[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
[February 4, 1997]
[Pages 109-117]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the State of the Union
February 4, 1997

    Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of the 105th Congress, 
distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans: I think I should start by 
saying thanks for inviting me back. I come before you tonight with a 
challenge as great as any in our peacetime history and a plan of action 
to meet that challenge, to prepare our people for the bold new world of 
the 21st century.
    We have much to be thankful for. With 4 years of growth, we have won 
back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls 
declining, we are winning back our optimism, the enduring faith that we 
can master any difficulty. With the cold war receding and global 
commerce at record levels, we are helping to win an unrivaled peace and 
prosperity all across the world.
    My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is strong. But now we 
must rise to the decisive moment, to make a nation and a world better 
than any we have ever known. The new promise of the global economy, the 
information age, unimagined new work, life-enhancing technology, all 
these are ours to seize. That is our honor and our challenge. We must be 
shapers of events, not observers, for if we do not act, the moment will 
pass, and we will lose the best possibilities of our future.
    We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy. The enemy of 
our time is inaction. So tonight I issue a call to action: action by 
this Congress, action by our States, by our people, to prepare America 
for the 21st century; action to keep our economy and our democracy 
strong and working for all our people; action to strengthen education 
and harness the forces of technology and science; action to build 
stronger families and stronger communities and a safer environment; 
action to keep America the world's strongest force for peace, freedom, 
and prosperity; and above all, action to build a more perfect Union here 
at home.
    The spirit we bring to our work will make all the difference. We 
must be committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans, 
responsibility from all Americans, in a community of all Americans. And 
we must be committed to a new kind of Government, not to solve all our 
problems for us but to give our people, all our people, the tools they 
need to make the most of their own lives.
    And we must work together. The people of this Nation elected us all. 
They want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all right here 
in the same boat, they gave us all oars, and they told us to row. Now, 
here is the direction I believe we should take.
    First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business of 
our country, to balance the budget, renew our democracy, and finish the 
job of welfare reform.
    Over the last 4 years, we have brought new economic growth by 
investing in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our deficits, 
creating over 11 million new jobs, a 4-year record. Now we must keep our 
economy the strongest in the world. We here tonight have an historic 
opportunity. Let this Congress be the Congress that finally balances the 
budget. [Applause] Thank you.
    In 2 days I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by 
2002. This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people while 
protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. It will 
balance the budget and build on the Vice President's efforts to make our 
Government work better, even as it costs less. It will balance the 
budget and provide middle class tax relief to pay for education and 
health care, to help to raise a child, to buy and sell a home.
    Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature. It 
does not require us to rewrite our Constitution. I believe it is both 
unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced

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budget amendment that could cripple our country in time of economic 
crisis and force unwanted results, such as judges halting Social 
Security checks or increasing taxes. Let us at least agree, we should 
not pass any measure--no measure should be passed that threatens Social 
Security. Whatever your view on that, we all must concede: We 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 for 
the long run, so that these fundamental programs will be as strong for 
our children as they are for our parents.
    And let me say something that's not in my script tonight. I know 
this is not going to be easy. But I really believe one of the reasons 
the American people gave me a second term was to take the tough 
decisions in the next 4 years that will carry our country through the 
next 50 years. I know it is easier for me than for you to say or do. But 
another reason I was elected is to support all of you, without regard to 
party, to give you what is necessary to join in these decisions. We owe 
it to our country and to our future.
    Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit 
ourselves tonight, before the eyes of America, to finally enacting 
bipartisan campaign finance reform. Now, Senators McCain and Feingold, 
Representatives Shays and Meehan have reached across party lines here to 
craft tough and fair reform. Their proposal would curb spending, reduce 
the role of special interests, create a level playing field between 
challengers and incumbents, and ban contributions from noncitizens, all 
corporate sources, and the other large soft money contributions that 
both parties receive.
    You know and I know that this can be delayed. And you know and I 
know the 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 fourth.
    There is a third piece of unfinished business. Over the last 4 
years, we moved a record 2\1/4\ million people off the welfare rolls. 
Then last year, Congress enacted landmark welfare reform legislation, 
demanding that all able-bodied recipients assume the responsibility of 
moving from welfare to work. Now each and every one of us has to fulfill 
our responsibility, indeed, our moral obligation, to make sure that 
people who now must work, can work.
    Now we must act to meet a new goal: 2 million more people off the 
welfare rolls by the year 2000. Here is my plan: Tax credits and other 
incentives for businesses that hire people off welfare; incentives for 
job placement firms and States to create more jobs for welfare 
recipients; training, transportation, and child care to help people go 
to work.
    Now I challenge every State: Turn those welfare checks into private 
sector paychecks. I challenge every religious congregation, every 
community nonprofit, every business to hire someone off welfare. And I'd 
like to say especially to every employer in our country who ever 
criticized the old welfare system, you can't blame that old system 
anymore. We have torn it down. Now do your part. Give someone on welfare 
the chance to go to work.
    Tonight I am pleased to announce that five major corporations, 
Sprint, Monsanto, UPS, Burger King, and United Airlines, will be the 
first to join in a new national effort to marshal America's businesses, 
large and small, to create jobs so that people can move from welfare to 
work.
    We passed welfare reform. All of you know I believe we were right to 
do it. But no one can walk out of this Chamber with a clear conscience 
unless you are prepared to finish the job.
    And we must join together to do something else, too, something both 
Republican and Democratic Governors have asked us to do, to restore 
basic health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes immigrants 
who came to this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the 
law. To do otherwise is simply unworthy of a great nation of immigrants.
    Now, looking ahead, the greatest step of all, the high threshold of 
the future we must now cross, and my number one priority for the next 4 
years is to ensure that all Americans have the best education in the 
world.
    Let's work together to meet these three goals: Every 8-year-old must 
be able to read; every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the 
Internet; every 18-year-old must be able to go to college; and every 
adult American must be able to keep on learning for a lifetime.

