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RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Darby E. Stott ( Darby E. Stott@EOP@LNGTWY@LNGTWY [ UNKNOWN ])
CREATION DATE/TIME: 4-FEB-1997 18:29:00.00
SUBJECT: sotu
TO: April Mellody ( April Mellody@eop [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Message Creation Date was at 4-FEB-1997 18:29:00
Text as Prepared for Delivery
Check Against Final Delivery
No Wire Transmission until 8pm EST
PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. CLINTON
STATE-OF-THE-UNION ADDRESS
UNITED STATES CAPITOL
FEBRUARY 4, 1997
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice-President, Members of the 105t h Congress,
distinguished
guests, my fellow Americans:
I come before you tonight with a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime
history -- and a plan of action to meet that challenge, to prepare our
people
for the bold new world of the 21st Century.
We have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won
back
the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls
declining, we
are winning back our basic optimism, the enduring faith that we can master
any
difficulty. With the Cold War receding and global commerce at record
levels,
we are helping to win unrivaled peace and prosperity all across the world.
My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we must
rise to
the decisive moment, to make a nation and a world better than any we have
ever
known. The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age,
unimagined
new work, life-enhancing technology -- all are ours to seize. That is our
honor
and our challenge. We must be shapers of events, not observers. For if
we do
not act, the moment will pass -- and we will lose the best possibilities
of our
future.
We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy: The enemy of our
time is
inaction.
So tonight, I issue a call to action -- action by this Congress, by our
states, by all our people, to prepare America for the 21st Century.
Action to
keep our economy and our democracy strong and working for all our people;
action to strengthen education and harness the forces of technology and
science; action to build stronger families and stronger communities and a
safer
environment; action to keep America the world!,s strongest force for peace
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. We must all
be
committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans, and
responsibility
from all Americans, in a community of all Americans, and to a new kind of
government -- not to solve all our problems for us, but to give all our
people
the tools to make the most of their own lives.
And we must work together. The people of this nation elected us all.
They
want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all here in the same
boat
they gave us all oars
and they told us to row. Here!,s the
direction
I think we should take.
First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business of our
country
-- to balance our budget, renew our democracy, and 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 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 will balance the
budget
and build on the Vice President!,s efforts to make our government work
better,
even as it costs less. It will balance the budget and provide middle
class tax
relief to pay for education and health care, to help 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 unwanted results such as judges halting Social
Security checks or increasing taxes. Let us agree: We should not pass any
measure that threatens Social Security. We don!,t need a Constitutional
amendment -- we need action.
Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now, and then, for
the
long-term health of our society, we must agree to a bipartisan process to
preserve Social Security and reform Medicare, so that 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 campaign
finance
reform.
Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and Meehan, have
reached
across party lines to craft tough and fair campaign reform. Their
proposal
would curb spending, reduce the role of special interests, create a level
playing field between challengers and incumbents and ban contributions
from
noncitizens and all corporate sources, and the other large soft money
contributions that both parties receive.
You know and I know that delay will mean the death of reform. So let!,s
set
our own deadline. Let!,s work together to write bipartisan campaign
finance
reform into law, and pass McCain-Feingold by the day we celebrate the
birth of
our democracy -- July the 4th.
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.
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 more jobs for welfare recipients. Training, transportation and
child
care to help people go to work.
Now I challenge every state: turn those welfare checks into private
sector
paychecks. I challenge every religious congregation, every community
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 cannot blame that old system anymore. We have torn it down.
Now
do your part. Give someone on welfare the chance to work.
Tonight, I am pleased to announce that five major corporations -- Sprint,
Monsanto, UPS, Burger King, and United Airlines -- will be the first to
join in
a new national effort to marshal America!,s businesses, large and small,
to
create jobs so people on welfare can move to work.
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.
And we must join together to do something else too -- something both
Republican and Democratic governors have asked us to do -- to restore
basic
health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes immigrants who came
to
this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes, and obey the law. To do
otherwise is simply unworthy of a great nation of immigrants.
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, based on these
ten
principles.
First, a national crusade 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
school must shape the curriculum to reflect these standards, and train
teachers
to lift students up to meet 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 of student achievement in reading and math.
Tonight, I issue a challenge to the nation: Every state should adopt high
national standards, and by 1999, every state should test every 4th grader
in
reading and every 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. 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, Secretary of Education Dick Riley and I visited Northern
Illinois,
where 8th grade students from 20 school districts, in a project called !
&First
in the World,!8 took the Third International Math and Science Study -- a
test
that reflects the world-class standards our children must meet for the new
era. And those students in Illinois tied for first in the world in
science,
and came in second in math. Two of them, Kristin Tanner, 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.
Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. Most
of us
would not be here tonight without the help of such teachers. I know I
wouldn!,t be. For years, many educators, led by North Carolina!,s
Governor Jim
Hunt and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, have
worked
hard to establish nationally accepted credentials for excellence in
teaching.
Just 500 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, quickly and fairly remove those few who
don!,t
measure up, and challenge our finest young 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 citizen army of one million volunteer tutors to
make
sure every child can read independently by the end of the 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, pledging that thousands of their
work
study students will serve for one year as reading tutors.
This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal: use these
tutors to help students read. And it is especially a challenge to our
parents:
Read with your children every night.
This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the first days of
life.
Scientists are now discovering how young children develop emotionally and
intellectually from their first days, and, therefore, how important it is
for
parents to begin immediately talking, singing, even reading to their
infants.
The First Lady has spent years studying and writing about this issue. She
and
I will convene a White House Conference on Early Learning and the Brain
this
Spring, to explore how parents and educators can best use these startling
new
findings.
We already know we should start teaching children before they start
schools.
That!,s why my budget expands Head Start to one million children by 2002.
And,
in June, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore will host their 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. Their right to choose will foster the
competition
and innovation that can make our public schools better. We should also
make it
possible for more parents and teachers to start charter schools, schools
that
set and meet the highest standards, and survive only as long as they do.
Our
plan will help America create 3,000 of these charter schools by the next
century - nearly seven times as many as there are today - so that
parents
will have even more choices 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 we must continue to promote order and
discipline, supporting communities that introduce school uniforms, impose
curfews, enforce truancy laws, remove disruptive students from the
classroom,
and have zero tolerance for guns and drugs.
Seventh: we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools
that
are literally falling down. With the student population at an all time
high,
and record numbers of school buildings falling into disrepair, this has
now
become a serious national concern. My budget includes a new initiative:
$5
billion to help communities finance $20 billion in school construction
over the
next four years.
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 we must open the doors of college to all.
To do that, I propose America's HOPE scholarship, based on Georgia!,s
pioneering program: 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 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: In the 21st Century, we must expand the frontiers of learning
across a
lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have a chance to learn
new
skills. Most Americans live near a community college. The roads that
take
them there can be paths to a better future. My G.I. Bill for Workers will
transform the confusing tangle of federal training programs into a simple
skill
grant that will go directly into eligible workers !, hands. For too long,
this
bill has been sitting on that desk down there without action -- and I ask
you
to pass it now. Let !,s give more of our workers the ability to learn and
to
earn.
Tenth: we must bring the power of the Information Age into all our
schools.
Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to
the
Internet by the year 2000, so that, for the first time in history, a child
in
the most isolated rural town, the most comfortable suburb, the poorest
inner
city school, will 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.
We must understand the significance of this endeavor: One of the greatest
sources of our strength throughout the Cold War was a bipartisan foreign
policy; because our future was at stake, politics stopped at the water !,s
edge. Now I ask you -- I ask all our nation !,s governors -- and I ask
teachers, parents and citizens all across America -- for a new nonpartisan
commitment to education -- because education is one of the critical
national
security issues for our future -- and politics must stop at the classroom
door.
I pledge to take this Call to Action to our 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 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. Now, we
should
connect every hospital to the Internet, so doctors can instantly share
data
about their patients with the best specialists in the field. And I
challenge
the private sector to start by connecting every children !,s hospital as
soon as
possible, so that a child in bed can stay in touch with school, family and
friends. A sick child need no longer be a child alone.
We must build the second generation of the Internet so 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 Internet becomes our new town square, a
computer in every home -- a teacher of all subjects, a connection to all
cultures -- this will no longer be a dream, but a necessity. And over the
next
decade, that must be our goal.
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars probes
and
the international space station, both of which will have practical
applications
for our everyday living.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The human
genome
project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life. American
scientists
have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and
medication that stops a stroke in progress and begins to reverse its
effects --
and treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with HIV and
AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National Institutes
of
Health has increased dramatically, to $1.5 billion. With new resources,
NIH
will now become the most powerful discovery engine for an AIDS vaccine,
working
with other scientists to finally end the threat of AIDS. Every year we
move up
the discovery of an AIDS vaccine, we can save millions of lives around the
world.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger
families.
Over the past 4 years, the Family and Medical Leave Act has helped
millions of
Americans take time off to be with their families. With new pressures on
people in the way they work and live, we should expand Family Leave so
that
workers can take time off for teacher conferences and a child !,s medical
checkup. We should pass flextime so workers can choose to be paid for
overtime
in income, or trade it in for time off to be with their families.
We must continue, step-by-step, to give more families access to
affordable,
quality health care. 40 million Americans still lack health insurance.
10
million children still 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. Since nearly half of all
children who
lose their insurance do so because their parents lose or change jobs, my
budget
will also ensure that people who temporarily lose their jobs can still
afford
to keep their health insurance. No child should be without a doctor just
because a parent is without a job.
My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the Trust
Fund to
10 years, provides support for respite care for the many families with
loved-ones afflicted with Alzheimers -- and for the first time, it would
fully
pay for annual mammograms.
Just as we ended drive through deliveries of babies last year, we must
now end
the dangerous and demeaning practice of forcing women home from the
hospital
only hours after a mastectomy. I ask your support for bipartisan
legislation
to guarantee that women can stay in the hospital for 48 hours after a
mastectomy. With us tonight is Dr. Kristen Zarfos, a Connecticut surgeon
whose
outrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired this
legislation. We thank her for her efforts.
In the last four years, we have increased child support collections by
50%.
Now, we should go further, and make it a felony for any parent to cross
state
lines in an attempt to flee from this, his or her most sacred obligation.
Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm in our
determination to ban the advertising and marketing of cigarettes that
endanger
their lives.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must build stronger
communities.
We should start with safe streets. Serious crime has dropped 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 full scale assault on juvenile
crime,
with legislation that: declares war on gangs, with new prosecutors and
tougher
penalties; extends the Brady Bill so violent teen criminals will never be
able
to buy handguns; requires child safety locks on handguns to prevent
unauthorized use; and helps to keep our schools open after hours, on
weekends,
and in the summer, so young people will have someplace to go and something
to
say yes to.
My balanced budget includes the largest anti-drug effort ever: to stop
drugs
at their source, punish those who push them, and teach our young people
that
drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal, and drugs will kill them.
Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and rural
neighborhoods.
But we must do more, to empower them to create the conditions in which
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 restore contaminated urban land and
buildings
to productive use. We should expand the network of community development
banks.
And together, we must pledge tonight that we will use this empowerment
approach -- including private sector tax incentives -- to renew our
capital
city, so that Washington is a great place to live and work, 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 up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous twelve.
Now we
should clean up 500 more of them, so that our children grow up next to
parks,
not poison. Big polluters must live by this simple rule: 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
drinking water laws. We protected some of America !,s rarest, most
beautiful
land in Utah !,s Red Rocks region, created three new national parks in the
California desert, and began to restore Florida !,s Everglades. Now we must
be
as vigilant with our rivers as we are with our land. Tonight, I announce
that
this year I will designate 10 American Heritage Rivers, to help
communities
alongside them revitalize their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the
rivers, proving once again that we can grow the economy as we protect the
environment.
We must also protect our global environment, working to ban the worst
toxic
chemicals and to reduce the greenhouse gasses that challenge our health
even as
they change our climate.
We all know that in all of our communities, some of our children simply
do not
have what they need to grow and learn in their homes, or schools, or
neighborhoods. The rest of us must do more, for they are our children
too.
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.
Our national service program, Americorps, has already helped 70,000 young
people work their way through college as they serve America. Now we
intend to
mobilize millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Citizen
service
is an American responsibility, which all Americans should embrace.
I !,d like to make one last point about our national community. Our
economy is
measured in numbers and statistics, and it !,s very important. But the
enduring
worth of our nation lies in our values and our soaring spirit. So instead
of
cutting back on our modest efforts to support the arts and humanities, I
believe we should stand by them, and challenge our artists, musicians and
writers, our museums, libraries and 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 common culture in the century that has
passed, and in the new one to come in the new millennium, so that we can
remain
the world !,s beacon of liberty and creativity, long after the fireworks
have fad
ed.
To prepare America for the 21st Century, we must master the forces of
change
in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for an uncharted
time.
Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the institutions
that
secured victory in the Cold War and built a growing world economy. As a
result, today more people than ever embrace our ideals and share our
interests.
Already, we have dismantled many of the blocs and barriers that divided
our
parents world. For the first time, more people live under democracy than
dictatorship, including every nation in our 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.
To that end, we must expand NATO by 1999, so that countries that were
once our
adversaries can become our allies. At the special NATO summit this
summer,
that is what we will begin to do. We must strengthen NATO !,s Partnership
for
Peace with non-member allies. And we must build a stable partnership
between
NATO and a democratic Russia.
An expanded NATO is good for America. And a Europe in which all
democracies
define their future not in terms of what they can do to each other, but in
terms of what they can do together for the good of all -- that kind of
Europe
is good for America.
Second, America must look to the East no less than 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 there 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 this Congress
to
fund our share of the agreement under which North Korea must continue to
freeze
and then dismantle its nuclear weapons program.
We must pursue a deeper 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 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
worked
hard to tear down trade barriers abroad, so that we can create good jobs
at
home. I am proud to say that today, America is once again the most
competitive
nation, and the number one exporter in the world.
Now, we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and Latin
America,
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 the
authority
now to conclude new trade agreements that open markets to our goods and
services even as we preserve our values.
We need not shrink from the challenge of the global economy. We have the
best
workers and the best products. In a truly open market, and we can
out-compete
anyone in the world.
But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can
advance the
cause of freedom and democracy around 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 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.
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
later.
With American leadership, the killing has stopped in Bosnia. Now, the
habits
of peace must take hold. The new NATO force will allow reconstruction and
reconciliation to accelerate. Tonight, I ask Congress to continue its
strong
support for our troops there. They are doing a remarkable job for America
and America must do right by them.
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. In the
past
four years, we agreed to ban nuclear testing. With Russia, we
dramatically cut
our nuclear arsenals; we stopped targeting each others citizens. We are
acting
to rid the world 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 drug traffickers before they act, and to hold them
fully
accountable if they do.
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 to fight terrorism.
