rebuild their own communities.
    But the rising tide is not lifting all boats. While our Nation is 
enjoying peace and prosperity, too many of our people are still working 
harder and harder, for less and less. While our businesses are 
restructuring and growing more productive and competitive, too many of 
our people still can't be sure of having a job next year or even next 
month. And far more than our material riches are threatened, things far 
more precious to us, our children, our families, our values.
    Our civil life is suffering in America today. Citizens are working 
together less and shouting at each other more. The common bonds of 
community which have been the great strength of our country from its 
very beginning are badly frayed. What are we to do about it?
    More than 60 years ago, at the dawn of another new era, President 
Roosevelt told our Nation, ``New conditions impose new requirements on 
Government and those who conduct Government.'' And from that simple 
proposition, he shaped the New Deal, which helped to restore our Nation 
to prosperity and define the relationship between our people and their 
Government for half a century.
    That approach worked in its time. But we today, we face a very 
different time and very different conditions. We are moving from an 
industrial age built on gears and sweat to an information age demanding 
skills and learning and flexibility. Our Government, once a champion of 
national purpose, is now seen by many as simply a captive of narrow 
interests, putting more burdens on our citizens rather than equipping 
them to get ahead. The values that used to hold us all together seem to 
be coming apart.
    So tonight we must forge a new social compact to meet the challenges 
of this time. As we enter a new era, we need a new set of 
understandings, not just with Government but, even more important, with 
one another as Americans.
    That's what I want to talk with you about tonight. I call it the New 
Covenant. But it's grounded in a very, very old idea, that all Americans 
have not just a right but a solemn responsibility to rise as far as 
their God-given talents and determination can take them and to give

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something back to their communities and their country in return. 
Opportunity and responsibility: They go hand in hand. We can't have one 
without the other. And our national community can't hold together 
without both.
    Our New Covenant is a new set of understandings for how we can equip 
our people to meet the challenges of a new economy, how we can change 
the way our Government works to fit a different time, and, above all, 
how we can repair the damaged bonds in our society and come together 
behind our common purpose. We must have dramatic change in our economy, 
our Government, and ourselves.
    My fellow Americans, without regard to party, let us rise to the 
occasion. Let us put aside partisanship and pettiness and pride. As we 
embark on this new course, let us put our country first, remembering 
that regardless of party label, we are all Americans. And let the final 
test of everything we do be a simple one: Is it good for the American 
people?
    Let me begin by saying that we cannot ask Americans to be better 
citizens if we are not better servants. You made a good start by passing 
that law which applies to Congress all the laws you put on the private 
sector, and I was proud to sign it yesterday. But we have a lot more to 
do before people really trust the way things work around here. Three 
times as many lobbyists are in the streets and corridors of Washington 
as were here 20 years ago. The American people look at their Capital, 
and they see a city where the well-connected and the well-protected can 
work the system, but the interests of ordinary citizens are often left 
out.
    As the new Congress opened its doors, lobbyists were still doing 
business as usual; the gifts, the trips, all the things that people are 
concerned about haven't stopped. Twice this month you missed 
opportunities to stop these practices. I know there were other 
considerations in those votes, but I want to use something that I've 
heard my Republican friends say from time to time, ``There doesn't have 
to be a law for everything.'' So tonight I ask you to just stop taking 
the lobbyists' perks. Just stop. We don't have to wait for legislation 
to pass to send a strong signal to the American people that things are 
really changing. But I also hope you will send me the strongest possible 
lobby reform bill, and I'll sign that, too.
    We should require lobbyists to tell the people for whom they work 
what they're spending, what they want. We should also curb the role of 
big money in elections by capping the cost of campaigns and limiting the 
influence of PAC's. And as I have said for 3 years, we should work to 
open the airwaves so that they can be an instrument of democracy, not a 
weapon of destruction, by giving free TV time to candidates for public 
office.
    When the last Congress killed political reform last year, it was 
reported in the press that the lobbyists actually stood in the Halls of 
this sacred building and cheered. This year, let's give the folks at 
home something to cheer about.
    More important, I think we all agree that we have to change the way 
the Government works. Let's make it smaller, less costly, and smarter; 
leaner, not meaner. [Applause]
    I just told the Speaker the equal time doctrine is alive and well. 
[Laughter]
    The New Covenant approach to governing is as different from the old 
bureaucratic way as the computer is from the manual typewriter. The old 
way of governing around here protected organized interests. We should 
look out for the interests of ordinary people. The old way divided us by 
interest, constituency, or class. The New Covenant way should unite us 
behind a common vision of what's best for our country. The old way 
dispensed services through large, top-down, inflexible bureaucracies. 
