State of the Union Address

President William Jefferson Clinton State of the Union Address
United States Capitol, Washington. D.C.
[Congressional Record: January 27, 2000 (House) Page H29-H35]

The PRESIDENT. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, honored guests,

my fellow Americans: We are fortunate to be alive at this moment in

history. Never before has our Nation enjoyed, at once, so much

prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis and so

few external threats. Never before have we had such a blessed

opportunity and, therefore, such a profound obligation to build the

more perfect union of our founders' dreams.

We begin the new century with over 20 million new jobs; the fastest

economic growth in more than 30 years; the lowest unemployment rates in

30 years; the lowest poverty rates in 20 years; the lowest African-

American and Hispanic unemployment rates on record; the first back-to-

back surpluses in 42 years.

Next month, America will achieve the longest period of economic

growth in our entire history.

We have built a new economy.

Our economic revolution has been matched by a revival of the American

spirit: Crime down by 20 percent, to its lowest level in 25 years. Teen

births down 7 years in a row. Adoptions up by 30 percent. Welfare rolls

cut in half to their lowest levels in 30 years.

My fellow Americans, the state of our union is the strongest it has

ever been.

As always, the real credit belongs to the American people.

My gratitude also goes to those of you in this Chamber who have

worked with us to put progress over partisanship.

Eight years ago, it was not so clear to most Americans there would be

much to celebrate in the year 2000. Then our Nation was gripped by

economic distress, social decline, political gridlock. The title of a

best-selling book that year asked: ``America: What Went Wrong?''

In the best traditions of our Nation, Americans determined to set

things right. We restored the vital center, replacing outmoded

ideologies with a new vision anchored in basic, enduring values:

opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a community of all

Americans.

We reinvented government, transforming it into a catalyst for new

ideas that stress both opportunity and responsibility, and give our

people the tools they need to solve their own problems.

With the smallest Federal workforce in 40 years, we turned record

deficits into record surpluses, and doubled our investment in

education. We cut crime: with 100,000 community police and the Brady

Law, which has kept guns out of the hands of half a million criminals.

We ended welfare as we knew it, requiring work while protecting

health care and nutrition for children, and investing more in child

care, transportation, and housing to help their parents go to work. We

have helped parents to succeed at home and at work with family leave,

which 20 million Americans have now used to care for a newborn child or

a sick loved one. We have engaged 150,000 young Americans in citizen

service through AmeriCorps, while helping them earn money for college.

In 1992, we just had a roadmap. Today, we have results. Even more

important, America again has the confidence to dream big dreams. But we

must not let this confidence drift into complacency. For we, all of us,

will be judged by the dreams and deeds we pass on to our children. And

on that score, we will be held to a high standard, indeed. Because our

chance to do good is so great.

My fellow Americans, we have crossed the bridge we built to the 21st

century. Now, we must shape a 21st-century American revolution, of

opportunity, responsibility, and community. We must be now, as we were

in the beginning, a new Nation.

At the dawn of the last century, Theodore Roosevelt said, ``The one

characteristic more essential than any other is foresight. It should be

the growing nation with a future that takes the long look ahead.''

Tonight, let us take our long look ahead and set great goals for our

Nation.

To 21st century America, let us pledge these things:

Every child will begin school ready to learn and graduate ready to

succeed.

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Every family will be able to succeed at home and at work, and no child

will be raised in poverty. We will meet the challenge of the aging of

America. We will assure quality, affordable health care at last for all

Americans. We will make America the safest big country on earth. We

will pay off our national debt for the first time since 1935. We will

bring prosperity to every American community. We will reverse the

course of climate change and leave a safer, cleaner planet. America

will lead the world toward shared peace and prosperity, and the far

frontiers of science and technology. And we will become at last what

our founders pledged us to be so long ago: One Nation, under God,

indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

These are great goals, worthy of a great nation. We will not reach

them all this year. Not even in this decade. But we will reach them.