We have no more important obligations -- especially in the wake of what we
now
know about the Gulf War. This treaty has been bipartisan from the
beginning,
supported by Republican and Democratic administrations alike -- and
Republican
and Democratic Members of Congress alike -- and already approved by 68
nations. If we do not act by April 29 -- when this Convention goes into
force,
with us or without us -- we will lose the chance to have Americans leading
and
enforcing this effort. Together, we must make the Chemical Weapons
Convention
law, so that at last we can begin to outlaw poison gas from the earth.
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.
We must maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase funding
for
weapons modernization by the Year 2000, and we must take good care of our
men
and women in uniform. They are the world !,s finest.
We must also renew our commitment to America S diplomacy -- and pay our
debts
and dues to international financial institutions like the World Bank, and
to a
reforming United Nations. Every dollar we devote to preventing conflicts
to promoting democracy
to stopping the spread of disease and
starvation .
brings a sure return in security and savings. Yet international
affairs
spending today is just one percent of the federal budget -- a tiny
fraction of
what America invested in diplomacy to choose leadership over escapism at
the
start of the Cold War. If America is to continue to lead the world, we
here
who lead America simply must find the will to pay our way.
A farsighted America moved the world to a better place over these last
fifty
years. And it can do so for another fifty years. But a shortsighted
America
will soon find its words falling on deaf ears all around the world.
Almost exactly fifty years ago, in the first winter of the Cold War,
President
Harry Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon our
country to
meet its responsibilities of leadership. This is was his warning: !&If we
falter, we may endanger the peace of the world -- and we shall surely
endanger
the welfare of this nation. !8 That Congress, led by Republicans like
Senator
Arthur Vandenberg, answered President Truman 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 here at home, out of our ability to remain strong as
one
America.
All over the world, people are being torn asunder by racial, ethnic, and
religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and terror. We are the world !,s
most
diverse democracy. And the world looks to us to show that it is possible
to
live and advance together across those kinds of differences.
America has always been a nation of immigrants. From the start, a steady
stream of people, in search of freedom and opportunity, have left their
own
lands to make this land their home. We started as an experiment in
democracy
fueled by Europeans. We have grown into an experiment in democratic
diversity
fueled by openness and promise.
My fellow Americans, we must never believe that diversity is a weakness
-- it
is our greatest strength. Americans speak every language, know every
country.
People on every continent can look to us and see the reflection of their
own
greatness, as long as we give all of our citizens, whatever their
background,
an opportunity to achieve their greatness.
We are not there yet. We still see evidence of abiding bigotry and
intolerance, in ugly words and awful violence, in burned churches and
bombed
buildings. We must fight against this, in our country and in our hearts.
A few days before my second inauguration, one of America !,s best known
pastors, Rev. Robert Schuller, suggested that 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. !8
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 share a common past, but surely we share a common future.
I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us the way to
that
common future. Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud
American
whose family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. He earned the
Silver
Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fighting for his country in
Vietnam,
and he went on to serve Texas and America fighting for our future in this
chamber. We are grateful for his service and honored to have his mother,
Lillie Tejeda, with us tonight.
Gary Locke, the newly elected Governor of Washington State, is our first
Chinese-American Governor, the proud son of two of the millions of
Asian-American immigrants who have strengthened America with their hard
work,
family values, and good citizenship.
Rev. Schuller, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke, along with Kristin
Tanner,
Chris Getsla, Sue Winski and Dr. Kristen Zarfos - all 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, !8 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. A child born tonight will have almost no memory
of
the 20th Century. Everything that child will know of America, will be
because
of what we do now to build a new century.
We don !,t have a moment to waste. Tomorrow morning, 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. 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.
RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: jon.orszag ([email protected]@INET@LNGTWY [ UNKNOWN ])
CREATION DATE/TIME: 4-FEB-1997 20:03:00.00
SUBJECT: CBS Reality Check
TO: Jason S. Goldberg ( Jason S. Goldberg@EOP [ UNKNOWN 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Jason:
The CBS reality check on the HOPE scholarship was pretty good --
it was 10 times better than Clay's last couple of articles.
Make sure you watch it.
Orszag
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Date: 5-Feb-1997 06:37:55 EST
Message Creation Date was at 5-FEB-1997 06:33:00
SCHEDULING DIRECTOR: ANNE HAWLEY
HOME: 703-553-8940
OFFICE: 202-456-2823
WHCA PAGER: 4039
SCHEDULING DIRECTOR: STEPHANIE STREETT
HOME: 202-332-5651
OFFICE: 202-456-2823
WHCA PAGER: 4033
TRIP COORDINATOR: NICOLE ELKON
HOME: 202-332-2350
OFFICE: 202-456-6481
WHCA PAGER:
PRESS COORDINATOR: ANNE EDWARDS
HOME: 301-565-3101
OFFICE: 202-456-2921
WHCA PAGER: 4208
NOTE: Staff vans depart from West Executive Basement at 9:15 am.
9:30 am- MEETING
9:45 am OVAL OFFICE
Staff Contact: Erskine Bowles
9:55 am THE PRESIDENT proceeds to the South Lawn
10:00 am THE PRESIDENT departs the White House via Marine One en route
Andrews Air Force Base
(flight time: 10 minutes)
10:10 am THE PRESIDENT arrives Andrews Air Force Base
10:25 am THE PRESIDENT departs Andrews Air Force Base via Air Force One
en
route Bush Field, Augusta, Georgia
(flight time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)
12:00 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Bush Field, Augusta, Georgia
OPEN PRESS
CLOSED PUBLIC
Greeters: Lt. Governor Pierre Howard
Agriculture Commissioner Tom Irvin
State Senator Don Cheeks
State Senator Charles Walker
State Representative Ben Allen
State Representative Alberta Anderson
State Representative Henry Howard
Mayor Larry Sconyers
Former Representative Don Johnson
12:15 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Bush Field via motorcade en route Augusta
State University
(drive time: 20 minutes)
12:35 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Augusta State University, Physical
Education Building
Greeters: William Bloodworth, Jr., President, Augusta State
University
Julia Bloodworth
Paul Bloodworth
Nicole Bloodworth
Tom Allgood, Sr., Chairman, Board of Regents,
Augusta State University
David Neal, President, Student Government, Augusta
State University
Wynsome Bryant, Vice President, Student
Government, Augusta State University
John Flower, Vice President, University Advancement,
Augusta State University
Fred Barnabei, Vice President for Business and Student
Affairs, Augusta State University
Bill Bompart, Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Augusta State University
Francis J. Tedesco, President, Medical College of
Georgia
12:40 pm- POLICE PHOTOS
12:45 pm HALLWAY
Physical Education Building, Augusta State University
WHITE HOUSE PHOTO ONLY
12:50 pm- ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION ON K-12 EDUCATION
1:40 pm REFORMS
DANCE STUDIO
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
Remarks: Jordan Tamagni
Staff Contact: Bruce Reed
Event Coordinator: Nicole Elkon
POOL SPRAY (At the top)
-- Governor Zell Miller makes brief opening remarks.
-- The President makes brief remarks.
-- A discussion begins.
-- Upon conclusion of the discussion, the President departs.
1:45 pm- DRIVER/VOLUNTEER PHOTOS
1:50 pm HALLWAY
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
WHITE HOUSE PHOTO ONLY
2:00 pm- REMARKS ON THE HOPE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
3:20 pm ARENA
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
Remarks: Carolyn Curiel
Staff Contact: Bruce Reed
Event Coordinator: Nicole Elkon
OPEN PRESS
-- Off-stage announcement of the President, accompanied by Secretary
Richard
Riley, Department of Education, Senator Paul Coverdell, Senator Max
Cleland,
Governor Zell Miller, William Bloodworth, President, Augusta State
University
and Tanya Davis, Chair, Student Senate, Augusta State University, to
_&Ruffles
and Flourishes_8 and _&Hail to the Chief_8.
-- William Bloodworth makes brief welcoming remarks and introduces
Secretary
Richard Riley, Department of Education.
-- Secretary Richard Riley makes brief remarks and introduces Senator Max
Cleland.
-- Senator Max Cleland makes brief remarks and introduces Senator Paul
Coverdell
-- Senator Paul Coverdell makes brief remarks and introduces Governor Zell
Miller.
-- Governor Zell Miller makes brief remarks and introduces Tanya Davis
-- Tanya Davis makes remarks and introduces the President.
-- The President makes remarks.
-- Upon conclusion of remarks, the President works a ropeline and
departs.
3:25 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Augusta State University via motorcade en
route
Bush Field
(drive time: 20 minutes)
3:45 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Bush Field
4:00 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Bush Field via Air Force One en route
Andrews
Air Force Base
(flight time: 1 hour, 20 minutes)
OPEN PRESS
CLOSED PUBLIC
5:20 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Andrews Air Force Base
5:30 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Andrews Air Force Base via Marine One en
route
the White House
(flight time: 10 minutes)
5:40 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives the White House
6:00 pm- BRIEFING
6:15 pm RESIDENCE
Staff Contact: John Hilley
6:15 pm- CONGRESSIONAL MEETING
7:00 pm RESIDENCE
Staff Contact: John Hilley
CLOSED PRESS
EVENING OFF
BC AND HRC RON THE WHITE HOUSE
--openmail-part-006d5e6f-00000002--
--openmail-part-006d5e6f-00000001-
RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Mail-Server ([email protected]@INET@LNGTWY[UNKNOWN])
CREATION DATE/TIME: 5-FEB-1997 14:51:00.00
SUBJECT: 1997-02-03 Press Briefing by Mike McCurry
TO: Jeffrey H. Cohen ( Jeffrey H. Cohen@EOP [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 3, 1997
PRESS BRIEFING BY
MIKE MCCURRY AND DAVID JOHNSON
The Briefing Room
1:25 P.M. EST
MR. MCCURRY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Let
me start -- the President had a good 20-minute meeting today with
President Fujimori. With that, I will turn to my esteemed Deputy,
Mr. Johnson, who will give you some more on it.
Q
Was that a drop-by?
MR. JOHNSON: No.
As Mike mentioned, the meeting with President Fujimori
lasted about 20 minutes. And while there was a translator available,
the meeting was mostly in English, so it was about 20 minutes of
conversation.
The President wanted the opportunity to talk to
President Fujimori while he was in town, and therefore, reached out
and invited him to come to the White House. What he wanted to do was
to tell him how much he appreciated and admired the way he had been
handling this crisis, and that he thought that the statement that had
been made by him and Prime Minister Hashimoto this weekend in Toronto
had set exactly the right tone.
The President, of course, had been briefed during the
course of the weekend on that meeting, as well as the meeting that
Assistant Secretary Davidow had with President Fujimori shortly after
he arrived in Washington.
The President told President Fujimori that he thought he
was skillfully walking a very fine line and that is between resolving
this crisis peacefully without giving into terror. He told him that
it was a very hard line to walk, but it's the right one, and he was
handling it very carefully. President Fujimori thanked the President
for his support and told him that he knew that international support
for Peru and Japan during this crisis, particularly support from the
United States, was of critical importance. And he told him that Peru
intended to continue to be careful and to be patient as it worked to
try to resolve this.
During the -- taking advantage of the meeting being
here, the President also raised a couple of extra issues. He told
President Fujimori how much he appreciated the work that he was doing
and Peru was doing with the United States and with General McCaffrey
in our joint counternarcotics efforts, and that he appreciated him
continuing to push forward on trying to find a resolution to the
border dispute between Peru and Ecuador, in spite of the fact that
the crisis was ongoing.
Q
Was Secretary Albright there?
MR. JOHNSON: The Vice President, Secretary Albright,
Mr. Berger, Assistant Secretary Davidow, National Security
Interamerican Affairs Senior Director Jim Dobbins.
Q
Did the President offer any solutions as to how
they could break the stalemate in the hostage --
MR. JOHNSON: This wasn't that kind of meeting. They
were talking about how hard the work was to do and how correct it was
to be patient, but not to provide concessions to terrorists. It
wasn't about those type of specific issues.
On another subject --
Q
No, let's stay on Peru. Did they talk about
proposals that Mr. Hashimoto --
MR. JOHNSON: It was not a discussion about -- those are
issues that the Japanese and the Peruvians talked about this weekend.
But as I said, what the President wanted to do was to take the
opportunity while President Fujimori was in town to invite him into
the White House and to have a discussion with him and to tell him
that he appreciated the patience that he was exhibiting here and the
care that he was taking in resolving this crisis peacefully, but
walking that fine line and avoiding giving any concessions to
terrorists.
Q
David, why was the President reluctant to issue
that invitation prior to Mr. Fujimori's meeting with the Japanese --
MR. JOHNSON: I don't know that the President was
reluctant to issue any invitations. The Peruvians, as we said I
believe several times last week, had not asked to meet with the
President while President Fujimori was here. But the President and
others as we saw the situation developing and the meeting over the
weekend in Toronto, what we saw happening there, the meeting that
Assistant Secretary Davidow had upon President Fujimori's arrival in
Washington -- the President decided himself that he wanted to reach
out to President Fujimori and invite him here to the White House
while he was in town.
Q
David, since there are no U.S. nationals involved
in this hostage crisis, what is the U.S. interest in all this? I
mean, sometimes it seems we get involved in things that are beyond
our scope, and this would seem to be one of them.
MR. JOHNSON: I think that the United States has a very
strong interest in doing whatever we can to support governments who
are trying to confront terror. We have two friendly governments
here, Peru and Japan, that are in a very difficult situation because
of a terrorist attack in Peru. And it's something that I think the
United States will maintain a continuing interest in.
Notwithstanding the fact, as you say, that we do not have any
nationals there and it does not directly involve us, I think that any
time there is an ongoing terrorist incident which affects diplomats
and affects two friendly countries like this, it's something that we
have an interest in.
Q
Conditions of prisons or Lori Berenson was brought
up during the meeting?
MR. JOHNSON: No, that wasn't discussed. You may have
learned from the State Department that Ms. Berenson was one of the
issues that was discussed by Assistant Secretary Davidow I believe
with another member of President Fujimori's party. But you might
want to check with them about details about that. That was not part
of this discussion.
Q
Did the President offer any good offices to mediate
or to try --
MR. JOHNSON: I think I've said about what I can about
the content of their discussion.
Q
David, did the Japanese send word in the last few
days that they would welcome a meeting between the two Presidents?
MR. JOHNSON: I'm not sure about that. Not that I am
aware of. I'll see if there's anything about that.
Q
It's my understanding that a Saudi delegation will
be here later in the month, led by the Saudi Defense Minister. Will
the oil minister also be in that delegation?
MR. JOHNSON: I don't know that the delegation has been
formed yet. They will, of course, as you recognize, be guests of
Secretary Cohen, but you might want to ask the Defense Department who
is going to be part of the delegation. I know of no individuals
outside of the Defense Ministry who are expected to attend, but they
may have more detailed information.