The New Covenant way should shift these resources and decisionmaking 
from bureaucrats to citizens, injecting choice and competition and 
individual responsibility into national policy. The old way of governing 
around here actually seemed to reward failure. The New Covenant way 
should have built-in incentives to reward success. The old way was 
centralized here in Washington. The New Covenant way must take hold in 
the communities all across America. And we should help them to do that.
    Our job here is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower 
people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security 
here at home and abroad. We must not ask Government to do what we should 
do for ourselves. We should rely on Government as a partner to help us 
to do more for ourselves and for each other.
    I hope very much that as we debate these specific and exciting 
matters, we can go beyond the sterile discussion between the illusion 
that there is somehow a program for every problem, on the one hand, and 
the other illusion that

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the Government is a source of every problem we have. Our job is to get 
rid of yesterday's Government so that our own people can meet today's 
and tomorrow's needs. And we ought to do it together.
    You know, for years before I became President, I heard others say 
they would cut Government and how bad it was, but not much happened. We 
actually did it. We cut over a quarter of a trillion dollars in 
spending, more than 300 domestic programs, more than 100,000 positions 
from the Federal bureaucracy in the last 2 years alone. Based on 
decisions already made, we will have cut a total of more than a quarter 
of a million positions from the Federal Government, making it the 
smallest it has been since John Kennedy was President, by the time I 
come here again next year.
    Under the leadership of Vice President Gore, our initiatives have 
already saved taxpayers $63 billion. The age of the $500 hammer and the 
ashtray you can break on ``David Letterman'' is gone. Deadwood programs, 
like mohair subsidies, are gone. We've streamlined the Agriculture 
Department by reducing it by more than 1,200 offices. We've slashed the 
small business loan form from an inch thick to a single page. We've 
thrown away the Government's 10,000-page personnel manual.
    And the Government is working better in important ways: FEMA, the 
Federal Emergency Management Agency, has gone from being a disaster to 
helping people in disasters. You can ask the farmers in the Middle West 
who fought the flood there or the people in California who have dealt 
with floods and earthquakes and fires, and they'll tell you that. 
Government workers, working hand in hand with private business, rebuilt 
southern California's fractured freeways in record time and under 
budget. And because the Federal Government moved fast, all but one of 
the 5,600 schools damaged in the earthquake are back in business.
    Now, there are a lot of other things that I could talk about. I want 
to just mention one because it will be discussed here in the next few 
weeks. University administrators all over the country have told me that 
they are saving weeks and weeks of bureaucratic time now because of our 
direct college loan program, which makes college loans cheaper and more 
affordable with better repayment terms for students, costs the 
Government less, and cuts out paperwork and bureaucracy for the 
Government and for the universities. We shouldn't cap that program. We 
should give every college in America the opportunity to be a part of it.
    Previous Government programs gathered dust. The reinventing 
Government report is getting results. And we're not through. There's 
going to be a second round of reinventing Government. We propose to cut 
$130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze 
on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3, 
getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need, like the Interstate 
Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve Program. And we're working on 
getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making them more sensible. 
The programs and regulations that have outlived their usefulness should 
go. We have to cut yesterday's Government to help solve tomorrow's 
problems.
    And we need to get Government closer to the people it's meant to 
serve. We need to help move programs down to the point where States and 
communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better 
job. If they can do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of 
the way and let them do what they can do better. Taking power away from 
Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to communities and individuals 
is something everyone should be able to be for.
    It's time for Congress to stop passing on to the States the cost of 
decisions we make here in Washington. I know there are still serious 
differences over the details of the unfunded mandates legislation, but I 
want to work with you to make sure we pass a reasonable bill which will 
protect the national interests and give justified relief where we need 
to give it.
    For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending 
projects. Last year was no difference. There was a $1 million to study 
stress in plants and $12 million for a tick removal program that didn't 
work. It's hard to remove ticks. Those of us who have had them know. 
[Laughter] But I'll tell you something, if you'll give me line-item 
veto, I'll remove some of that unnecessary spending.
    But I think we should all remember, and almost all of us would 
agree, that Government still has important responsibilities. Our young 
people--we should think of this when we cut--our young people hold our 
future in their hands. We still owe a debt to our veterans. And our 
senior citizens have made us what we are. Now,

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my budget cuts a lot. But it protects education, veterans, Social 
Security, and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. You 
should, and I hope you will.