Let us remember that the first American revolution was not won with a

single shot. The continent was not settled in a single year. The lesson

of our history, and the lesson of the last 7 years, is that great goals

are reached step by step: always building on our progress, always

gaining ground.

of course, you cannot gain ground if you are standing still. For too

long this Congress has been standing still on some of our most pressing

national priorities. So let us begin tonight with them.

Again, I ask you to pass a real Patients' Bill of Rights. I ask you

to pass common sense gun safety legislation. I ask you to pass campaign

finance reform. I ask you to vote up or down on judicial nominations

and other important appointees; and, again, I ask you, I implore you,

to raise the minimum wage.

Now, let me try to balance the seesaw here. Two years ago, as we

reached across party lines to reach our first balanced budget, I asked

that we meet our responsibility to the next generation by maintaining

our fiscal discipline. Because we refused to stray from that path, we

are doing something that would have seemed unimaginable 7 years ago. We

are actually paying down the national debt.

Now, if we stay on this path, we can pay down the debt entirely in

just 13 years now and make America debt-free for the first time since

Andrew Jackson was President in 1835.

In 1993, we began to put our fiscal house in order with the Deficit

Reduction Act, which you will all remember won passages in both Houses

by just a single vote. Your former colleague, my first Secretary of

the Treasury, led that effort and sparked our long boom. He is here

with us tonight. Lloyd Bentsen, you have served America well; and we

thank you.

Beyond paying off the debt, we must ensure that the benefits of debt

reduction go to preserving two of the most important guarantees we make

to every American, Social Security and Medicare. Tonight I ask you to

work with me to make a bipartisan down payment on Social Security

reform by crediting the interest savings from debt reduction to the

Social Security Trust Fund so that it will be strong and sound for the

next 50 years.

But this is just the start of our journey. We must also take the

right steps toward reaching our great goals.

First and foremost, we need a 21st century revolution in education,

guided by our faith that every single child can learn. Because

education is more important than ever, more than ever the key to our

children's future, we must make sure all of our children have that key.

That means quality pre-school and afterschool, the best trained

teachers in the classroom and college opportunities for all our

children.

For 7 years now, we have worked hard to improve our schools, with

opportunity and responsibility: Investing more, but demanding more in

return.

Reading, math and college entrance scores are up. Some of the most

impressive gains are in schools in very poor neighborhoods. But all

successful schools have followed the same proven formula: higher

standards, more accountability and extra help so children who need it

can get it to reach those standards.

I have sent Congress a reform plan based on that formula. It holds

States and school districts accountable for progress and rewards them

for results. Each year our national government invests more than $15

billion in our schools. It is time to support what works and stop

supporting what does not.

Now, as we demand more from our schools, we should also invest more

in our schools. Let us double our investment to help States and

districts turn around their worst-performing schools, or shut them

down. Let us double our investment in afterschool and summer school

programs which boost achievement and keep people off the street and out

of trouble. If we do this, we can give every single child in every

failing school in America, everyone, the chance to meet high standards.

Since 1993, we have nearly doubled our investment in Head Start and

improved its quality. Tonight, I ask you for another $1 billion for

Head Start, the largest increase in the history of the program.

We know that children learn best in smaller classes with good

teachers. For 2 years in a row, Congress has supported my plan to hire

100,000 new qualified teachers to lower class size in the early grades.

I thank you for that, and I ask you to make it three in a row.

And to make sure all teachers know the subjects they teach, tonight I

propose a new teacher quality initiative, to recruit more talented

people into the classroom, reward good teachers for staying there and

give all teachers the training they need.

We know charter schools provide real public school choice. When I

became President, there was just one independent public charter school

in all America. Today, thanks to you, there are 1,700. I ask you now to

help us meet our goal of 3,000 charter schools by next year.

We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet, and we

are getting there. In 1994, only 3 percent of our classrooms were

connected. Today, with the help of the Vice President's E-rate program,

more than half of them are; and 90 percent of our schools have at least

one Internet connection.