Q
The reason why I ask is that there is speculation
the Saudis may offer to sell crude to pay for the F-16s.
MR. JOHNSON: I think we've addressed that issue. There
have been no formal requests for any F-16s, so to talk about how they
might be paid for is better than premature. We've had speculation
about things like that before and they tend to peter out
occasionally. But we'll see.
Q
David, why was there no press coverage of the
meeting with Fujimori this morning?
MR. JOHNSON: There were still photographs taken --
Q
That's not --
Q
But no chance for the opportunity for the press to
ask questions or --
MR. JOHNSON: I think President Fujimori is going to
have a press conference later this afternoon. You might want to
attend that.
Q
At the beginning of the crisis Mr. Burns was very
critical with the possibility of dealing with terrorists. Did the
President repeat such a view?
MR. JOHNSON: The President talked, as I've explained
here, about what U.S. policy is with respect to terrorism, and it's
one that's been articulated by several U.S. government spokesmen, and
that is that we do not see any profit in concessions for terrorists.
And that's the, as the President said himself, the fine line that
President Fujimori is working there -- to be patient, to try to
resolve this peacefully, but not to provide concessions to
terrorists.
Q
Was the role of Canada discussed on solving the
crisis?
MR. JOHNSON: No, it was not.
MR. MCCURRY: Thank you, David.
Other subjects.
Q
Is the President reconsidering this use of
marijuana in light of the editorial in the New England Journal of
Medicine?
MR. MCCURRY: No, he is not. He's doing what he said we
would do all along, which is conduct additional expert medical
research to see if there are helpful medical effects. I think
General McCaffrey has expressed himself to that.
Q
Why won't President Clinton take Senator Lott and
Speaker Gingrich up on their offer to meet the morning after the
State of the Union?
MR. MCCURRY: Oh, I assume he will take them up on the
offer to meet. We've said, as you know, here that we would look
forward to a bipartisan leadership meeting very shortly after the
State of the Union, and it's clear to me that the President and the
Majority Leader are working on the same wavelength that there needs
to be bipartisan cooperation to move the agenda of the nation
forward.
Q
-- apparently faxed him a letter asking him to move
actually -- to come up there and meet, I think on the 6th.
MR. MCCURRY: Well, we've already announced our schedule
for -- oh, on the 6th. Will you guys go call Leg. Affairs and see if
there's anything new.
But so are you planning anything? I mean you've
got the President's schedule --
MR. MCCURRY: We certainly -- the Congressional Affairs
Office here plan to be in contact with the Majority Leader's Office
to work out an appropriate time for a meeting. That's something we
would look forward --
But through the Majority Leader rather than
responding directly to Lott?
MR. MCCURRY: We would also talk to the Speaker. But as
the Majority Leader indicated on television yesterday he has spoken
with the Speaker, and we will speak with both of them.
So the meeting is definitely not going to be on
Wednesday?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, I'll check right now and see what's
definite.
Mike, the governors said that in their meeting the
President said that he would support the lifting of the Boren
Amendment, and they seemed to think that that was new, that he had
not said that in the past. And I wondered if you could --
MR. MCCURRY: I'd have to check.
Q
-- talk about that and also what he told them in
terms of giving them relief, if there is a Medicaid cap.
MR. MCCURRY: What he said with respect to Medicaid and
our desire to have some effective mechanism that can control cost,
what we said and what they said I think is very familiar to those who
have followed the debate on federal financing for health care. The
governors want maximum flexibility and continued access to federal
funding. We want to do something about rising costs, make sure we
don't go back to the situation of the 1980s, and put in a prudent
mechanism that preserves guaranteed federal access to health care.
Now, we've got some distinct ideas on how to do that.
We've talked about a per capita cap in the past. You can imagine
that's a subject that we'll be talking about Thursday when the budget
comes out. But we'll work closely with the governors to ensure that
the right kind of resources are available to guarantee the access to
health care while at the same time having the kind of prudent
mechanisms in place that control cost. That's the work that we have
to do, and I think it was clear for the meeting today that kind of
work can be done in a cordial and bipartisan atmosphere.
Could you confirm or at least, if you don't know --
MR. MCCURRY: On the Boren Amendment?
Q
-- get back to us on that?
MR. MCCURRY: We'll have to check on that. I know that
-- let me just check on that before I speculate.
Q
Are there some nuances we're missing in this
picture -- that the President wants bipartisanship; he's invited up
to come to Congress on Wednesday. Can he say I have already a trip
on Wednesday, but I can come another day? But you seem to be leaving
it up in the air. Is there any problem?
MR. MCCURRY: No, I'm just checking now to see -- we
were going to have some further contact. I didn't get a report back
on it, that's all. For all I know, Majority Leader Lott was not
aware of the fact that we plan to travel on Wednesday.
Q
And is the Hill the appropriate place for that
first meeting, or should it be here?
MR. MCCURRY: It's appropriate that they meet and that
they get to work. And where and when and how that happens remains to
be determined.
Q
Does it matter where it meets?
MR. MCCURRY: I think the President is obviously willing
to go to the Congress; he's doing so tomorrow night to give his
message. And he wants to move forward on this agenda, and I think
he's willing to work with the congressional leadership to see that
gets done.
Q
Mike, do you anticipate having a text tomorrow,
and if so, what time?
MR. MCCURRY: I'll see. I'm never, ever again going to
promise a State of the Union text advance, but work on the speech is
progressing well and we'll see where we are tomorrow night.
What about some excerpts like last year -- excerpts
at 6:00 p.m.?
MR. MCCURRY: We'll let you know tomorrow. No need to
worry about that until this time tomorrow.
Where is the President working on the speech?
MR. MCCURRY: He's worked on it extensively Saturday and
Sunday and has got more work to do. He looks forward to giving it.
The balanced budget amendment is going to be the
first order of business on the Hill. Is the President going to say
anything about it tomorrow night?
MR. MCCURRY: The President will certainly talk about
the importance of balancing the budget and talk about his budget plan
to do it and he'll suggest that we ought to do it and get on with
that business, and that the question of a constitutional amendment is
a moot question if we actually got together, Congress and the
President, and did the work of balancing the budget by a date
certain.
-- talk about the amendment in the State of the
Union Address?
MR. MCCURRY: I wouldn't be surprised if he said
something about the amendment.
Mike, several of the governors indicated that the
President suggested that he's prepared to go along with their
compromise language on aid to legal immigrants on welfare.
MR. MCCURRY: Well, the President, in the discussion
that was led by Governor Carper on that point -- right, Barry? Barry
was there and can give you a little more on it, but he indicated that
-- they acknowledged that there are some real concerns about the
status of legal immigrants under the bill. The President reaffirmed
the importance of successfully implementing welfare reform. This is
about making welfare reform work, not about some wholesale rewriting
of the very historic legislation that the President supported. And
we're talking about -- in fact, most of the discussion, if I
understand correctly, was built around the premise that we all have
to work together to ensure that welfare reform is a success.
And then on the specific issue of legal immigration,
legal immigrants who would be denied benefits, especially elderly
immigrants who have been in the country for some time, there is
concern that the governors have about that. Obviously, the President
has identified those concerns as well and will have some specific
remedies that we'll be talking about in that area.
But don't miss the overall thrust of the conversation.
The overall thrust was about things people can do together to build
support for welfare reform. In fact, the President was encouraged
that several governors encouraged him to continue to do what he's
doing -- stimulate a response from the private sector to ensure that
the jobs are there. They see how necessary that's going to be.
Q
Let me follow up. The President, in the same area,
suggested that on his own apparently brought up problems that welfare
recipients in Memphis are having finding transportation to and from
job sites, and suggested that there could be a smidgen of transit
aid.
MR. MCCURRY: If you follow up with Barry Toiv on that;
I didn't hear him refer to that.
Q
Well, is he going to propose or is there something
in the budget to take a portion of mass transit aid, which comes out
of the gasoline tax, and reserve it for welfare recipients to and
from the job site?
MR. MCCURRY: There was a discussion generally of the
importance of transportation to those who are going to locate work
opportunities and get to them, and there was some discussion, because
they had a separate discussion on the issue of ISTEA. You all are
familiar with ISTEA, right? So when they had the discussion on
ISTEA, there were some relevant comments about federal mass transit,
urban mass transit subsidies and how those were especially important
in light of welfare reform.
Q
But is he going to propose something in ISTEA to
reserve some aid for --
MR. MCCURRY: He will -- I think there will be further
discussion of the importance of linking federal transportation
subsidies to the welfare reform effort.
Q
Is he likely to talk about the elderly and the
disabled legal immigrant stuff in his budget?
MR. MCCURRY: Sorry, say again?
Q
Will he talk about that specific issue that the
governors were out here talking about -- the elderly and disabled
legal immigrants?
MR. MCCURRY: He will have more to say on that subject,
of course.
Q
I mean, tomorrow night?
MR. MCCURRY: He may very well tomorrow night, yes.
As for the specific compromise language on legal
immigrants, though, the governors seem to think the President thought
that their formulation was acceptable. Did he go that far, or was it
just more general kinds of -- in the same ballpark?
MR. MCCURRY: I didn't get the impression that they had
a specific language discussion. It was more about the general need
to address the issue, which the President clearly wants to do, which
many of the governors support, but they have a somewhat different
formulation of their own.
You may want to do some more on that. On the Boren
Amendment, Barry says that the President was reiterating his support
for repealing the Boren Amendment in order to provide states with
greater flexibility in negotiating payment rates with providers under
the Medicaid program. Barry can do more on that subject. We also
had a question on mass transit subsidies, which I gave a generic
answer to. Do you want to give a more specific answer? I said in
the course of ISTEA they did a little bit of transportation subsidy
and linking it back to welfare.
Q
Can you tell us what the Boren Amendment is?
MR. TOIV: As a matter of fact, I sort of can. The
Boren Amendment -- well, repealing the Boren Amendment would provide
the states with greater flexibility in negotiating payment rates with
providers under the Medicaid program. I think one can assume that
the Boren Amendment limits such flexibility. (Laughter.)
Q
What does that mean? I mean, what does the Boren
Amendment say now?
MR. TOIV: I don't have any more -- I can get more for
you on it. But this was a proposal that was contained in the
President's balanced budget proposal last year to repeal the Boren
Amendment. And the President today in the discussion reiterated his
support for repealing the amendment.
And on ISTEA, the President talked about something that
he actually talked about with some of the CEOs who gathered in the
Cabinet Room several weeks ago to talk about implementing welfare
reform, and that was the need to deal with the transportation issue
for many welfare recipients, getting them -- the problem of getting
them to where the jobs are, sometimes the jobs being in different
jurisdictions. And so there is a need to look at how mass transit
can be used can be developed to connect workers with jobs. And
that was something that was brought up today in connection with the
ISTEA discussion.
Q
Was there some sense of subsidies being set aside
specifically in legislation for this purpose?
MR. TOIV: To be honest, the discussion didn't get that
specific.
Q
Well, one of the governors said that the President
specifically suggested the idea of reserving, and he used the word
"smidgeon" -- of mass transit aid for subsidies for welfare.
MR. TOIV: That's right. But as far as how you do that
or what the -- any specific proposal, they didn't get that detailed.
Q
Is that in the budget?
MR. TOIV: Is that in the budget? I don't know the
answer to that one. I think we might have to wait on that one. One
of the few details we may have to wait on. (Laughter.)
Q
One of the governors was saying something about a
sevenfold increase in charter schools funding that the President
mentioned. I thought it was going to like double.
MR. MCCURRY: Well, when we were briefing on it in
Chicago you remember we gave out the numbers on charter schools -- it
takes you up to the goal of 3,000 charter schools by the year 2000.
And then the flow of how you -- I think the budget request this year
for FY '98 would take it from 400 that are in existence now up to
about 1,200 by the end of the fiscal year. So maybe a threefold
increase.
A sevenfold increase I think gets you from the
longer-term, the goal of 2000.
You mean the doubling of the number of schools --
Tripling the number.
MR. TOIV: Doubling of the money.
MR. MCCURRY: The only report I have from Legislative
Affairs is we've accepted in principle a meeting; we're just working
out the details of time and place.
Q
Two questions on campaign finance. In his position
at the White House, did Harold Ickes fax instructions to a Texas
donor who is part of which the donation was going to go to get out
the vote efforts?
MR. MCCURRY: I have only the following on that subject:
Based upon our understanding of the facts, Mr. Ickes' identification
of entities does not constitute a solicitation in violation of the
Hatch Act. Rather it is a response to Mr. Meddoff's request for
organizations to which he could make substantial contributions. In
general, identifying entities to which contributions can be made does
not constitute a solicitation in violation of the Hatch Act, nor is
it a violation of the Federal Election Campaign Act.
And whose interpretation is that?
MR. MCCURRY: It's an authorized statement from me from
the Legal Counsel's Office.
They say that -- the article says that in addition
to pointing out places where he could give tax-exempt contributions,
that Mr. Ickes solicited him for a $500,000 contribution to the DNC.
Are you saying, to your knowledge that didn't happen?
MR. MCCURRY: I'm not speaking to the facts of the
situation. I'm giving the authorized statement from the Legal
Counsel's Office, and Mr. Davis can help you with follow-up on that.
And do you know whether anyone here has contacted
Harold Ickes about that? He is not still with the administration?
MR. MCCURRY: I don't know whether he has formally left,
or not, or whether he is in transition.
Second issue, about the time that there was a great
deal of talk about the coffees here and the other people coming in
and out of the White House. Has the White House ever reorganized the
way people are given access to the White House and to the President
itself?
MR. MCCURRY: We have. Mr. Bowles sent a two-page
memorandum establishing new procedures that was distributed, I guess,
well over a week ago now.
How would you describe access now? Is it harder?
Is it more rigorous?
MR. MCCURRY: Yes, it now goes through a checking
process that's much more rigorous and attempts to address what
clearly were lapses in the ability to screen and check those
scheduled to have encounters with the President during the course of
the last year.
Q
May I ask a budget question? The proposals that
were put out yesterday by Secretary Rubin, two in particular were a
little confusing. The first is, there is going to be money to Puerto
Rico for development there. And the second is a D.C. tax package,
which we haven't heard anything about.
MR. MCCURRY: I think you've heard -- in the past we've
briefed about the Economic Development Corporation that the President
will propose for the District of Columbia. The funding level is the
new thing that was identified yesterday, about $260 million over five
years, I believe.
The Puerto Rico provision, I am not familiar with, and I
understand Treasury is in a position to brief on it, or to answer
questions on it.
Do you have a number of what the tax increases in
the new budget are going to be, as opposed to the tax cuts?
MR. MCCURRY: No, I've got the tax cuts -- (laughter) --
which were conveniently provided by the Treasury Department
yesterday, and they're $100 billion. Obviously, most people would
worry, is there any broad-based income tax increase proposed in the
budget, and clearly not. There are some things they're doing in
terms of base broadening. The Secretary of the Treasury has talked
about that.
