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02/04/1997
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�New opening.
Tonight I present a plan of action to prepare our people for the next century.
For four years, we have worked to get America moving, moving beyond division and
gridlock toward the future. And America is on the move, with four years of solid job growth,
crime rates and welfare roils falling, and peace and freedom advancing. Our pursuit of
opportunity for all, responsibility from all, community of all Americans is working.
For all this, we should be thankful and encouraged. But we must not be complacent. We
stand on the edge of a new century, a new era of vast possibility not merely for wealth and power
but for building better lives, here and throughout the world.
This is no ordinary time. But I want to be very clear: This time of great promise could
also be a time of great peril — and the choice is ours. The global economy and the Information
Age will mean better jobs, life-enhancing technglogy and rising dreams for our people; we must
never let this time mean uncertainty, social breakdown and falling expectations. We must never
let our opportunities slip from our grasp — or even be turned to our disadvantage ~ in this
vigorous new world of competition.
We must ask ourselves here tonight: What kind of an America do we want our children to
inherit 50 years from now? Do we have the will as a nation ~ every one of us — to take the
actions to make this new world work for us. not against us? The decisions we make ~ just as
�surely as those we do not make -- will answer those questions.
My fellow Americans: The State of our Union is strong, but the opporUmity and the
obligation before us are even stronger. Unlike so many times in this cenftiry, we face no enemy
determined to destroy us. The enemy of Qur times is inaction.
So, tonight, I issue a call to action - action by this Congress, action by our states, action
by all our people - to achieve the big goals that are absolutely essential to prepare America for
the 21st C:entury. Action to finish the work before us; action to strengthen education for our
people and to harness the forces of technology and science, to build stronger families and
stronger communities, to keep America the world.'s strongest force for peace, freedom and
prosperity. And action to build a stronger, more perfect imion here at home.
This call to action will require a new government for a new century, that gives all
Americans the means to make the most of their own lives; a new sense of responsibility among
all citizens, and a new spirit of community across our land. The spirit we here bring to our work
v^rill indeed light our way. The people of this country elected all of us. Regardless of our
differences, the people put us all here in the same boat - gave us ail oars -- and told us to row.
Now the choice is ours.
�i\«
Tonight I present a plan of action to prepare our people for the next century.
For four years, we have worked to get America moving, moving beyond division and
gridlock toward the future. And America is on the move, with four years of solid job growth,
crime rates and welfare rolls falling, and peace and freedom advancing. Our pursuit of
opporttmity for all, responsibility from all, community of all Americans is working.
For all this, we should be thankful and encouraged. But we must not be complacent. We
stand on the edge of a new century, a new era of vast possibility not merely for wealth and power
but for building better lives, here and throughout the worid.
This is no ordinary time. But I want to be very clear: This time of great promise could
also be a time of great peril - the choice is ours. Tlie global economy and the Information Age
should mean better jobs, life-enhancing technology and rising dreams for our people, not
uncertainty, social breakdown and falling expectations. If we do not take action, these
opportunities could slip from our grasp, or even be turned to our disadvantage, in this vigorous
new world of competition.
We must ask ourselves here tonight: What kind of an America do we want our children to
inherit 50 years from now? Do we have the will as a nation - every one of us - to take the
actions to make this new worid work for us, not.against us? The decisions we make - just as
surely as those we do not make ~ will answer those questions.
1:30
» ^
�My fellow Americans: The State of our ynion is strong, but the opportunity and the
obligation before us are even stronger. Unlike so many times in this century, we face no enemy
determined to destroy us. The enemy of QUI times is inaction.
So, tonight, 1 issue a call to action - actibn by this Congress, action by our states, action
by all our people - to achieve the big goals that are absolutely essential to prepare America for
the 21st Century. Action to finish the work before us; action to strengthen education for our
people and to harness the forces of technology and science, to build stronger families and
stronger communities, to keep America the worid's strongest force for peace,freedomand
prosperity. And action to build a stronger, more perfect union here at home.
This call to action will require a new government for a new century, that gives all
Americans the means to make the most of their own lives; a new sense of responsibility among
all citizens, and a new spirit of community across our land. The spirit we here bring to our work
will indeed light our way. The people of this country elected all of us. Regardless of our
differences, the people put us all here in the same.boat - gave us all oars - and told us to row.
Now the choice is ours.
* .
�To prepare America for the 21st Century, with new pressures on people in the way
they work and live, we must build stronger families and help parents pass on their values to
their children.
We should expand the Family and Medical Leave Law so parents can take time off for
teacher conferences or a child's checkup. We should passflextimeso workers can choose to be
paid for overtime not only in income, but also with time off to be with their families.
We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to affordable, quality health
care.
We must find a way to work together and cover the 40 million Americans who still lack
health insurance.
My balanced budget will extend health coverage to five million children ~ cutting in half
the number of uninsured children in America. It will help all working Americans by ensuring that
people who temporarily lose their jobs don't lose their health insurance.
My Medicare plan helps millions of families taking care of loved-ones afflicted with
Alzheimers ~ and for the first time, we would pay for mammograms for older women.
And we must end the dangerous and demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies.
�With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice
spurred a national movement and inspired this legislation.
We must protect our children by standing by our action to ban cigarette ads that endanger
their lives.
To build on our progress, increasing child support collections by 50%, we should make it
a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an attempt tofleefrom his or her obligations.
We must build stronger communities to prepare America for the 21st Century.
Our approach to renewing urban neighborhoods, and poor communities across America, is
to empower communities to create the conditions in which people can live and children can
flourish, and to create jobs through investment by business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. We should expand the network of
community development banks. We should enact the brownfields initiative to restore
contaminated properties to productive use.
We should protect our environment in every community. We cleaned up as many toxic
waste sites in three years as in the previous 12; we cut the amount of toxic pollution in half; we
protected 1.7 million acres of the Grand Staircase Escalante in Utah, created 3 national parks in
�the California desert, began the work of restoring the Florida Everglades.
Now we should clean up over 500 more toxic waste sites, so that 2/3 of our worst sites
are cleaned up by the Year 2000. We should make big polluters live by this simple rule: if you
pollute, you pay to clean it up.
And to strengthen our communities, we must press our fight against crime and violence. '
Serious crime has dropped five years in a row. We mustfinishthe job of putting 100,000 police
officers on our streets. We should pass a Victims' Rights Amendment to the Constitution. We
should set a goal to deport a record 100,000 criminals and other illegal aliens this year.
My balanced budget includes the largest anti-drug effort ever: to stop drugs at their
source, punish those who push them, and steer young people away.
And, for the next four years, we must mount a full scale assault on juvenile crime. My
comprehensive legislation declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and tougher penalties;
extends the Brady Bill so violent teenage criminals will never own a handgun; requires gun safety
locks to prevent unauthorized use; and keeps schools open late, on weekends, and in the summer,
so young people have someplace to go and something to say yes to.
Because so many of those children do not have what they need to grow and learn in their
homes, schools and neighborhoods, the rest of us must do more. That is why President Bush,
�General Colin Powell, and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros joined Vice President Gore
and me to announce the Presidents's Summit of Service, to be held in Philadelphia in April. We
want to mobilize millions of Americans to serve our young people in thousands of ways. Already,
AmeriCorps, our national service program, has helped 70,000 young people work their way
through college as they serve America. Citizen service belongs to no party or ideology. It is an
American responsibility which all Americans should embrace in their daily lives.
Let me say a word directly to our children: As we work to build a strong future for you,
you have to take responsibility for that fliture. Succeed in school, stay off drugs, steer clear of
gangs. Nothing your parents do, nothing anyone can do, can stop the rise in teen drug use if you
don't stop. The school standards won't work if you don't learn. The streets won't be safe if you
embrace violence. It's your life. Soon America will be in your hands. It's up to you.
[As the new century approaches, we face another opportunity to come together as a
community. We can give new life to the ideas and ideals that have shaped our culture ~ our arts
and music, our great writers and thinkers. I call on all levels of government, on our universities
and cultural institutions, on businesses and communities across America; work with us to make
the Year 2000 a national celebration of American culture, so we can remain the world's beacon of
liberty and creativity, long after thefireworkshave faded.]
�Draft 2/1/97 10:00pm
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105 th Congress, distinguished guests:
Tonight 1 come before you to present a plan of action to prepare our people for the next
century.
For four years, we have worked to get America moving, moving beyond division and
gridlock toward the future. And America is on the move, with four years of solid job growth,
crime rates and welfare rolls falling, and peace andfreedomadvancing. Our pursuit of
opportimity for all, responsibility from all, community of all Americans is working.
For all this we should be thankful and encouraged, but we must not be complacent. We
stand on the edge of a new century in a new millennium, a new era of vast possibility not merely
for wealth and power but for building better lives, here and throughout the world.
The global economy, the Information Age, life-enhancing technology, are ours to seize
for our people. But if we do not take action, these opportimities could slip from our grasp, or
even be turned to our disadvantage, in this vigorous new world of competition. We must ask
ourselves here tonight: What kind of an America do we want our children to inherit 50 years
from now? The decisions we make ~ just as surely as those we do not make — will answer that
question.
�Tonight, unlike so many times in this centiuy, we face no enemy determined to destroy
us. The enemy of our times is inaction.
My fellow Americans, the State of our Union is strong, but the opportimity before us is
even sfronger.
So tonight, I issue a call to action ~ action by this Congress, action by our states, action
by all our people to prepare America for the 21st Century; action to create a new goverrmient for
a new century, that gives all our people the means to make the most of their own lives; action to
instill a new sense of responsibility among all citizens; action to forge a new spirit of commtmity
across our nation.
This call to action simimons us to work for sfronger education and harness the forces of
technology and science; to build sfronger families and sfronger communities; to keep America
the world's strongest force for peace,freedomand prosperity. And above all, to build a stronger,
more perfect union here at home.
The spirit in which we approach this work will determine its success. The people of this
coimtry elected all of us. Regardless of our political or personal differences, the people put us all
here in the same boat... gave us all oars . . . and told us to row. And that's what we have to do.
We must start by moving quickly to finish the unfinished business of the country:
�balancing our budget, renewing our democracy, andfinishingthe job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, our sfrategy of cutting the deficit, expanding exports and
investing in our people has spurred our economy to produce record ntmibers of new businesses
and 11 million new jobs. But to keep our economy the sfrongest in the world, and to extend our
progress to all our people, we must do more.
We here, tonight, have an historic opportunity. This Congress can be the Congress that
finally balances the budget.
In two days, I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by the Year 2002.
This plan will balance the budget Mid protect Medicare, Medicaid, education and the
environment. It will balance the budget an^ make government work better, even as it costs less,
building on the Vice-President's groundbreaking reinvention project. It will balance the budget
and provide tax relief for the middle class ~ to buy and sell a home, and to pay for education, to
raise a child, and for health care.
Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature. It does not require us to
rewrite our Constitution. It is not only urmecessary but imwise for us to adopt a balanced budget
amendment that could cripple our coimtry in time of crisis, and force judges to impoimd Social
Security checks or increase taxes. Let's balance the budget ~ and do it therightway.
�For the long-term health of our society, we must also come together, in a bipartisan
process, to preserve Social Security, and reform Medicare so that they will be as strong for our
children as they are for our parents.
There is a second piece of imfmished business for us here. Tonight, with all America
watching, we should conmiit to passing bipartisan campaign finance reform, now.
[More money was raised and spent on Congressional and Presidential campaigns in the
last election season than ever before. Every one of us here must take responsibility for fixing the
system.]
In the last Congress, we passed sweeping reform of the lobbying laws, and we did it in a
bipartisan way. Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan, have
reached across party lines to craft reform. It would curb spending, reduce the role of special
interests, create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents and ban the large soft
money contributions both parties receive. And it bans contributions from foreign ovmed
companies and people who are not American citizens.
Delay will mean the death of reform. We must work together to enact campaign finance
reform, and we should do it by the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy, by July 4.
There is a third piece of unfinished business for us here: Last year we enacted landmark
�welfare reform. Now each and every one of us has to fulfill Qur responsibility to finish the job
and lift the permanent imderclass into our growing middle class.
Over the last four years, we moved a record 2.25 million people off of the welfare rolls.
Now we must act to meet this new goal: to lift one million more people from the dependence of
welfare to the dignity of work by the Year 2000.
To everyone here, whether you supported this law or opposed it — but especially those of
us who supported it ~ I say: We have a moral obligation to make sure people who now must
work, can work. We have torn the broken system down. We must give all our people the chance
to raise themselves up through the dignity, the power and the ethic of work.
Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that hire people off
welfare. Incentives for job placement firms that create jobs for welfare recipients.
Transportation and fraining and childcare to help people go to work.
This is the responsibility of every American. I challenge every state to turn welfare
checks into private sector paychecks. 1 challenge every employer in this coimtry who ever made
a disparaging remark about the old welfare system: it's gone. Now do your part. Give someone
on welfare a chance to work. Indeed, I challenge every business, every commtmity non-profit
organization, every religious congregation: hire someone off welfare.
�Tonight, I am pleased to announce that five major corporations ~ Sprint, Monsanto, UPS,
Burger King, and United Airlines ~ will join with my administration to lead a national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And, we must join together to do what Republican and Democratic governors have asked,
to restore help for legal immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law. They should
not be deprived of human support when misfortune strikes.
We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one should walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job.
Then, the greatest step of all on the path to a new century ~ the high threshold to
the future we must now cross ~ and my number one priority as President for the next four
years ~ is to help our people have the best education in the world. These must be our
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.
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals ~ $51 billion
next year, the largest ever. But far more than money is required.
I have a Plan for American Education, based on [four] principles, to which we must
�commit ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must setrigorousnational standards for education, and help our children to
reach them. For the first time in America, every school must say: Fourth graders must be able to
read, and read well. Eighth graders must be able to do algebra. All our children must master the
basics.
We must begin tonight a crusade for standards ~ not federal government standards, but
national standards of what students must master to succeed in the knowledge economy of the
21st century. Every state and school must develop a curriculum that reflects national standards,
and frain our teachers to teach them. Then, we must have national tests to measure our progress.
There are lots of standardized tests; we need tests to measure national standards. Over the next
two years, we will lead an effort to develop them.
Tonight. I issue a national challenge: Everv state should adopt national .standards, and bv
1999 we should test everv 4th grader in reading and every 8th grader in math.
Every state should require a tough standards-based exam in high school, so when seniors
get a diploma, that diploma means something. And we should move towards national high
school math and science tests, based on world-class standards.
Raising standards will not be easy. When we do, some of our children will not be able to
�meet them at first. But the point is not to put them down, it is to lift them up. Good tests will
help show us who to help, what changes in teaching to make, and which schools to improve.
And they will help us end social promotion, because no child should move from grade school to
junior high or junior high to high school until he or she is ready.
These tests are far more than tests of our children. This is a test of our nation, of our will
to meet the challenges of the global economy and the Information Age. Tonight, we have the
strongest economy and the sfrongest democracy in the world. But we will not have them fifty
years from now unless American education, like America itself, is the envy of the world.
We know our children can do this. Last week, I visited the Chicago suburbs, where
students from 20 school districts, in a project they called "First in the World," took the Third
International Math and Science Survey, the TIMSS test. This test is given to 4th, 8th, and 12th
graders around the world. And those Illinois students tied for first in the world in science, and
second in math.
Two of those students are here tonight, with their teacher, [introduce Kristin Tanner, and
Chris Getsla; teacher: Sue Winski] When we aim high and challenge our students, they will be
the best in the world.
The second principle of my Plan: to have the best schools, we must have the best
teachers. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt and the National
�Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked hard to establish nationally accepted
credentials for excellence in teaching. 400 of these master teachers have been certified since
1995. Under my budget, 100,000 more v^ll be able to seek national certification. We should
reward our best teachers, quickly and fairly remove those who don't measure up, and challenge
our finest young people to consider teaching as a career.
The third part of my Plan: every state should let parents choose the right public school for
their children. Innovation and competition will make our public schools better. Beyond public
school choice, we must do more to encourage teachers and parents to start charter schools that set
and meet the highest standards, and survive only as long as they do. My balanced budget doubles
the funding to help start charter schools, so by the Year 2000, there will be 3,000 ~ seven times
as many as today.