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    My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals, 
$51 billion next year. But far more than money is required. I have a 
plan, a call to action for American education, based on these 10 
principles:
    First, a national crusade for education standards, not Federal 
Government standards but national standards, representing what all our 
students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st 
century. Every State and school must shape the curriculum to reflect 
these standards and train teachers to lift students up to them. To help 
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an 
effort over the next 2 years to develop national tests of student 
achievement in reading and math. Tonight I issue a challenge to the 
Nation: Every State should adopt high national standards, and by 1999, 
every State should test every fourth grader in reading and every eighth 
grader in math to make sure these standards are met.
    Raising standards will not be easy, and some of our children will 
not be able to meet them at first. The point is not to put our children 
down but to lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs help, what 
changes in teaching to make, and which schools need to improve. They can 
help us end social promotions, for no child should move from grade 
school to junior high or junior high to high school until he or she is 
ready.
    Last month our Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, and I visited 
northern Illinois, where eighth-grade students from 20 school districts, 
in a project aptly called First in the World, took the Third 
International Math and Science Study. That's 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, Kristen Tanner and Chris Getsler, are here 
tonight, along with their teacher, Sue Winski. They're up there with the 
First Lady. And they prove that when we aim high and challenge our 
students, they will be the best in the world. Let's give them a hand. 
Stand up, please. [Applause]
    Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. 
Most of us in this Chamber would not be here tonight without the help of 
those teachers; I know that I wouldn't be here. For years, many of our 
educators, led by North Carolina's Governor Jim Hunt and the National 
Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked very hard to 
establish nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 
Just 500 of these teachers have been certified since 1995. My budget 
will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification as master 
teachers. We should reward and recognize our best teachers, and as we 
reward them, we should quickly and fairly remove those few who don't 
measure up. And we should challenge more of our finest young people to 
consider teaching as a career.
    Third, we must do more to help all our children read. Forty 
percent--40 percent--of our 8-year-olds cannot read on their own. That'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 third grade. We will use 
thousands of AmeriCorps volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. We 
want at least 100,000 college students to help, and tonight I am pleased 
that 60 college presidents have answered my call, pledging that 
thousands of their work-study students will serve for one year as 
reading tutors. This is also a challenge to every teacher and every 
principal: You must use these tutors to help students read. And it is 
especially a challenge to our parents: You must 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 very first days and how 
important it is for parents to begin immediately talking, singing, even 
reading to their infants. The First Lady has spent years writing about 
this issue, studying it. And she and I are going to convene a White 
House conference on early learning and the brain this spring, to explore 
how parents and educators can best use these startling new findings.
    We already know we should start teaching children before they start 
school. That's why this balanced budget expands Head Start to one 
million children by 2002. And that is why the Vice President and Mrs. 
Gore will host their annual family conference this June on what we can 
do to make sure that parents are an active part of their children's 
learning all the way through school. They've done a great deal to 
highlight the importance of family in our life, and now they're turning 
their attention to getting more parents involved in their children's