Q
Why do some of the tax cuts have sunset provisions
in them? Isn't he putting a sunset provision on a couple of them?
MR. MCCURRY: No, under our economic assumptions about
the future, these would be permanent tax relief measures.
But the tax cuts are not permanent.
MR. MCCURRY: Under our assumptions, these would be
permanent tax relief measures.
So if your assumptions aren't right are they
permanent?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, our assumptions in general have been
pretty much on the money. We're very proud of this.
But on the tiny fraction of a percent that they're
wrong, what happens to the tax --
MR. MCCURRY: I'm not going to -- that's a technical
budget issue that I'm not going to attempt to -- (laughter).
Q
Do you have a ballpark figure of what the tax
increases will be from the proposal?
MR. MCCURRY: No, I don't.
Q
-- $80 billion has been mentioned --
MR. MCCURRY: No, I've seen a figure in print of $39
billion for one set of them, and there are some extended provisions
that go elsewhere. But I don't have a total figure.
Will there be an additional cigarette tax or
tobacco tax?
MR. MCCURRY: I have not heard anything to that effect.
Q
Can you tell us, is this going to be a wash? Or is
there going to be a net increase in tax deductions or a net increase
in taxes?
MR. MCCURRY: I know that that will be something that
all parties interested in the President's budget Thursday will rush
to determine and analyze and there will probably be different answers
given by different people.
The President -- he said that there would be a net
tax decrease. Is that correct?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, if you play with some of the numbers
you just asked me about, you would see he's right.
(Laughter.)
Q
Mr. Gingrich has confirmed that he has invited
Jesse Jackson to sit with him in the Speaker's Gallery at the State
of the Union. Has the President and First Lady decided whom their
guests will be?
MR. MCCURRY: They've got some ideas. I think they're
delighted, obviously, that Reverend Jackson will be there because
he's such an important and inspirational leader in so many
communities in America. They've got some people that they will be
acknowledging both by inviting them to be with the First Lady and
then also people the President will refer to, and I know you all will
be interested in who they are tomorrow night.
Q
In addition to the Georgia trip, what else can we
expect from this White House in terms of promoting and selling the
budget -- other travel, Cabinet types, et cetera?
MR. MCCURRY: The President has said in the past that he
would like to go out particularly to state legislatures, and states
are going to be so much a part of the work that we do on education,
on welfare reform, on some of the things to strengthen our
communities. We've suggested in the past he might even look for
opportunities to go talk to state legislatures or to visit additional
places, and you can foresee that type of opportunity after the State
of the Union.
The only thing scheduled right now is the trip we take
on Wednesday.
Q
To address the concerns on legal immigration, do
you think there would be a legitimate vehicle to either go through
the appropriations process or reform immigration law, rather than
revisit the welfare law?
MR. MCCURRY: I don't take a view on that. I think
there are a number of ways that Congress could address some of the
concerns the President has. You could do that either in the
authorization process or the appropriations process or the
appropriations process perhaps. I think that would be a
determination for Congress to make.
Mike, J.C. Watts is apparently going to be the
first African American ever to respond to a State of the Union
speech. Does the White House have any reaction to that, or any
comment on the selection?
MR. MCCURRY: He's a very eloquent, talented member of
Congress, and I think the President himself in his remarks will talk
about ways in which Americans can reach across racial divides and
come together. And the choice of the Republican leadership to
designate an African American to give that is a very encouraging
development.
Q
Mike, Trent Lott said yesterday that Alexis
Herman's confirmation will probably be successful if the White House
can document that she was not involved in the May 13th bankers
meeting last --
MR. MCCURRY: Can you hold that for a second?
But, Deborah, to come back to that question, in saying
that he is a very talented an effective member of Congress, I would
also acknowledge that there are many reasons why he was chosen. He,
himself, said yesterday that he was not -- didn't believe he was
chosen solely because of race, and we believe that, too. I'm sorry,
I just wanted to add that point.
What has the White House done today to send
documentation to the Hill proving what she told Trent Lott on Friday?
MR. MCCURRY: She indicated to him that he would -- that
follow-up, I assume, is taking place by Counsel and by others. But
if you call Joe Lockhart, he can probably give you some sense of what
documentation they're providing.
Mike, you mentioned that he'll talk about bridging
the racial divide. Will he offer specific remedies that we'll see in
the form of legislation or program or policy?
MR. MCCURRY: This is not -- on matters of races, you've
heard the President address them. They are matters of the heart as
much as matters of policy. There are aspects of our policy that I
think are reflected in ways we bring people together, but this is
also a way to comment and talk about the ways that individual
Americans can reach across and that elected leaders and those in
positions of responsibility can conduct themselves responsibly so
that we don't exacerbate tensions that do exist in our society.
Mike, you mentioned on Friday that the President
will have a fairly detailed portion of the State of the Union speech
concentrating on foreign policy. Presumably, one of the things he
might talk about is international cooperation to fight terrorist
threats. In that context and after meeting with Fujimori today, do
you think that he would make reference to the hostage crisis in Peru?
MR. MCCURRY: I'm not anticipating that. I think he
will talk about those challenges we face in the post-Cold War era,
which the fight against terrorism is certainly one, and one area in
which the United States government should devote its resources and
effort.
What is -- getting insurance for health for
children -- where does that fit into the President's budget? For
needy children?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, we haven't said specifically that it
fits in one way or another or how specifically, but it is obviously a
concern of the President and one that he might not only address
tomorrow night, but might also address in terms of his budget
proposal.
And where would that money come from? Would it be
part of Medicaid, or would it be a new program?
MR. MCCURRY: I'll leave that detail to the very good
budget briefings you will be getting on Thursday.
Q
Mike, the week after the budget comes out, CBO will
score the President's budget. If, like last time, CBO does not give
him full credit for what OMB's baseline quantifies, is the President
prepared to amend it and submit suggestions for where he'd do either
additional revenue raisers, or spending cuts to make it come under
balance under CBO?
MR. MCCURRY: First, let me say we are not having the
same kind of contentious debate about assumptions that we had this
time last year, or in the proposing of the FY'97 budget. We are, by
contrast, having a reasonably good discussion at a technical level
about what the economy is going to do. And, of course, we're seeing
very encouraging economic numbers that even are better than the very
conservative economic forecasts that we made at the Office of
Management and Budget.
So there will be, inevitably, some differences in the
way that the two different organizations look at the future of the
economy. We tend to believe those are technical issues for experts
to discuss because in past practice Congress, as they consider a
President's budget, will sometimes pick and choose from OMB forecasts
or from CBO forecasts. They sometimes mix and match. And we assume
in this case there will a look at the technical assumptions behind
the budget, the forecasts, the projections.
We, of course, hope that we get some credit for the
generally accurate nature of the President's forecasts, and then
we'll see what that does to the scoring of the baseline. It will be
clear that there will be some differences, but we don't think they'll
be insurmountable differences.
Q
But the President would advocate some policies to
make it up? I mean, there are predictions that by 2002 the gap could
be like $60 billion.
MR. MCCURRY: The President has a very credible balanced
budget proposal that we believe is based on conservative and accurate
projections. And we believe that they would give this country the
balanced budget it wants by the year 2002. If CBO ends up taking a
different point of view, we'll work with them to develop the right
forecast.
On the Medicaid per capita cap, is the President
set in stone on the level of that cap, or might that be negotiable?
Some governors said, well, it's in the 7.5 percent range with an
additional flexibility --
MR. MCCURRY: The President will propose a budget on
Thursday, and then we will, we hope, enter into discussions very
quickly with members of Congress about how to write the budget, how
to structure a balanced budget agreement. And we hope we can reach
that agreement quickly. Beyond that, I'm just not going to speculate
too much on what's happening.
MR. TOIV: He also did say that he wanted to hear from
the governors.
MR. MCCURRY: That's right. And he did tell the
governors that he wanted to hear from them on that kind of subject,
and they certainly have got a role in the debate, too.
Will we be briefed on the budget on Wednesday? And
if so, how?
MR. MCCURRY: I don't anticipate budget briefings on
Wednesday. I know that you'll hear from the President, Vice
President, and a range of technical experts on Thursday. We might,
for purposes of some of the wires so they can get a head start on the
story after midnight on Tuesday - I mean, Thursday - --
Q
Wednesday night, midnight.
MR. MCCURRY: Wednesday at midnight. So you have
something Thursday morning, we may talk to you late Wednesday night.
Q
Why just the wires? Why not the television - --
MR. MCCURRY: Well, and those of us who are the
electronic wires.
Q
-- a clear answer on the President's guest lists?
MR. MCCURRY: I'm sorry, say again.
Getting back to the President's guest list for the
State of the Union, could the governor of Georgia be there with him
that night?
MR. MCCURRY: I just don't -- he, today in the meeting
with the governors, said he knew that they were in town, some of them
might be staying in town. He invited those who could to participate
and to, if they could attend the speech, to do so because much of
what he would talk about tomorrow night impacts directly on the work
that governors do.
I think everyone knows that he will see Governor Miller
on Wednesday. That's in part because Governor Miller has been such a
leader in structuring the type of education opportunities that the
President wants to see reflected in the HOPE Scholarship that he will
propose in the budget. And our admiration for his work is well
known. And we don't know whether he's going to be there in any event
at this point.
In the State of the Union, will he talk about
adjustments in the CPI?
MR. MCCURRY: That would be pretty boring so I don't why
he would do that. (Laughter.) I mean, it's important. He'll talk
about balancing the budget. He'll talk about -- I think he's going
to say -- look, adjusting benefit programs for inflation -- I'm not
going to suggest he's going to get into that subject. But he is
going to talk about the importance of balancing the budget and talk
about how we need to reach agreement. But I don't think he's going
attempt to sit down and write a balanced budget on the spot,
particularly on a technical issue that needs expert review such as
the CPI.
And you're going to ask, is he going to appoint some
kind of commission, and the answer is, I don't know where that idea
comes from. That's floating around in the ether somewhere. That was
-- no, that was Chairman Greenspan's idea. I am not aware of any --
You will knock that down, too. (Laughter.)
MR. MCCURRY: -- not aware of any plans for the
President to address that tomorrow night.
Q
Who will be sitting in the First Lady's area?
MR. MCCURRY: The folks that we put out tomorrow.
(Laughter.)
Are you saying that he invited all the governors to
come?
MR. MCCURRY: He said that to the degree that those who
were there who could come, that they should come. I think he did
that in the pool spray at the top.
You said there are no surprises in the State of the
Union. Is there any news?
MR. MCCURRY: I told you. I said there are no surprises
-- so that if there was anything in there you hadn't heard before,
you'd say, ah, news and you could write it accordingly. There will
be some things in there you haven't heard before.
Like?
MR. MCCURRY: You'll hear them tomorrow night.
You gave us a big preview on Friday. Don't you
want to freshen that a little bit?
MR. MCCURRY: Well yes, we've got the governors today.
We did a lot about education and other stuff. We're pretty fresh.
(Laughter.) I think.
Mike, I wondered if you had any comment on the --
Is the President going to change parties?
Q
-- on the Time Magazine story and the word that the
person who is now the chief fundraiser for the Democrats apparently
-- Secretary of HHS and the suggestion is that some regulations may
have been modified because of his lobbying. I wondered if the White
House has checked into and if you have any comment?
MR. MCCURRY: Well, Mr. Bowles, first of all, addressed
that yesterday and I certainly agree with what he said yesterday.
But the general issue of nursing home reform is one that I think has
been covered extensively and has been addressed by the Department of
Health and Human Services and what we've done to implement the law
passed by Congress in 1987, draft the appropriate regulations to
protect those who are providing quality health care to seniors --
even at a time when some people are saying let's throw all the
regulations out the door altogether and is very, very well known.
The best thing to do would be to go and talk to those
who actually developed the regulations, promulgated them and now are
in the process of implementing them, to ask them what the impact has
been of people who are experts.
Did they talk to Mr. Solomont? They should have because
he's a recognized expert in nursing home care and he's someone who's
opinion I think counts a lot in medical circles. But they've talked
to consumer groups, to health care ombudsmen, to state public health
officials, to a wide variety of people. And HHS is, I think, more
than prepared to do a great deal on that subject.
Q
Mike, did you get a better answer on if, in fact,
and when he's going to the Hill to talk about the budget?
MR. MCCURRY: Yes, I did. I said that it's been agreed
to in principle, but no date and time has been set.
No, I mean if there's a meeting with Lott and the
Speaker.
MR. MCCURRY: That's the answer, agreed to in principle
but no date and time has been set.
Is the President going to support toughening up the
Clean Air Act? It sounds like the governors are against that.
MR. MCCURRY: We have promulgated regulations through
the Environmental Protection Agency. There's now a set of draft
regulations that are out there publicly and people are rendering
comment on those draft regulations. But the President will remain
committed to clean air, clean water, continuing to meet his
obligations as someone responsible for environmental protection.
Back to the budget briefing, you'll make sure that
there won't be a briefing while we're in the air coming back from
Georgia or something like that?
MR. MCCURRY: Yes. Yes, we wouldn't do -- anything we
did, we'd do after people returned.
Are you going on the trip, Mike?
MR. MCCURRY: I suspect so; I don't know yet.
Q
Back to Rita's question. The President last week
stressed that donors might get access, but they wouldn't get a
guaranteed result. And I think the question that was asked about Mr.
Solomont is, this is a donor who seemed to get a result, a desired
result, and I wonder, is there a feeling at the White House that
everything he did was proper, no improprieties there.
MR. MCCURRY: He got -- I'm not aware of anyone
suggesting he did anything improper. He is someone who would have a
right to comment like a range of Americans would on regulations that
impact the provision of care to the elderly -- consumers -- and did.
We actively reached out. And again, HHS is the agency that did this,
so I would suggest you contact them. But they actively reached out
to a wide range of people who would have concern about how we were
going to implement regulations mandated by Congress in 1987.
But as the President said, no one who is a fundraiser
gets any kind of guaranteed result or any directed result as a result
of him. They get to make their case, like any other group of people
get to make their case. We listen to a lot of representative
consumer groups that had no interest in making financial
contributions, but listen to them because they're expert in this area
and they have concern about the quality of health care being provided
to seniors. That's exactly the way the process should work.
Q
So there's no concern about his current role as a
fundraiser --
MR. MCCURRY: I'm not aware of anything that would lead
me to have any concern.
Q
Mike, what's he going to talk to the Democratic
Governors about tonight?
MR. MCCURRY: He's just going to say hello, thank them
for their work. There's a lot -- they're organized to begin the
process of contesting gubernatorial seats in 1998 of which there will
be many at stake, and that will be one of the stories of the 1998
campaign cycle. So, surely, he's interested in making sure that the
Democrats are able to elect Democratic governors around the country.
This is their annual dinner of the Democratic Governors Association.