We cannot raise our children up in schools that are literally falling down. Traditionally,
the federal budget has played no role in school construction. But as the student population
climbs, and school buildings continue to deteriorate, this is a serious national concern. My
budget includes $5 billion to help communities issue bonds and spur $20 billion in school
construction over the next four years. [Moseley-Braun]
Finally, we must make sure character education is a part of every curriculum. We caimot
raise standards if we fail to teach our children how to be good citizens. We should 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.
Tonight, I pledge to take this Plan for American Education to the country. All Americans
must enlist in this crusade for tomorrow's children, [mention of Governors who might be present;
legislature speeches?]
Learning begins long before school, and goes on long after it. We now know much more
about children's emotional and intellectual development in their earliest years. That's why my
balanced budget expands Head Start to one million children by 2002. The First Lady has spent a
lot of time studying and writing about early childhood learning. And I am pleased to announce
that she and I will convene a White House Conference on Early Learning and the Brain this
Spring.
We must do more to help all our children read. 40% of 8 year olds cannot read on their
own. We have launched the America Reads initiative ~ a national effort to build a citizen army
of one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read independently by 3rd grade. We
will use thousands of AmeriCorps volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. We want at least
100,000 college students in the work study program to help. And tonight, I am proud to
aimounce that 60 college presidents have pledged that tens of thousands of their work study
students will serve one year as reading tutors.
10
�This is a challenge to every teacher and every principal - to be honest enough to
recognize when a child hasfroublereading, and committed enough to do something about it. But
especially to parents: Read to your children every night. This spring, the Vice President and Mrs.
Gore wdll host their sixth annual family conference to talk about parents and learning - because
parents are children's first teachers, and every home must be a place of learning
And to prepare our people for the 21st Century, learning must last a lifetime.
We must make the 13th and 14th years of education ~ at least two years of college ~ as
universal in America as high school is today.
To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition,
enough to pay for the typical community college tuition, based on Georgia's HOPE scholarship
started by Governor Zell Miller. I propose a deduction of up to $10,000 for all tuition after high
school; an IRA you can save in and then withdraw from taxfree,as long as it's for education;
and the largest increase in Pell Grant scholarships for deserving students in 20 years.
With this package, no working family need ever pay a nickel of taxes on money saved for
college.
All our people must have the chance to learn new skills. Nearly every American worker
lives near a community college, offering a path to a better future. Government doesn't need to
11
�decide what kind of training workers need; they can decide for themselves. My G.I. Bill for
Workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a single, simple
skill grant that will go directly into eligible workers' hands. For far too long, this bill has sat
before you without action — and I ask you to pass it now.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful forces of
knowledge, science and technology to the benefit of aU Americans.
This is the first State of the Union carried live over the Internet. But we have only begun
to spread the benefits of the technology revolution to the lives of all our citizens.
We are connecting every classroom and library to the Internet so that, for the first time in
history, a child in the poorest inner city, the most isolated rural town, the most comfortable
suburb, will all have access to the same universe of knowledge at the same time. My plan
doubles funding to $500 million to put this future at our children's fingertips.
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 ~ is no longer a dream, but a
necessity. And over the next decade, that must be our goal.
I challenge the private sector to help us connect every children's hospital to the Internet as
soon as possible, so a child in bed can stay in school and stay in touch with family and friends.
12
�We will build the second generation of the Intemet so our leading universities and
national laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000 times faster than today, to develop new
medical treatments, new sources of energy, and new ways of working together.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing our mission of discovery with the
Mars probes, the international space station, and the project to discover the origins of life, so we
both understand the cosmos and for practical applications on Earth.
And we must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. In the last year alone,
American scientists discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, [stroke research
to come] - and we have discovered drug treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people
with AIDS.
Since 1 took office, funding for AIDS research has gone up nearly 50%. With these new
resources, the National Institutes of Health will now become the primary discovery engine for an
AIDS vaccine. Every year we move up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine, we will save 65,000
lives. If you approve this plan, scientists from business, universities and our national labs will be
able to work together so we can end the threat of AIDS in America.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, with new pressures on people in the way
they work and live, we must build stronger families and help parents pass on their values to
13
�their children.
We should expand the Family and Medical Leave Law so parents can take time off for
teacher conferences or a child's checkup. We should passflextimeso workers can choose to be
paid for overtime not only in income, but also with time off to be with their families.
We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to affordable, quality health
care.
We must find a way to work together and cover the 40 million Americans — most in
working families, who pay their taxes and give all of us health insurance, but who stUl lack
health insurance for themselves. I don't think that's right, and I know you don't either. We
cannot rest until we change it.
My balanced budget will extend health coverage to five million children ~ cutting in half
the number of uninsured children in America. It will help all working Americans by ensuring
that people who temporarily lose their jobs don't lose their health insurance.
My Medicare plan helps millions of families taking care of a loved-one afflicted with
Alzheimers — and for the first time, we would pay for mammograms for older women.
And we must enact the bipartisan legislation before you to end the dangerous and
14
�demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a
Connecticut surgeon whose oufrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired
this legislation.
And we must protect our children by standing by our action to ban cigarette ads that
endanger their lives.
Every parent must uphold their most sacred responsibility ~ to their child. I am very
proud of the fact that we have increased child support collections by 50% in the last four years.
Now we should do more; we should make it a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an
attempt to flee from his or her obligations.
We must build stronger communities to prepare America for the 21st Century.
There are still places in America untouched by opportunity. Our approach to renewing
urban neighborhoods, and poor communities across America, is to empower communities to
create the conditions in which people can live and children can flourish, and to create jobs
through investment by business and loans by banks.
Empowerment zones have already brought hope to communities like Defroit, where the
unemployment rate has been cut in half in four years. We should double the number of
empowerment zones. We should expand the network of community development banks. We
15
�should enact the brownfields initiative to restore contaminated properties to productive use.
And we, together, must pledge tonight that with this approach ~ including private sector
tax incentives - we will renew this great capital city, so it is once again the proud face America
shows the world.
As we strengthen our communities we must protect our environment and preserve our
natural heritage. We cleaned up as many toxic waste sites in three years as in the previous 12;
we cut the amount of toxic pollution in half; we protected 1.7 million acres of the Grand
Staircase Escalante in Utah, created 3 national parks in the California desert, began the work of
restoring the Florida Everglades.
Now we should clean up over 500 more toxic waste sites, so that 2/3 of our worst sites
are cleaned up by the Year 2000. We should pass my proposal to make big polluters live by this
simple rule: if you pollute, you pay to clean it up.
And to strengthen our communities, we must press our fight against crime and violence.
Serious crime has dropped five years in a row. The key has been community policing — and we
must finish the job of putting 100,000 police officers on our streets. We should pass a Victims'
Rights Amendment to the Constitution. We should set a goal to deport a record 100,000
criminals and other illegal aliens this year.
16
�And, for the next four years, our goal must be to mount a full scale assault on juvenile
crime. I will submit comprehensive legislation that declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors
and tougher penalties; cracks down on gang members who intimidate witnesses; extends the
Brady Bill so violent teenage criminals will never have therightto own a handgun; requires gun
safety locks to prevent unauthorized use; and provides resources to keep schools open late, on
weekends, and in the summer, so young people have someplace to go and something to say yes
to.
And we must help our communities in the battle against drugs. My balanced budget
includes the largest anti-drug effort ever: to stop drugs at their source, punish those who push
them, and steer young people away.
In the end, it is not punishing our troubled children that will save America in the 21st
Century. We must keep our children out of trouble. Because so many of them do not have what
they need to grow and learn in their homes, schools and neighborhoods, the rest of us must do
more. That is why President Bush, General Colin Powell, and former Housing Secretary Henry
Cisneros joined Vice President Gore and me to announce the Presidents's Summit of Service, to
be held in Philadelphia in April. We want to mobilize millions of Americans to serve our young
people in thousands of ways. Already, AmeriCorps, our national service program, has helped
70,000 young people work their way through college as they serve America. Citizen service
belongs to no party or ideology. It is an American responsibility which all Americans should
embrace in their daily lives.
17
�Let me say a word direcfly to you, our children: As we work to build a sfrong future for
you, you have to take responsibility for that future. Succeed in school, stay off drugs, steer clear
of gangs. Nothing your parents do, nothing anyone can do, can stop the rise in teen drug use if
you don't stop. The school standards won't work if you don't leam. The streets won't be safe if
you embrace violence. It's your life. Soon America wdll be in your hands. It's up to you.
[As the new century approaches, we face another opportunity to come together as a
community. We can give new life to the ideas and ideals that have shaped our culture ~ our arts
and music, our great writers and thinkers. I call on all levels of government, on our universities
and cultural institutions, on businesses and communities across America: work with us to make
the Year 2000 a national celebration of American culture, so we can remain the world's beacon
of liberty and creativity, long after the fireworks have faded.]
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must continue to lead the world, to
harness the forces of change for the security, prosperity and freedom of our people.
Fifty years ago, America led in creating the institutions that secured victory in the Cold
War and built a growing world economy. Today, more people than ever before share the ideals
that define America and the interests we defend. [For the first time in history, more people live
under democracy than dictatorship.]
Now, we face another moment of change and choice. We already have dismantled many
18
�of the blocs and barriers that divided our parents' world. But we still must meet a bold new set
of challenges - to change and adapt old institutions for new demands... old thinking for new
times... so the world works for our children and brings America fifty more years of security and
prosperity.
Our first task is to build, for the first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When
Europe is stable and at peace, America is more secure. When Europe prospers, so does America.
NATO was created to sfrengthen Europe's west. Now, we must do the same for Europe's
east. This summer, we will hold a summit to expand NATO so that, by 1999, countries that were
once our adversaries can become our allies. And we will build a sfrong NATO-Russia
partnership to meet the challenges of a new era.
Second, America must look to the East no less than the West. Our security demands it:
Americans have fought three wars in Asia this century. Our prosperity requires it: more than 2
million American jobs depend on trade with Asia.
We are helping an Asian Pacific community to take shape. But we must not let our
progress mask the peril that remains. I call on Congress to fund our contribution to assure that
North Korea continues to implement its agreement to freeze and dismantle its nuclear weapons
program. Together with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge
the Cold War's last armed divide.
19
�We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China ~ for our interests aad our ideals. An
isolated, inward looking China is not good for America. A China playing its rightful 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 with China is the best way to work on common
challenges like ending nuclear testing ~ and to deal frankly with fundamental differences like
human rights.
Third, the American people must prosper in the global economy. We have made it our
mission to tear downfradebarriers abroad and create good jobs at home. Today, America is
again the world's number one exporter ~ leading in agriculture and aviation, automobiles and
entertainment, semiconductors and software.
Now, we must build on that momentum, especially in the two most dynamic regions on
earth, Asia and Latin America. If we fail to act now, these emerging economies will find their
economic future with other nations - and we will be left behind. That's why I will ask Congress
to give us the tools to make - and enforce ~ trade agreements that expand America's
competitive opportunities. I am announcing tonight that I will travel to Latin America [dates to
come] to continue the work we began at the Summit of the Americas in Miami to build a
community of democracies linked by shared values and expanding trade, [fast track?]
When Mexico's peso collapsed ~ threatening our economic stability — we came to our
neighbor's aid. Last month, Mexico repaid the United States three years ahead of schedule, with
20
�half a billion dollars profit - and today our exports to Mexico are at an all time high. We must
continue to help nations embrace open markets and improve living standards. But we can
succeed only if we meet our obligations to the World Bank and the other organizations that
multiply our contributions to progress many times over.
Fourth, America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace ~ from the Middle
East to Haiti... from Northern Ireland to Africa. Taking reasonablerisksfor peace keeps us from
being drawn into far more costly conflicts. It encourages other nations to focus on future hopes,
not past hatreds. It creates partners willing to seize the opportunities of a new century.
With American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now, the habits of peace
must take hold. The follow-on NATO force will help speed reconstruction and reconciliation.
Tonight, I ask Congress to continue its sfrong support for ourfroops.They are doing a
remarkable job for America ~ America must dorightby them.
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security: weapons of mass
destruction... terrorism... intemational crime and drugs... environmental degradation. The
American people are more secure because we won an historic accord to ban nuclear testing. With
Russia, we have cut our nuclear arsenals and 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. And we are working with others, with renewed intensity, to stop terrorists and drug
fraffickers before they act ~ and to hold them accountable if they do.
21
�Now, we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention. It will make ourfroopssafer from chemical attack. It will help us fight terrorism.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning - negotiated and supported by Republican and
Democratic adminisfrations. Together, we must act to outlaw poison gas from this earth.
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.
We must maintain a strong and ready military. We will, by increasing funding for
weapons modernization and taking care of our men and women in uniform.
We must renew our conmiitment to America's diplomacy ~ and pay our debts and dues
to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar we devote to preventing conflicts... promoting
democracy... stopping the spread of disease and starvation... brings a sure return in security and
savings. Yet intemational affairs spending today totals just one percent of the federal budget ~
compared to sixteen percent when another generation led America to choose engagement over
escapism at the very start of the Cold War. If America is to continue to lead the world, we here
who lead America must find the will and pay the way.
And we must do it together, vrith the bipartisan support for American leadership that has
been a source of our strength in the world.
Almost exactly fifty years ago, as America began the long struggle of the Cold War,
22
�President Harry Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called on our country to meet
its responsibilities of leadership. "If we falter," he warned, "we may endanger the peace of the
worid ~ and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation." That Congress, led by great
Republicans like Arthur Vandenberg, answered Truman's call. Together, they made the
commitments that sfrengthened our counfry for fifty years. Now, we must do what it takes to
keep America strong, secure and prosperous for another fifty years - to keep America the
indispensable nation.
Finally, perhaps our most important leadership of the world grows out of the power
of our example -and our ability to remain strong as One America.
People all over the world are splitting apart because of conflicts of race or religion or
ethnicity. We are the worid's most diverse democracy. And the world looks to us to show it is
possible to live and leam together across all differences.
America has always been a nation of immigrants. Throughout our history, a steady
stream of people, in search offreedomand opportunity, have left their own lands to make this
land their home. We started as an experiment in democracy fueled by Europeans, and have
evolved into an experiment in diversity fiieled by opermess and promise.
So much of America's future is tied to how we relate to the rest of the worid. Our
diversity is not a weakness - i t is our greatest strength. People around the world can look to us
23
�and see the reflection of their greatness. And we must give every one of our citizens the
opportunity achieve their own greatness.
But we still see evidence all around us that we have not yet healed our divisions. We see
it every day in the sullen, hopeless faces wom by too many of our youth. Too often, we see it in
the corridors of business, and the schoolyards and streets of our daily lives. Too many people
still spend time trying to drive wedges between us -black against white, haves against have nots,
old immigrants against new.
A few days before my second inauguration, one of America's best known pastors. Rev.
Robert Schuller, suggested I read Isaiah 58:12. He knew what he was talking about. I placed my
hand on that verse when I took the oath of office. 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." That scripture reminds us that no matter what our differences - i n our faiths, our
backgrounds, our politics -we all must be repairers of the breach. We may not all share a
common past, but surely we share a common future.
Along with Rev. Schuller, we are joined tonight by two other Americans, and the spirit of
another, who come from different backgrounds but show us how to come together to build a
stronger future. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud Mexican-American
who earned a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart fighting forfreedomin Vietnam, and served Texas
and America fighting for our fuhu-e in this chamber. His son, Frank, Jr., is with us tonight. Gary
24
�Locke, a Chinese-American, is the newly elected Govemor of Washington and the first Asian
American govemor in our history.
And Vemon Baker, [detail of heroism to come] Along vnth six comrades-in-arms, he
waited fifty years for the recognition he deserved - for bravery, for patriotism, forriskinghis life
for our country. He was denied that recognition simply because he was black. Last month, I had
the privilege ofrightingthat wrong and awarding the Medal of Honor to Mr. Baker, and his six
courageous comrades. He is the only one still alive. He is up in that box tonight, and I'd like to
ask him to stand.
Rev. Schuller, Kristin Tanner, Chris Getsla, Sue Winski, Dr. Kristen Zarfos, Frank
Tejeda, Govemor Locke and Lieutenant Vemon Baker - they are all repairers of the breach.