    And when we give more flexibility to the States, let us remember 
that there are certain fundamental national needs that should be 
addressed in every State, North and South, East and West: Immunization 
against childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools, Head 
Start, medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants, all 
these things, all these things are in the national interest.
    I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary 
regulations. But when we deregulate, let's remember what national action 
in the national interest has given us: safer food for our families, 
safer toys for our children, safer nursing homes for our parents, safer 
cars and highways, and safer workplaces, cleaner air, and cleaner water. 
Do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. 
But we can have common sense and still provide for safe drinking water. 
We can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps, and we ought to do 
it.
    Should we cut the deficit more? Well, of course we should. Of course 
we should. But we can bring it down in a way that still protects our 
economic recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be 
punished but instead should be helped.
    I know many of you in this Chamber support the balanced budget 
amendment. I certainly want to balance the budget. Our administration 
has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a 
very, very long time. If you believe passing this amendment is the right 
thing to do, then you have to be straight with the American people. They 
have a right to know what you're going to cut, what taxes you're going 
to raise, and how it's going to affect them. We should be doing things 
in the open around here. For example, everybody ought to know if this 
proposal is going to endanger Social Security. I would oppose that, and 
I think most Americans would.
    Nothing has done more to undermine our sense of common 
responsibility than our failed welfare system. This is one of the 
problems we have to face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It 
rewards welfare over work. It undermines family values. It lets millions 
of parents get away without paying their child support. It keeps a 
minority but a significant minority of the people on welfare trapped on 
it for a very long time.
    I've worked on this problem for a long time, nearly 15 years now. As 
a Governor, I had the honor of working with the Reagan administration to 
write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988. In the last 2 years, we 
made a good start at continuing the work of welfare reform. Our 
administration gave two dozen States the right to slash through Federal 
rules and regulations to reform their own welfare systems and to try to 
promote work and responsibility over welfare and dependency.
    Last year I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever 
presented by an administration. We have to make welfare what it was 
meant to be, a second chance, not a way of life. We have to help those 
on welfare move to work as quickly as possible, to provide child care 
and teach them skills, if that's what they need, for up to 2 years. And 
after that, there ought to be a simple, hard rule: Anyone who can work 
must go to work. If a parent isn't paying child support, they should be 
forced to pay. We should suspend drivers' license, track them across 
State lines, make them work off what they owe. That is what we should 
do. Governments do not raise children, people do. And the parents must 
take responsibility for the children they bring into this world.
    I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. 
But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them up from dependence 
to independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to 
responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because 
they happen to be poor.
    We should, we should require work and mutual responsibility. But we 
shouldn't cut people off just because they're poor, they're young, or 
even because they're unmarried. We should promote responsibility by 
requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other 
supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school. But we 
shouldn't put them and their children out on the street. And I know all 
the arguments, pro and con, and I have read and thought about this for a 
long time. I still don't think we can in good conscience punish poor 
children for the mistakes of their parents.
    My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American 
people care about this without regard to party or race or region.

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So let this be the year we end welfare as we know it. But also let this 
be the year that we are all able to stop using this issue to divide 
America. No one is more eager to end welfare--[applause]--I may be the 
only President who has actually had the opportunity to sit in a welfare 
office, who's actually spent hours and hours talking to people on 
welfare. And I am telling you, the people who are trapped on it know it 
doesn't work; they also want to get off. So we can promote, together, 
education and work and good parenting. I have no problem with punishing 
bad behavior or the refusal to be a worker or a student or a responsible 
parent. I just don't want to punish poverty and past mistakes. All of us 
have made our mistakes, and none of us can change our yesterdays. But 
every one of us can change our tomorrows. And America's best example of 
that may be Lynn Woolsey, who worked her way off welfare to become a 
Congresswoman from the State of California.
    I know the Members of this Congress are concerned about crime, as 
are all the citizens of our country. And I remind you that last year we 
passed a very tough crime bill: longer sentences, ``three strikes and 
you're out,'' almost 60 new capital punishment offenses, more prisons, 
more prevention, 100,000 more police. And we paid for it all by reducing 
the size of the Federal bureaucracy and giving the money back to local 
communities to lower the crime rate.
    There may be other things we can do to be tougher on crime, to be 
smarter with crime, to help to lower that rate first. Well, if there 
are, let's talk about them, and let's do them. But let's not go back on 
the things that we did last year that we know work, that we know work 
because the local law enforcement officers tell us that we did the right 
thing, because local community leaders who have worked for years and 
years to lower the crime rate tell us that they work. Let's look at the 
experience of our cities and our rural areas where the crime rate has 
gone down and ask the people who did it how they did it. And if what we 
did last year supports the decline in the crime rate--and I am convinced 
that it does--let us not go back on it. Let's stick with it, implement 
it. We've got 4 more hard years of work to do to do that.