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learning all the way through school. And I thank you, Mr. Vice 
President, and I thank you especially, Tipper, for what you do.
    Fifth, every State should give parents the power to choose the right 
public school for their children. Their right to choose will foster 
competition and innovation that can make public schools better. We 
should also make it possible for more parents and teachers to start 
charter schools, schools that set and meet the highest standards and 
exist only as long as they do. Our plan will help America to create 
3,000 of these charter schools by the next century, nearly 7 times as 
there are in the country today, so that parents will have even more 
choices in sending their children to the best schools.
    Sixth, character education must be taught in our schools. We must 
teach our children to be good citizens. And we must continue to promote 
order and discipline, supporting communities that introduce school 
uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive 
students from the classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs 
in school.
    Seventh, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in 
schools that are literally falling down. With the student population at 
an all-time high and record numbers of school buildings falling into 
disrepair, this has now become a serious national concern. Therefore, my 
budget includes a new initiative, $5 billion to help communities finance 
$20 billion in school construction over the next 4 years.
    Eighth, we must make the 13th and 14th years of education, at least 
2 years of college, just as universal in America by the 21st century as 
a high school education is today, and we must open the doors of college 
to all Americans. To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, 
based on Georgia's pioneering program: 2 years of a $1,500 tax credit 
for college tuition, enough to pay for the typical community college. I 
also propose a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for all tuition 
after high school, an expanded IRA you can withdraw from tax-free for 
education, and the largest increase in Pell grant scholarships in 20 
years. Now, this plan will give most families the ability to pay no 
taxes on money they save for college tuition. I ask you to pass it and 
give every American who works hard the chance to go to college.
    Ninth, in the 21st century, we must expand the frontiers of learning 
across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have the chance 
to learn new skills. Most Americans live near a community college. The 
roads that take them there can be paths to a better future. My ``GI 
bill'' for America's workers will transform the confusing tangle of 
Federal training programs into a simple skill grant to go directly into 
eligible workers' hands. For too long, this bill has been sitting on 
that desk there without action. I ask you to pass it now. Let's give 
more of our workers the ability to learn and to earn for a lifetime.
    Tenth, we must bring the power of the information age into all our 
schools. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and 
library to the Internet by the year 2000, so that, for the first time in 
our history, children in the most isolated rural towns, the most 
comfortable suburbs, the poorest inner-city schools, will have the same 
access to the same universe of knowledge.
    That is my plan, a call to action for American education. Some may 
say that it is unusual for a President to pay this kind of attention to 
education. Some may say it is simply because the President and his 
wonderful wife have been obsessed with this subject for more years than 
they can recall. That is not what is driving these proposals.
    We must understand the significance of this endeavor. One of the 
greatest sources of our strength throughout the cold war was a 
bipartisan foreign policy. Because our future was at stake, politics 
stopped at the water's edge. Now I ask you and I ask all our Nation's 
Governors, I ask parents, teachers, and citizens all across America for 
a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because education is a 
critical national security issue for our future, and politics must stop 
at the schoolhouse door.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the 
powerful forces of science and technology to benefit all Americans. This 
is the first State of the Union carried live in video over the Internet. 
But we've only begun to spread the benefits of a technology revolution 
that should become the modern birthright of every citizen.
    Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. Now we 
should connect every hospital to the Internet, so that doctors can 
instantly share data about their patients with the best specialists in 
the field. And I challenge the private sector tonight to start by 
connecting every children's hospital as soon as possible, so