But we cannot finish the job when a third of all our schools are in

serious disrepair. Many of them have walls and wires so old they are

too old for the Internet. So tonight I propose to help 5,000 schools a

year to make immediate and urgent repairs and again to help build or

modernize 6,000 more, to get students out of trailers and into high-

tech classrooms.

I ask all of you to help me double our bipartisan GEAR UP program,

which provides mentors for disadvantaged young people. If we double it,

we can provide mentors for 1.4 million of them. Let us also offer these

kids from disadvantaged backgrounds the same chance to take the same

college test-prep courses wealthier students use to boost their test

scores.

Thank you.

To make the American dream achievable for all, we must make college

affordable for all. For 7 years, on a bipartisan basis, we have taken

action toward that goal: larger Pell grants, more affordable student

loans, education IRAs and our HOPE scholarships which have already

benefited 5 million young people. Now, 67 percent of high school

graduates are going on to college. That is up 10 percent since 1993.

Yet millions of families still strain to pay college tuition. They need

help.

So I propose a landmark $30 billion college opportunity tax cut, a

middle-class tax deduction for up to $10,000 in college tuition costs.

The previous actions of this Congress have already made 2 years of

college affordable for all. It is time to make 4 years of college

affordable for all.

If we take all of these steps, we will move a long way toward making

sure every child starts school ready to learn and graduates ready to

succeed.

We also need a 21st century revolution to reward work and strengthen

families by giving every parent the tools to succeed at work and at the

most important work of all, raising children. That means making sure

every family has health care and the support to care for aging parents,

the tools to bring their children up right and that no child grows up

in poverty.

From my first days as President, we have worked to give families

better access to better health care. In 1997, we passed the Children's

Health Insurance Program, CHIP, so that workers who do not have

coverage through their employers at least can get it for their

children. So far, we have enrolled 2

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million children. We are well on our way to our goal of 5 million, but

there are still more than 40 million of our fellow Americans without

health insurance, more than there were in 1993.

Tonight I propose that we follow Vice President Gore's suggestion to

make low-income parents eligible for the insurance that covers their

children. Together with our children's initiative, think of this,

together with our children's initiative, this action would enable us to

cover nearly a quarter of all the uninsured people in America.

Again, I want to ask you to let people between the ages of 55 and 65,

the fastest growing group of uninsured, buy into Medicare. And this

year I propose to give them a tax credit to make that choice an

affordable one. I hope you will support that, as well.

When the Baby Boomers retire, Medicare will be faced with caring for

twice as many of our citizens. Yet, it is far from ready to do so. My

generation must not ask our children's generation to shoulder our

burden. We simply must act now to strengthen and modernize Medicare.

My budget includes a comprehensive plan to reform Medicare to make it

more efficient and more competitive. And it dedicates nearly $400

billion of our balanced budget surplus to keep Medicare solvent past

2025; and, at long last, it also provides funds to give every senior a

voluntary choice of affordable coverage for prescription drugs.

Lifesaving drugs are an indispensable part of modern medicine. No one

creating a Medicare program today would even think of excluding

coverage for prescription drugs. Yet, more than three in five of our

seniors now lack dependable drug coverage which can lengthen and enrich

their lives. Millions of older Americans who need prescription drugs

the most pay the highest prices for them.

In good conscience, we cannot let another year pass without extending

to all our seniors this lifeline of affordable prescription drugs.

Record numbers of Americans are providing for aging or ailing loved

ones at home. It is a loving but a difficult and often very expensive

choice. Last year, I proposed a $1,000 tax credit for long-term care.

Frankly, it was not enough. This year, let us triple it to $3,000, but

this year, let us pass it.

We also have to make needed investments to expand access to mental

health care. I want to take a moment to thank the person who led our

first White House Conference on Mental Health last year, and who for 7

years has led all our efforts to break down the barriers to decent

treatment of people with mental illness. Thank you, Tipper Gore.