    I don't want to destroy the good atmosphere in the room or in the 
country tonight, but I have to mention one issue that divided this body 
greatly last year. The last Congress also passed the Brady bill and, in 
the crime bill, the ban on 19 assault weapons. I don't think it's a 
secret to anybody in this room that several Members of the last Congress 
who voted for that aren't here tonight because they voted for it. And I 
know, therefore, that some of you who are here because they voted for it 
are under enormous pressure to repeal it. I just have to tell you how I 
feel about it.
    The Members of Congress who voted for that bill and I would never do 
anything to infringe on the right to keep and bear arms to hunt and to 
engage in other appropriate sporting activities. I've done it since I 
was a boy, and I'm going to keep right on doing it until I can't do it 
anymore. But a lot of people laid down their seats in Congress so that 
police officers and kids wouldn't have to lay down their lives under a 
hail of assault weapon attack, and I will not let that be repealed. I 
will not let it be repealed.
    I'd like to talk about a couple of other issues we have to deal 
with. I want us to cut more spending, but I hope we won't cut Government 
programs that help to prepare us for the new economy, promote 
responsibility, and are organized from the grassroots up, not by Federal 
bureaucracy. The very best example of this is the national service 
corps, AmeriCorps. It passed with strong bipartisan support. And now 
there are 20,000 Americans, more than ever served in one year in the 
Peace Corps, working all over this country, helping people person-to-
person in local grassroots volunteer groups, solving problems, and in 
the process earning some money for their education. This is citizenship 
at its best. It's good for the AmeriCorps members, but it's good for the 
rest of us, too. It's the essence of the New Covenant, and we shouldn't 
stop it.
    All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in 
every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers 
of illegal aliens entering our country. The jobs they hold might 
otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service 
they use impose burdens on our taxpayers. That's why our administration 
has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record 
number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens 
as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare 
benefits to illegal aliens. In the budget I will present to you, we will 
try to do more to speed

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the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to better 
identify illegal aliens in the workplace as recommended by the 
commission headed by former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. We are a 
nation of immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws. It is wrong and 
ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind 
of abuse of our immigration laws we have seen in recent years, and we 
must do more to stop it.
    The most important job of our Government in this new era is to 
empower the American people to succeed in the global economy. America 
has always been a land of opportunity, a land where, if you work hard, 
you can get ahead. We've become a great middle class country. Middle 
class values sustain us. We must expand that middle class and shrink the 
under class, even as we do everything we can to support the millions of 
Americans who are already successful in the new economy.
    America is once again the world's strongest economic power: almost 6 
million new jobs in the last 2 years, exports booming, inflation down. 
High-wage jobs are coming back. A record number of American 
entrepreneurs are living the American dream. If we want it to stay that 
way, those who work and lift our Nation must have more of its benefits.
    Today, too many of those people are being left out. They're working 
harder for less. They have less security, less income, less certainty 
that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids 
or retirement for themselves. We cannot let this continue. If we don't 
act, our economy will probably keep doing what it's been doing since 
about 1978, when the income growth began to go to those at the very top 
of our economic scale and the people in the vast middle got very little 
growth, and people who worked like crazy but were on the bottom then 
fell even further and further behind in the years afterward, no matter 
how hard they worked.
    We've got to have a Government that can be a real partner in making 
this new economy work for all of our people, a Government that helps 
each and every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity 
to renew our skills. That's why we worked so hard to increase 
educational opportunities in the last 2 years, from Head Start to public 
schools, to apprenticeships for young people who don't go to college, to 
making college loans more available and more affordable. That's the 
first thing we have to do. We've got to do something to empower people 
to improve their skills.
    The second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their 
incomes immediately by lowering their taxes. We took the first step in 
1993 with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes 
under $27,000, a tax cut that this year will average about $1,000 a 
family. And we also gave tax reductions to most small and new 
businesses. Before we could do more than that, we first had to bring 
down the deficit we inherited, and we had to get economic growth up. Now 
we've done both. And now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way. 
But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation: to 
empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of 
their own lives. The spotlight should shine on those who make the right 
choices for themselves, their families, and their communities.
    I have proposed the middle class bill of rights, which should 
properly be called the bill of rights and responsibilities because its 
provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their 
children and to educate themselves. It will, therefore, give needed tax 
relief and raise incomes in both the short run and the long run in a way 
that benefits all of us.