They show us how to build America's common future. And we should thank them all.
The work of staying together as a nation is hard work. But it is America's most important
mission. Money carmot buy it. Power cannot compel it. Technology carmot create it. It must
rise from the human spirit, the spirit that moved our founders to establish our true creed — that all
of us are created equal, endowed by God with the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness.
The future before us can bring us closer to that creed. And we don't have a moment to
waste. A child bom tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th century. Everything she is
25
�likely to know firsthand about the progress of America, she will know because of the work we do
now to help build the new century.
Tomorrow moming, 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 our land of new promise. My
fellow Americans, let us seize the days and the century ahead. We have work to do.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
26
�Draft 1/31/97 9:30pm
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests:
I come before you tonight to put forward a plan of action to prepare our people for the
challenges of the next century.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of solid growth, we have won back the
strength of our economy. With crime, welfare rolls, teen pregnancy all falling, we are winning
back our optimism, our faith that we can master our most difficult social challenges. America
won the Cold War, and now we are helping to bring peace and prosperity unrivaled in history
throughout the world.
It would be easy to be complacent, to rest at this moment. But we must not rest. We
must not win these stmggles only to lose this moment of opportunity.
Though we face no enemy bent on destroying us, the enemy of our time is inaction. The
global economy, the Information Age, new careers, life-enhancing technology are ours to seize
for our people. But if we do not take action, these opportunities could slip from our grasp or
even be turned to our disadvantage in this vigorous new worid of competition.
�Our moment of opportunity is fleeting. A child born tonight will have almost no memory
of the 20"' Century. Everything she is likely to knowfirsthandabout the progress of America,
she will know because of the work we do now to help build the new century. We must focus on
our responsibilities to help her and all our children build for the future.
My fellow Americans, the State of our I Jnion is strong, hut the opportunitv before ii<; i<;
even stronger. So tonight, I issue a call to action - action by this Congress, action by our states,
action by all our people to prepare America for the 21st Centuiy. To answer this call, we must
have a new government for a new century, one that gives all our people the means and the power
to make the most of their own lives; we must have a new sense of responsibility among all
individuals, and we must have a new spirit of community across our nation.
This call to action summons us to work for sfronger education and harness the forces of
technology and science; to build stronger families and sfronger communities; to keep America
the world's sfrongest force for peace,freedomand prosperity. And above all, to build a stronger,
more perfect union here at home.
The spirit in which we approach this work will determine its success. The people of this
country elected us all. They will not tolerate gridlock or acrimony. They put us all in the same
boat... gave us all oars . . . and told us to row. And that's what we have to do.
We must start by moving quickly tofinishthe unfinished business before us:
�balancing our budget, renewing our democracy, andfinishingthe job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, we have made our economy grow, by investing in our people,
expanding exports, cutting our deficit and creating 11 million new jobs. Now we must keep our
economy the strongest in the worid.
We here tonight have an historic opportunity. This Congress can be the Congress that
finally balances the budget.
In two days, 1 will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by the Year 2002.
My plan proves we can balance the budget and invest in our people so they can make the
most of their own lives. We can balance the budget and provide tax relief to pay for education to raise a child - and to buy and sell a new home. The middle class deserves tax relief, and we
must give it to them. We can balance the budget and build on the Vice President's work to make
government work better, even as it costs less.
Let me be clear: A balanced budget amendment could cripple our country in time of
crisis; it could force unthinkable results such as judges impounding Social Security checks or
increasing taxes. Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature. It does not
require us to rewrite our Constitution.
�We must also come together, in a bipartisan process, to preserve Social Security, and
reform Medicare so these core programs are as strong for our children as they are for our parents.
There is a second piece of unfinished business for us here. Tonight, before the eyes of
America, we should commit to passing bipartisan campaignfinancereform.
We have just come tlirough an election in which more money was raised and spent on
races for Congress and the Presidency than ever before. Every one involved in this system every one of us here - must take responsibility for it, and for fixing it.
In the last Congress, we passed sweeping reform of the lobbying laws, and we did it in a
bipartisan way. Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan, have
reached across party lines to craft reform. It would curb spending, reduce the role of special
interests, create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents and ban the large soft
money contributions both parties receive. And it bans contributions from foreign owned
companies and people who are not American citizens.
You know and I know: delay will mean the death of reform. We must work together to
enact campaignfinancereform, and we should do it by the day we celebrate the birth of our
democracy, by July 4.
There is a third piece of unfinished business for us here: Last year we enacted landmark
�welfare reform. Now each and every one of us has to fulfill Qur responsibility to finish the job
and lift the permanent underclass into our growing middle class.
Over the last four years, we moved a record 2.25 million people off of tiie welfare rolls.
Now we must act to meet this new goal: to lift one million more people from the dependence of
welfare to the dignity of work by the Year 2000.
To everyone here, whether you supported this law or opposed it - but especially those of
us who supported it - 1 say: We have a moral obligation to make sure people who now niust
work, can work. We cannot blame the welfare system anymore. We have tom the broken system
down. Now we must come together to raise our people up.
Here is my plan: Tax credits to businesses that hire people off welfare. Incentives for
companies and job placement firms that create jobs for welfare recipients. Transportation and
childcare to help people go to work.
But this is not our responsibility here alone; this is the responsibility of eveiy American. I
challenge every state: turn welfare checks into private sector paychecks. I challenge every
religious congregation, every community non-profit, and, especially, every business: hire
someone off welfare. If every business in America would do that, we could solve this problem,
once and for all. Every employer in this country who ever made a disparaging remark about the
old welfare system should do their part and hire someone from welfare to work.
�Tonight, I am pleased to announce that five major corporations - Sprint, Monsanto, UPS,
Burger King, and United Airiines - will join with my administration to lead a national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And, we must join together to do what Republican and Democratic govemors have asked,
to restore help for legal immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law.
We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one should walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to help us finish the job. We must give
all our people the chance to raise themselves up through the dignity, the power and the ethic of
work.
If we balance the budget, enact campaignfinancereform, and finish the job of welfare
reform, we will have cleared the path to prepare America for the new century ahead.
Then, the most important thing we can do to prepare our people for the future and my number one priority as President for the next four years - is to work together to
meet these goals: Every 8 year old will be able to read, every 12 year old will be able to log
on to the Internet, every 18 year old will be able to go to college - and American children
must have the best education in the world.
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to sfronger education - $42
�Tonight, 1 am pleased to announce that five major corporations - Sprint, Monsanto. UPS,
Burger King, and United Airlines - will join with my administration to lead a national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And, we must join together to do what Republican and Democratic govemors have asked,
to restore help for legal immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law.
We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one should walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to help us finish the job. We must give
all our people the chance to raise themselves up through the dignity, the power and the ethic of
work.
If we balance the budget, enact campaignfinancereform, and finish the job of welfare
reform, we will have cleared the path to prepare America for the new century ahead.
Then, the most important thing we can do to prepare our people for the future ~
and my number one priority as President for the next four years - is to work together to
meet these goals: Every 8 year old will be able to read, every 12 year old will be able to log
on to the Internet, every 18 year old will be able to go to college - and American children
must have the best education in the world.
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to sfronger education - $42
�billion next year, the largest ever. We are going to do our part here in Washington. But when it
comes to education, that is nowhere near enough.
1 have a Plan for America's Schools, based on [four] principles, to which we must commit
ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must setrigorousnational standards for education, and help our children reach
them. For the first time in America, every school in every community will say: Fourth graders
must be able to read, and read well. Eighth graders must be able to do algebra. All our children
must master the basics.
•J
We must begin tonight a national effort to achieve these standards. Every state and every
school must dedicate itself to develop the curriculum and train the teachers to lift our students
up. To help schools meet these standards and measure their progress, we will lead an effort over
the next two years to develop national tests based on them.
Tonight. I issue a national challenge: Bv 1999. everv state should test everv student in
reading and math to make sure these standards are met
And we will provide the Third Intemational Math and Science Survey - the TIMSS test - to every school district that will accept it. Children all over the world have taken this test. It is a
reflection of the worid class standards our young people must meet for the new era.
�And every state should require a tough graduation exam, so high school seniors will not
get a diploma unless they can pass a test to show they have earned it.
When we are done, every parent will have the tools to know whether their child can read.
American students will have the tools to test themselves against students around the worid. And
we will make sure tliat every high school diploma means something.
Raising standards will not be easy. Some of our children will not be able to meet them at
first. But the point is not to put them down, it is to lift them up. These tests will help show us
who needs extra help, what changes in teaching we need to make, and which schools need to be
improved. And they will help us, once and for all, to end social promotion in America.
These tests are far more than just tests of our children. This entire endeavor is a test of
our nation, of our ability to marshal the many forces of this country to meet the challenges of the
global economy and the Information Age. We must make American education, like America
itself, the envy of the world.
We know our children can achieve excellence, because we see them do it all across this
country. Last week, 1 visited the Chicago suburbs, where parents were not afraid to test their
communities against the rest of the worid. Their children took the TIMSS test. They came in
first in the world in science. And two of them are here today, along with their teacher, [introduce
students and teacher in First Lady's box]
�They prove what we know: When we aim high and challenge our students to be the best
in the worid, they will be the best in the world.
We can't start teaching our children too soon. We are already expanding Head Start - by
one million children by 2002. New scientific discoveries teach us that we build the foundation
for a child's later learning is the earliest years. My wife Hillary has spent a lot of time studying
this and writing about it. And I am pleased to announce that we will convene a White House
Conference on Early Learning and the Brain this Spring.
We must do more to help all our children read. Today, 40% of 8 year olds caimot read on
their own. We have launched the America Reads initiative - a national effort to build a citizen
army of one million volunteers to tutor those who need extra help. We will use thousands of
AmeriCorps volunteers to mobilize this citizen army. Tonight, I am proud to announce that 60
college presidents have pledged tens of thousands of work sttidy students to work one year as
reading tutors.
1 call on more of you to join us. Call 1-800-USA-LEARN to find out how. This is a
challenge to every teacher and every principal - to be honest enough to recognize when a child is
having trouble reading, and committed enough to do something about it. But this is especially a
challenge to parents. Parents should read to their children every night. This spring, the Vice
President and Mrs. Gore will host their sixth annual family conference where they will talk about
parents and learning - because parents are our children's first teachers, and every home must be
�a school.
The second principle of my Plan for America's Schools recognizes we must have the best
teachers to have the best schools. For years, educators, with leadership from people like North
Carolina Governor Jim Hunt, have worked hard to establish nationally accepted credentials for
excellence in teaching. The goal is to measure, not just what teachers know, but how well they
teach. The first of these master teachers were certified [last year], and there are now [##]. My
budget will help more than 100,000 teachers seek national certification as master teachers. We
should reward our best teachers, but find ways to quickly and fairiy remove those few who don't
measure up. And we have to do more to challenge the best of our young people to look at
teaching as a career.
The third part of my plan calls on every state to let parents choose the right public school
for their children. Innovation and competition will make our public schools better. We must do
more to encourage teachers and parents to start public charter schools that set and meet the
highest standards. My balanced budget doubles the funding set aside to help start charter
schools, so by the Year 2000, there will be 3,000.
We cannot raise our children up in schools that are literally falling down. My budget
includes $5 billion to spur $20 billion in school constmction and modemization over the next
four years.
10
�Finally, we must press forward to make sure character education is a part of every
curriculum. We cannot raise standards on every other subject if we fail to teach our children how
to be good citizens. We should continue to promote order and discipline, supporting
communities that introduce school uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, and get
dismptive kids out of the classroom.
Tonight, 1 pledge to take this plan to the country, to enlist America's support in this
crusade for tomorrow's children, [mention of Governors who might be present; legislature
speeches?]
Beyond high school, to prepare our people for the 21st Century, we must make the 13th
and 14th years of education — at least two years of college — as universal in America as high
school is today.
To do that, we should cut taxes. 1 propose America's HOPE scholarship, a $1,500 tax
credit for college tuition, enough to pay for the typical community college tuition; a deduction of
up to $10,000 deduction for all tuition after high school; an IRA you can save in and then
withdraw from tax free, as long as it's for education; and the largest increase in Pell Grant
scholarships for deserving students in 20 years.
With this package, no working family need ever pay a nickel of taxes on money they save
for college - and 1 ask you to pass it so every American who works hard can go to college.
11
�All our people must have the chance to leam new skills throughout then lives. Nearly
every American worker lives within driving distance of a community college, offering a path to a
better future. Government doesn't need to decide what kind of training they need; they can
decide for themselves - if they have the means. My G.l. Bill for Workers willfransformthe
confusing tangle of federal training programs into a single, simple skill grant that will go directly
into eligible workers' hands. For far too long, this bill has sat before you without action - and
you should pass it now.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness these powerful forces of
knowledge, science and technology to the service of all Americans.
This is the first State of the Union to be carried live over the Intemet. But we have only
begun to spread the benefits of the technology revolution to the lives of all our citizens.
Last year, I challenged our nation to connect every classroom and library to the Intemet
by the Year 2000 - so that for the first time, children in the poorest rural communities, inner city
schools, and well off suburbs will have access to the same universe of knowledge. We are doing
it, and giving them access at rates every school can afford.
This year, 1 challenge the private sector to help us connect every children's hospital to the
Internet as soon as possible, so a child in bed can stay in school and stay in touch with family and
friends.
12
�My plan increases ftinding to teach our children how to use computers by $225 million.
We will build the second generation of the Internet so our leading universities and national
laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000 times faster than today, to develop new medical
treatments, new sources of energy, and new ways of working together.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing our mission of discovery with the
Mars probes, the intemational space station, and the project to discover the origins of life.
And we must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. In the last year alone,
American scientists discovered the gene for breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and have
discovered dmgfreatmentsthat dramatically lengthen the lives of people with AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research has gone up nearly 50%. With these new
resources, the National Institutes of Health will now become the primary discovery engine for an
AIDS vaccine. Every year we move up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine, we will save 65,000
lives. If you approve this plan, scientists from business, universities and our national labs will be
able to work together so we can end the threat of AIDS in America.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger families.
In the new century, with new pressures on people in the way they work and live, we must
13
�help parents raise strong families and pass on their values to their children.
For four years, the Family and Medical Leave Law has helped millions of our people.
Now we should expand Family Leave so parents can take time off for parent teacher conferences
or a child's routine checkup. We should passflextimeso workers can choose to be paid for
overtime not only in income, but also with time off to be with their families.
For our families to be strong, we must continue, step-by-step, to give them access to
affordable, quality health care. My balanced budget will extend health coverage to five million
children - cutting in half the number of uninsured children in America. It will help all people
between jobs pay their premiums for up to six months. No child should be without a doctor just
because a parent is without a job.
And we must never lose sight of our ultimate goal: to find a way to cover the rest of the
40 million Americans who are in working families, who pay their taxes, and who Mill lack health
insurance. I don't think that's right, and I know you don't either. We have to find a way to
continue to work together until every American has access to the worid's best health care system.
Last year, we ended "drive-through deliveries," requiring that new mothers and their
babies get at least 48 hours of hospital care. This year, we must enact the bipartisan legislation
before you to end the dangerous and demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies.
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'37FEB4ftMl:i8
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105 th Congress, distinguished guests, my
fellow Americans:
Thank you 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 thankfiil for. With four years of growth, we have won back the
«
basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls declining, we are vrinning back our
basic optimism, the enduring faith of America that we can master any difficulty. With the Cold
War receding and global commerce at record levels, we are helping to win unrivaled peace and
prosperity all across the world.
My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we mustriseto 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, brilliant new careers, life-enhancing
technology ~ are ours to seize. That is our honor and our challenge. [We must be shapers of
events, not observers. The question before us is not what the future means for us, but what
1
Clinton Library Photocopy
�meaning we can give to the future.] But if we do not act, the moment will pass ~ and we will
lose the best possibilities of our future.
Tonight, we face no inuninent 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, by our states, by all ovir
people, to prepare America for the 21 st 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 communhies and
a safer environment; action to keep America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom
and prosperity. And above all, action to build a more perfect union here at home.
The spirit we bring to our work will determine its success. 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 let's get going.