THE PRESS: Thank you.
END
2:05 P.M. EST
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TEXT:
STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS
BY PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON
TO A JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS
THE HOUSE CHAMBER, THE CAPITOL
WASHINGTON, DC
9:14 P.M. EST
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 1997
.STX
TRANSCRIPT BY: FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE
620 NATIONAL PRESS BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC 20045
FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE IS A PRIVATE FIRM AND IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
COPYRIGHT 1997 BY FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE GROUP, INC., WASHINGTON,
DC 20045, USA. NO PORTION OF THIS TRANSCRIPT MAY BE COPIED, SOLD, OR
RETRANSMITTED WITHOUT THE WRITTEN AUTHORITY OF FEDERAL NEWS SERVICE
GROUP, INC.
TO RECEIVE STATE, WHITE HOUSE, DEFENSE, BACKGROUND AND OTHER
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COPYRIGHT IS NOT CLAIMED AS TO ANY PART OF THE ORIGINAL WORK
PREPARED BY A UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT OFFICER OR EMPLOYEE AS A PART
OF THAT PERSON'S OFFICIAL DUTIES.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: (Cheers, applause.) Thank you. Thank you.
(Continued applause.) Thank you very much. Thank you.
Mr. Speaker -- Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the
105th Congress, distinguished guests, and my fellow Americans. I
think I should start by saying thanks for inviting me back!
(Laughter, applause.)
I come before you tonight with a challenge as great as any in our
peacetime history, and a plan of action to meet that challenge, to
prepare our people for the bold new world of the 21st century. We
have much to be thankful for. With four years of growth, we have won
back the basic strength of our economy. With crime and welfare rolls
declining, we are winning back our optimism, the enduring faith that
we can master any difficulty. With the Cold War receding and global
commerce at record levels, we are helping to win an unrivaled peace
and prosperity all across the world. My fellow Americans, the state
of our union is strong. (Applause.)
But now we must rise to the decisive moment to make a nation and
a world better than any we have ever known.
The new promise of the global economy, the information age, unimagined
new work, life-enhancing technology -- all these are our to seize.
That is our honor and our challenge. We must be shapers of events,
not observers, for if we do not act, the moment will pass and we will
lose the best possibilities of our future.
We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy. The enemy
of our time is inaction. So tonight I issue a call to action --
action by this Congress, action by our states, by our people to
prepare America for the 21st Century; action to keep our economy and
our democracy strong and working for all our people; action to
strengthen education and harness the forces of technology and science;
action to build stronger families and stronger communities and a safer
environment; action to keep America the world's strongest force for
peace, freedom and prosperity; and above all, action to build a more
perfect union here at home.
The spirit we bring to our work will make all the difference.
We must be committed to the pursuit of opportunity for all Americans,
responsibility from all Americans in a community of all Americans.
And we must be committed to a new kind of government: not to solve
all our problems for us, but to give our people -- all our people --
the tools they need to make the most of their own lives. And we must
work together.
The people of this nation elected us all. They want us to be
partners, not partisans. They put us all right here in the same boat.
They gave us all oars, and they told us to row. Now, here is the
direction I believe we should take.
First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business
of our country: to balance the budget, renew our democracy, and
finish the job of welfare reform.
Over the last four years we have brought new economic growth by
investing in our people, expanding our exports, cutting our deficits,
creating over 11 million new jobs, a four-year record. (Applause.)
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. (Cheers, applause.) Thank
you.
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 will balance the budget and build on the vice president's efforts
to make our government work better -- even as it costs less.
It will balance the budget and provide middle-class tax relief to pay
for education and health care, to help to raise a child, to buy and
sell a home.
Balancing the budget requires only your vote and my signature.
It does not require us to rewrite our Constitution. (Applause,
cheers.) I believe (applause continues) -- I believe it is both
unnecessary, unwise to adopt a balanced budget amendment that could
cripple our country in time of economic crisis and force unwanted
results such as judges halting Social Security checks or increasing
taxes. (Hisses, groans.)
Let us at least agree we should not pass any measure, no measure
should be passed that threatens Social Security. We don't need --
(applause, cheers) whatever your view on that, we all must concede
we don't need a constitutional amendment, we need action. (Applause.)
Whatever our differences, we should balance the budget now, and then,
for the long-term health of our society, we must agree to a bipartisan
process to preserve Social Security and reform Medicare for the long
run, so that these fundamental programs will be as strong for our
children as they are for our parents.
And let me say something that's not in my script tonight. I know
this is not going to be easy. But I really believe one of the reasons
the American people gave me a second term was to take the tough
decisions in the next four years that will carry our country through
the next 50 years. I know it is easier for me than for you to say or
do. But another reason I was elected is to support all of you,
without regard to party, to give you what is necessary to join in
these decisions. We owe it to our country and to our future.
(Applause.)
Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit
ourselves tonight, before the eyes of America, to finally enacting
bipartisan campaign finance reform. (Applause.)
Now, Senators McCain and Feingold, Representatives Shays and
Meehan have reached across party lines here to craft tough and fair
reform. Their proposal would curb spending, reduce the role of
special interests, create a level playing field between challengers
and incumbents, and ban contributions from non-citizens, all corporate
sources, and the other large soft-money contributions that both
parties receive.
You know and I know that this can be delayed, and you know and I
know that delay will mean the death of reform. So let's set our own
deadline. Let's work together to write bipartisan campaign finance
reform into law and pass McCain-Feingold by the day we celebrate the
birth of our democracy, July the 4th. (Applause.)
There is a third piece of unfinished business. Over the last
four years we moved a record 2-1/4 million people off the welfare
roles. Then last year Congress enacted landmark welfare reform
legislation demanding that all able-bodied recipients assume the
responsibility of moving from welfare to work. Now each and every one
of us has to fulfill our responsibility, indeed our moral obligation,
to make sure that people who now must work can work. (Applause.) And
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 for businesses that hire
people off welfare;
-- incentives for job placement firms in states to create more
jobs for welfare recipients;
-- training, transportation and child care to help people go to
work.
Now I challenge every state -- turn those welfare checks into
private sector paychecks. I challenge every religious congregation,
every community nonprofit, every business to hire someone off welfare.
And I'd like to say especially to every employer in our country who
ever criticized the old welfare system, "You can't blame that old
system anymore; we have town it down.
Now, do your part." Give someone on welfare the chance to go to work.
(Applause.)
Tonight I am pleased to announce that five major corporations --
Sprint, Montsanto, UPS, Burger King, and United Airlines -- will be
the first to join in a new national effort to marshal America's
businesses large and small to create jobs so that people can move from
welfare to work. (Applause.)
We passed welfare reform. All of you know I believe we were
right to do it. But no one can walk out of this chamber with a clear
conscience unless you are prepared to finish the job. (Applause.)
And we must join together to do something else, too, something
both Republican and Democratic governors have asked us to do: to
restore basic health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes
immigrants who came to this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes,
and obey the law.
To do otherwise is simply unworthy of a great nation of immigrants!
(Cheers, applause.)
Now, looking ahead, the greatest step of all, the high threshold
to the future we must now cross, and my number one priority for the
next four years, is to ensure that all Americans have the best
education in the world. (Applause.) Thank you.
Let's work together to meet these three goals: every eight-year-
old must be able to read, every 12-year-old must be able to log on to
the Internet, every 18-year-old must be able to go to college, and
every adult American must be able to keep on learning for a lifetime.
(Applause.)
My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these
goals -- $51 billion next year -- but far more than money is required.
I have a plan, a call to action for American education based on these
ten principles:
First, a national crusade for education standards -- not federal
government standards, but national standards, representing what all
our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 2 st
century. Every state and school must shape the curriculum to reflect
these standards and train teachers to lift students up to them. To
help schools meet the standards and measure their progress, we will
lead an effort over the next two years to develop national tests of
student achievement in reading and math.
Tonight I issue a challenge to the nation. Every state should
adopt high national standards, and by 1999, every state should test
every fourth grader in reading and every eighth grader in math to make
sure these standards are met. (Applause.)
Raising standards will not be easy, and some of our children will
not be able to meet them at first. The point is not to put our
children down, but to lift them up. Good tests will show us who needs
help, what changes in teaching to make, and which schools need to
improve. They can help us end social 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 our secretary of education, Dick Riley, and I visited
northern Illinois, where eighth-grade students from 20 school
districts, in a project aptly called First in the World, took the
third International Math and Science Study. That's a test that
reflects the world-class standards our children must meet for the new
era. And those students in Illinois tied for first in the world in
science and came in second in math. Two of them, Kristin Tanner (sp)
and Chris Getzler (sp), are here tonight along with their teacher, Sue
Wentsky (sp). They're up there with the first lady, and they prove
that when we aim high and challenge our students, they will be the
best in the world. Let's give them a hand. Stand up, please.
(Applause.)
Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers.
Most of us in this chamber would not be here tonight without the help
of those teachers. I know that I wouldn't be here.
For years many of our educators, led by North Carolina's
governor, Jim Hunt, and the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards, have worked very hard to establish nationally accepted
credentials for excellence in teaching.
Just 500 of these teachers have been certified since 1995. My budget
will enable 100,000 more to seek national certification as master
teachers. We should reward and recognize our best teachers.
(Applause.) And as we reward them, we should quickly and fairly
remove those few who don't measure up, and we should challenge more of
our finest young people to consider teaching as a career.
Third, we must do more to help all our children read. Forty
percent -- forty percent -- of our eight-year-olds cannot read on
their own. That's why we have just launched the America Reads
initiative, to build a citizen army of one million volunteer tutors to
make sure every child can read independently by the end of the third
grade. We will use thousands of Americorps volunteers to mobilize
this citizen army. We want at least 100,000 college students to help.
And tonight I'm pleased that 60 college presidents have answered my
call, pledging that thousands of their work-study students will serve
for one year as reading tutors. (Applause.)
This is also a challenge to every teacher and every principal.
You must use these tutors to help your students read. And it is
especially a challenge to our parents. You must read with your
children every night.
This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the first
days of life. Scientists are now discovering how young children
develop emotionally and intellectually from their very first days and
how important it is for parents to begin immediately talking, singing,
even reading to their infants. The first lady has spent years writing
about this issue, studying it. And she and I are going to convene a
White House conference on early learning and the brain this spring to
explore how parents and educators can best use these startling new
findings.
We already know we should start teaching children before they
start school. That's why this balanced budget expands Head Start to
one million children by 2002. (Applause.) And that is why the vice
president and Mrs. Gore will host their annual family conference this
June on what we can do to make sure that parents are an active part of
their children's learning all the way through school. They've done a
great deal to highlight the importance of family in our life, and now
they're turning their attention to getting more parents involved in
their children's learning all the way through school. I thank you,
Mr. Vice President, and I thank you especially, Tipper, for what
you're doing. (Applause.)
Fifth, every state should give parents the power to choose the
right public school for their children. Their right to choose will
foster competition and innovation that can make public schools better.
We should also make it possible for more parents and teachers to start
charter schools, schools that set and meet the highest standards and
exist only as long as they do. Our plan will help America to create
3,000 of these charter schools by the next century, nearly seven times
as there are in the country today, so that parents will have even more
choices in sending their children to the best schools.
Sixth, character education must be taught in our schools. We
must teach our children to be good citizens. (Applause.) And we must
continue to promote order and discipline; supporting communities that
introduce school uniforms, impose curfews, enforce truancy laws,
remove disruptive students from the classroom, and have zero tolerance
for guns and drugs in schools. (Applause.)
Seventh, we cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in
schools that are literally falling down. (Scattered applause.) With
the student population at an all-time high, and record numbers of
school buildings falling into disrepair, this has now become a serious
national concern.
Therefore, my budget includes a new initiative: $5 billion to help
communities finance $20 billion in school construction over the next
four years. (Applause.)
Eighth, we must make the 13th and 14th years of education -- at
least two years of college just as universal in America by the 21st
century as a high school education is today, and we must open the
doors of college to all Americans. (Applause.)
To do that, I propose America's HOPE Scholarship, based on
Georgia's pioneering program -- 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 scholarship in 20
years. (Applause.)
Now this plan will give most families the ability to pay no taxes
on money they save for college tuition. I ask you to pass it and give
every American who works hard the chance to go to college.
Ninth, in the 21st century we must expand the frontiers of
learning across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must
have the chance to learn new skills.
Most Americans live near a community college. The roads that
take them there can be paths to a better future. My Gl bill for
America's workers will transform the confusing tangle of federal
training programs into a simple skill grant to go directly into
eligible workers' hands.
For too long this bill has been sitting on that desk there,
without action. I ask you to pass it now. Let's give more of our
workers the ability to learn and to earn for a lifetime. (Applause.)
Tenth, we must bring the power of the information age into all
our schools.
Last year I challenged America to connect every classroom and
library to the Internet by the year 2000, so that for the first time
in our history, children in the most isolated rural town, the most
comfortable suburbs, the poorest inner-city schools will have the same
access to the same universe of knowledge. (Applause.)
That is my plan -- a call to action for American education. Some
may say that it is unusual for a president to pay this kind of
attention to education. Some may say it is simply because the
president and his wonderful wife have been obsessed with this subject
for more years than they can recall. That is not what is driving
these proposals. We must understand the significance of this
endeavor.
One of the greatest sources of our strength throughout the Cold
War was a bipartisan foreign policy. Because our future was at stake,
politics stopped at the water's edge. Now I ask you, and I ask all
our nation's governors, I ask parents, teachers and citizens all
across America, for a new nonpartisan commitment to education, because
education is a critical national security issue for our future and
politics must stop at the schoolhouse door. (Cheers, applause.)
To prepare America for the 21 st century, we must harness the
powerful forces of science and technology to benefit all Americans.
This is the first State of the Union carried live in video over the
Internet, but we've only begun to spread the benefits of a technology
revolution that should become the modern birthright of every citizen.
Our effort to connect every classroom is just the beginning. Now
we should connect every hospital to the Internet so that doctors can
instantly share data about their patients with the best specialists in
the field. And I challenge the private sector tonight to start by
connecting every children's hospital as soon as possible so that a
child in bed can stay in touch with school, family, and friends. A
sick child need no longer be a child alone. (Applause.)
We must build the second generation of the Internet so that our
leading universities and national laboratories can communicate in
speeds a thousand times faster than today to develop new medical
treatments, new sources of energy, new ways of working together. But
we cannot stop there.
As the Internet becomes our new town square, a computer in every
home: a teacher of all subjects, a connection to all cultures. This
will no longer be a dream, but a necessity. And over the next decade,
that must be our goal. (Applause.)
We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the
Mars probes and the International Space Station, both of which will
have practical applications for our everyday living.
We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The
human genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life.
American scientists have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and
ovarian cancer and medication that stops a stroke in progress and
begins to reverse its effects, and treatments that dramatically
lengthen the lives of people with HIV and AIDS.