    There are four provisions. First, a tax deduction for all education 
and training after high school. If you think about it, we permit 
businesses to deduct their investment, we permit individuals to deduct 
interest on their home mortgages, but today an education is even more 
important to the economic well-being of our whole country than even 
those things are. We should do everything we can to encourage it. And I 
hope you will support it. Second, we ought to cut taxes $500 for 
families with children under 13. Third, we ought to foster more savings 
and personal responsibility by permitting people to establish an 
individual retirement account and withdraw from it, tax-free, for the 
cost of education, health care, first-time homebuying, or the care of a 
parent. And fourth, we should pass a ``GI bill'' for America's workers. 
We propose to collapse nearly 70 Federal programs and not give the money 
to the States but give the money directly to the American people, offer 
vouchers to them so that they, if they're laid off or if they're working 
for a very low wage, can get a voucher worth $2,600 a year for up to 2 
years to go to their local

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community colleges or wherever else they want to get the skills they 
need to improve their lives. Let's empower people in this way, move it 
from the Government directly to the workers of America.
    Now, any one of us can call for a tax cut, but I won't accept one 
that explodes the deficit or puts our recovery at risk. We ought to pay 
for our tax cuts fully and honestly.
    Just 2 years ago, it was an open question whether we would find the 
strength to cut the deficit. Thanks to the courage of the people who 
were here then, many of whom didn't return, we did cut the deficit. We 
began to do what others said would not be done. We cut the deficit by 
over $600 billion, about $10,000 for every family in this country. It's 
coming down 3 years in a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was 
President, and I don't think anybody in America wants us to let it 
explode again.
    In the budget I will send you, the middle class bill of rights is 
fully paid for by budget cuts in bureaucracy, cuts in programs, cuts in 
special interest subsidies. And the spending cuts will more than double 
the tax cuts. My budget pays for the middle class bill of rights without 
any cuts in Medicare. And I will oppose any attempts to pay for tax cuts 
with Medicare cuts. That's not the right thing to do.
    I know that a lot of you have your own ideas about tax relief, and 
some of them I find quite interesting. I really want to work with all of 
you. My test for our proposals will be: Will it create jobs and raise 
incomes; will it strengthen our families and support our children; is it 
paid for; will it build the middle class and shrink the under class? If 
it does, I'll support it. But if it doesn't, I won't.
    The goal of building the middle class and shrinking the under class 
is also why I believe that you should raise the minimum wage. It rewards 
work. Two and a half million Americans, two and a half million 
Americans, often women with children, are working out there today for 
$4.25 an hour. In terms of real buying power, by next year that minimum 
wage will be at a 40-year low. That's not my idea of how the new economy 
ought to work.
    Now, I've studied the arguments and the evidence for and against a 
minimum wage increase. I believe the weight of the evidence is that a 
modest increase does not cost jobs and may even lure people back into 
the job market. But the most important thing is, you can't make a living 
on $4.25 an hour, especially if you have children, even with the working 
families tax cut we passed last year. In the past, the minimum wage has 
been a bipartisan issue, and I think it should be again. So I want to 
challenge you to have honest hearings on this, to get together, to find 
a way to make the minimum wage a living wage.
    Members of Congress have been here less than a month, but by the end 
of the week, 28 days into the new year, every Member of Congress will 
have earned as much in congressional salary as a minimum wage worker 
makes all year long.
    Everybody else here, including the President, has something else 
that too many Americans do without, and that's health care. Now, last 
year we almost came to blows over health care, but we didn't do 
anything. And the cold, hard fact is that, since last year, since I was 
here, another 1.1 million Americans in working families have lost their 
health care. And the cold, hard fact is that many millions more, most of 
them farmers and small business people and self-employed people, have 
seen their premiums skyrocket, their copays and deductibles go up. 
There's a whole bunch of people in this country that in the statistics 
have health insurance but really what they've got is a piece of paper 
that says they won't lose their home if they get sick.
    Now, I still believe our country has got to move toward providing 
health security for every American family. But I know that last year, as 
the evidence indicates, we bit off more than we could chew. So I'm 
asking you that we work together. Let's do it step by step. Let's do 
whatever we have to do to get something done. Let's at least pass 
meaningful insurance reform so that no American risks losing coverage 
for facing skyrocketing prices, that nobody loses their coverage because 
they face high prices or unavailable insurance when they change jobs or 
lose a job or a family member gets sick.
    I want to work together with all of you who have an interest in 
this, with the Democrats who worked on it last time, with the Republican 
leaders like Senator Dole, who has a longtime commitment to health care 
reform and made some constructive proposals in this area last year. We 
ought to make sure that self-employed people in small businesses can buy 
insurance at more affordable rates through voluntary purchasing pools. 