First, we must move quickly to finish the unfinished business of our country — to
balance our budget, renew our democracy, finish the job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, we brought new economic growth by investing in our people,
expanding our exports, cutting our deficits, creating over 11 million new jobs. Now we must
2
�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.
In two 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 wdll balance the budget and build on the Vice
President's efforts to make our government work better, even as it costs less. It wdll balance the
budget and provide middle class tax relief to pa^ for education and health care, to help 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 unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced budget
amendment that could cripple our country in time of crisis later on, and force imwanted results
such as judges impounding Social Security checks or increasing taxes. We don't need an
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, so that these fundamental programs will be as strong for our children as they
3
�are for our parents./ca« 't read your writing on p. 4]
Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit ourselves, before the eyes
of America tonight, to enacting bipartisan campaignfinancereform.
Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan, have reached across
party lines to craft tough and fair campaign reform. [I ask them to stand.] 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 and all corporate sources ~
the large soft money contributions that both parties receive.
You know and I know that delay will mean the death reform. So let's set our own
deadline. Let's work together to write bipartisan campaignfinancereform into law, [and pass
McCain-Feingold] by the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy ~ July the 4"*.
There is a third piece of imfinished business: Over the last four years, we moved a record
two and a quarter million people off the welfare rolls. Then last year we enacted landmark
welfare reform, demanding that 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 must work, can work. Now we must act to
meet a new goal: two million more people off the welfare rolls by the Year 2000.
�Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that hire people off
welfare. Incentives for job placement firms and for states to create 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 commtmity non-profit, and every business: hire
someone off welfare. And I say especially to every employer in this country who has ever
criticized the old welfare system: You carmot blame the old system anymore. We have tom it
down. Now do your part. Give someone on welfare the chance to work.
If we all do that, we can end the permanent underclass by lifting it up into a growing
middle class.
Tonight, I am proud to annoimce 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 to hire people off welfare.
And we must join together to do something else too ~ something Republican and
Democratic govemors alike have asked us to do ~ to restore basic health, nutrition, 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.
�We passed welfare reform. We were riglit to do it. But no one can walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job.
Next, the greatest step of all ~ the high threshold to the future we now must cross and my number one priority as President for'the next four years -- is to ensure that
Americans have the best education in the world. Let's work together to meet these 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.
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals ~ $51 billion
dollars next year. But far more than money is required.
I have a plan, a Call to Action for American Education, with ten principles to which we
must commit ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must begin a national cmsade for education standards ~ not federal government
standards, but national standards representing what all of our students must know to succeed in
the knowledge economy of the 21st Century. Every state and every school must shape the
curriculum to reflect these standards, and train teachers to lift students up to meet them. To help
the schools to meet the standards and to measure their progress, we will lead an effort over the
next two years to develop national tests of student achievement.
�Tonight. I issue a challenge to the nation: Everv state should adopt high national
standards, and by 1999. every state should test every 4th grader in reading and everv 8th 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 to improve. And they
can help us to end social promotion. 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, along with my partner in this effort. Secretary of Education Dick Riley, I
visited schools in [tk] county in Northern Illinois, where 8th grade students from 20 school
distidcts, in a project they called "Fkst in the World," took the Third Intemational Math and
Science Study, called the TIMSS test - a test that reflects the worid-class standards our children
must meet for the new era. And those students in Illinois were tied for first in the world in
science, and came in second only to Singapore in math. Two of them, Kristin Tatmer, and Chris
Getsla are here tonight, with their teacher. Sue Winski. They prove that when we aim high and
challenge our students, they will be the best in the world.
The second point of my plan recognizes this simple tmth: to have the best schools, we
must have the best teachers. Most of us ~ certainly including myself - would not be here
7
�tonight without the help of such teachers. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina's
Govemor Jim Hunt and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked
hard to establish nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 400 of these master
teachers have been certified since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national
certification as master teachers. We should reward our best teachers, qiiickly and fairly remove
those few who don't measure up, and challenge ourfinestyoung people to consider teaching as a
career.
Third: we must do more to help all our children read. 40% of our 8 year olds cannot read
on their own. That's why we have just launched the America Reads initiative - to build a chizen
army of one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read independently by the end
of 3rd 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, and pledged that thousands of their work study students wdll
serve for one year as reading tutors.
This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal: create a system to use these
tutors to help your children read. And it's especially a challenge to our parents: Read with your
children every night.
•
That leads to the fourth part of my plan: We can't start teaching children too soon. My
budget expands Head Start to one million children by 2002.
8
�Yet what we are learning more and more now about very young children's emotional and
intellectual development teaches us we must start even earlier. Parents' quiet moments with their
children makes a big difference in their lives. The First Lady has spent years studying and
writing about this issue. She and I will convene a White House Conference on Early Leaming
and the Brain this Spring, to explore how parents and educators can best use these startling new
scientific discoveries. Then, in June, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will host their sixth
annual family conference. This one will focus on the importance of parents' involvement
throughout a child's education.
Fifth, every state should give parents the power to choose the right public school for their
children. Irmovation and competition will make* Our public schools better. And we must do
more to encourage parents and teachers to start charter schools, schools that set and meet the
highest standards, and survive only as long as they do. Our plan wdll help America create 3,000
of these charter schools by the next century ~ that's nearly seven tunes as many as there are
today ~ so that parents will have more choice in sending their children to the best public schools.
Sixth: character education must be taught in our schools. We must teach our children to
be good citizens, and continue to promote order ^and discipline, supporting communities that
introduce school uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove dismptive students
from the classroom, and have zero tolerance for guns and dmgs.
Seventh: we cannot expect our children tO raise themselves up in schools that are literally
9
�falling down. Traditionally, the federal government has played no role in school constmction.
But with the student population at an all time high, and record numbers of school buildings
falling into disrepair, this has become a serious national concern. My budget, therefore, includes
$5 billion to help communitiesfinance$20 billion in school constmction over the next foiuyears. [Moseley-Braun]
*
Eighth: We must make the 13th and 14th years of education — at least two years of
college ~ just as universal in America as a high school education is today, and open the doors of
college to all..
To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Govemor Zell Miller's
pioneering program in Georgia: two 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. This plan wdll give most families the
ability to pay no taxes on money saved for college tuition. I ask you to pass it — to give every
American who works hard the chance to go to college.
Ninth: In the 21st Century, we must expand the frontiers of leaming across a lifetime.
All our people, of whatever age, must have the chance to leam new skills. Most American
workers live near a community college. The roads that take them there can be paths to a better
future. My G.I. Bill for Workers will transform the confiising tangle of federal training programs
10
\
�into a simple skill grant that will go directiy into eligible workers' hands. For too long, this bill
has sat before you without action ~ and I ask you to pass it now. Let's give more of our workers
the chance to leam what they need, to cam a better life.
Tenth: we must harness the Information Age to make our schools equal to the 21
Century. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to the Intemet
by the year 2000, so that, for the first time in history, a child in the poorest inner city school, the
most isolated rural town, the most comfortable suburb, wdll have the same access to the same
universe of knowledge. I ask your support to complete this historic mission.
That is my plan ~ a Call to Action for American Education.
It reflects a basic insight: One of the greatest sources of our national strength throughout
the 20'*" Century has been a bipartisan foreign policy; politics stopped at the water's edge. Now I
ask you ~ and I ask the govemors from tiie many states who have joined us here tonight ~ and
teachers, parents and citizens all across America ~ for a new nonpartisan commitment to
education ~ because education is the national security issue of our ftiture ~ and politics should
stop at the classroom door.
We have the strongest economy and the strongest democracy in the worid. If we want
tomorrow's children to enjoy these blessings 50 years from now, we dare not fall prey to inaction
and miss this moment of opportunity in education.
11
�I pledge to take tiiis Call to Action to the country, so that together, we can make
American education, like America itself, the envy of the world.
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 over the Intemet. But we have only begim
to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that should be the modem birthright of every
citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. I challenge the private sector
to help us connect every children's hospital to the Intemet as soon as possible, so a child in bed
can stay in touch with school, family andfidends.A sick child should not be a child alone.
We will build the second generation of the Intemet so our leading universities and
national laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000 times faster than today, to develop new
medical treatments, new sources of energy, and new ways of working together.
But we caimot stop there. As the Intemet 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 die next decade; that must be our goal.
12
�We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars probes, the
intemational 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. In the last year alone, American scientists
discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication that stops a stroke in
progress and begins to reverse its effects - and we have discovered treatments that dramatically
lengthen the lives of people with HIV and AIDS. •
Since I took office, fiinding for AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health has
increased dramatically, to $1.5 billion next year. With these new resources, NIH wdll now
become the primary discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine. And every year we move up the
discovery of an AIDS vaccine, we can save 3 million lives around the world. If you approve this
budget, scientists from the private sector, universities, and our national labs wdll be able to work
together more efficiently so that we can end the threat of AIDS.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger families and help
parents pass on their values to their children.
•
With new pressures on people in the way they work and live, we should expand the
Family and Medical Leave Law so workers can take time off for teacher conferences and a
child's medical checkup. Now we should passflextimeso workers can choose to be paid for
[3
�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. 40 million Americans ~ most of them in working, taxpaying families, still lack health
insurance.
10 million children lack health insurance ~ 80% of them have working parents who pay
taxes. That is wrong. My balanced budget will extend health coverage to up to five million of
those children. It will help all working Americans by ensuring 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 provides support for respite care for the many families taking care of
loved-ones afflicted with Alzheimers ~ and for the first time, it would pay for annual
mammograms.
Just as we ended drive through deliveries of babies last year, we must now end the
[dangerous and demeaningjpractice of^endi^g)women home from the hospital only hours after a
mastectomy. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at thij
K
practice spurred a national movement and inspired this legislation. We thank her for her efforts
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by 50%. Now, we
14
�should go further and make it a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an attempt to flee
from his or her most sacred obligations.
We must protect our children by standing by our action to ban the advertising and
•
marketing of cigarettes that endangers their lives.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger communities.
Our growing economy has helped revive poor urban and rural neighborhoods. But we
have more to do, to empower them to create the conditions in which families can flourish, and to
create jobs through investment by business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have already brought hope
to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate has been cut in half in four years. We
should expand the network of commimity development banks. We should restore contaminated
urban land and buildings to productive use.
And together, we must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment approach ~
including private sector tax incentives ~ to renew this great capital city, so that Washington,
D.C. is a great place to live, and is once again the proud face America shows to the world.
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four years, we cleaned
15
�up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous twelve. Now we should clean up 500 more
of the worst toxic waste sites, so our children grow up next to parks, not poison. We should pass
my proposal to make big polluters live by this simple mle: If you pollute our environment, you
pay to clean it up.
In the last four years, we strengthened the nation's safe food and clean water laws. We
protected some of America's rarest, most beautifiil land in Utah's Red Rocks region, created
three new national parks in the California desert, and began to protect Florida's Everglades. Now
we must be as vigilant with ourriversas we are with our land. Tonight, I announce that this year
I will designate 10 American Heritage Rivers, and help communities develop their waterfronts
and clean up pollution in theirrivers,proving once again that we can grow the economy as we
protect the environment.
And we must also protect our global environment, working to ban the worst toxic
chemicals and to reduce greenhouse gasses that challenge our health as they change our climate.
Next, we must press our fight against crime and violence. Serious crime has dropped five
years in a row. The key has been community policing ~ and we must finish the job of putting
100,000 community police on our streets. We should pass the Victims' Rights Amendment to
the Constitution. And I ask you to join me in mounting a firll scale assault on juvenile crime,
with legislation that: declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and tougher penalties; that
extends the Brady Bill so violent teenage criminals will not be able to buy handguns; that
16
�requires child safety locks on handguns to prevent unauthorized use; and helps keep our schools
open after dark, on weekends, and in the summer, so young people have someplace to go and
something to say yes to.
My balanced budget includes the largest'anti-dmg effort ever: fo stop dmgs at their
source, punish those who push them, and steer young people away from them.
Because so many of our yoimg children do not have what they need to grow and leam in
their homes, schools and neighborhoods, the rest of us must do more. That is why President
Bush, General Colin Powell, and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros wdll join Vice
President Gore and me to lead the Presidents's Summit of Service in Philadelphia in April. We
intend to mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Our national service
program, Americorps, has already helped 70,000 young people work their way through college
as they serve America. It is an American responsibility, which all Americans should embrace in
their daily lives.
I'd like to make one last point about our national community. Our economy is measured
in numbers and statistics. But the enduring worth of our nation lies in our values and our soaring
spirit. So instead of cutting back on our modest efforts to support the arts and humanities, we
should stand by them, and challenge our artists and writers, our museums and our theaters, to
join with all Americans to make the Year 2000 a national celebration of the American spirit in
every community ~ a celebration of our culture in the century that has passed, and in the new one
17
�to come, so that we can remain the world's beacon of liberty and 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 lecf 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 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.
Our first task is to help build, for the first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When
Europe is stable, prosperous and at peace, America is more secure.
We must expand NATO by 1999, so countries that were once our adversaries can become
*
our allies. At the special NATO siunmit this summer, that is what we will do. In addition, we
18
�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 theirfiiturenot 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 the West. Our security demands it:
Americans have fought three wars in Asia 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 Asian Pacific community of cooperation, not
conflict. But we must not let our progress 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 fimd our share of the agreement under which North Korea must
continue tofreeze— and then dismantle ~ its nuclear weapons program.
We must pursue a deeper dialogue 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 with China is the best way to work on common challenges like
ending nuclear testing ~ and to deal frankly with fimdamental differences like human rights.
19
�Third, the American people must prosper in the global economy. We have made it our
mission to tear down trade barriers abroad, so that we can create good jobs at home, and to
promote prosperity and freedom around the worid. 1 am proud to tell you 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, the two
fastest growing regions on earth - or be left behind as these emerging economies forge new ties
with other nations. That is why we need authority now to conclude trade agreements that open
markets to our goods and services even as we preserve our values.
*
We cannot shrink from the challenge of the global economy. We have the best workers
and the best products. Give Americans the opportunity of an open market, and we can out
compete anyone in the world.
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, three fiill years ahead of schedule, with a half a billion dollars profit for us. And today
our exports to Mexico are at an all time high.
The events of the last few years prove that if we can link this entire hemisphere in a
network of open and fair trade, it wdll not only increase our prosperity, it will advance the cause
of freedom and democracy.
20
�Fourth, America must continue to be an jinrelenting force for peace - from the Middle
East to H a i t i . . . from Northern Ireland to Africa. Taking reasonablerisksfor peace keeps us
from being drawn into far more costly conflicts later.
Witii American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now, the habits of peace
must take hold. The new NATO force will allow reconstmction and reconciliation to accelerate.
Tonight, I ask Congress to continue its strong support for ourti-oopsthere. They are doing a
remarkable job for America ~ and America must do right by them.
Fifth, we must sti-ongly move against new threats to our security: weapons of mass
destiuction... terrorism . . , intemational crime and dmgs. In the past four years, we agreed to
ban nuclear testing; with Russia, we dramatically cut our nuclear arsenals, and stopped targeting
each others citizens. We are acting toridthe worid of landmines, and prevent nuclear materials
from falling into the wrong hands. We are working with other nations, with renewed intensity, to
stop terrorists and dmg traffickers before tiiey act, and to hold them fiilly accountable if they do.
Now, we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention. It wiU make our troops safer from chemical attack. It wdll help us to fight terrorism.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by Republican and Democratic
administrations alike ~ and already approved by 68 nations. Together, we must make the
Chemical Weapons Convention law, so that we can begin to outlaw poison gas from this earth.
21
�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 and we must take good care of our men and women in uniform.
We must also renew our commitment to America's diplomacy ~ and pay our debts and
dues to intemationalfinancialinstitutions such as the Worid 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
intemational affairs spending today is just one percent of the federal budget - a smallfractionof
what America invested to choose engagement over escapism at the start of the Cold War. I f
America is to continue to lead the worid, we here who lead America simply must find the will
and pay our way.
A farsighted America moved the worid to a better place over these last fifty years. And it
can do so for another fifty years. But the words of a shortsighted America would soon fall on
deaf ears all around the world.
