    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 30, Number 1 (Monday, January 10, 1994)]
    [Pages 1-3]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

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    The President's Radio Address

    January 1, 1994

        Good morning, and happy New Year. I hope you're enjoying this day
    with your family and your friends. I hope you feel that you have a lot
    to be thankful for on New Year's Day. I know that I certainly do.
        I am grateful that our economy is coming back to life, that optimism
    and direction are back. The deficit is down. Interest rates and
    inflation are down. Investments and consumer confidence are up. We have
    more trade opportunities with NAFTA and with the GATT world trade
    agreement. Millions of you have refinanced your homes and businesses.
    The private sector has created about a million and a half new jobs in
    just 10 months, more than were created in the previous 4 years.
        But our Nation is about more than economics. It's also about our
    sense of community, the obligations we have to each other. For too long
    we've been coming apart instead of coming together. In 1993, we began to
    reverse that, and I'm grateful.
        We established the national service program to allow our young
    people to serve their communities and earn money for their college
    educations. We reorganized the student loan program so that all students
    can now afford to borrow money from this program because they can repay
    on lower interest rates and based on the incomes they earn, not just the
    money they borrow. We made democracy more of a reality for millions of
    people with the motor voter bill, which makes it easier to register to
    vote. We wrote our best family values into law with the family leave
    law, which says to parents, if you have a newborn child or an ill
    parent, you can be with them, you can take a little time off from work
    without losing your jobs. We also strengthened our families when we gave
    tax relief to 15 million working families on modest wages with children
    so that they can stay off welfare, stay at work, and still succeed as
    parents. And after 7 years of gridlock, Washington finally woke to the
    growing fear of violence on our streets when Congress passed and I
    signed the Brady bill.
        All over America, beyond Washington, people are beginning to take
    more responsibility for themselves, for their children, for their
    communities, working to save jobs, improve schools, and make our streets
    safer. In 1994, we must resolve to do even more, to help the middle
    class with more jobs and with income growth, to help the poor who are
    trapped in whole neighborhoods where there's no work, few stable
    families, and where violence is the norm. There is still a great deal to
    do.

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        So in 1994, let us resolve to improve the health security, the
    personal security, and the job security of the American people who work
    hard and play by the rules. With all the changes sweeping our Nation and
    the world, let us resolve to make these changes our friends and not our
    enemies.
        In 1994, we must work to keep the economic recovery going. We must
    pass comprehensive health care reform that provides benefits that can
    never be taken away. We must put more police on the street and take more
    assault weapons off the street. We must adopt world-class standards for
    our schools and provide lifetime training for our workers.
        Millions of Americans, even those with good health insurance, must
    live in fear of losing their health coverage. Another 2 million
    Americans lost their insurance in 1993. Our health care reform plan is a
    guaranteed system of private insurance that will cover every American.
    We'll maintain the health care system in private hands, improve the
    quality of health care, increase the choices you have as a consumer, and
    protect the doctor-patient relationship. And all the while, if we do it
    in the way we've recommended, we will reduce mountains of paperwork and
    billions of dollars of unnecessary costs in the present system. Health
    reform is a good deal for our families and our future, and it should
    pass in 1994.
        I also want Congress to pass the crime bill without delay. Our
    proposal will put 100,000 more police officers on the street, expand
    boot camps for young offenders, get handguns out of the hands of minors,
    ban assault weapons, and have stiffer sentences for violent repeat
    offenders.
        This year, I'm also determined to start creating a world-class
    system of lifetime education and training, especially for those who lose
    their jobs. This means setting high standards first for our public
    schools and challenging every State to meet them--world-class standards.
    It means new investments, from Head Start for preschoolers to job
    training for young people to retraining for experienced workers. Better
    schools and better skills are the best way to promote competitiveness
    for our economy and equal opportunity for every American.
        And we must continue to work to make welfare a second chance, not a
    way of life. Our welfare reform proposal will embrace two simple values:
    work and responsibility. Those who can work should do so. And both
    parents must take responsibility for their children, because governments
    don't raise children, parents do.
        In 1993, I met a lot of Americans who made a vivid impression on me
    and whose impression caused me to redouble my determination to face the
    problems which our country has too long ignored. I met a young man in
    California who changed schools to go to a safer school but whose brother
    was shot standing in front of him in the safer school as they tried to
    register. I met a widow in Detroit who supports herself and her
    children, enrolled in a training program to become a machinist, to prove
    again that most Americans want to work and don't want to be on welfare.
    I met a businessman in Florida who poured his heart into his small
    furniture store, only to be told by his insurance company that he had to
    drop coverage of his own parents whose age made them a high risk. All
    these folks strengthened my commitment to work for better education and
    better job training, universal health coverage that can never be taken
    away, safer streets, and a stronger America.
        The stories of real people inspire the struggles and the efforts
    that drive my administration. We've got to keep working to rebuild the
    American economy, to revive middle class life and middle class values in
    America, and to restore our sense of community. We have to recognize
    that all these problems are interrelated. You can't just solve one
    without the other. We have to remember that these problems developed
    over a long period of time; they can't be solved overnight. We have to
    remember that Government can't do everything alone, everyone must play
    his or her part. But we must remember, too, that we can make a
    difference and we can do better.
        In that spirit, let us all make New Year's resolutions today. Let's
    resolve among other things that in 1994 every American will have health
    care that's always there and can never be taken away, that in 1994 we
    will take back our streets and make them safer for our children, that in
    1994 we will improve our

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    schools and hold ourselves to world-class standards of excellence and
    that we will give our workers throughout their lifetimes the skills they
    need to compete and win in a tough global economy, that in 1994 we will
    continue to work to favor work over welfare, and that we will continue
    to rebuild our economy and, with it, the American dream.
        If we'll stay together and work together, we can do these things.
    Have a happy and healthy New Year's. And thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 3:15 p.m. on December 31 in Hilton
    Head, SC, for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on January 1.