We ought to help families provide

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long-term care for a sick parent or a disabled child. We can work to 
help workers who lose their jobs at least keep their health insurance 
coverage for a year while they look for work. And we can find a way--it 
may take some time, but we can find a way--to make sure that our 
children have health care.
    You know, I think everybody in this room, without regard to party, 
can be proud of the fact that our country was rated as having the 
world's most productive economy for the first time in nearly a decade. 
But we can't be proud of the fact that we're the only wealthy country in 
the world that has a smaller percentage of the work force and their 
children with health insurance today than we did 10 years ago, the last 
time we were the most productive economy in the world. So let's work 
together on this. It is too important for politics as usual.
    Much of what the American people are thinking about tonight is what 
we've already talked about. A lot of people think that the security 
concerns of America today are entirely internal to our borders. They 
relate to the security of our jobs and our homes and our incomes and our 
children, our streets, our health, and protecting those borders. Now 
that the cold war has passed, it's tempting to believe that all the 
security issues, with the possible exception of trade, reside here at 
home. But it's not so. Our security still depends upon our continued 
world leadership for peace and freedom and democracy. We still can't be 
strong at home unless we're strong abroad.
    The financial crisis in Mexico is a case in point. I know it's not 
popular to say it tonight, but we have to act, not for the Mexican 
people but for the sake of the millions of Americans whose livelihoods 
are tied to Mexico's well-being. If we want to secure American jobs, 
preserve American exports, safeguard America's borders, then we must 
pass the stabilization program and help to put Mexico back on track.
    Now let me repeat: It's not a loan. It's not foreign aid. It's not a 
bailout. We will be given a guarantee like cosigning a note, with good 
collateral that will cover our risks. This legislation is the right 
thing for America. That's why the bipartisan leadership has supported 
it. And I hope you in Congress will pass it quickly. It is in our 
interest, and we can explain it to the American people because we're 
going to do it in the right way.
    You know, tonight, this is the first State of the Union Address ever 
delivered since the beginning of the cold war when not a single Russian 
missile is pointed at the children of America. And along with the 
Russians, we're on our way to destroying the missiles and the bombers 
that carry 9,000 nuclear warheads. We've come so far so fast in this 
post-cold-war world that it's easy to take the decline of the nuclear 
threat for granted. But it's still there, and we aren't finished yet.
    This year I'll ask the Senate to approve START II to eliminate 
weapons that carry 5,000 more warheads. The United States will lead the 
charge to extend indefinitely the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to 
enact a comprehensive nuclear test ban, and to eliminate chemical 
weapons. To stop and roll back North Korea's potentially deadly nuclear 
program, we'll continue to implement the agreement we have reached with 
that nation. It's smart. It's tough. It's a deal based on continuing 
inspection with safeguards for our allies and ourselves.
    This year I'll submit to Congress comprehensive legislation to 
strengthen our hand in combating terrorists, whether they strike at home 
or abroad. As the cowards who bombed the World Trade Center found out, 
this country will hunt down terrorists and bring them to justice.
    Just this week, another horrendous terrorist act in Israel killed 19 
and injured scores more. On behalf of the American people and all of 
you, I send our deepest sympathy to the families of the victims. I know 
that in the face of such evil, it is hard for the people in the Middle 
East to go forward. But the terrorists represent the past, not the 
future. We must and we will pursue a comprehensive peace between Israel 
and all her neighbors in the Middle East.
    Accordingly, last night I signed an Executive order that will block 
the assets in the United States of terrorist organizations that threaten 
to disrupt the peace process. It prohibits financial transactions with 
these groups. And tonight I call on all our allies and peace-loving 
nations throughout the world to join us with renewed fervor in a global 
effort to combat terrorism. We cannot permit the future to be marred by 
terror and fear and paralysis.
    From the day I took the oath of office, I pledged that our Nation 
would maintain the best equipped, best trained, and best prepared 
military on Earth. We have, and they are. They have managed the dramatic 
downsizing of our

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forces after the cold war with remarkable skill and spirit. But to make 
sure our military is ready for action and to provide the pay and the 
quality of life the military and their families deserve, I'm asking the 
Congress to add $25 billion in defense spending over the next 6 years.
    I have visited many bases at home and around the world since I 
became President. Tonight I repeat that request with renewed conviction. 
We ask a very great deal of our Armed Forces. Now that they are smaller 
in number, we ask more of them. They go out more often to more different 
places and stay longer. They are called to service in many, many ways. 