Almost exactly fifty years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War, President Harry
Tmman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon our country to meet its
responsibilities of leadership. "If we falter," he wamed, "we may endanger the peace of the
worid ~ and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation." That Congress, led by
22
�Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered President Tmman's call. Together, they
made the commitments that strengthened our country for fifty 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 fifty years.
In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out of the power of
our example, out of our ability to remain strong as one America.
All over the world, people are being tom astmder by racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts
that fiiel 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 ftieled by Europeans. We have grown into an
experiment in democratic diversity fueled by openness and promise.
My fellow Americans, we must never believe that this diversity is a weakness ~ it is our
greatest strength. For people on every continent can look to us and see the reflection of their
own greatness, as long as we give all of our citizens, whatever their background, an opportunity
to achieve their greatness.
23
�We have not done that yet. Evidence of lingering division is all around us. We see it
every day in the sullen, hopeless faces wom by too many of our young people. Too often, we see
it in the corridors of power, in the schoolyards, in.the streets of our cities. We see it in bumedout houses of worship and bombed-out clinics. Too many people still seek to exploit our
differences. We must respect our differences, and each other. And we'must never hate. We must
never, ever hate.
A few days before my second inauguration, one of America's best known pastors. Rev.
Robert Schuller, suggested I read Isaiah 58:12. 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. We may not all share a common past, but surely we share
a common future.
I want to say a word about two other Americans whose lives show us the way to that
common ftiture. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, [a proud American whose
family came from Mexico.] He was only 51 years old. He eamed the Silver Star, the Bronze
Star and the Purple Heart fighting in Vietnam, and he went on to serve Texas and America
fighting for our fiiture in this chamber. We are honored to have his mother, Lillie Tejeda, with us
tonight.
24
�Gary Locke, [a proud American whose family came from China], is the newly elected
Govemor of Washington, the son of two of the millions of Asian American immigrants who
have strengthened America with their hard work, family values, and good citizenship.
Rev. Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Govemor Locke, along with Kristin Tatmer, Chris
Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen Zarfos ~ Americans from different roots, whose lives reflect
our shared values and the best of what we can become when we are one America.
«
Building that one America is our most important mission, "the foundation of many
generations," of every other strength we must build fortiienew century. Money cannot buy it.
Power cannot compel it. Technology cannot create it. It must rise from the human spirit.
America is far more than a place. It is an idea, tiie most powerfiil idea in the history of
nations. We are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. We don't
have a moment to waste. The children bom tonight wdll have almost no memory of the 20th
Century. Everything they will know of America, .they will know only through the work we do
now to build a new century.
Tomorrow morning,tiierewill 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 our land of new promise. My
fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize the days £ind the century.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
25
�Draft 2/3/97 2:15pm
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests:
I come before you tonight with a plan of action and a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime history -- to prepare our people for the next century.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won back the basic
strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls all declining, we are winning back our
basic optimism, the enduring faith of America that we can master any difficulty. We won the
Cold War, and now we are helping to bring unrivaled peace and prosperity across the worid.
It would be easy to be complacent, to rest at this moment. But we are not a people made
for complacency. America must not have won the struggles of the past only to lose this moment
of opportunity.
Though we face no threat to our existence, we do have an enemy: the enemy of our time
is inaction. It is the enemy within. The new promise of the global economy, the Information
Age, new careers, and life-enhancing technology are ours to seize for our people. But if we do
not choose action, the chance will slip from our grasp or even be turned to our disadvantage in
this vigorous new era of competition.
[Our moment of opportunity is fleeting. We must be shapers of events, not observers.
Our task is not to ask what the future means for us, but what meaning we can give to the future.]
My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we mustriseto the
decisive moment and make it even stronger. This is our honor and our challenge. We can make
a nation and a world better than we have ever known. But if we do not act, the moment will pass
— and we will lose the best possibilities of our future.
So tonight, I issue a call to action -- by this Congress, by our states, by all our people, to
prepare America for the 21st Century. Action to keep our economy and democracy strong and
working for all our people; action to strengthen education and harness the forces of technology
and science; to build stronger families and stronger communities and a safer environment; to
keep America the worid's strongest force for peace, freedom and prosperity. And above all,
action to build a stronger, more perfect union here at home.
The spirit we bring to our work will determine its success. The people of this nation
�elected us all. They want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all in the same boat...
gave us all oars ... and told us to row.
First we must move quickly to finish the unfinished business of our country -balancing our budget, renewing our democracy, and finishing the job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, we have brought new economic growth by investing in our
people, expanding exports, cutting our deficit and creating 11 million new jobs. 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.
In two days, 1 will propo.se a detailed plan to balance the budget by the Year 2000.
This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people so they can make the most of
their lives, protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. It will balance the
budget and build on the Vice President's work to make this 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 raise a child, and 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. It is unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment
that could cripple our country in time of crisis and force unthinkable results such as judges
impounding Social Security checks or increasing taxes. [I ask this Congress to join me in keeping
Social Security out of any .such amendment.] We don't need an amendment -- we need action.
Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now, and then, for the long-term
health of our society, agree to a bipartisan process to safeguard Social Security and reform
Medicare so these fundamental programs will be as strong for our children as they are for our
parents.
Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit ourselves tonight, before
the eyes of America, to enacting bipartisan campaignfinancereform.
Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan have reached across
party lines to craft tough and fair campaign reform. [I ask them to stand.] Their proposal would
curb spending, reduce the role of special interests, create a level playing field between
challengers and incumbents and ban the large soft money contributions that both parties receive.
It would ban contributions from foreign owned companies and noncitizens.
Delay will mean the death of reform. So let's set our own deadline. Let's work together
to write campaignfinancereform into law, [and pass McCain-Feingold-Shays-Meehan], by the
�day we celebrate the birth of our democracy - July 4"'.
There is a third piece of unfinished business: Over the last four years, we moved a record
two and a quarter million people off the welfare rolls. La.st year we enacted landmark welfare
reform, demanding that 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 people who must work, can work. [Now we must act to meet a new
goal: two million more people from welfare to work by 2000.]
Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that hire people off
welfare. Incentives for job placement firms and for states that create jobs for welfare recipients.
Training, transportation and childcare to help people go to work.
I challenge every state: turn welfare checks into private sector paychecks. I challenge
every religious congregation, every community non-profit, and especially every business: hire
someone off welfare. I say to every employer in this country who ever criticized the old welfare
system: You can't blame the old system anymore. We have torn it down. Now do your part.
Give someone on welfare the chance to work. If we all do that, we can solve this problem once
and for all.
Tonight, I am proud to announce that five major corporations - Sprint, Monsanto, UPS,
Burger King, and United Airlines - will be the first to join with us in a new national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And we must join together to do something else - something Republican and Democratic
governors alike have asked - restore basic health, nutrition, and disability benefits to legal
immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law. To do otherwise, is unworthy of a
nation of immigrants.
We passed welfare reform. 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.
Then, the greatest step of all -- the high threshold to the future that we must now
cross ~ and my number one priority as President for the next four years -- is to ensure that
Americans have the best education in the world. Let's work together to meet these 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.
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 for American Education [tk], based on ten principles, to which we must
�commit ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must set rigorous national standards for education, and help our children to
reach them. We must finally say: Fourth graders must be able to read. Eighth graders must be
able to do algebra. All our children must master the basics.
To do this, we must begin a national crusade for standards — not federal government
standards, but national standards representing what students must know to succeed in the
knowledge economy of the 21st Century. Every state and every school must shape the
curriculum to reflect these standards, and train teachers to lift our students up to them. To help
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an effort over the next two
years to develop national tests for student achievement.
Tonight. 1 issue a national challenge: Every state should adopt high national standards,
and by 1999. every slate should test every 4th grader in reading and every 8th grader in math to
make sure these standards are met.
Raising standards will not be easy. Some of our children will not be able to meet them at
first. The point is not to put them down, but lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs
help, what changes in teaching to make, and which .schools to improve. And they can help us
end social promotion, because no child should move from grade school to junior high, or junior
high to high school until he or she knows the basics.
These tests are far more than tests of our children. This is a test of our nation, of our will
to meet the challenges of the global economy and the Information Age.
Last week, along with my strong partner in this effort, Secretary of Education Richard
Riley, I visited schools outside Chicago, where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in a
\
project they called "First in the World," took the Third International Math and Science Study, the
''^V TIMSS test — a test that reflects the world-class standards our children must meet for the new
era. Those Illinois students tied for first in the world in science, and second in math. Two of
them are here tonight, with their teacher, [introduce Kristin Tanner, and Chris Getsla; teacher:
Sue Winski] When we aim high and challenge our students, they will be the best in the world.
The second principle of my Plan recognizes this simple truth: to have the best schools, we
must have the best teachers. Most of us — including myself - would not be here tonight without
the help of such teachers. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina Governor Jim Hunt
and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked hard to establish
nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 400 of these master teachers have
been certified since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification[^e
should reward our best teachers, quickly and fairly remove those who don't measure up, and
challenge our finest young people to consider teaching as a career. J
�Third: we must do more to help all our children read. 40% of our 8 year olds cannot read
on their own. We have just launched the America Reads initiative - a critical national effort to
build a citizen army of one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read
independently by 3rd 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 proud to
announce that 60 college presidents have answered my call, and pledged that tens of thousands of
their work study students will serve one year as reading tutors.
This is a challenge to every teacher and every principal: create a program to train and use
these tutors to help your children read. This is especially a challenge to parents: Read to your
children every night.
And that leads us to the fourth part of my plan: We can't start teaching our children too
early. We are learning more and more about young children's emotional and intellectual
development. Parents small moments with their children make a big difference throughout their
lives. Parents are children's first teachers, and every home must be a place of learning. The First
Lady has spent years studying and writing about this issue. And I am pleased to announce that
she and I will convene a White Hou.se Conference on Early Learning and the Brain this Spring, to
[help us learn more about the ways very young children learn]. We already know what a
difference good preschool can make, and that's why my plan expands Head Start to one million
children by 2002.
The fifth part of my plan calls on every parent to be involved in their children's
education, and calls on every state to give parents the power to choose the right public school for
them. Innovation and competition will make our public schools better. And we must do more to
encourage teachers and parents to start charter schools that set and meet the highest standards,
and survive only as long as they do. My balanced budget doubles the funding to help start
charter schools, so by in the new century, there will be 3,000 charter schools — nearly seven
times as many as today. We want parents to be more involved in their children's education — not
just choosing schools, but every step of the way, meeting their teachers, helping with homework.
In June, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will host their sixth annual family conference to talk
about parents and learning.
Sixth: we must make sure character education is a part of every curriculum. We should
teach our children how to be good citizens, and 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.
Seventh: we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally
falling down. Traditionally, the federal budget has played no role in school constmction. But
with the student population at record levels, and record numbers of school buildings in disrepair,
this has become a serious national concern. My budget includes $5 billion to help communities
finance $20 billion in school construction over the next four years. [Moseley-Braun]
�Eighth: In the 21st Century, we must expand the frontiers of learning across a lifetime.
We must make the 13th and 14th years of education ~ at least two years of college — as universal
in America as high school is today.
To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Governor Zell Miller's
HOPE scholarship in Georgia: two years of a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition, enough to pay
for the typical community college. I propose a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for all
tuition after high school; an expanded LRA you can withdraw from tax free for education; and the
largest increase in Pell Grant scholarships for deserving students in 20 years.
This plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on money saved for college
tuition. I ask you to pass it ~ to give every American who works hard the chance to go to
college.
Ninth: all our people must have the chance to learn new skills. Most American workers
live near a community college. The roads that take them there can be paths to a better future.
My G.I. Bill for Workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a
single, simple skill grant that will go directly into eligible workers' hands. For far too long, this
bill has sat before you without action — and 1 ask you to pass it now.
Tenth: we must harness the Information Age to make our schools worthy of the 21"
Century. 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 history, a child in the poorest inner city, the most
isolated rural town, the most comfortable suburb, will all have access to the same universe of
knowledge. I ask your support to complete this historic mission.
One of the greatest sources of our national strength in the 20"' century was a bipartisan
foreign policy; politics stopped at the water's edge. I ask you — and I ask the governors from the
many states who have joined us here tonight — for a new bipartisan commitment to education —
because education is the national security of our future — and politics should stop at the
classroom door.
But this is far more than a challenge to government — no matter what the level. All
Americans must enlist in this crusade for tomorrow's children — businesspeople, teachers and,
especially, parents. Tonight we have the strongest economy and the strongest democracy in the
world. To keep them for the next fifty years, we must make American education, like America
itself, the envy of the world.
Tonight, I pledge to take this Plan for American Education to the country. If we work
together, we can get this done.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful forces of
, science and technology to benefit aU Americans.
�This is the first State of the Union carried live over the Internet. But we have only begun
to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that should be the modern birthright of every
citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. I challenge the private sector A
to help us connect every children's hospital to the Internet as soon as possible, so a child in bed
can stay in touch with school, family and friends.
We will build the second generation of the Internet so our leading universities and
national laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000timesfaster than today, to develop new
medical treatments, new sources of energy, and 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 - will no longer be a dream
but a necessity. Over the next decade, that must be our goal.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing our mission of discovery with the
Mars probes, the international space station, and the project to discover the origins of life, all of
which will have practical applications here on Earth.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. In the last year alone,
American scientists discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication
that stops a stroke in progress and begins to reverse its effects - and we have discovered
treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with AIDS.
V
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health has
gone up 40%, to [$1.5 billion] next year. With these new resources, NIH will now become the
primary discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine. Every year we move up the discovery of an
AIDS vaccine, we will save [3 million] lives each year around the world. If you approve this
plan, scientists from business, universities and our national labs will be able to work together
more efficiently so we can end the threat of AIDS.
To prepare America for the 21st Century,^ith new pressures on people in the way
they work and live'^e must build stronger families and help parents pass on their values to
their children.
iNow we should expand the Family and Medical Leave Law so workers can take time off
for teacher conferences or a child's 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.
�We must find a way to work together to cover the 40 million Americans — most in
working, taxpaying families, who .still lack health insurance.
Today, 10 million American children lack health insurance ~ 80% of them have working
parents who pay taxes. This is unacceptable. My balanced budget will extend health coverage to
up to five million children. It will help all working Americans by ensuring 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 helps the many families taking care of loved-ones afflicted with
Alzheimers - and for the first time, we would pay for annual mammograms.
I
Just as we ended drive through deliveries last year, we must end the dangerous and
demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a
Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired
this legislation. Thank you, Dr. Zarfos.
We must protect our children by standing by our action to ban cigarette ads and marketing
that endangers their lives.
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by 50%. Now, we
should make it a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an attempt to flee from his or her
most sacred obligations.
We must build stronger communities to prepare America for the 21st Century.
Our strong and growing economy has helped revive many urban areas, but we still have
more to do. Our approach is to empower poor urban and rural communities to create the
conditions in which families can flourish, and to create jobs through investment by business and
loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have already brought hope
to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate has been cut in half in four years. We
should expand the network of community development banks. We should enact the brownfields
initiative to restore contaminated urban land and buildings to productive use.
And we, together, must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment approach —
including private sector tax incentives — to renew this great capital city, so that Washington, D.C.
is once again the proud face America shows the world.
I
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four years, we cleaned
up as many toxic waste sites as in the previous twelve; we cut the amount of toxic pollution in
half; we protected the 1.7 million acres of Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante.
�Draft 2/2/97 9:45pm
i
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests:
1 come before you tonight with a plan of action and a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime history ~ to prepare our people for the next century and a global economic revolution.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won back the basic
strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls all declining, we are winning back our
basic optimism, the enduring faith of America that we can master any difficulty. We won the
Cold War, and now we are helping to bring unrivaled peace and prosperity across the world.
It would be easy to be complacent, to rest at this moment. But we are not a people made
for complacency. We must not win the stmggles of the past only to lose this moment of
opportunity.
Though we face no enemy bent on destroying us, the enemy of our time is inaction. It is
the enemy within. The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age, new careers,
and life-enhancing technology are ours to seize for our people. But if we do not act, the chance
will slip from our grasp or even be tumed to our disadvantage in this vigorous new era of
competition.