Since I took office, funding for AIDS research at the National
Institutes of Health has increased dramatically to $1.5 billion. With
new resources, NIH will now become the most powerful discovery engine
for an AIDS vaccine, working with other scientists, to finally end the
threat of AIDS. (Applause.) Thank you. Remember that every year,
every year we move up the discovery of an AIDS vaccine we'll save
millions of lives around the world. We must reinforce our commitment
to medical science.
To prepare America for the 21st century we must build stronger
families. Over the past four years the Family and Medical Leave Law
has helped millions of Americans to take time off to be with their
families. With new pressures on people and the way they work and
live, I believe we must expand family leave so that workers can take
time off for teacher conferences and a child's medical checkup. We
should pass flex time so workers can choose to be paid for overtime in
income or trade it in for time off to be with their families.
(Applause.)
We must continue we must continue, step by step, to give more
families access to affordable quality health care. Forty million
Americans still lack health insurance. Ten million children still
lack health insurance. Eighty percent of them have working parents
who pay taxes. That is wrong. (Applause.)
My -- my balanced budget will extend health coverage to up to 5
million of those children. Since nearly half of all children who lose
their insurance do so because their parents lose or change a job, my
budget will also ensure that people who temporarily lose their jobs
can still afford to keep their health insurance. No child should be
without a doctor just because a parent is without a job. (Applause.)
My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the
trust fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many
families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer's, and, for the
first time, it would fully pay for annual mammograms. (Applause.)
Just as we ended drive-through deliveries of babies last year, we
must now end the dangerous and demeaning practice of forcing women
home from the hospital only hours after a mastectomy.
(Applause.)
I ask your support for bipartisan legislation to guarantee that a
woman can stay in the hospital for 48 hours after a mastectomy. With
us tonight is Dr. Kristin Zarfos (ph), a Connecticut surgeon whose
outrage at this practice spurred a national movement and inspired this
legislation. I'd like her to stand so we can thank her for her
efforts. Dr. Zarfos, thank you. (Applause.)
In the last four years, we have increased child support
collections by 50 percent. Now we should go further and do better by
making it a felony for any parent to cross a state line in an attempt
to flee from this, his or her most sacred obligation. (Applause.)
Finally, we must also protect our children by standing firm in
our determination to ban the advertising and marketing of cigarettes
that endanger their lives. (Cheers, applause.)
To prepare America for the 21st century, we must build stronger
communities. We should start with safe streets. Serious crime has
dropped five years in a row. The key has been community policing.
(Applause.) We must finish the job of putting 100,000 community
police on the streets of the United States. (Applause.) We should
pass the Victims' Rights Amendment to the Constitution, and I ask you
to mount a full-scale assault on juvenile crime, with legislation that
declares war on gangs with new prosecutors and tougher penalties,
extends the Brady bill so violent teen criminals will not be able to
buy handguns, requires child safety locks on handguns to prevent
unauthorized use, and helps to keep our schools open after hours, on
weekends and in the summer so our young people will have someplace to
go and something to say yes to. (Applause.)
This balanced budget includes the largest anti-drug effort ever
-- to stop drugs at their source; punish those who push them; and
teach our young people that drugs are wrong, drugs are illegal, and
drugs will kill them. I hope you will support it. (Applause.)
Our growing economy has helped to revive poor urban and rural
neighborhoods, but we must do more to empower them to create the
conditions in which all families can flourish and to create jobs
through investment by business and loans by banks.
We should double the number of empowerment zones. They've already
brought so much hope to communities like Detroit -- (scattered
applause) -- where the unemployment rate has been cut in half in four
years. We should restore contaminated urban land and buildings to
constructive use. We should expand the network of community
development banks. And together, we must pledge tonight that we will
use this empowerment approach, including private sector tax
incentives, to renew our capital city so that Washington is a great
place to work and live -- (applause) -- and once again the proud face
America shows the world! (Continued applause, cheers.)
We must protect our environment in every community. In the last
four years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the
previous 12. Now we should clean up 500 more so that our children
grow up next to parks, not poison. I urge to pass my proposal to make
big polluters live by a simple rule: If you pollute our environment,
you should pay to clean it up. (Applause.)
In the last four years, we strengthened our nation's safe food
and clean drinking water laws; we protected some of America's rarest,
most beautiful land in Utah's Red Rocks region; created three new
national parks in the California desert; and began to restore the
Florida Everglades. Now we must be as vigilant with our rivers as we
are with our lands. Tonight I announce that this year I will
designate 10 American Heritage Rivers to help communities alongside
them revitalize their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the
rivers, proving once again that we can grow the economy as we protect
the environment. (Applause.)
We must also protect our global environment, working to ban the worst
toxic chemicals and to reduce the greenhouse gases that challenge our
health even as they change our climate.
Now, we all know that in all of our communities some of our
children simply don't have what they need to grow and learn in their
own homes or schools or neighborhoods. And that means the rest of us
must do more, for they are our children, too. That's why President
Bush, General Colin Powell, former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros
will join the vice president and me to lead the President's Summit of
Service in Philadelphia in April. Our national service program,
Americorps, has already helped 70,000 young people to work their way
through college as they serve America. Now we intend to mobilize
millions of Americans to serve in thousands of ways. Citizen service
is an American responsibility which all Americans should embrace. And
I ask your support for that endeavor. (Applause.)
I'd like to make just one last point about our national
community. Our economy is measured in numbers and statistics. And
it's very important. But the enduring worth of our nation lies in our
shared values and our soaring spirit. So instead of cutting back on
our modest efforts to support the arts and humanities I believe we
should stand by them and challenge our artists, musicians, and writers
-- (applause) -- challenge our museums, libraries, and theaters.
(Applause continues.) We should challenge all Americans in the arts
and humanities to join with their fellow citizens to make the year
2000 a national celebration of the American spirit in every community,
a celebration of our common culture in the century that is past and in
the new one to come in a new millennium so that we can remain the
world's beacon not only of liberty but of creativity long after the
fireworks have faded.
To prepare America for the 21st century we must master the forces of
change in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for
an uncharted time.
Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the
institutions that secured victory in the Cold War and built a growing
world economy. As a result, today more people than ever embrace our
ideals and share our interests. Already we have dismantled many of
the blocks 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. (Applause.)
Now we stand at another moment of change and choice, and another
time to be farsighted, to bring America 50 more years of security and
prosperity.
In this endeavor, our first task is to help to build for the very
first time an undivided, democratic Europe. When Europe is stable,
prosperous, and at peace, America is more secure.
To that end, we must expand NATO by 1999, so that countries that
were once our adversaries can become our allies. At the special NATO
summit this summer, that is what we will begin to do. We must
strengthen NATO's Partnership for Peace with non-member allies. And
we must build a stable partnership between NATO and a democratic
Russia. (Applause.)
An expanded NATO is good for America, and a Europe in which all
democracies define their future not in terms of what they can do to
each other, but in terms of what they can do together for the good of
all -- that kind of Europe is good for America.
Second, America must look to the East no less than to the West.
Our security demands it. Americans fought three wars in Asia in
this century.
Our prosperity requires it. More than 2 million American jobs
depend upon trade with Asia. There, too, we are helping to shape an
Asia Pacific community of cooperation, not conflict.
Let our -- let our progress there not mask the peril that
remains. Together with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with
North Korea and bridge the Cold War's last divide. And I call on
Congress to fund our share of the agreement under which North Korea
must continue to freeze and then dismantle its nuclear weapons
program. (Applause.)
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 China is the best way to
work on our common challenges, like ending nuclear testing, and to
deal frankly with our fundamental differences, like human rights.
(Applause.)
The American people must prosper in the global economy. We've
worked hard to tear down trade barriers abroad so that we can create
good jobs at home. I'm proud to say that today America is once again
the most competitive nation and the number-one exporter in the world.
(Applause.)
Now we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and
Latin America, two of the fastest-growing regions on earth, or be left
behind as these emerging economies forge new ties with other nations.
That is why we need the authority now to conclude new trade agreements
that open markets to our goods and services even as we preserve our
values. (Applause.) We need not shrink from the challenge of the
global economy. After all, we have the best workers and the best
products. In a truly open market, we can out-compete anyone, anywhere
on earth.
But this is about more than economics. By expanding trade, we can
advance the cause of freedom and democracy around the world. There is
no better example of this truth than Latin America where democracy and
open markets are on the march together. That is why I will visit
there in the spring to reinforce our important ties.
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 full
years ahead of schedule, with half a billion dollar profit to us.
(Applause.)
America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace. From
the Middle East to Haiti, from Northern Ireland to Africa, taking
reasonable risks for peace keeps us from being drawn into far more
costly conflicts later. With American leadership, the killing has
stopped in Bosnia. Now the habits of peace must take hold. The new
NATO force will allow reconstruction and reconciliation to accelerate.
Tonight I ask Congress to continue its strong support of our troops.
They are doing a remarkable job there for America, and America must do
right by them. (Applause.)
Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security.
In the past four years, we agreed to ban -- we led the way to a
worldwide agreement to ban nuclear testing.
(Scattered applause.)
With Russia, we dramatically cut nuclear arsenals and we stopped
targeting each other's citizens. We are acting to prevent nuclear
materials from falling into the wrong hands, and to rid the world of
land mines. (Applause.)
We are working with other nations with renewed intensity to fight
drug traffickers and to stop terrorists before they act and hold them
fully accountable if they do. (Applause.)
Now we must rise to a new test of leadership -- ratifying the
Chemical Weapons Convention. (Applause.) Make no mistake about it,
it will make our troops safer from chemical attack. It will help us
to fight terrorism. We have no more important obligations, especially
in the wake of what we now know about the Gulf War.
This treaty has been bipartisan from the beginning, supported by
Republican and Democratic administrations, and Republican and
Democratic members of Congress, and already approved by 68 nations.
But if we do not act by April the 29th, when this convention goes into
force with or without us -- we will lose the chance to have
Americans leading and enforcing this effort. Together we must make
the Chemical Weapons Convention law so that at last we can begin to
outlaw poisoned gas from the earth. (Applause.)
Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges. We
must maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase funding
for weapons modernization by the year 2000. And we must take good
care of our men and women in uniform. They are the world's finest.
(Applause.)
We must also renew our commitment to America's diplomacy and pay
our debts and dues to international financial institutions like the
World Bank -- (applause) -- and to a reforming United Nations. Every
dollar -- (applause) -- every dollar we devote to preventing
conflicts, to promoting democracy, to stopping the spread of disease
and starvation brings a sure return in security and savings. Yet
international affairs spending today is just 1 percent of the federal
budget, a small fraction of what America invested in diplomacy to
choose leadership over escapism at the start of the cold war.
If America is to continue to lead the world, we here who lead
America simply must find the will to pay our way. A far-sighted
America moved the world to a better place over these last 50 years.
And so it can be for another 50 years. But a short-sighted America
will soon find its words falling on deaf ears all around the world.
(Applause.)
Almost exactly 50 years ago in the first winter of the cold war
President Truman stood before a Republican Congress and called upon
our country to meet its responsibilities of leadership. This was his
warning. He said, "If we falter, we may endanger the peace of the
world, and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this nation."
That Congress, led by Republicans like Senator Arthur Vandenburg,
answered President Truman's call. Together, they made the commitments
that strengthened our country for 50 years. Now let us do the same.
Let us do what it takes to remain the indispensable nation, to keep
America strong, secure and prosperous for another 50 years.
(Applause.)
In the end, more than anything else, our world leadership grows
out of the power of our example here at home, out of our ability to
remain strong as one America. All over the world people are being
torn asunder by racial, ethnic and religious conflicts that fuel
fanaticism and terror. We are the world's most diverse democracy, and
the world looks to us to show that it is possible to live and advance
together across those kinds of differences. America has always been a
nation of immigrants. From the start, a steady stream of people in
search of freedom and opportunity have left their own lands to make
this land their home. We started as an experiment in democracy fueled
by Europeans. We have grown into an experiment in democratic
diversity fueled by openness and promise.
My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our
diversity is a weakness; it is our greatest strength. (Applause.)
Americans speak every language, know every country. People on
every continent can look to us and see the reflection of their own
great potential, and they always will, as long as we strive to give
all our citizens, whatever their background, an opportunity to achieve
their own greatness.
We're not there yet. We still see evidence of a biting bigotry
and intolerance in ugly words and awful violence, in burned churches
and bombed buildings. We must fight against this in our country and
in our hearts.
Just a few days before my second Inauguration, one of our
country's best-known pastors, Reverend Robert Schuller, suggested that
I read Isaiah 58:12. Here's what it says: "Thou shalt raise up the
foundations of many generations, and thou shalt be called the repairer
of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in."
I placed my hand on that verse when I took the oath of office, on
behalf of all Americans, for no matter what our differences in our
faiths, our backgrounds, our politics, we must all be repairers of the
breach.
I want to say a word about two other Americans who show us how.
Congressman Frank Tejeda was buried yesterday, a proud American whose
family came from Mexico. He was only 51 years old. He was awarded
the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart fighting for his
country in Vietnam. And he went on to serve Texas and America
fighting for our future here in this chamber. We are grateful for his
service and honored that his mother, Lily (sp) Tejeda, and his sister,
Mary Alice, have come from Texas to be with us here tonight. And we
welcome you. Thank you. (Applause.)
Gary Locke, the newly-elected governor of Washington state, is
the first Chinese American governor in the history of our country.
He's the proud son of two of the millions of Asian American immigrants
who strengthened America with their hard work, family values and good
citizenship.
He represents the future we can all achieve. Thank you, Governor, for
being here. Please stand up. (Applause.)
Reverend Schuler, Congressman Tejeda, Governor Locke (sp), along
with Kristin Tanner (sp) and Chris Getzler (sp), Sue Wynski (sp) and
Dr. Kristin Zarfos (sp) -- they're all Americans from different roots
whose lives reflect the best of what we can become when we are one
America.
We may not share a common past, but we surely do share a common
future. Building one America is our most important mission, the
foundation for many generations of every other strength we must build
for this new century. Money cannot buy it, power cannot compel it,
technology cannot create it. It can only come from the human spirit.
America is far more than a place; it is an idea -- the most
powerful idea in the history of nations, and all of us in this
chamber, we are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people
into a new world.
A child born tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th
century. Everything that child will know about America will be
because of what we do now to build a new century. We don't have a
moment to waste. Tomorrow there will be just over 1,000 days until
the year 2000. One thousand days to prepare our people. One thousand
days to work together. One thousand days to build a bridge to a land
of new promise.
My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize those days
and the century.
Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.
(Applause.)