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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 that our 
leading universities and national laboratories can communicate in speeds 
1,000 times faster than today, to develop new medical treatments, new 
sources of energy, new ways of working together.
    But we cannot stop there. As the Internet becomes our new town 
square, a computer in every home, a teacher of all subjects, a 
connection to all cultures, this will no longer be a dream but a 
necessity. And over the next decade, that must be our goal.
    We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars 
probes and the international space station, both of which will have 
practical applications for our everyday living.
    We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The human 
genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life. American 
scientists have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian 
cancer and medication that stops a stroke in progress and begins to 
reverse its effects and treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives 
of people with HIV and AIDS.
    Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National 
Institutes of Health has increased dramatically to $1.5 billion. With 
new resources, NIH will now become the most powerful discovery engine 
for an AIDS vaccine, working with other scientists to finally end the 
threat of AIDS. Remember that every year--every year--we move up the 
discovery of an AIDS vaccine will save millions of lives around the 
world. We must reinforce our commitment to medical science.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build stronger 
families. Over the past 4 years, the family and medical leave law has 
helped millions of Americans to take time off to be with their families. 
With new pressures on people in the way they work and live, I believe we 
must expand family leave so that workers can take time off for teacher 
conferences and a child's medical checkup. We should pass flextime, so 
workers can choose to be paid for overtime in income or trade it in for 
time off to be with their families.
    We must continue, step by step, to give more families access to 
affordable, quality health care. Forty million Americans still lack 
health insurance. Ten million children still lack health insurance; 80 
percent of them have working parents who pay taxes. That is wrong. My 
balanced budget will extend health coverage to up to 5 million of those 
children. Since nearly half of all children who lose their insurance do 
so because their parents lose or change a job, my budget will also 
ensure that people who temporarily lose their jobs can still afford to 
keep their health insurance. No child should be without a doctor just 
because a parent is without a job.
    My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the 
Trust Fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many 
families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer's, and for the first 
time, it would fully pay for annual mammograms.
    Just as we ended drive-through deliveries of babies last year, we 
must now end the dangerous and demeaning practice of forcing women home 
from the hospital only hours after a mastectomy. I ask your support for 
bipartisan legislation to guarantee that a woman can stay in the 
hospital for 48 hours after a mastectomy. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen 
Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice spurred a 
national movement and inspired this legislation. I'd like her to stand 
so we can thank her for her efforts. Dr. Zarfos, thank you. [Applause]
    In the last 4 years, we have increased child support collections by 
50 percent. Now we should go further and do better by making it a felony 
for any parent to cross a State line in an attempt to flee from this, 
his or her most sacred obligation.
    Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm in our 
determination to ban the advertising and marketing of cigarettes that 
endanger their lives.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build stronger 
communities. We should start with safe streets. Serious crime has 
dropped 5 years in a row. The key has been community policing. We must 
finish the job of putting 100,000 community police on the streets of the 
United States. We should pass the victims' rights amendment to the 
Constitution. And I ask you to mount a full-scale assault on juvenile 
crime with legislation that declares war on gangs with new prosecutors 
and tougher penalties; extends the Brady bill so violent teen

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criminals will not be able to buy handguns; requires child safety locks 
on handguns to prevent unauthorized use; and helps to keep our schools 
open after hours, on weekends, and in the summer, so our young people 
will have someplace to go and something to say yes to.
    This balanced budget includes the largest antidrug effort ever, to 
stop drugs at their source, punish those who push them, and teach our 
young people that drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal, and drugs will 
kill them. I hope you will support it.
    Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and rural 
neighborhoods. But we must do more to empower them to create the 
conditions in which all families can flourish and to create jobs through 
investment by business and loans by banks. We should double the number 
of empowerment zones. They've already brought so much hope to 
communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate has been cut in 
half in 4 years. We should restore contaminated urban land and buildings 
to productive use. We should expand the network of community development 
banks. And together we must pledge tonight that we will use this 
empowerment approach, including private-sector tax incentives, to renew 
our Capital City, so that Washington is a great place to work and live 
and once again the proud face America shows the world.
    We must protect our environment in every community. In the last 4 
years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous 
12. Now we should clean up 500 more, so that our children grow up next 
to parks, not poison. I urge you to pass my proposal to make big 
polluters live by a simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you 
should pay to clean it up.
    In the last 4 years, we strengthened our Nation's safe food and 
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 the Florida 
Everglades. Now we must be as vigilant with our rivers as we are with 
our lands. Tonight I announce that this year I will designate 10 
American Heritage Rivers, to help communities alongside them revitalize 
their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the rivers, proving once 
again 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 gases that challenge 
our health even as they change our climate.
    Now, we all know that in all of our communities, some of our 
children simply don't have what they need to grow and learn in their own 
homes or schools or neighborhoods. And that means the rest of us must do 
more, for they are our children, too. That's why President Bush, General 
Colin Powell, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join the Vice 
President and me to lead the Presidents' Summit of Service in 
Philadelphia in April.
    Our national service program, AmeriCorps, has already helped 70,000 
young people to work their way through college as they serve America. 
Now we intend to mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of 
ways. Citizen service is an American responsibility which all Americans 
should embrace, and I ask your support for that endeavor.
    I'd like to make just 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 shared 
values and our soaring spirit. So instead of cutting back on our modest 
efforts to support the arts and humanities, I believe we should stand by 
them and challenge our artists, musicians, and writers, challenge our 
museums, libraries, and theaters. We should challenge all Americans in 
the arts and humanities to join with our fellow citizens to make the 
year 2000 a national celebration of the American spirit in every 
community, a celebration of our common culture in the century that has 
passed and in the new one to come in the new millennium, so that we can 
remain the world's beacon not only of liberty but of creativity long 
after the fireworks have faded.
    To prepare America for the 21st century, we must master the forces 
of change in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for 
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