�Our moment of opportunity is fleeting. We must be shapers of events, not observers.
Our task is not to ask what the fiiture means for us, but what meaning we can give to the future.
My fellow Americans, the State of our Union is strong, but the opportunity before us is
even stronger. So tonight, I issue a call to action ~ a call to this Congress, to our states, to all our
people to welcome a future that will be what we make of it. This call to action summons us to
work for stronger education and hamess the forces of technology and science; to build stronger
families and stionger communities; to keep America the world's strongest force for peace,
freedom and prosperity. And above all, to build a stronger, more perfect union here at home.
The spirit with which we approach our work will determine its success. The people of
this nation elected us all. They want us to be partners, not partisans. What matters is not the
applause when we arrive, but the judgment when we leave.
Here is what I believe we, together, must do to prepare America for the 21st
Century:
First we must move quickly to finish the unfinished business of our country ~
balancing our budget, renewing our democracy, andfinishingthe job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, we have brought new economic growth by investing in our
people, expanding exports, cutting our deficit and creating 11 million new jobs. 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.
In two days, I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by the Year 2000.
This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people so they can make the most of
their lives, protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. It will balance the
budget and build on the Vice President's work to make this govemment 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 raise a child, and 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. It is unnecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment
that could cripple our country in time of crisis and force unthinkable results such as judges
impounding Social Security checks or increasing taxes. We don't need an amendment ~ we need
action.
Whatever our differences, we should agree that for the long-term health of our society, we
must act together, in a bipartisan process, to safeguard Social Security and reform Medicare so
these fundamental programs will be as strong for our children as they are for our parents.
3
�The second piece of unfinished business relates not to our economy, but to our democracy
itself Tonight, before the eyes of America, we must commit ourselves to enacting bipartisan
campaign finance reform.
Senator McCain and Senator Feingold, Representative Shays and Representative Meehan
have reached across party lines to craft tough and fair campaign reform. Their proposal would
curb spending, reduce the role of special interests, ban contributions from foreign owned
companies and noncitizens, create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents and
ban the large soft money contributions that both parties receive.
Delay will mean the death of reform. So let's set our own deadline. Let's work together
to write campaign finance reform into the law, by the day we celebrate the birth of our
democracy ~ July 4"".
There is a third piece of unfinished business for us: Last year we enacted landmark
welfare reform, demanding that 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 people who must work, c ^ work. Only then can the permanent
underclass lift themselves into our growing middle class.
Over the last four years, we moved a record two and a quarter million people off the
welfare rolls. Now we must act to meet a new goal ~ one million more people moving from the
�dependence of welfare to the dignity of work by the Year 2000.
Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that hire people off
welfare. Incentives for job placement firms and for states that create jobs for welfare recipients.
Transportation and childcare to help people go to work.
I challenge every state: tum welfare checks into private sector paychecks. I challenge
every religious congregation, every community non-profit, and especially every business: hire
someone off welfare. I say to every employer in this country who ever criticized the old welfare
system: You can't blame the old system anymore. We have tom it down. Now do your part.
Give someone on welfare the chance to work. If we all do that, we can solve this problem once
and for all.
Tonight, I am proud to announce that five major corporations ~ Sprint, Monsanto, UPS,
Burger King, and United Airlines — will be the first to join with us in a new national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And we must join together to do something else ~ something that Republican and
Democratic govemors alike have asked — restore basic health, nutrition, and disability benefits to
legal immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law. To do otherwise, is unworthy of a
nation of immigrants.
�We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one should walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job.
Then, the greatest step of all ~ the high threshold to the future that we must now
cross ~ and my number one priority as President for the next four years ~ is to ensure that
Americans have the best education in the world. Let's work together to meet these 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.
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 for American Education [tk], based on ten principles, to which we must
commit ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must set rigorous national standards for education, and help our children to
reach them. We must finally say: Fourth graders must be able to read, and read well. Eighth
graders must be able to do algebra. All our children must master the basics.
To do this, we must begin a national cmsade for standards ~ not federal govemment
standards, but national standards representing what students must know to succeed in the
�project they called "First in the World," took the Third International Math and Science Study, the
TIMSS test ~ a test that reflects the world-class standards our children must meet for the new
era. Those Illinois students tied for first in the world in science, and second in math. Two of
them are here tonight, with their teacher, [introduce Kristin Tanner, and Chris Getsla; teacher:
Sue Winski] When we aim high and challenge our students, they will be the best in the world.
The second principle of my Plan recognizes this simple tmth: to have the best schools, we
must have the best teachers. Most of us ~ including myself ~ would not be here tonight without
the help of such teachers. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina Govemor Jim Hunt
and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked hard to establish
nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 400 of these master teachers have
been certified since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification. We
should reward our best teachers, quickly and fairly remove those who don't measure up, and
challenge our finest young people to consider teaching as a career.
The third part of my plan calls on every state to let parents choose the right public school
for their children. Innovation and competition will make our public schools better. Beyond
public school choice, we must do more to encourage teachers and parents to start charter schools
that set and meet the highest standards, and survive only as long as they do. My balanced budget
doubles the funding to help start charter schools, so by in the new century, there will be 3,000
charter schools ~ nearly seven times as many as today. We want parents to be more involved in
their children's education ~ not just choosing schools, but every step of the way, meeting their
8
�teachers, helping with homework. This spring, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will host their
sixth annual family conference to talk about parents and leaming.
Fourth: we must make sure character education is a part of every curriculum. We carmot
raise standards if we fail to teach our children how to be good citizens. We should continue to
promote order and discipline, supporting communities that introduce school uniforms, impose
curfews, enforce tmancy laws, remove dismptive students from the classroom, and have zero
tolerance for guns and drugs.
Fifth: we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally
falling down. Traditionally, the federal budget has played no role in school constmction. But
with the student population at record levels, and record numbers of school buildings in disrepair,
this has become a serious national concern. My budget includes $5 billion to help commimities
finance $20 billion in school constmction over the next four years. [Moseley-Braun]
Sixth: we must do more to help all our children read. 40% of our 8 year olds cannot read
on their own. We have just launched the America Reads initiative ~ a critical national effort to
build a citizen army of one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read
independently by 3rd 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 proud to
announce that 60 college presidents have answered my call, and pledged that tens of thousands of
their work study students will serve one year as reading tutors.
9
�This is a challenge to every teacher and every principal: create a program to train and use
these tutors to help your children read. This is especially a challenge to parents: Read to your
children every night. [800 number]
And that leads us to the seventh part of my plan: We can't start teaching our children too
early. We are leaming more and more about young children's emotional and intellectual
development. Parents small moments with their children make a big difference throughout their
lives. Parents are children's first teachers, and every home must be a place of leaming. The First
Lady has spent years studying and writing about this issue. And I am pleased to armounce that
she and I will convene a White House Conference on Early Leaming and the Brain this Spring, to
[help us leam more about the ways very young children learn]. We already know what a
difference good preschool can make, and that's why my plan expands Head Start to one million
children by 2002.
Eighth: In the 21st Century, we must expand thefrontiersof leaming across a lifetime.
We must make the 13th and 14th years of education ~ at least two years of college ~ as universal
in America as high school is today.
To do that, 1 propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Govemor Zell Miller's
HOPE scholarship in Georgia: two years of a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition, enough to pay
for the typical community college. I 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
10
�largest increase in Pell Grant scholarships for deserving students in 20 years.
This plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on money saved for college
tuition. I ask you to pass it ~ to give every American who works hard the chance to go to
college.
Ninth: all our people must have the chance to leam new skills. Most American workers
live near a community college. The roads that take them there can be paths to a better future.
Government doesn't need to decide what kind of training workers need; they can decide for
themselves. My G.I. Bill for Workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal training
programs into a single, simple skill grant that will go directly into eligible workers' hands. For
far too long, this bill has sat before you without action ~ and I ask you to pass it now.
Tenth: we must hamess the Information Age to make our schools worthy of the 2P'
Century. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to the Intemet
by the year 2000, so that, for the first time in history, a child in the poorest inner city, the most
isolated rural town, the most comfortable suburb, will all have access to the same universe of
knowledge. I ask your support to complete this historic mission.
One of the greatest sources of our national strength in the 20* century was a bipartisan
foreign policy; politics stopped at the water's edge. I ask you ~ and I ask the govemors from the
many states who have joined us here tonight ~ for a new bipartisan commitment to education —
11
�because education is the national security of our future — and politics should stop at the
classroom door.
Tonight, I pledge to take this Plan for American Education to the country. All Americans
must enlist in this cmsade for tomorrow's children.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must harness the powerful forces of
knowledge, science and technology to benefit aU Americans.
This is the first State of the Union carried live over the Intemet. But we have only begun
to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that should be the modern birthright of every
citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the begirming. I challenge the private sector
to help us connect every children's hospital to the Intemet as soon as possible, so a child in bed
can stay in touch with school, family and friends.
We will build the second generation of the Internet so our leading universities and
national laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000 times faster than today, to develop new
medical treatments, new sources of energy, and new ways of working together.
But we cannot stop there. As the Intemet becomes our new town square, a computer in
12
�every home — a teacher of all subjects, a connection to all cultures ~ will no longer be a dream,
but a necessity. Over the next decade, that must be our goal.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing our mission of discovery with the
Mars probes, the international space station, and the project to discover the origins of life, all of
which will have practical applications here on Earth.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. In the last year alone,
American scientists discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication
that stops a stroke in progress and begins to reverse its effects ~ and we have discovered
treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health has
gone up 40%, to [$1.5 billion] next year. With these new resources, NIH will now become the
primary discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine. Every year we move up the discovery of an
AIDS vaccine, we will save millions of lives each year around thfc world. If you approve this
plan, scientists from business, universities and our national labs will be able to work together so
we can end the threat of AIDS.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, with new pressures on people in the way
they work and live, we must build stronger families and help parents pass on their values to
their children.
13
�For four years, the Family and Medical Leave Law has done that for millions of our
people. Now we should expand Family Leave so workers can take time off for teacher
conferences or a child's checkup. We should passflextimeso workers can choose to be paid for
overtime in income or with time off to be with their families.
We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to affordable, quality health
care.
We must find a way to work together to cover the 40 million Americans ~ most in
working, taxpaying families, who still lack health insurance.
My balanced budget will extend health coverage to five million children ~ cutting in half
the number of uninsured children in America. It will help all working Americans by ensuring
that people who temporarily lose their jobs don't lose their health insurance. No child should be
without a doctor just because a parent is without a job.
My Medicare plan helps millions of families taking care of loved-ones afflicted with
Alzheimers — and for the first time, we would pay for annual mammograms.
Just as we ended drive through deliveries last year, we must end the dangerous and
demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a
14
�Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired
this legislation. Thank you. Dr. Zarfos.
We must protect our children by standing by our action to ban cigarette ads and marketing
that endangers their lives.
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by 50%. But we can do
more. We should make it a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an attempt to flee from his
or her most sacred obligations.
We must build stronger communities to prepare America for the 21st Century.
Our strong and growing economy has helped revive many urban areas, but we still have
more to do. Our approach to renewing poor urban and mral communities is to empower them to
create the conditions in which families can flourish, and to create jobs through investment by
business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have already brought hope
to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate has been cut in half in four years. We
should expand the network of community development banks. We should enact the brownfields
initiative to restore contaminated urban land and buildings to productive use.
15
�And we, together, must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment approach —
including private sector tax incentives ~ to renew this great capital city, so that Washington, D.C.
is once again the proud face America shows the world.
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four years, we cleaned
up as many toxic waste sites as in the previous twelve; we cut the amount of toxic pollution in
half; we protected the 1.7 million acres of Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante.
Now we should clean up over 500 more toxic waste sites, so that two-thirds of our worst
sites are cleaned up by the Year 2000. We should pass my proposal to make big polluters live by
this simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you pay to clean it up.
We must press our fight against crime and violence. Serious crime has dropped five years
in a row. The key has been community policing ~ and we must finish the job of putting 100,000
police on our streets. We should pass a Victims' Rights Amendment to the Constitution. We
will deport a record 100,000 criminals and illegal aliens this year.
For the next four years, we must mount a full scale assault on juvenile crime. I will
submit legislation that declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and tougher penalties;
extends the Brady Bill so violent teenage criminals will not be able to buy handguns; requires
gun safety locks to prevent unauthorized use; and helps to keep schools open after hours, on
weekends, and in the summer, so young people have someplace to go and something to say yes
16
�knowledge economy of the 21st Century. Every state and every school must shape the
curriculum to reflect these standards, and train teachers to lift our students up to them. To help
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an effort over the next two
years to develop national tests for student achievement.
Tonight. 1 issue a national challenge: Every state should adopt high national standards,
and by 1999. every state should test every 4th grader in reading and every 8th grader in math to
make sure these standards are met.
Raising standards will not be easy. Some of our children will not be able to meet them at
first. The point is not to put them down, but lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs
help, what changes in teaching to make, and which schools to improve. And they can help us
end social promotion, because no child should move from grade school to junior high, or junior
high to high school until he or she is ready.
These tests are far more than tests of our children. This is a test of our nation, of our will
to meet the challenges of the global economy and the Information Age. Tonight, we have the
strongest economy and the strongest democracy in the world. But we will not have them fifty
years from now unless American education, like America itself, is the envy of the world.
Last week, along with my strong partner in this effort, Secretary of Education Richard
Riley, I visited schools outside Chicago, where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in a
�to.
And my balanced budget includes the largest anti-dmg effort ever: to stop drugs at their
source, punish those who push them, and steer young people away from them..
Because so many of our children do not have what they need to grow and learn in their
homes, schools and neighborhoods, the rest of us must do more. That is why President Bush,
General Colin Powell, and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join Vice President
Gore and me to lead the Presidents's Summit of Service in Philadelphia in April. We intend to
mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Already, AmeriCorps, our
national service program, has helped 70,000 young people work their way through college as
they serve America. Citizen service belongs to no party or ideology. It is an American
responsibility which all Americans should embrace in their daily lives.
[Let me say a word directly to oin children: As we work to build a strong ftiture for you,
you have to take responsibility for that future. Nothing anyone can do can stop the rise in teen
drug use if you don't stop. Better schools won't matter if you don't study. The streets won't be
safe if you embrace violence. Soon America will be in your hands. It's up to you.]
As the new century approaches, we will have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our
diverse American community. We can give new life to the ideas and ideals that have shaped our
culture from the beginning ~ through our arts and culture, our great writers and thinkers. Our
17
�economy is measured in numbers and statistics. But the real worth of our nation lies in our
values and soaring spirit. Instead of cutting back on our modest effort to support the arts and
humanities, we should stand by them. We should challenge our artists and writers, our museums
and theaters to join with all Americans to make the Year 2000 a national celebration of American
culture in every community ~ a celebration of our culture in the century that has passed and in
the new one ahead, so that we can remain the world's beacon of liberty and creativity, long after
the fireworks have faded.
And to prepare America for the 21st Century, we must master the forces of change
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
before embrace our ideals and share our interests.
Now, we stand at another moment of change and choice ~ another time to be farsighted.
We already have dismantled many of the blocs and barriers that divided our parents' world. For
the first time, more people live under democracy than dictatorship, including every nation in our
hemisphere but one ~ and its day too will come.
But we still face bold new challenges ~ to adapt old institutions for new demands... old
thinking for new times... so the world works for our children and brings America fifty more years
18
�of security and prosperity.
Our first task is to build, for the first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When
Europe is stable and at peace, America is more secure. When Europe prospers, so does America.
NATO was created to strengthen Europe's west. Now, we must do the same for Europe's
east. This summer, we will hold a special summit to begin the process of expanding NATO by
1999. Countries that were once our adversaries now can become our allies. We also will
strengthen the Partnership for Peace for non-member nations. And we will build a strong
NATO-Russia partnership so that all Europe's 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.
Second, America must look to the East no less than the West. Our security demands it:
Americans have fought three wars in Asia this century. Our prosperity requires it: more than 2
million American jobs depend on trade with Asia.
There, too, we are helping to shape an Asian Pacific community of cooperation, not
discord and dominance. But we must not let our progress mask the peril that remains. We must
assure that North Korea continues to implement its agreement to freeze and dismantle its nuclear
weapons program. I call on Congress to fund America's contribution to this effort. Together
with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge the Cold War's last
armed divide.