And we must give them and their families what the times demand and what 
they have earned.
    Just think about what our troops have done in the last year, showing 
America at its best, helping to save hundreds of thousands of people in 
Rwanda, moving with lightning speed to head off another threat to 
Kuwait, giving freedom and democracy back to the people of Haiti. We 
have proudly supported peace and prosperity and freedom from South 
Africa to Northern Ireland, from Central and Eastern Europe to Asia, 
from Latin America to the Middle East. All these endeavors are good in 
those places, but they make our future more confident and more secure.
    Well, my fellow Americans, that's my agenda for America's future: 
expanding opportunity, not bureaucracy; enhancing security at home and 
abroad; empowering our people to make the most of their own lives. It's 
ambitious and achievable, but it's not enough. We even need more than 
new ideas for changing the world or equipping Americans to compete in 
the new economy, more than a Government that's smaller, smarter, and 
wiser, more than all of the changes we can make in Government and in the 
private sector from the outside in.
    Our fortunes and our posterity also depend upon our ability to 
answer some questions from within, from the values and voices that speak 
to our hearts as well as our heads; voices that tell us we have to do 
more to accept responsibility for ourselves and our families, for our 
communities, and yes, for our fellow citizens. We see our families and 
our communities all over this country coming apart, and we feel the 
common ground shifting from under us. The PTA, the town hall meeting, 
the ball park, it's hard for a lot of overworked parents to find the 
time and space for those things that strengthen the bonds of trust and 
cooperation. Too many of our children don't even have parents and 
grandparents who can give them those experiences that they need to build 
their own character and their sense of identity.
    We all know that while we here in this Chamber can make a difference 
on those things, that the real differences will be made by our fellow 
citizens, where they work and where they live and that it will be made 
almost without regard to party. When I used to go to the softball park 
in Little Rock to watch my daughter's league and people would come up to 
me, fathers and mothers, and talk to me, I can honestly say I had no 
idea whether 90 percent of them were Republicans or Democrats. When I 
visited the relief centers after the floods in California, northern 
California, last week, a woman came up to me and did something that very 
few of you would do. She hugged me and said, ``Mr. President, I'm a 
Republican, but I'm glad you're here.'' [Laughter]
    Now, why? We can't wait for disasters to act the way we used to act 
every day, because as we move into this next century, everybody matters. 
We don't have a person to waste. And a lot of people are losing a lot of 
chances to do better. That means that we need a New Covenant for 
everybody.
    For our corporate and business leaders, we're going to work here to 
keep bringing the deficit down, to expand markets, to support their 
success in every possible way. But they have an obligation when they're 
doing well to keep jobs in our communities and give their workers a fair 
share of the prosperity they generate.
    For people in the entertainment industry in this country, we applaud 
your creativity and your worldwide success, and we support your freedom 
of expression. But you do have a responsibility to assess the impact of 
your work and to understand the damage that comes from the incessant, 
repetitive, mindless violence and irresponsible conduct that permeates 
our media all the time.
    We've got to ask our community leaders and all kinds of 
organizations to help us stop our most serious social problem, the 
epidemic of teen pregnancies and births where there is no marriage. I 
have sent to Congress a plan to target schools all over this country 
with antipregnancy programs that work. But Government can only do so 
much. Tonight I call on

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parents and leaders all across this country to join together in a 
national campaign against teen pregnancy to make a difference. We can do 
this, and we must.
    And I would like to say a special word to our religious leaders. You 
know, I'm proud of the fact the United States has more houses of worship 
per capita than any country in the world. These people who lead our 
houses of worship can ignite their congregations to carry their faith 
into action, can reach out to all of our children, to all of the people 
in distress, to those who have been savaged by the breakdown of all we 
hold dear. Because so much of what must be done must come from the 
inside out and our religious leaders and their congregations can make 
all the difference, they have a role in the New Covenant as well.
    There must be more responsibility for all of our citizens. You know, 
it takes a lot of people to help all the kids in trouble stay off the 
streets and in school. It takes a lot of people to build the Habitat for 
Humanity houses that the Speaker celebrates on his lapel pin. It takes a 
lot of people to provide the people power for all of the civic 
organizations in this country that made our communities mean so much to 
most of us when we were kids. It takes every parent to teach the 
children the difference between right and wrong and to encourage them to 
learn and grow and to say no to the wrong things but also to believe 
that they can be whatever they want to be.
    I know it's hard when you're working harder for less, when you're 
under great stress, to do these things. A lot of our people don't have 
the time or the emotional stress, they think, to do the work of 
citizenship.
