[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 9 (Monday, March 3, 1997)]
[Pages 227-228]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

February 22, 1997

    Good morning. Today I want to talk with you about our economy, what 
we can do to keep it growing, offering opportunities to all Americans 
who work for them.
    When I took office 4 years ago, my most important job was to renew 
our economy. We put in place an economic plan that cut the deficit even 
as we increased investments in our people and expanded exports to record 
levels. We cut the deficit by 63 percent, from $290 billion a year in 
1992 to $107 billion last year. Proportionally, it is now the smallest 
of any major economy. This has created the conditions for American 
businesses and workers to thrive, and they have.
    Over the last several weeks, we've received the full data on our 
country's economic progress for the last 4 years. The economy created 
11\1/2\ million new jobs for the first time ever in a single term. That 
includes a million construction jobs and millions of other good paying 
jobs. Entrepreneurs have started a record number of new businesses, 
hundreds of thousands of them owned by women and minorities. We've had 
the largest increase in homeownership ever, a big drop in the poverty 
rate, and a big increase in family income. And just this week, we 
learned that the combined rate of unemployment and inflation over the 
last 4 years is the lowest for a Presidential term since the 1960's.
    Now we must continue our progress. We cut the deficit by two-thirds; 
it's time to finish the job. We must balance the budget to keep interest 
rates down and investment up and jobs coming in. But we must do it the 
right way. Today our economy is growing steady and strong. If we want to 
keep it growing, producing jobs and opportunity for our people as we 
enter a new century, then we simply must finish the job of balancing the 
budget, and we must do it this year. That is the only way to keep 
interest rates low, to keep confidence high, to give businesses the 
ability to innovate for tomorrow. We must pass a balanced budget plan 
this year or face the consequences in years to come.
    This month I submitted my plan to balance the budget by 2002. Our 
plan makes the hard decisions necessary to lock in the savings achieved 
and to ensure that the budget remains in balance in the future. It saves 
$350 billion over the next 5 years, enough not only to balance the 
budget but also to cut taxes. It makes tough and specific cuts in 
spending, and ensures that those cuts will be carried out by imposing 
strict limits on the amounts Congress can spend each year. It ends 
hundreds of wasteful Government programs and projects, eliminates $34 
billion in corporate subsidies businesses don't need, and makes reforms 
in entitlement programs so they'll cost less in the future, extending

the life of the Medicare Trust Fund for a decade while preserving quality 
health care for elderly Americans.

    Even as the plan balances the budget, it also maintains the balance 
of our values. To prepare our people for the 21st century, I have 
challenged our Nation to build the world's best educational system. My 
plan increases investment in education and training to $51 billion in 
1998, a 20 percent increase. It provides tax cuts to help families pay 
for college, increases Pell grant scholarships for deserving students, 
advances the America Reads initiative to help every 8-year-old read on 
his or her own, and advances our goal of connecting every single 
classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000. It invests in 
our people in other ways as well, giving them tax cuts to help them 
raise their children or buy a home, extending health care coverage to 5 
million more children, protecting the environment.
    That is the right way to balance the budget. And balancing the 
budget only requires Congress' vote and my signature. It does not 
require us to rewrite our Constitution. We

[[Page 228]]

must balance the budget, but a balanced budget amendment could cause 
more harm than good. It would prevent us from responding to foreign 
challenges abroad or economic trouble at home, if to do so resulted in 
even a minor budget deficit. And because it would write a specific 
economic policy into our Constitution, it could force the Secretary of 
the Treasury to cut Social Security, or drive the budget into courts of 
law when a deficit occurred when Congress was not working on the budget. 
In a court of law, judges could be forced to halt Social Security checks 
or to raise taxes just to meet the demands of the constitutional 
amendment.
    These are results no one wants to see happen, but a balanced budget 
amendment could surely produce them. Instead, we should simply act this 
year and act together, for Democrats and Republicans have an historic 
opportunity to reach across party lines to enact the first balanced 
budget in a generation. Soon we will begin discussions with bipartisan 
leaders in Congress to craft a final plan. By coming to an agreement 
this year, we can take a giant step to prepare our country for the 21st 
century and give our children the future they deserve.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 5:17 p.m. on February 21 in the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on 
February 22.