19
�We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China ~ for the sake of our interests and our
ideals. An isolated, inward looking China is not good for America. A China playing its rightful
role in the world is. I will go to China and 1 have invited China's president to come here not
because we agree on everything, but because engaging with China is the best way to work on
common challenges like ending nuclear testing ~ and to deal frankly with fundamental
differences like human rights.
Third, the American people must prosper in the global economy. We have made it our
mission to tear down trade barriers abroad to create good jobs at home. Today, America is again
the world's number one exporter ~ leading in agriculture and aviation, automobiles and
entertainment, semiconductors and software.
Now, we must build on that momentum, especially in the two most dynamic regions on
earth, Asia and Latin America. If we fail to act now, these emerging economies will find their
economic future with other nations — and we will be left behind. That is why we need authority
to conclude trade agreements that open markets to American exports, that preserve our values
and promote our interests. And that is why 1 will travel to Latin America this Spring and
continue the work we began at the Summit of the Americas in Miami to build a community of
democracies linked by shared values and expanding trade.
When Mexico's peso collapsed — threatening our economic stability ~ we led the world
to help our neighbor through its crisis. Last month, Mexico repaid the United States three years
20
�ahead of schedule, with half a billion dollars profit ~ and today our exports to Mexico are at an
all time high. We must continue to help nations embrace open markets, improve living standards
and advance freedom. But we can succeed only if we meet our obligations to the World Bank and
the other organizations that multiply our contributions to progress many times over.
Fourth, 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.
With American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now, the habits of peace
must take hold. The follow-on NATO force will help speed reconstruction and reconciliation.
Tonight, I ask Congress to continue its strong support for our troops. They are doing a
remarkable job for America — America must do right by them.
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security: weapons of mass
destruction... terrorism... intemational crime and drugs... environmental degradation. The
American people are more secure because we won an historic accord to ban nuclear testing. With
Russia, we have cut our nuclear arsenals and 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 others, with renewed intensity, to stop terrorists and drug
traffickers before they act ~ and to hold them accountable if they do. And we are protecting the
global environment ~ managing our forests, stopping the spread of toxic chemicals, closing the
21
�hole in the ozone layer, reducing the greenhouse gasses that challenge our health as they change
our climate.
Now, we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention. It will make our troops safer from chemical attack. It will help us fight terrorism.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by Republican and Democratic
administrations alike — and already approved by 68 nations. Together, we must make the
Chemical Weapons Convention law and begin to outlaw poison gas from this earth.
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.
We must maintain a strong and ready military. We will, by increasing funding for
weapons modernization and taking care of our men and women in uniform.
We must renew our commitment to America's diplomacy ~ and pay our debts and dues
to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar we devote to preventing conflicts... promoting
democracy... stopping the spread of disease and starvation... brings a sure retum in security and
savings. Yet international affairs spending today totals just one percent of the federal budget ~ a
small fraction of what America invested to choose engagement over escapism at the very start of
the Cold War. If America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead America must find
the will and pay the way. A farsighted America has moved the world to a better place over these
last fifty years. It can do so for another fifty years. But the words of a shortsighted America soon
22
�will fall on deaf ears.
Almost exactly fifty years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War, President Harry
Tmman stood before a Republican Congress and called on our country to meet its responsibilities
of leadership. "If we falter," he warned, "we may endanger the peace of the world — and we
shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation." That Congress, led by great Republicans like
Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered President Truman's call. Together, they made the
commitments that strengthened our country for fifty years. With Truman and Vandenberg as otu"
guiding lights, let us do what it takes to keep America strong, secure and prosperous for another
fifty years ~ let us keep America the indispensable nation.
In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out of the power of
our example, our ability to remain strong as One America.
All over the world, people are being tom asunder by racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts
that fuel the fanaticism of terror. We are the world's most diverse democracy. And the world
looks to us to show it is possible to live and advance together across all 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 diversity fueled by openness and promise.
23
�So much of America's fiiture is tied to how we relate to the rest of the world. Our
diversity is not a weakness ~ it is our greatest strength. People on every continent can look to us
and see the reflection of their greatness, as long as we give all of our citizens, whatever their
background, the opportunity to achieve their own greatness.
We have not done that yet. Evidence of lingering division is all around us. We see it
every day in the sullen, hopeless faces wom by too many of our youth. Too often, we see it in
the corridors of power, and the schoolyards and streets of our cities. We see it in burned and
defaced houses of worship. Too many people still seek to exploit our differences.
A few days before my second inauguration, one of America's best known pastors. Rev.
Robert Schuller, suggested I read Isaiah 58:12. 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." 1 placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office, on behalf of all
Americans. No matter what our differences —in oin faiths, our backgrounds, our politics ~ we
all must be repairers of the breach. For we may not all share a common past, but surely we share
a common future.
Along with Rev. Schuller, we are joined tonight by two other Americans, and the spirit of
another, who come from different backgrounds but show us how to come together to build a
stronger future. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud Mexican-American
who eamed a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart fighting for freedom in Vietnam, and served Texas
24
�and America fighting for our future in this chamber. His mother, [TK], is with us tonight. Gary
Locke, a Chinese-American, is the newly elected Govemor of Washington and the first Asian
American govemor in our history, a proud representative of immigrants who have strengthened
America with their hard work, strong faith, and good citizenship.
And Vernon Baker. Along with six comrades-in-arms, he waited fifty years for the
recognition he deserved — for bravery, for patriotism, for risking his life for our country [in
World War II]. He was denied that recognition simply because he is black. Last month, I had the
privilege of righting that wrong and awarding the Medal of Honor to Mr. Baker, and his six
courageous comrades.
Rev. Schuller, Kristin Tanner, Chris Getsla, Sue Winski, Dr. Kristen Zarfos, [Mrs.
Tejeda,] Govemor Locke and Lieutenant Vernon Baker ~ they are all repairers of the breach.
They show us how to build America's common future. And we should thank them all.
The work of staying together as a nation is hard work. But it is America's most important
mission. "The foundation of many generations," of every other strength we must build for the
new century. Money cannot buy it. Power cannot compel it. Technology cannot create it. It
must rise from the human spirit.
America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful idea in the history of
nations. We are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. We don't
25
�have a moment to waste. The children bom tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th
Century. Everything they will know of America, they will know only through the work we do to
build the new century.
Tomorrow moming, 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 our land of new promise. My
fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize the days and the century.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
26
�Draft 2/2/97 9:45pm
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4,1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests:
I come before you tonight with a plan of action and a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime history ~ to prepare our people for the next century and a global economic revolution.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won back the basic
strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls all declining, we are winning back our
basic optimism, the enduring faith of America that we can master any difficulty. We won the
Cold War, and now we are helping to bring unrivaled peace and prosperity across the world.
It would be easy to be complacent, to rest at this moment. But we are not a people made
for complacency. We must not win the stmggles of the past only to lose this moment of
opportunity.
Though we face no enemy bent on destroying us, the enemy of our time is inaction. It is
the enemy within. The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age, new careers,
and life-enhancing technology are ours to seize for our people. But if we do not act, the chance
will slip from our grasp or even be tumed to our disadvantage in this vigorous new era of
competition.
Our moment of opportunity is fleeting. We must be shapers of events, not observers.
Our task is not to ask what the future means for us, but what meaning we can give to the future.
My fellow Americans, the State of our Union is strong, but the opportunity before us is
even stronger. So tonight, I issue a call to action ~ a call to this Congress, to our states, to all our
people to welcome a future that will be what we make of it. This call to action summons us to
work for stronger education and hamess the forces of technology and science; to build stronger
families and stronger communities; to keep America the world's strongest force for peace,
freedom and prosperity. And above all, to build a stronger, more perfect union here at home.
The spirit with which we approach our work will determine its success. The people of
this nation elected us all. They want us to be partners, not partisans. What matters is not the
applause when we arrive, but the judgment when we leave.
Here is what I believe we, together, must do to prepare America for the 21st
Century:
�First we must move quickly tofinishthe unfinished business of our country ~
balancing our budget, renewing our democracy, andfinishingthe job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years, we have brought new economic growth by investing in our
people, expanding exports, cutting our deficit and creating 11 million new jobs. 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.
In two days, I will propose a detailed plan to balance the budget by the Year 2000.
This plan will balance the budget and invest in our people so they can make the most of
their lives, protecting Medicare, Medicaid, education, and the environment. It will balance the
budget and build on the Vice President's work to make this govemment 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 raise a child, and 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. It is urmecessary and unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment
that could cripple our country intimeof crisis and force unthinkable results such as judges
impounding Social Security checks or increasing taxes. We don't need an amendment — we need
action.
Whatever our differences, we should agree that for the long-term health of our society, we
must act together, in a bipartisan process, to safeguard Social Security and reform Medicare so
thesefimdamentalprograms will be as strong for our children as they are for our parents.
The second piece of unfinished business relates not to otu- economy, but to our democracy
itself Tonight, before the eyes of America, we must commit ourselves to enacting bipartisan
campaign finance reform.
Senator McCain and Senator Feingold, Representative Shays and Representative Meehan
have reached across party lines to craft tough and fair campaign reform. Their proposal would
curb spending, reduce the role of special interests, ban contributions from foreign owned
companies and noncitizens, create a level playing field between challengers and incumbents and
ban the large soft money contributions that both parties receive.
Delay will mean the death of reform. So let's set our own deadline. Let's work together
to write campaignfinancereform into the law, by the day we celebrate the birth of our
democracy ~ July 4'\
There is a third piece of unfinished business for us: Last year we enacted landmark
�welfare reform, demanding that 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 people who must work, can work. Only then can the permanent
underclass lift themselves into our growing middle class.
Over the last four years, we moved a record two and a quarter million people off the
welfare rolls. Now we must act to meet a new goal ~ one million more people moving from the
dependence of welfare to the dignity of work by the Year 2000.
Here is my plan: Tax credits and other incentives to businesses that hire people off
welfare. Incentives for job placement firms and for states that create jobs for welfare recipients.
Transportation and childcare to help people go to work.
I challenge every state: tum welfare checks into private sector paychecks. 1 challenge
every religious congregation, every community non-profit, and especially every business: hire
someone off welfare. I say to every employer in this country who ever criticized the old welfare
system: You can't blame the old system anymore. We have tom it down. Now do your part.
Give someone on welfare the chance to work. If we all do that, we can solve this problem once
and for all.
Tonight, I am proud to armotmce that five major corporations ~ Sprint, Monsanto, UPS,
Burger King, and United Airlines ~ will be the first to join with us in a new national effort to
marshal America's businesses to hire people off welfare.
And we must join together to do something else ~ something that Republican and
Democratic govemors alike have asked ~ restore basic health, nutrition, and disability benefits to
legal immigrants who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law. To do otherwise, is unworthy of a
nation of immigrants.
We passed welfare reform. We were right to do it. But no one should walk out of this
chamber with a clear conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job.
Then, the greatest step of all ~ the high threshold to the future that we must now
cross ~ and my number one priority as President for the next four years ~ is to ensure that
Americans have the best education in the world. Let's work together to meet these 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.
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 for American Education [tk], based on ten principles, to which we must
�commit ourselves tonight, [hold up booklet]
First, we must set rigorous national standards for education, and help our children to
reach them. We must finally say: Fourth graders must be able to read, and read well. Eighth
graders must be able to do algebra. All our children must master the basics.
To do this, we must begin a national cmsade for standards - not federal govenunent
standards, but national standards representing what students must know to succeed in the
knowledge economy of the 21 st Century. Every state and every school must shape the
curriculum to reflect these standards, and train teachers to lift our students up to them. To help
schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will lead an effort over the next two
years to develop national tests for student achievement.
Tonight. I issue a national challenge: Every state should adopt high national standards,
and by 1999. everv state should test every 4th grader in reading and every 8th grader in math to
make sure these standards are met.
Raising standards will not be easy. Some of our children will not be able to meet them at
first. The point is not to put them down, but lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs
help, what changes in teaching to make, and which schools to improve. And they can help us
end social promotion, because no child should move from grade school to junior high, or junior
high to high school until he or she is ready.
These tests are far more than tests of our children. This is a test of our nation, of our will
to meet the challenges of the global economy and the Information Age. Tonight, we have the
strongest economy and the strongest democracy in the world. But we will not have them fifty
years from now unless American education, like America itself, is the envy of the worid.
Last week, along with my strong partner in this effort. Secretary of Education Richard
Riley, 1 visited schools outside Chicago, where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in a
project they called "First in the World," took the Third Intemational Math and Science Study, the
TIMSS test - a test that reflects the world-class standards our children must meet for the new
era. Those Illinois studentstiedfor first in the worid in science, and second in math. Two of
them are here tonight, with their teacher, [introduce Kristin Tanner, and Chris Getsla; teacher:
Sue Winski] When we aim high and challenge our students, they wdU be the best in the world.
The second principle of my Plan recognizes this simple tmth: to have the best schools, we
must have the best teachers. Most of us ~ including myself - would not be here tonight without
the help of such teachers. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina Govemor Jim Hunt
and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have worked hard to establish
nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching. 400 of these master teachers have
been certified since 1995. My budget will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification. We
should reward our best teachers, quickly and fairly remove those who don't measure up, and
�challenge ourfinestyoung people to consider teaching as a career.
The third part of my plan calls on every state to let parents choose the right public school
for their children. Innovation and competition will make our public schools better. Beyond
public school choice, we must do more to encourage teachers and parents to start charter schools
that set and meet the highest standards, and survive only as long as they do. My balanced budget
doubles the ftinding to help start charter schools, so by in the new century, there will be 3,000
charter schools ~ nearly seven times as many as today. We want parents to be more involved in
their children's education ~ not just choosing schools, but every step of the way, meeting their
teachers, helping with homework. This spring, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will host their
sixth annual family conference to talk about parents and leaming.
Fourth: we must make sure character education is a part of every curriculum. We carmot
raise standards if we fail to teach our children how to be good citizens. We should continue to
promote order and discipline, supporting communities that introduce school uniforms, impose
curfews, enforce tmancy laws, remove dismptive students from the classroom, and have zero
tolerance for guns and dmgs.
Fifth: we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally
falling down. Traditionally, the federal budget has played no role in school constmction. But
with the student population at record levels, and record numbers of school buildings in disrepair,
this has become a serious national concem. My budget includes $5 billion to help communities
finance $20 billion in school constmction over the next four years. [Moseley-Braun]
Sixth: we must do more to help all our children read. 40% of our 8 year olds carmot read
on their own. We have just launched the America Reads initiative ~ a critical national effort to
build a citizen army of one million volunteer tutors to make sure every child can read
independently by 3rd 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 proud to
announce that 60 college presidents have answered my call, and pledged that tens of thousands of
their work study students will serve one year as reading tutors.
This is a challenge to every teacher and every principal: create a program to train and use
these tutors to help your children read. This is especially a challenge to parents: Read to your
children every night. [800 number]
And that leads us to the seventh part of my plan: We can't start teaching our children too
early. We are leaming more and more about young children's emotional and intellectual
development. Parents small moments with their children make a big difference throughout their
lives. Parents are children's first teachers, and every home must be a place of leaming. The First
Lady has spent years studying and writing about this issue. And I am pleased to announce that
she and I will convene a White House Conference on Early Leaming and the Brain this Spring, to
[help us leam more about the ways very young children leam]. We already know what a
�difference good preschool can make, and that's why my plan expands Head Start to one million
children by 2002.
Eighth: In the 21st Century, we must expand the frontiers of leaming across a lifetime.
We must make the 13th and 14th years of education — at least two years of college - as universal
in America as high school is today.
To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Govemor Zell Miller's
HOPE scholarship in Georgia: two years of a $1,500 tax credit for college tuition, enough to pay
for the typical community college. I 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 for deserving students in 20 years.
This plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes on money saved for college
tuition. 1 ask you to pass it ~ to give every American who works hard the chance to go to
college.
Ninth: all our people must have the chance to leam new skills. Most American workers
live near a community college. The roads that take them there can be paths to a better future.