    Most of us in politics haven't helped very much. For years, we've 
mostly treated citizens like they were consumers or spectators, sort of 
political couch potatoes who were supposed to watch the TV ads either 
promise them something for nothing or play on their fears and 
frustrations. And more and more of our citizens now get most of their 
information in very negative and aggressive ways that are hardly 
conducive to honest and open conversations. But the truth is, we have 
got to stop seeing each other as enemies just because we have different 
views.
    If you go back to the beginning of this country, the great strength 
of America, as de Tocqueville pointed out when he came here a long time 
ago, has always been our ability to associate with people who were 
different from ourselves and to work together to find common ground. And 
in this day, everybody has a responsibility to do more of that. We 
simply cannot want for a tornado, a fire, or a flood to behave like 
Americans ought to behave in dealing with one another.
    I want to finish up here by pointing out some folks that are up with 
the First Lady that represent what I'm trying to talk about--citizens. I 
have no idea what their party affiliation is or who they voted for in 
the last election. But they represent what we ought to be doing.
    Cindy Perry teaches second graders to read in AmeriCorps in rural 
Kentucky. She gains when she gives. She's a mother of four. She says 
that her service inspired her to get her high school equivalency last 
year. She was married when she was a teenager--stand up, Cindy. She was 
married when she was a teenager. She had four children. But she had time 
to serve other people, to get her high school equivalency, and she's 
going to use her AmeriCorps money to go back to college.
    Chief Stephen Bishop is the police chief of Kansas City. He's been a 
national leader--stand up, Steve. He's been a national leader in using 
more police in community policing, and he's worked with AmeriCorps to do 
it. And the crime rate in Kansas City has gone down as a result of what 
he did.
    Corporal Gregory Depestre went to Haiti as part of his adopted 
country's force to help secure democracy in his native land. And I might 
add, we must be the only country in the world that could have gone to 
Haiti and taken Haitian-Americans there who could speak the language and 
talk to the people. And he was one of them, and we're proud of him.
    The next two folks I've had the honor of meeting and getting to know 
a little bit, the Reverend John and the Reverend Diana Cherry of the 
A.M.E. Zion Church in Temple Hills, Maryland. I'd like to ask them to 
stand. I want to tell you about them. In the early eighties, they left 
Government service and formed a church in a small living room in a small 
house, in the early eighties. Today that church has 17,000 members. It 
is one of the three or four biggest churches in the entire United 
States. It grows by 200 a month. They do it together. And the special 
focus of their ministry is keeping families together.

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    Two things they did make a big impression on me. I visited their 
church once, and I learned they were building a new sanctuary closer to 
the Washington, DC, line in a higher crime, higher drug rate area 
because they thought it was part of their ministry to change the lives 
of the people who needed them. The second thing I want to say is that 
once Reverend Cherry was at a meeting at the White House with some other 
religious leaders, and he left early to go back to this church to 
minister to 150 couples that he had brought back to his church from all 
over America to convince them to come back together, to save their 
marriages, and to raise their kids. This is the kind of work that 
citizens are doing in America. We need more of it, and it ought to be 
lifted up and supported.
    The last person I want to introduce is Jack Lucas from Hattiesburg, 
Mississippi. Jack, would you stand up? Fifty years ago, in the sands of 
Iwo Jima, Jack Lucas taught and learned the lessons of citizenship. On 
February 20th, 1945, he and three of his buddies encountered the enemy 
and two grenades at their feet. Jack Lucas threw himself on both of 
them. In that moment, he saved the lives of his companions, and 
miraculously in the next instant, a medic saved his life. He gained a 
foothold for freedom, and at the age of 17, just a year older than his 
grandson who is up there with him today--and his son, who is a West 
Point graduate and a veteran--at 17, Jack Lucas became the youngest 
Marine in history and the youngest soldier in this century to win the 
Congressional Medal of Honor. All these years later, yesterday, here's 
what he said about that day: ``It didn't matter where you were from or 
who you were, you relied on one another. You did it for your country.''
    We all gain when we give, and we reap what we sow. That's at the 
heart of this New Covenant. Responsibility, opportunity, and 
citizenship, more than stale chapters in some remote civic book, they're 
still the virtue by which we can fulfill ourselves and reach our God-
given potential and be like them and also to fulfill the eternal promise 
of this country, the enduring dream from that first and most sacred 
covenant. I believe every person in this country still believes that we 
are created equal and given by our Creator the right to life, liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness. This is a very, very great country. And 
our best days are still to come.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 9:14 p.m. in the House Chamber of the 
Capitol.