####
END ATTACHMENT 2
RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Ronald L. Wright ( Ronald L. Wright@EOP@LNGTWY@LNGTWY UNKNOWN 1)
CREATION DATE/TIME: 5-FEB-1997 06:33:00.00
SUBJECT: POTUS SCHEDULE FOR 2/5
TO: James A. Hawkins (James A. Hawkins@eop [ UNKNOWN 1)
READ:UNKNOWN
TO: Ronald L. Wright (Ronald L. Wright@eop [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Message Creation Date was at 5-FEB-1997 06:33:00
SCHEDULING DIRECTOR: ANNE HAWLEY
HOME: 703-553-8940
OFFICE: 202-456-2823
WHCA PAGER: 4039
SCHEDULING DIRECTOR: STEPHANIE STREETT
HOME: 202-332-5651
OFFICE: 202-456-2823
WHCA PAGER: 4033
TRIP COORDINATOR: NICOLE ELKON
HOME: 202-332-2350
OFFICE: 202-456-6481
WHCA PAGER:
PRESS COORDINATOR: ANNE EDWARDS
HOME: 301-565-3101
OFFICE: 202-456-2921
WHCA PAGER: 4208
NOTE: Staff vans depart from West Executive Basement at 9:15 am.
9:30 am- MEETING
9:45 am OVAL OFFICE
Staff Contact: Erskine Bowles
9:55 am THE PRESIDENT proceeds to the South Lawn
10:00 am THE PRESIDENT departs the White House via Marine One en route
Andrews Air Force Base
[flight time: 10 minutes]
10:10 am THE PRESIDENT arrives Andrews Air Force Base
10:25 am THE PRESIDENT departs Andrews Air Force Base via Air Force One
en
route Bush Field, Augusta, Georgia
[flight time: 1 hour, 30 minutes]
12:00 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Bush Field, Augusta, Georgia
OPEN PRESS
CLOSED PUBLIC
Greeters: Lt. Governor Pierre Howard
Agriculture Commissioner Tom Irvin
State Senator Don Cheeks
State Senator Charles Walker
State Representative Ben Allen
State Representative Alberta Anderson
State Representative Henry Howard
Mayor Larry Sconyers
Former Representative Don Johnson
12:15 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Bush Field via motorcade en route Augusta
State University
[drive time: 20 minutes]
12:35 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Augusta State University, Physical
Education Building
Greeters: William Bloodworth, Jr., President, Augusta State
University
Julia Bloodworth
Paul Bloodworth
Nicole Bloodworth
Tom Allgood, Sr., Chairman, Board of Regents,
Augusta State University
David Neal, President, Student Government, Augusta
State University
Wynsome Bryant, Vice President, Student
Government, Augusta State University
John Flower, Vice President, University Advancement,
Augusta State University
Fred Barnabei, Vice President for Business and Student
Affairs, Augusta State University
Bill Bompart, Vice President for Academic Affairs,
Augusta State University
Francis J. Tedesco, President, Medical College of
Georgia
12:40 pm- POLICE PHOTOS
12:45 pm HALLWAY
Physical Education Building, Augusta State University
WHITE HOUSE PHOTO ONLY
12:50 pm- ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION ON K-12 EDUCATION
1:40 pm REFORMS
DANCE STUDIO
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
Remarks: Jordan Tamagni
Staff Contact: Bruce Reed
Event Coordinator: Nicole Elkon
POOL SPRAY (At the top)
-- Governor Zell Miller makes brief opening remarks.
-- The President makes brief remarks.
-- A discussion begins.
-- Upon conclusion of the discussion, the President departs.
1:45 pm- DRIVER/VOLUNTEER PHOTOS
1:50 pm HALLWAY
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
WHITE HOUSE PHOTO ONLY
2:00 pm- REMARKS ON THE HOPE SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM
3:20 pm ARENA
Physical Education Building - Augusta State University
Remarks: Carolyn Curiel
Staff Contact: Bruce Reed
Event Coordinator: Nicole Elkon
OPEN PRESS
-- Off-stage announcement of the President, accompanied by Secretary
Richard
Riley, Department of Education, Senator Paul Coverdell, Senator Max
Cleland,
Governor Zell Miller, William Bloodworth, President, Augusta State
University
and Tanya Davis, Chair, Student Senate, Augusta State University, to !
&Ruffles
and Flourishes !8 and !&Hail to the Chief !8.
-- William Bloodworth makes brief welcoming remarks and introduces
Secretary
Richard Riley, Department of Education.
-- Secretary Richard Riley makes brief remarks and introduces Senator Max
Cleland.
-- Senator Max Cleland makes brief remarks and introduces Senator Paul
Coverdell
-- Senator Paul Coverdell makes brief remarks and introduces Governor Zell
Miller.
-- Governor Zell Miller makes brief remarks and introduces Tanya Davis
-- Tanya Davis makes remarks and introduces the President.
-- The President makes remarks.
-- Upon conclusion of remarks, the President works a ropeline and departs.
3:25 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Augusta State University via motorcade en
route
Bush Field
[drive time: 20 minutes]
3:45 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Bush Field
4:00 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Bush Field via Air Force One en route
Andrews
Air Force Base
[flight time: 1 hour, 20 minutes]
OPEN PRESS
CLOSED PUBLIC
5:20 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives Andrews Air Force Base
5:30 pm THE PRESIDENT departs Andrews Air Force Base via Marine One en
route
the White House
[flight time: 10 minutes]
5:40 pm THE PRESIDENT arrives the White House
6:00 pm- BRIEFING
6:15 pm RESIDENCE
Staff Contact: John Hilley
6:15 pm- CONGRESSIONAL MEETING
7:00 pm RESIDENCE
Staff Contact: John Hilley
CLOSED PRESS
EVENING OFF
BC AND HRC RON THE WHITE HOUSE
RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Mail-Server ( [email protected]@INET@LNGTWYJUNKNOWN ])
CREATION DATE/TIME: 5-FEB-1997 12:51:00.00
SUBJECT: 1997-02-03 Remarks by the President at DGA Dinner
TO: Jeffrey H. Cohen ( Jeffrey H. Cohen@EOP [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
February 3, 1997
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT DEMOCRATIC GOVERNORS ASSOCIATION
ANNUAL DINNER
Omni Shoreham Hotel
Washington, D.C.
6:40 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. Thank you, Governor Dean,
for that wonderful introduction. And I thank the orchestra for
playing me in. (Laughter.) Thank you, Governor Rossello, for your
leadership in the DGA. And to our DNC General Chair, Governor Roy
Romer, thank you for agreeing to do that. I hope it made the
Democratic Governors feel better; it sure made me feel better when
you did it. (Applause.)
Our Democratic National Chairman, Steve Grossman, thank
you for being here tonight. And thank you, Santita, for singing
again. You got me in a good humor before I had to come out and
speak.
You all know that the Vice President is coming over
later -- I'm just the warm-up act. (Laughter.) But that's probably
as it should be. At least that's what he asked me to say right
before I left the White House. (Laughter.) I thank you for
understanding why I can't be here all evening. As you know, the
State of the Union is tomorrow night, and I hope that the governors
who are here will be staying for it. We have a place for all of you.
It's a very different city than it was a year ago. A
year ago we had a cold wave -- and a cold wave in politics so bad
that it shut the government down. And the American people had
something to say about it in the months ahead after that, and then
definitively in November. And it's a lot warmer outside this year
than it was last year. And I like it. (Applause.)
All of you know that I have been deeply indebted to my
own experience as a governor and to the Democratic Governors for many
of the ideas that we have brought to bear over the last four years.
Our country has produced 11.2 million jobs, for the first time in
history in a four-year presidential administration. (Applause.) We
have -- crime has come down in every year. The welfare rolls have
dropped by 2.24 million, the largest amount in history.
Inequality among working people has started back down
again, after a 20-year increase, with particular drops for single
parents working to support their children, the elderly, and African
Americans.
In the last four years, thanks to the work that we have
done together, we have, first of all, reversed our country's
addiction to supply-side economics, and substituted for it an
economics based on investing in people, expanding trade, reducing the
deficit, and ultimately, balancing the budget in the right way.
(Applause.)
We have restored the family and community as the
centerpiece of our social agenda with initiatives like the Family and
Medical Leave law, which we celebrated the fourth anniversary of just
this week, and which I hope to expand in this coming session of the
Congress -- and I hope you will help me do that. (Applause.)
When it comes to crime and welfare we replaced rhetoric
with action, and that's why results have flowed. We have redefined
the role of government -- no longer do the American people believe,
and no longer are they being told that government is the enemy. They
know that the role of government is to be our partner to give us the
tools to solve our problems and to create the conditions in which
Americans can flourish.
And finally, we have reaffirmed the importance of our
national community. No longer is it commonplace in our national
politics to see victory come from dividing Americans by race, by
gender, or in any other way. And I'm proud of that; perhaps proudest
of all that we have rebuked the people who want to divide us as a
nation. That's what the Democratic Party is all about. (Applause.)
In the next four years -- well, you have to wait until
tomorrow night to hear about that. (Laughter.) But let me say that
in the next four years I will still depend upon the Democratic
Governors for your ideas; two of them you know I have embraced with
particular vigor -- the HOPE Scholarship, pioneered by Governor Zell
Miller in Georgia -- (applause) -- and the idea of providing national
certification to the most excellent teachers in America, pioneered by
Governor Jim Hunt in North Carolina. I thank you both for that.
(Applause.)
What I want to leave you with is that I think in the
last four years we've basically unlocked the potential of our country
by fixing a lot of things that were wrong and by redefining what the
stakes are. In the next four years we have to take initiatives to
shape America for the next 50 years. And what I want you to think
about when you go back home is this: It's not very often that a
country has a period of such enormous peace and prosperity and yet,
is still confronted by such great challenges. And what has brought
us to this moment in history is the incredible rate and scope of
change of the time in which we live.
We're not just moving into a new century and a new
millennium, we're moving into a whole new way of doing things. It's
changing the way family life works, it's changing the way work life
works, it's changing the way people relate to each other in society
and across national borders. It poses particular challenges for our
educators, but also challenges for all the rest of us.
We're also learning a lot of things that impose new
responsibilities on us. I know that the Democratic governors heard
from my friend, Rob Reiner, who is sitting out here at this table,
who is passionately concerned about what happens to children from the
time they're born until they're two or three years old. We now know
things about those years that we never knew before. And that imposes
upon us responsibilities we never had before -- because we now know
we can prevent problems from occurring we didn't think we could, and
we can unleash potential we didn't know was there, and that requires
us to behave in a different way.
So, tomorrow night, I'm going to try to talk about the
next steps I think we have to take. But I want you to think in big
terms about this. Every time a governor is elected who has real
vision and real understanding and a real willingness to take prudent
risks to tap the potential of this moment. We have advanced the
cause of freedom and democracy, and we've given more people a chance
to light up their own lives. That's really what all this is about.
Democracies normally don't do very well in times of
peace and prosperity. They sort of get complacent and kind of go to
the golf course twice a week. Sounds like a good idea to me.
(Laughter.) Unfortunately, we don't have that luxury now -- not if
we're going to do what we ought to do.
So that's what this is about tonight. In the next two
years we'll be seeing 38 governors races come up for a vote of the
people, affecting 80 percent of the people who live in this country.
And the decisions that will be made by those governors will chart the
course for the next century. This is a very, very important time to
be making these judgments. And I can tell you, having now been
President for four years and having been a governor for 12 years -- I
could tell you a lot of things about that -- (laughter) -- but the
point I want to make is there are a lot of things that a President
can do and a lot of things a President can't. There are some things
that can and will only be done by the governors of this country,
working with people throughout the states. It matters a great deal.
You know that. That's why you're here tonight. But as
you think about this tonight and tomorrow night at the State of the
Union and the work that I'm going to help you do in the next two
years to try to make sure we elect more people from our party to the
statehouses to move this country forward, just remember, usually
democracies get lazy in times of peace and prosperity. The changes a
and the challenges of this time do not permit us to do this. If we
do it we will regret it for a very long time. If we don't, you ain't
seen nothing yet.
Thank you, and God bless you. (Applause.)
END
6:50 P.M. EST
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END ATTACHMENT 1
RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Mail-Server ([email protected]@INET@LNGTWY] UNKNOWN 1)
CREATION DATE/TIME: 6-FEB-1997 05:40:00.00
SUBJECT: 1997-02-05 President Opening Remarks at Education Discussion
TO: Jeffrey H. Cohen ( Jeffrey H. Cohen@EOP [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
(Augusta, Georgia)
For Immediate Release
February 5,
1997
OPENING REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
AT EDUCATION DISCUSSION
Athletic Center
Augusta State University
1:17 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I want to thank all of you
for agreeing to be part of this. And I'll be very brief because I want
to hear from you.
I very much appreciate the fact that Senator Coverdell and
Senator Cleland and Congressman Norwood came down with me today, along
with Governor and Mrs. Miller. And I wanted to, after the State of the
Union last night, which I believe was the most extensive treatment a
President has ever given to the question of education in the State of
the Union -- I wanted to come here because I know a lot about what
you've done here and what you're trying to do, and I think it's very
important that the American people respond to the challenge that I laid
out last night to make American education the best in the world, to
understand that it won't be done overnight, and not to be afraid of
trying to reach higher standards.
I went over -- and I won't belabor it now, but this is a
little booklet that I had done that Secretary of Education Riley, who is
here with us today, put together for us, incorporating the 10 points
that I made in the State of the Union last night. But in virtually
every one of these areas, the state of Georgia is trying to move
forward. And that's the important thing. Whether it's opening the
doors of college education with a HOPE Scholarship, or the
pre-kindergarten program, or the remarkable thing you're trying to do on
the Internet which will have a huge impact around the country if you do
it, because then a lot of other states will get in here and help us.
The Vice President and I have been trying to get all the schools hooked
up by the year 2000, but we might get there ahead of time if every state
would take the kind of action that you're taking here.
Then the thing that I really want to focus on is how we can
achieve the objectives that were set out way back in 1989 by the
governors and then President Bush -- how can we achieve those national
education goals. The only way we can ever do it is if we maintain the
right blend of local control of our schools, state leadership, but
adherence to high national standards so everybody understands what the
bar is we're trying to reach.
And what we're going to try to do is to get the states and
the school districts of the country and all the teachers organizations,
the other educators and the parents especially, to accept the notion
that there ought to be high standards and we ought to measure to see how
our kids are doing -- not to put them down, but to lift them up, and to
support the whole educational process, and make a specific effort to
mobilize a lot of people to make sure our children are literate and that
they can read independently at the appropriate level, at least by the
time they get out of the 3rd grade.
So that's what we're going to do. And I think -- what I
hope will come out of this today is that by our being here people will
see what you're trying to do in Georgia; they'll be interested in it; it
will spark similar activities around the country and we'll see a kind of
a cascading effect. You know, when the American people make up their
mind to do something, they can get out ahead of the leaders in a hurry,
and that's a good thing.
When we started this hooking up the Internet, for example,
we went to California, which is our biggest state, and had a Net Day and
hooked up 20 percent of the schools in California. And we had this
organized effort to get everybody else to do it. And within no time,
the amount of activity outstripped the organization; people just went on
and did it, just like you're doing. And that's what you want to happen.