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live under democracy than dictatorship, including every nation in our 
own hemisphere but one, and its day, too, will come.
    Now we stand at another moment of change and choice and another time 
to be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years of security and 
prosperity. In this endeavor, our first task is to help to build, for 
the very first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When Europe is 
stable, prosperous, and at peace, America is more secure. To that end, 
we must expand NATO by 1999, so that countries that were once our 
adversaries can become our allies. At the special NATO summit this 
summer, that is what we will begin to do. We must strengthen NATO's 
Partnership For Peace with non-member allies. And we must build a stable 
partnership between NATO and a democratic Russia. An expanded NATO is 
good for America, and a Europe in which all democracies define their 
future not in terms of what they can do to each other but in terms of 
what they can do together for the good of all--that kind of Europe is 
good for America.
    Second, America must look to the East no less than to the West. Our 
security demands it. Americans fought three wars in Asia in this 
century. Our prosperity requires it. More than 2 million American jobs 
depend upon trade with Asia. There, too, we are helping to shape an 
Asia-Pacific community of cooperation, not conflict. Let our progress 
there not mask the peril that remains. Together with South Korea, we 
must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge the cold war's last 
divide. And I call on Congress to fund our share of the agreement under 
which North Korea must continue to freeze and then dismantle its nuclear 
weapons program.
    We must pursue a deeper dialog with China for the sake of our 
interests and our ideals. An isolated China is not good for America; a 
China playing its proper role in the world is. I will go to China, and I 
have invited China's President to come here, not because we agree on 
everything but because engaging China is the best way to work on our 
common challenges like ending nuclear testing and to deal frankly with 
our fundamental differences like human rights.
    The American people must prosper in the global economy. We've worked 
hard to tear down trade barriers abroad so that we can create good jobs 
at home. I am proud to say that today America is once again the most 
competitive nation and the number one exporter in the world.
    Now we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and Latin 
America, two of the fastest growing regions on Earth, or be left behind 
as these emerging economies forge new ties with other nations. That is 
why we need the authority now to conclude new trade agreements that open 
markets to our goods and services even as we preserve our values.
    We need not shrink from the challenge of the global economy. After 
all, we have the best workers and the best products. In a truly open 
market, we can out-compete anyone, anywhere on Earth.
    But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can 
advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the world. There is no 
better example of this truth than Latin America, where democracy and 
open markets are on the march together. That is why I will visit there 
in the spring to reinforce our important tie.
    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 3 full years ahead of 
schedule, with half a billion dollar profit to us.
    America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace from the 
Middle East to Haiti, from Northern Ireland to Africa. Taking reasonable 
risks for peace keeps us from being drawn into far more costly conflicts 
later.
    With American leadership, the killing 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 of our troops. They are doing a 
remarkable job there for America, and America must do right by them.
    Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. In 
the past 4 years, we agreed to ban--we led the way to a worldwide 
agreement to ban nuclear testing. With Russia, we dramatically cut 
nuclear arsenals, and we stopped targeting each other's citizens. We are 
acting to prevent nuclear materials from falling into the wrong hands 
and to rid the world of landmines. We are working with other nations 
with renewed intensity to fight drug traffickers

