[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 1 (Monday, January 11, 1999)]
[Pages 1-2]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

January 2, 1999

    Good morning. As we celebrate this last New Year of the 20th 
century, I want to speak to you about the debt we owe to those who make 
every season a season of peace for America, the men and women of our 
Armed Forces.
    Almost 1.4 million Americans are serving our country on active duty 
today. Nearly a quarter million of them are overseas, doing what needs 
to be done as no one else can, whether that means thwarting Iraq's 
ambition to threaten its neighbors or the world with weapons of mass 
destruction or standing watch in Korea on the last fortified frontier of 
the cold war or safeguarding the peace in Bosnia or helping our 
neighbors in Central America or the Caribbean dig out from natural 
disasters or simply giving us the confidence that America will be 
forever strong, safe, and secure.
    We rely on our Armed Forces because this is still a dangerous world. 
We're proud of them because they are the best in the world. And we 
remember today what makes them the best--not just the quality of our 
weapons but the quality of our people in uniform. Their skill, 
dedication, and professionalism are unstinting, unquestioned, and 
unmatched.
    When we give our service men and women a mission, there is a 
principle we must keep in mind: We should never ask them to do what they 
are not equipped to do, and we should always equip them to do what we 
ask. The more we ask, the greater our responsibility to give our troops 
the support and training and equipment they need. As Commander in Chief, 
I have no higher duty than this: to give our troops the tools to take on 
new missions, while maintaining their readiness to defend our country 
and defeat any adversary; to make sure they can deploy away from home, 
knowing their families have the quality of life they deserve; and to 
make certain their service is not only rewarding but well rewarded, from 
recruitment to retirement.
    I'm confident our military is ready to fulfill this mission today. 
Our troops continue to execute complex and dangerous missions far from 
home with flawless precision, as we've just seen in the Persian Gulf. 
Our challenge is to retain the ability to do this as we carry out our 
entire defense strategy.
    For this reason, we asked Congress to add $1.1 billion to this 
year's budget to keep our readiness razor-sharp and to improve 
recruitment. And Congress did. I've also worked with our military 
leaders to ensure their highest readiness priorities are reflected in 
our budget request for the year 2000.
    The budget I will submit to Congress for next year will provide an 
increase of over $12 billion for defense readiness and modernization 
through a combination of new spending and budgetary savings. This is the 
start of a 6-year effort that will represent the first long-term 
sustained increase in defense spending in a decade.
    We want our Armed Forces to remain ready to deploy rapidly in any 
crisis, and that is what this effort will assure, by funding joint 
exercises, flight training, badly needed spare parts, and recruiting for 
critical positions. We want our forces to remain the best equipped in 
the world into the next century, and that is what this effort will 
assure, by paying for the next generation of ships, planes, and weapons 
systems. It will also enable our military to play its part in meeting 
emerging threats to our security such as terrorism and proliferation. It 
will help us to do right by our troops by upgrading and replacing aging 
equipment, barracks, and family housing. It will include a military pay 
raise of 4.4 percent, the largest since 1982, a restructuring of paid 
reward performance, and the reinstatement of military retirement 
benefits that were taken away over a decade ago.

[[Page 2]]

    We must undertake this effort today so that our Nation will remain 
strong and secure tomorrow. We must do it as well because we have the 
most sacred obligation to those who accept dangers and hardships on our 
behalf.
    They are our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and 
neighbors, from cities and towns all over America. We must give them the 
support they need to keep doing their jobs well and to keep coming home 
to America, safe and sound.
    Thanks for listening, and happy New Year.

Note: The address was recorded at 10:55 a.m. on December 30 in the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on January 
2. The transcript was made available by the Office of the Press 
Secretary on December 31 but was embargoed for release until the 
broadcast.