Govemment doesn't need to decide what kind of training workers need; they can decide for
themselves. My G.I. Bill for Workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal training
programs into a single, simple skill grant that will go directly into eligible workers' hands. For
far too long, this bill has sat before you without action ~ and I ask you to pass it now.
Tenth: we must hamess the Information Age to make our schools worthy of the 21"
Century. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to the Intemet
by the year 2000, so that, for the first time in history, a child in the poorest inner city, the most
isolated mral town, the most comfortable suburb, will all have access to the same universe of
knowledge. I ask your support to complete this historic mission.
One of the greatest sources of our national strength in the 20"" century was a bipartisan
foreign policy; politics stopped at the water's edge. 1 ask you ~ and I ask the govemors from the
many states who have joined us here tonight ~ for a new bipartisan commitment to education ~
because education is the national security of our future ~ and politics should stop at the
classroom door.
Tonight, I pledge to take this Plan for American Education to the country. All Americans
must enlist in this cmsade for tomorrow's children.
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must hamess the powerful forces of
knowledge, science and technology to benefit all Americans.
This is the first State of the Union carried live over the Intemet. But we have only begun
�to spread the benefits of a technology revolution that should be the modem birthright of every
citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. 1 challenge the private sector
to help us connect every children's hospital to the Intemet as soon as possible, so a child in bed
can stay in touch with school, family and friends.
We will build the second generation of the Intemet so our leading universities and
national laboratories can communicate at speeds 1000 times faster than today, to develop new
medical treatments, new sources of energy, and new ways of working together.
But we cannot stop there. As the Intemet becomes our new town square, a computer in
every home ~ a teacher of all subjects, a connection to all cultures - will no longer be a dream,
but a necessity. Over the next decade, that must be our goal.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing our mission of discovery with the
Mars probes, the intemational space station, and the project to discover the origins of life, all of
which will have practical applications here on Earth.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. In the last year alone,
American scientists discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication
that stops a stroke in progress and begins to reverse its effects ~ and we have discovered
treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health has
gone up 40%, to [$l .5 billion] next year. With these new resources, NIH will now become the
primary discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine. Every year we move up the discovery of an
AIDS vaccine, we will save millions of lives each year around the world. If you approve this
plan, scientists from business, universities and our national labs will be able to work together so
we can end the threat of AIDS.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, with new pressures on people in the way
they work and live, we must build stronger families and help parents pass on their values to
their children.
For four years, the Family and Medical Leave Law has done that for millions of our
people. Now we should expand Family Leave so workers can take time off for teacher
conferences or a child's checkup. We should passflextimeso workers can choose to be paid for
overtime in income or with time off to be with their families.
We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to affordable, quality health
care.
�We must find a way to work together to cover the 40 million Americans ~ most in
working, taxpaying families, who still lack health insurance.
My balanced budget will extend health coverage to five million children ~ cutting in half
the number of tminsured children in America. It will help all working Americans by ensuring
that people who temporarily lose their jobs don't lose their health insurance. No child should be
without a doctor just because a parent is without a job.
My Medicare plan helps millions of families taking care of loved-ones afflicted with
Alzheimers ~ and for the first time, we would pay for annual mammograms.
Just as we ended drive through deliveries last year, we must end the dangerous and
demeaning practice of drive-through mastectomies. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a
Connecticut surgeon whose outrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired
this legislation. Thank you. Dr. Zarfos.
We must protect our children by standing by our action to ban cigarette ads and marketing
that endangers their lives.
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by 50%. But we can do
more. We should make it a felony for any parent to cross state lines in an attempt to flee from his
or her most sacred obligations.
We must build stronger communities to prepare America for the 21st Century.
Our strong and growing economy has helped revive many urban areas, but we still have
more to do. Our approach to renewing poor urban and mral communities is to empower them to
create the conditions in which families can flourish, and to create jobs through investment by
business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They have already brought hope
to communities like Detroit, where the unemployment rate has been cut in half in four years. We
should expand the network of community development banks. We should enact the brownfields
initiative to restore contaminated urban land and buildings to productive use.
And we, together, must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment approach ~
including private sector tax incentives ~ to renew this great capital city, so that Washington, D.C.
is once again the proud face America shows the world.
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four years, we cleaned
up as many toxic waste sites as in the previous twelve; we cut the amount of toxic pollution in
half; we protected the 1.7 million acres of Utah's Grand Staircase-Escalante.
�Now we should clean up over 500 more toxic waste sites, so that two-thirds of our worst
sites are cleaned up by the Year 2000. We should pass my proposal to make big polluters live by
this simple mle: If you pollute our environment, you pay to clean it up.
We must press our fight against crime and violence. Serious crime has dropped five years
in a row. The key has been community policing ~ and we must finish the job of putting 100,000
police on our streets. We should pass a Victims' Rights Amendment to the Constitution. We
will deport a record 100,000 criminals and illegal aliens this year.
For the next four years, we must mount a full scale assault on juvenile crime. 1 will
submit legislation that declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and tougher penalties;
extends the Brady Bill so violent teenage criminals will not be able to buy handguns; requires
gun safety locks to prevent unauthorized use; and helps to keep schools open after hours, on
weekends, and in the summer, so young people have someplace to go and something to say yes
to.
And my balanced budget includes the largest anti-dmg effort ever: to stop dmgs at their
source, punish those who push them, and steer young people away from them..
Because so many of our children do not have what they need to grow and leam in their
homes, schools and neighborhoods, the rest of us must do more. That is why President Bush,
General Colin Powell, and former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros will join Vice President
Gore and me to lead the Presidents's Summit of Service in Philadelphia in April. We intend to
mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Already, AmeriCorps, our
national service program, has helped 70,000 young people work their way through college as
they serve America. Citizen service belongs to no party or ideology. It is an American
responsibility which all Americans should embrace in their daily lives.
[Let me say a word directly to our children: As we work to build a strong future for you,
you have to take responsibility for that ftiture. Nothing anyone can do can stop the rise in teen
dmg use if you don't stop. Better schools won't matter if you don't study. The streets won't be
safe if you embrace violence. Soon America will be in your hands. It's up to you.]
As the new century approaches, we will have a wonderful opportunity to celebrate our
diverse American community. We can give new life to the ideas and ideals that have shaped our
culture from the beginning ~ through our arts and culture, our great writers and thinkers. Our
economy is measured in numbers and statistics. But the real worth of our nation lies in our
values and soaring spirit. Instead of cutting back on our modest effort to support the arts and
humanities, we should stand by them. We should challenge our artists and writers, our museums
and theaters to join with all Americans to make the Year 2000 a national celebration of American
culture in every community ~ a celebration of our culture in the century that has passed and in
the new one ahead, so that we can remain the world's beacon of liberty and creativity, long after
thefireworkshave faded.
�And to prepare America for the 21st Century, we must master the forces of change
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
before embrace our ideals and share our interests.
Now, we stand at another moment of change and choice — another time to be farsighted.
We already have dismantled many of the blocs and barriers that divided our parents' world. For
the first time, more people live under democracy than dictatorship, including every nation in our
hemisphere but one ~ and its day too will come.
But we still face bold new challenges ~ to adapt old institutions for new demands... old
thinking for new times... so the world works for our children and brings America fifty more years
of security and prosperity.
Our first task is to build, for the first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When
Europe is stable and at peace, America is more secure. When Europe prospers, so does America.
NATO was created to strengthen Europe's west. Now, we must do the same for Europe's
east. This summer, we will hold a special summit to begin the process of expanding NATO by
1999. Countries that were once our adversaries now can become our allies. We also will
strengthen the Partnership for Peace for non-member nations. And we will build a strong
NATO-Russia partnership so that all Europe's 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.
Second, America must look to the East no less than the West. Our security demands it:
Americans have fought three wars in Asia this century. Our prosperity requires it: more than 2
million American jobs depend on trade with Asia.
There, too, we are helping to shape an Asian Pacific community of cooperation, not
discord and dominance. But we must not let our progress mask the peril that remains. We must
assure that North Korea continues to implement its agreement to freeze and dismantle its nuclear
weapons program. I call on Congress to ftmd America's contribution to this effort. Together
with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge the Cold War's last
armed divide.
We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China ~ for the sake of our interests and our
ideals. An isolated, inward looking China is not good for America. A China playing its rightful
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 with China is the best way to work on
common challenges like ending nuclear testing ~ and to deal frankly with fundamental
differences like human rights.
10
�Third, the American people must prosper in the global economy. We have made it our
mission to tear down trade barriers abroad to create good jobs at home. Today, America is again
the world's number one exporter ~ leading in agriculture and aviation, automobiles and
entertainment, semiconductors and software.
Now, we must build on that momentum, especially in the two most dynamic regions on
earth, Asia and Latin America. If we fail to act now, these emerging economies will find their
economic future with other nations ~ and we will be left behind. That is why we need authority
to conclude trade agreements that open markets to American exports, that preserve our values
and promote our interests. And that is why I will travel to Latin America this Spring and
continue the work we began at the Summit of the Americas in Miami to build a community of
democracies linked by shared values and expanding trade.
When Mexico's peso collapsed ~ threatening our economic stability ~ we led the world
to help our neighbor through its crisis. Last month, Mexico repaid the United States three years
ahead of schedule, with half a billion dollars profit ~ and today our exports to Mexico are at an
all time high. We must continue to help nations embrace open markets, improve living standards
and advance freedom. But we can succeed only if we meet our obligations to the World Bank and
the other organizations that multiply our contributions to progress many times over.
Fourth, America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace ~ from the Middle
East to Haiti... from Northem Ireland to Africa. Taking reasonablerisksfor peace keeps us from
being drawn into far more costiy conflicts.
With American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now, the habits of peace
must take hold. The follow-on NATO force will help speed reconstmction and reconciliation.
Tonight, 1 ask Congress to continue its strong support for our troops. They are doing a
remarkable job for America - America must do right by them.
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security: weapons of mass
destmction... terrorism... intemational crime and dmgs... environmental degradation. The
American people are more secure because we won an historic accord to ban nuclear testing. With
Russia, we have cut our nuclear arsenals and 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 others, with renewed intensity, to stop terrorists and dmg
traffickers before they act ~ and to hold them accountable if they do. And we are protecting the
global environment ~ managing our forests, stopping the spread of toxic chemicals, closing the
hole in the ozone layer, reducing the greenhouse gasses that challenge our health as they change
our climate.
Now, we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical Weapons
Convention. It will make our troops safer from chemical attack. It will help usfightterrorism.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by Republican and Democratic
11
�administrations alike ~ and already approved by 68 nations. Together, we must make the
Chemical Weapons Convention law and begin to outlaw poison gas from this earth.
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.
We must maintain a strong and ready military. We will, by increasingftindingfor
weapons modemization and taking care of our men and women in uniform.
We must renew our commitment to America's diplomacy ~ and pay our debts and dues
to a reforming United Nations. Every dollar we devote to preventing conflicts... promoting
democracy... stopping the spread of disease and starvation... brings a sure retum in security and
savings. Yet intemational affairs spending today totals just one percent of the federal budget ~ a
smallfractionof what America invested to choose engagement over escapism at the very start of
the Cold War. If America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead America must find
the will and pay the way. A farsighted America has moved the world to a better place over these
last fifty years. It can do so for another fifty years. But the words of a shortsighted America soon
will fall on deaf ears.
Almost exactly fifty years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War, President Harry
Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called on our country to meet its responsibilities
of leadership. "If we falter," he wamed, "we may endanger the peace of the world ~ and we
shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation." That Congress, led by great Republicans like
Senator Arthur Vandenberg, answered President Tmman's call. Together, they made the
commitments that strengthened our country for fifty years. With Tmman and Vandenberg as our
guiding lights, let us do what it takes to keep America strong, secure and prosperous for another
fifty years ~ let us keep America the indispensable nation.
In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows out of the power of
our example, our ability to remain strong as One America.
All over the world, people are being tom asunder by racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts
that fiiel the fanaticism of terror. We are the world's most diverse democracy. And the world
looks to us to show it is possible to live and advance together across all differences.
America has always been a nation of immigrants. From the start, a steady stream of
people, in search offreedomand opportunity, have left their own lands to make this land their
home. We started as an experiment in democracy fueled by Etnopeans. We have grown into an
experiment in diversity fueled by openness and promise.
So much of America's ftiture is tied to how we relate to the rest of the world. Our
diversity is not a weakness ~ it is our greatest strength. People on every continent can look to us
and see the reflection of their greatness, as long as we give all of our citizens, whatever their
background, the opportunity to achieve their own greatness.
12
�We have not done that yet. Evidence of lingering division is all around us. We see it
every day in the sullen, hopeless faces wom by too many of our youth. Too often, we see it in
the corridors of power, and the schoolyards and streets of our cities. We see it in bumed and
defaced houses of worship. Too many people still seek to exploit our differences.
A few days before my second inaugtiration, one of America's best known pastors. Rev.
Robert Schuller, suggested I read Isaiah 58:12. It says: "Thou shah 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. No matter what our differences —in our faiths, our backgrounds, our politics - we
all must be repairers of the breach. For we may not all share a common past, but surely we share
a common future.
Along with Rev. Schuller, we are joined tonight by two other Americans, and the spirit of
another, who come from different backgrounds but show us how to come together to build a
stronger ftature. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud Mexican-American
who eamed a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart fighting for freedom in Vietnam, and served Texas
and America fighting for our future in this chamber. His mother, [TK], is with us tonight. Gary
Locke, a Chinese-American, is the newly elected Govemor of Washington and the first Asian
American govemor in our history, a proud representative of immigrants who have strengthened
America with their hard work, strong faith, and good citizenship.
And Vemon Baker. Along with six comrades-in-arms, he waited fifty years for the
recognition he deserved ~ for bravery, for patriotism, for risking his life for our country [in
World War II]. He was denied that recognition simply because he is black. Last month, 1 had the
privilege of righting that wrong and awarding the Medal of Honor to Mr. Baker, and his six
courageous comrades.
Rev. Schuller, Kristin Tanner, Chris Getsla, Sue Winski, Dr. Kristen Zarfos, [Mrs.
Tejeda,] Govemor Locke and Lieutenant Vemon Baker ~ they are all repairers of the breach.
They show us how to build America's common future. And we should thank them all.
The work of staying together as a nation is hard work. But it is America's most important
mission. "The foundation of many generations," of every other strength we must build for the
new century. Money cannot buy it. Power caimot compel it. Technology cannot create it. It
must rise from the human spirit.
America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful idea in the history of
nations. We are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. We don't
have a moment to waste. The children bom tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th
Century. Everything they will know of America, they will know only through the work we do to
build the new century.
13
�Tomorrow moming, 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 our land of new promise. My
fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize the days and the century.
Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.
14
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Don Baer
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of Communications
Don Baer
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1994-1997
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
<a href="http://clinton.presidentiallibraries.us/items/show/36008" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2006-0458-F
Description
An account of the resource
Donald Baer was Assistant to the President and Director of Communications in the White House Communications Office. The records in this collection contain copies of speeches, speech drafts, talking points, letters, notes, memoranda, background material, correspondence, reports, excerpts from manuscripts and books, news articles, presidential schedules, telephone message forms, and telephone call lists.
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Extent
The size or duration of the resource.
537 folders in 34 boxes
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data
Paper
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
[State of the Union, Feb. 4, 1997 (Binder)] [1]
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Office of Communications
Don Baer
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
2006-0458-F
Is Part Of
A related resource in which the described resource is physically or logically included.
Box 31
<a href="http://www.clintonlibrary.gov/assets/Documents/Finding-Aids/2006/2006-0458-F.pdf" target="_blank">Collection Finding Aid</a>
<a href="https://catalog.archives.gov/id/7431981" target="_blank">National Archives Catalog Description</a>
Provenance
A statement of any changes in ownership and custody of the resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation. The statement may include a description of any changes successive custodians made to the resource.
Clinton Presidential Records: White House Staff and Office Files
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
William J. Clinton Presidential Library & Museum
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
Adobe Acrobat Document
Medium
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Reproduction-Reference
Date Created
Date of creation of the resource.
1/12/2015
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
42-t-7431981-20060458F-031-001-2014
7431981