Taken together, these proposals would mark the largest investment in

health care in the 35 years since Medicare was created, the largest

investment in 35 years. That would be a big step toward assuring

quality health care for all Americans, young and old, and I ask you to

embrace them and pass them.

We must also make investments that reward work and support families.

Nothing does that better than the earned income tax credit, the EITC.

The E in the EITC is about earning, working, taking responsibility, and

being rewarded for it. In my very first address to you, I asked

Congress to greatly expand this credit, and you did. As a result, in

1998 alone, the EITC helped more than 4.3 million Americans work their

way out of poverty toward the middle class. That is double the number

in 1993.

Tonight, I propose another major expansion of the EITC, to reduce the

marriage penalty, to make sure it rewards marriage as it rewards work,

and also to expand the tax credit for families that have more than two

children. It punishes those with more than two children today. Our

proposal would allow families with three or more children to get up to

$1,100 more in tax relief. These are working families. Their children

should not be in poverty.

We also cannot reward work and family unless men and women get equal

pay for equal work. Today the female unemployment rate is the lowest it

has been in 46 years. Yet, women still only earn about 75 cents for

every dollar men earn. We must do better by providing the resources to

enforce present equal pay laws, training more women for high-paying,

high-tech jobs, and passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Many working parents spend up to a quarter, a quarter of their income

on child care. Last year we helped parents provide child care for about

2 million children. My child care initiative before you now, along with

funds already secured in welfare reform, would make child care better,

safer, and more affordable for another 400,000 children. I ask you to

pass that. They need it out there in America.

For hard-pressed middle-income families, we should also expand the

child care tax credit, and I believe strongly we should take the next

big step and make that tax credit refundable for low-income families.

For people making under $30,000, that could mean up to $2,400 for child

care costs. We all say we are pro-work and pro-family. Passing this

proposal would prove it.

Tens of millions of Americans live from paycheck to paycheck. As hard

as they work, they still do not have the opportunity to save. Too few

can make use of IRAs and 401(k) plans. We should do more to help all

working families save and accumulate wealth. That is the idea behind

the so-called Individual Development Accounts, the IDAs.

I ask you to take that idea to a new level, with new retirement

savings accounts that enable every low- and moderate-income family in

America to save for retirement, a first home, a medical emergency, or a

college education. I propose to match their contributions, however

small, dollar for dollar, every year they save. And I propose to give a

major new tax credit to any small business that will provide a

meaningful pension to its workers. Those people ought to have

retirement as well as the rest of us.

Nearly one in three American children grows up without a father.

These children are five times more likely to live in poverty than

children with both parents at home. Clearly, demanding and supporting

responsible fatherhood is critical to lifting all of our children out

of poverty. We have doubled child support collections since 1992, and I

am proposing to use tough new measures to hold still more fathers

responsible.

But we should recognize that a lot of fathers want to do right by

their children, but need help to do it. Carlos Rosas of St. Paul,

Minnesota, wanted to do right by his son, and he got the help to do it.

Now he has a good job and he supports his little boy. My budget will

help 40,000 more fathers make the same choices Carlos Rosas did. I

thank him for being here tonight. Stand up, Carlos. Thank you.

If there is any single issue on which we should be able to reach

across party lines, it is in our common commitment to reward work and

strengthen families. Let us remember what we did last year. We came

together to help people with disabilities keep their health insurance

when they go to work. I thank you for that.

Thanks to overwhelming bipartisan support from this Congress, we have

improved foster care. We have helped those young people who leave it

when they turn 18, and we have dramatically increased the number of

foster care children going into adoptive homes. I thank all of you for

all of that.

of course, I am forever grateful to the person who has led our

efforts from the beginning, and who has worked so tirelessly for

children and families for 30 years now: my wife, Hillary. Thank you,

Hillary.

If we take the steps I have just discussed, we can go a long, long

way toward empowering parents to succeed at home and at work, and

ensuring that no child is raised in poverty. We can make these vital

investments in health care, education, support for working families,

and still offer tax cuts to help pay for college, for retirement, to

care for aging parents, to reduce the marriage penalty. We can do these

things without forsaking the path of fiscal discipline that got us here

tonight.