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and to stop terrorists before they act and hold them fully accountable 
if they do.
    Now we must rise to a new test of leadership, ratifying the Chemical 
Weapons Convention. Make no mistake about it. It will make our troops 
safer from chemical attack. It will help us to fight terrorism. We have 
no more important obligations, especially in the wake of what we now 
know about the Gulf war. This treaty has been bipartisan from the 
beginning, supported by Republican and Democratic administrations and 
Republican and Democratic Members of Congress and already approved by 68 
nations. But if we do not act by April 29th, when this convention goes 
into force with or without us, we will lose the chance to have Americans 
leading and enforcing this effort. Together we must make the Chemical 
Weapons Convention law, so that at last we can begin to outlaw poison 
gas from the Earth.
    Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges. We 
must maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase funding for 
weapons modernization by the year 2000, and we must take good care of 
our men and women in uniform. They are the world's finest.
    We must also renew our commitment to America's diplomacy and pay our 
debts and dues to international financial institutions like the World 
Bank and to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar 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 small fraction of what America invested in diplomacy 
to choose leadership over escapism at the start of the cold war. If 
America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead America 
simply must find the will to pay our way.
    A farsighted America moved the world to a better place over these 
last 50 years. And so it can be for another 50 years. But a shortsighted 
America will soon find its words falling on deaf ears all around the 
world.
    Almost exactly 50 years ago, in the first winter of the cold war, 
President Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon our 
country to meet its responsibilities of leadership. This was his 
warning; he said, ``If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the 
world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this Nation.'' That 
Congress, led by Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered 
President Truman's call. Together, they made the commitments that 
strengthened our country for 50 years. Now let us do the same. Let us do 
what it takes to remain the indispensable nation, to keep America 
strong, secure, and prosperous for another 50 years.
    In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out 
of the power of our example here at home, out of our ability to remain 
strong as one America. All over the world, people are being torn asunder 
by racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and 
terror. We are the world's most diverse democracy, and the world looks 
to us to show that it is possible to live and advance together across 
those kinds of differences.
    America has always been a nation of immigrants. From the start, a 
steady stream of people in search of freedom and opportunity have left 
their own lands to make this land their home. We started as an 
experiment in democracy fueled by Europeans. We have grown into an 
experiment in democratic diversity fueled by openness and promise.
    My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our diversity 
is a weakness. It is our greatest strength. Americans speak every 
language, know every country. People on every continent can look to us 
and see the reflection of their own great potential, and they always 
will, as long as we strive to give all of our citizens, whatever their 
background, an opportunity to achieve their own greatness.
    We're 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.
    Just a few days before my second Inauguration, one of our country's 
best known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, suggested that I read 
Isaiah 58:12. Here's what it says: ``Thou shalt raise up the foundations 
of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer of the 
breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in.'' I placed my hand on that 
verse when I took the oath of office, on behalf of all Americans, for no 
matter what our differences in our faiths, our backgrounds, our 
politics, we must all be repairers of the breach.
    I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us how. 
Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud American

[[Page 117]]

whose family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. He was awarded 
the Silver Star, the Bronze Star, and the Purple Heart fighting for his 
country in Vietnam. And he went on to serve Texas and America fighting 
for our future here in this Chamber. We are grateful for his service and 
honored that his mother, Lillie Tejeda, and his sister, Mary Alice, have 
come from Texas to be with us here tonight. And we welcome you.
    Gary Locke, the newly elected Governor of Washington State, is the 
first Chinese-American Governor in the history of our country. He's 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. He represents the future we can all achieve. Thank you, 
Governor, for being here. Please stand up. [Applause]
    Reverend Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, along with 
Kristen Tanner and Chris Getsler, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen Zarfos, 
they're all Americans from different roots whose lives reflect the best 
of what we can become when we are one America. We may not share a common 
past, but we surely do share a common future. Building one America is 
our most important mission, the foundation for many generations of every 
other strength we must build for this new century. Money cannot buy it. 
Power cannot compel it. Technology cannot create it. It can only come 
from the human spirit.
    America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful 
idea in the history of nations. And all of us in this Chamber, we are 
now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. A 
child born tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th century. 
Everything that child will know about America will be because of what we 
do now to build a new century.
    We don't have a moment to waste. Tomorrow there will be just over 
1,000 days until the year 2000; 1,000 days to prepare our people; 1,000 
days to work together; 1,000 days to build a bridge to a land of new 
promise. My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize those 
days and the century.
    Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.

Note: The President spoke at 9:15 p.m. in the House Chamber of the 
Capitol. The Executive order of September 11, 1997, establishing the 
American Heritage Rivers initiative was published in the Federal 
Register at 62 FR 48445.