So I'm very hopeful, I'm very excited. And I hope that now
we can just hear from you. And, Mr. Swearingen, I think you're going to
run this show, so -- --
Q
We'll try, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: -- the floor is yours.
END
1:21 P.M. EST
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Document-Id: PDI://OMA.EOP.GOV.US/1997/2/6/7.TEXT.1
Keywords: California, Communications, Computers, Economy, Federalism, Georgia,
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RECORD TYPE: FEDERAL (TRP NOTES MAIL)
CREATOR: Bill_Dauster r([email protected]@mailexc2.senate.gov@INET@LNGTWY] UNKNOWN
])
CREATION DATE/TIME: 6-FEB-1997 15:26:00.00
SUBJECT: President's Budget Highlights
TO: Barbara Chow ( Barbara Chow@eop [ UNKNOWN ])
READ:UNKNOWN
TEXT:
Highlights
In his 1998 budget, President Clinton has proposed a balanced
approach to lead this Nation into the 21st century. The budget is
balanced not only fiscally - it will lead to a surplus in 5 years -
but also in terms of policy. Even as the President looks to the
future with bold proposals to improve the Nation's educational
system, he seeks to ensure that those Americans whose hard work and
sacrifice have brought us to this juncture are not forgotten.
The President's proposals represent a carefully measured
approach to eliminating the deficit. Savings are split almost
equally between discretionary reductions and entitlement changes.
Even in areas like Medicare, where any proposed change may be
considered controversial, the President has suggested workable
reforms that are designed to protect the benefits for which so many
Americans have worked so hard. Within the extremely tight limits
on discretionary spending, the budget reflects the priorities of a
Nation preparing itself for the new economy of the next millennium.
The 1998 budget delivers on the President's promise to put our
fiscal house in order by ensuring, for the first time in two
decades, that the Federal Government will take in more money than
it spends. At the same time, the budget looks to a promising
future of even greater economic growth and prosperity a future
-
that can be achieved only by ensuring that the next generation of
Americans is ready to meet the challenges it faces.
The President's 1998 Budget
(In billions of dollars) 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001
2002
Current services deficits
128
120
140
128
109
101
Proposals
-2
+1
-23
-41
-72
-118
Policy deficits/surplus(-)
126
121
117
87
36 -17
% of GDP
1.6%
1.5%
1.4%
1.0%
0.4%
-0.2%
Fiscal Balance in 2002
Completing the job. The deficit has declined for 4 straight
years, from $290 billion in 1992 to $107 billion in 1996. As a
percentage of the economy, the budget deficit is now at 1.4
percent, the lowest level since 1979, and the lowest of any major
industrialized nation. The 1998 budget completes the job with
credible savings proposals that close the gap between spending and
revenues in 2002.
Sustained economic growth. The budget builds on President
Clinton's strong economic record. Since 1993, more than 11 million
new jobs have been created, and the current unemployment rate
stands at 5.3 percent. OMB, CBO, and private-sector economists all
foresee a slowdown in growth to a more sustainable pace after real
GDP rose a strong 3.4 percent in 1996. On the whole, CBO's
economic projections are somewhat more pessimistic than OMB's,
leading them to predict worse future budget deficits. In the past
4 years, however, OMB's forecasting record for both the economy and
the deficit have been superior to CBO's, even while actual growth
and deficits have been better than either agency's projections.
Economic assumptions. If OMB assumptions prove overly
optimistic, expedited congressional procedures call for additional
cuts to keep the deficit on a path to balance. As a fall back, a
set of automatic triggers cut spending across-the-board and sunset
most tax cuts. Savings are split evenly among taxes, entitlements,
and discretionary spending. Balanced Priorities
The budget limits discretionary spending, reforms entitlement
programs, and eliminates unwarranted corporate benefits reducing
I
the deficit by $351 billion over 5 years. These savings are offset
by targeted tax cuts of $98 billion over the same period. Gross
savings are lower than previous plans for at least two reasons.
The time frame for balance has been compressed from 6 years to 5.
In addition, recent improvement in the economic and budget outlook
reduced the cumulative savings required to achieve balance from
previous levels.
Discretionary. Discretionary proposals save $137 billion in
outlays by reducing the projected growth below the inflated
baseline. The budget does provide small increases over a hard
freeze for both defense ($68 billion) and non-defense ($122
billion). Greatest investments in the non-defense category are for
education, training and law enforcement. Force readiness is the
top defense priority.
Education and Training. Education is the number one priority
in the President's budget. To pay for his national crusade to
improve education and provide for lifelong learning, the
President's budget includes $46.4 billion in discretionary budget
authority for education and training. His proposal is $8.9 billion
over that allocated in last year's budget resolution and an
increase of $4 billion over the 1997 appropriated level. Head
Start, Goals 2000, Education Technology, Pell Grants, and Job Corps
are but a few of the programs included in this function category
that receive significant budget increases in the President's plan.
Protecting the Environment. The President's budget places a
priority on protecting the environment by increasing funds for
several Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) programs and natural
resources initiatives. The President follows through on his pledge
to offer a balanced budget plan that protects the environment by
recommending an increase of $3.1 billion, up 12 percent relative
to last year, for various programs, highlighted by an increase of
$846 million for the EPA. The President's budget increases funding
for the EPA's operating program - the backbone of EPA's efforts to
ensure the enforcement of current environmental laws - and the
Superfund program that will serve to speed up the pace of cleanup
of toxic waste sites. Also included in the request is $87 million
for the brownfields program, an increase of $51 million.
Crime. The President's budget extends the commitment to cut
crime, curb illegal drugs, and secure the Nation's borders,
providing $1.1 billion more resources than last year. With overall
crime rates dropping for the last 5 years, the Administration
proposes to target resources to combat juvenile crime and illegal
immigration. To this end, the budget continues funding to put
100,000 police officers on the street, increases State grants for
prison construction and the Violence against Women initiative,
presents new anti-drug abuse programs, and deploys more resources
along the Nation's southern border to disrupt the drug trade and
illegal immigration.
Military Spending. The President proposes $266 billion for
defense-related programs, an increase of $2.9 billion from last
year's level, and assumes enactment of requested rescissions and
Major Proposals in the President's Budget
(In billions of dollars) 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002
5-yr
CURRENT SERVICES DEFICITS
120
140
128
109
101 ---
Discretionary changes 1/
-6 -18 -23 -41
-50 -137
Defense
-5 -15 -14 -22 -23 -80
Nondefense
-1 -3 -8 -19 -27
-58
Entitlement changes
+(*) -6 -19 -33
-64 -121
Medicare
-4 -11 -22 -28 -35
-100
Medicaid (net)
1 +(*) -1 -4 -6
-9
Health insurance initiatives
3 3 3
41 14
Welfare reform (excluding Medicaid)
3 3
43 3 16
Spectrum proposals
-2 -2 -4 -6
-22
-36
Student loans
-1 -(*) -(*) -(*) -1
-3
School construction
1 1 1 1
--- 5
Improve third grade literacy
0 +(*) +(*)
+(*) +(*) 1
Other mandatory
-1 -1 -(*) -1 -4
-9
Revenue proposals
7 1465
22
Tax relief
18 16 20 22 23
98
Unwarranted benefits
-4 -6 -7 -8
-9 -34
Other provisions
-7 -9 -9 -9
-9 -42
Total programmatic changes
1 -22 -38 -68
-109 -236
Debt service
-(*) -1 -2 -5 -9
-16
Total, proposals
1 -23 -41 -72 -118
-252
RESULTING DEFICIT/SURPLUS
121
117
87
36
-17 ---
1/ Savings from uncapped baseline. Total discretionary cuts
from capped baseline are $96 billion over 5 years.
supplementals. Over the next 5 years, the Administration proposes
to increase defense spending by $68 billion from a discretionary
freeze at 1997 enacted levels. The President's 1998 budget request
provides defense with $6.5 billion more in 1998 and $19.2 billion
more in 1998-2002 than was projected for these time periods in
last year's budget submission. The Administration's defense
request continues to emphasize readiness and quality of life for
U.S. soldiers. The budget provides robust funding of $93.7 billion
or operation and maintenance and gives military personnel a pay
raise of 2.8 percent in 1998 and 3.0 percent thereafter. The
President's defense procurement request is $42.6 billion, a $1.5
billion decline from last year's level. Over the next 5 years,
procurement spending would rise by 47 percent in real terms,
hitting the Joint Chief's $60 billion goal in 2001 and $68 billion
in 2002. These increases would accommodate the purchase of new
weapons systems coming on line at the turn of the century.
Foreign Policy and Diplomacy Spending. The President proposes
$19.5 billion in support of the Nation's foreign policy and
diplomatic efforts, which is $1.2 billion more than last year's
enacted level. This increase allows the United States to clear
arrearages and pays our assessed contributions to the United
Nations, and provides stepped-up assistance of $900 million to the
fragile democracies of the New Independent States. To avert
future monetary or currency crises, the budget also includes a
request for an additional $3.5 billion in budget authority only
(no outlays) for the New Arrangements to Borrow. The budget
continues to provide robust funding of $5.7 billion to support the
Middle East peace process.
Medicare. The 1998 budget preserves and modernizes Medicare
-
saving $100 billion over 5 years and extending the solvency of the
Hospital Insurance Trust Fund into 2007. The package gives
beneficiaries more choices among private health plans, makes
Medicare more efficient and responsive to beneficiary needs, and
reduces the growth rate of provider payments without adding new
costs to enrollees.
The distribution of 5-year savings concentrates on areas of
unsustainable growth. These include reductions in payments to
managed care programs ($34 billion), hospitals ($33 billion), home
health agencies ($14 billion), physician payments ($7 billion),
skilled nursing facilities ($7 billion), and other providers ($2
billion). Measures to reduce fraud and abuse save an additional $9
billion and new preventative benefits cost $16 billion over 5
years. The Part-B premium is extended at 25 percent for savings of
$10 billion over 5 years.
Medicaid. The President proposes a number of changes to
Medicaid, resulting in $9 billion in net savings. His plan limits
the amount of Federal dollars States can spend through a per-person
cap, while continuing to guarantee health and long-term care for
the 37 million low-income pregnant women, children, disabled
Americans, and elderly who rely on it. In addition, the budget
proposals include a restructuring of payments to hospitals that
serve a disproportionate share of low-income patients States
would be granted additional flexibility to simplify administration
of the program. These changes result in $22 billion in gross
savings.
The President also proposes to add back $13 billion to provide
additional services under Medicaid - including States options to
increase coverage for children and the disabled. The plan would
also restore certain benefits for legal immigrants and their
children that were eliminated in last year's welfare reform
legislation.
Other Health Initiatives. The budget includes three new
policies to extend health coverage to the uninsured: a State grant
program to provide health coverage to uninsured children; a
demonstration project to provide premium assistance to individuals
and families who lose their health insurance when they are between
jobs; and grants to States to encourage the creation of voluntary
purchasing cooperatives for small businesses. These proposals are
projected to cost $13.7 billion over 5 years. The administration
estimates that 5 million additional children half of those
currently without health insurance - could receive coverage by the
year 2002.
Welfare. In keeping with the promise he made after signing last
year's welfare reform legislation, the President includes several
initiatives designed to help welfare recipients find work, and
restores some of the benefit cuts in last year's welfare reform
bill. The budget provides $3 billion in new grant money to help
States and cities move one million welfare recipients into jobs.
The President also proposes to add to the current Work Opportunity
Tax Credit (WOTC) to create incentives for businesses to provide
new job opportunities for long-term welfare recipients.
In addition to helping low-income people find work by expanding
discretionary spending in the areas of transportation, job
training, and adult education, the President restores $16 billion
funding for several programs cut in last year's welfare reform
bill. Among the proposed restorations: longer food stamp benefits
for childless unemployed people, changes to the standard deduction
and other allowances, and SSI benefits for the estimated 200,000
legal immigrants who have become disabled after entering the
country.
Spectrum. The budget includes $36.1 billion over 5 years in
spectrum auction proposals. Of that amount, $18.3 billion would be
derived from the auction of the analog broadcast spectrum. Also
proposed is an expansion of FCC's authority to auction spectrum for
personal communication services that would generate $17.1 billion
in revenue, and a new generation of toll-free "888" vanity
telephone numbers estimated to yield $700 million over 5 years.
Student Loan Program Reforms. While affirming the right of
schools to choose between the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL)
Program and the Direct Student Loan Program, the budget proposes
net savings of $3.47 billion. To reduce student borrowing costs by
$1.4 billion, the budget would cut origination fees for both
programs. The plan would also extend the flexible repayment and
consolidation options available to Direct Loans borrowers to FFEL
borrowers, thus continuing efforts to provide similar terms. The
President would derive $4.5 billion in savings by requiring the
guarantee agency and lender system to be performance-based, thus
maximizing incentives to reduce student defaults. About $2.5
billion of these savings come from the proposed recall of guarantee
agency reserves.
School Construction. To stimulate State and local efforts to
renovate and construct new school facilities, the President
requests $5 billion in 1998. This new program will address the
need to correct safety problems, modernize schools to use
technology, create more space for growing enrollment, make schools
accessible to the disabled, and install energy efficient climate
control systems. The administration hopes to use this $5 billion
to leverage more than $20 billion in actual repairs and
construction by subsidizing school construction bonds and other
local financing mechanisms.
America Reads. Recognizing literacy as the foundation for
academic achievement, the President has issued a challenge to the
Nation that all children read well by the end of third grade. Two
parts of this $1.2 billion proposal are to be funded with new
mandatory spending: America's Reading Corps designed to create
reading specialists to train and supervise one million tutors who
would provide youngsters help, and Parents as First Teachers a
program that would provide training to parents through local
community and national groups.
Middle Class tax relief. The centerpiece of the President's tax
proposals is the $87 billion Middle Class Bill of Rights which, as
it did last year, contains three key proposals: a $500 credit for
children under 13, the HOPE Scholarship tax credit and other
education and training tax incentives, and expanded access to
Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs). Other significant proposals
in this category include: a welfare-to-work credit, a $500,000
capital gains exclusion on home sales, a package of tax incentives
for investment in distressed communities, and targeted estate tax
relief for small businesses.
Eliminating unwarranted benefits and tax loopholes. The budget
plan includes a variety of proposals to modify or eliminate various
tax breaks. Most of these items were included in last year's
budget. Among the major items: various limits on the use of the
dividends received deduction (DRD), requiring the use of
average-cost basis for stocks and securities, modification of the
loss carryback and carryforward rules, replacement of the sales
source rules with activity-based rules, and changes in the
allowable inventory accounting practices. Unlike his previous
year's proposal, the President declined to specify effective dates
for these measures. Instead, he suggested that the effective date
be the dat
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