Indeed, we must make these investments and these tax cuts in the

context of a balanced budget that strengthens and extends the life of

social security and Medicare and pays down the national debt.

Crime in America has dropped for the past 7 years. That is the

longest decline on record, thanks to a national consensus we helped to

forge on community police, sensible gun safety laws, and effective

prevention.

But nobody, nobody here, nobody in America, believes we are safe

enough.

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So again, I ask you to set a higher goal. Let us make this country the

safest big country in the world.

Now, last fall Congress supported my plan to hire, in addition to the

100,000 community police we have already funded, 50,000 more,

concentrated in high crime neighborhoods. I ask your continued support

for that.

Soon after the Columbine tragedy, Congress considered common-sense

gun legislation to require Brady background checks at the gun shows,

child safety locks for new handguns and a ban on the importation of

large-capacity ammunition clips. With courage, and a tie-breaking vote

for the Vice President, the Senate faced down the gun lobby, stood up

for the American people and passed this legislation. But the House

failed to follow suit.

Now, we have all seen what happens when guns fall into the wrong

hands. Daniel Mauser was only 15 years old when he was gunned down at

Columbine. He was an amazing kid, a straight-A student, a good skier.

Like all parents who lose their children, his father, Tom, has borne

unimaginable grief. Somehow he has found the strength to honor his son

by transforming his grief into action.

Earlier this month, he took a leave of absence from his job to fight

for tougher gun safety laws. I pray that his courage and wisdom will at

long last move this Congress to make common-sense gun legislation the

very next order of business. Tom Mauser, stand up. We thank you for

being here tonight, Tom. Thank you, Tom.

We must strengthen our gun laws and enforce those already on the

books better. Federal gun crime prosecutions are up 16 percent since I

took office, but we must do more. I propose to hire more Federal and

local gun prosecutors and more ATF agents to crack down on illegal gun

traffickers and bad-apple dealers and we must give them the enforcement

tools that they need. Tools to trace every gun and every bullet used in

every gun crime in the United States. I ask you to help us do that.

Every State in this country already requires hunters and automobile

drivers to carry a license. I think they ought to do the same thing for

handgun purchases. Now, specifically, I propose a plan to ensure that

all new handgun buyers must first have a photo license from their State

showing they passed the Brady background check and a gun safety course

before they get the gun. I hope you will help me pass that in this

Congress.

Listen to this: the accidental gun death rate of children under 15 in

the United States is nine times higher than in the other 25

industrialized countries combined. Technologies now exist that could

lead to guns that could only be fired by the adults who own them. I ask

Congress to fund research into Smart Gun technology to save these

children's lives. I ask responsible leaders in the gun industry to work

with us on smart guns and other steps to keep guns out of the wrong

hands and keep our children safe.

Every parent I know worries about the impact of violence in the media

on their children. I want to begin by thanking the entertainment

industry for accepting my challenge to put voluntary ratings on TV

programs and video and Internet games. But, frankly, the ratings are

too numerous, diverse and confusing to be really useful to parents. So

tonight I ask the industry to accept the First Lady's challenge, to

develop a single voluntary rating system for all children's

entertainment that is easier for parents to understand and enforce.

The steps I outline will take us well on our way to making America

the safest big country in the world.

Now, to keep our historic economic expansion going, the subject of a

lot of discussion in this community and others, I believe we need a

21st century revolution to open new markets, start new businesses, hire

new workers right here in America. In our inner-cities, poor, rural

areas and Native American reservations.

Our Nation's prosperity has not yet reached these places. Over the

last 6 months I have traveled to a lot of them, joined by many of you

and many farsighted businesspeople, to shine a spotlight on the

enormous potential in communities from Appalachia to the Mississippi

Delta, from Watts to the Pine Ridge Reservation. Everywhere I have gone

I have met talented people eager for opportunity and able to work.

Tonight I ask you: Let us put them to work.

For business, it is the smart thing to do. For America, it is the

right thing to do. And let me ask you something. If we do not do this

now, when in the wide world will we ever get around to it?

So I ask Congress to give businesses the same incentives to invest in

America's new markets they now have to invest in markets overseas.

Tonight, I propose a large New Markets Tax Credit and other incentives

to spur $22 billion in private sector capital to create new businesses

and new investments in our inner-cities and rural areas.

I also, because empowerment zones have been creating these

opportunities for 5 years now, I also ask you to increase incentives to

invest in them and to create more of them. And let me say to all of you

again what I have tried to say at every turn: This is not a Democratic

or a Republican issue. Giving people a chance to live their dreams is

an American issue.

Mr. Speaker, it was a powerful moment last November when you joined

the Reverend Jesse Jackson and me in your home State of Illinois and

committed to working toward our common goal by combining the best ideas

from both sides of the aisle. I want to thank you again and to tell

you, Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with you. This is a worthy

joint endeavor. Thank you.

I also ask you to make special efforts to address the areas of our

Nation with the highest rates of poverty, our Native American

reservations and the Mississippi Delta. My budget includes a $110

million initiative to promote economic development in the Delta; and $1

billion to increase economic opportunity, health care, education and

law enforcement for our Native American communities.

Now, in this new century, we should begin this new century by

honoring our historic responsibility to empower the first Americans.

And I want to thank tonight the leaders and the Members from both

parties who have expressed to me an interest in working with us on

these efforts. They are profoundly important.

There is another part of our American community in trouble tonight,

our family farmers. When I signed the Farm Bill in 1996, I said there

was great danger it would work well in good times but not in bad. Well,

droughts, floods and historically low prices have made these times very

bad for the farmers. We must work together to strengthen the farm

safety net, invest in land conservation, and create some new markets

for them by expanding our programs for bio-based fuels and products.

Please, they need help. Let us do it together.

Opportunity for all requires something else today: having access to a

computer and knowing how to use it. That means we must close the

digital divide between those who have the tools and those who do not.

Connecting classrooms and libraries to the Internet is crucial, but

it is just a start. My budget ensures that all new teachers are trained

to teach 21st century skills and it creates technology centers in 1,000

communities to serve adults. This spring, I will invite high-tech

leaders to join me on another New Markets tour to close the digital

divide and open opportunity for our people.

I want to thank the high-tech companies that already are doing so

much in this area, and I hope the new tax incentives I have proposed

will get all the rest of them to join us. This is a national crusade.

We have got to do this and do it quickly.

Now, again, I say to you these are steps, but step by step we can go

a long way toward our goal of bringing opportunity to every community.

To realize the full possibilities of this economy, we must reach

beyond our own borders to shape the revolution that is tearing down

barriers and building new networks among nations and individuals,

economies, and cultures: Globalization. It is the central reality of

our time.

of course, change this profound is both liberating and threatening to

people. But there is no turning back. And our open, creative society

stands to benefit more than any other if we understand and act on the

realities of interdependence. We have to be at the center of every

vital global network as

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a good neighbor and a good partner. We have to recognize that we cannot

build our future without helping others to build theirs.

The first thing we have got to do is to forge a new consensus on

trade. Those of us who believe passionately in the power of open trade,

we have to ensure that it lifts both our living standards and our

values, never tolerating abusive child labor or a race to the bottom in

the environment and worker protection. But others must recognize that

open markets and rules-based trade are the best engines we know of for

raising living standards, reducing global poverty and environmental

destruction, and assuring the free flow of ideas.

I believe as strongly tonight as I did the first day I got here, the

only direction for America on trade is to keep going forward. I ask you

to help me forge that consensus.

We have to make developing economies our partners in prosperity. That

is why I would like to ask you again to finalize our ground-breaking

African and Caribbean Basin trade initiatives.

But globalization is about more than economics. Our purpose must be

to bring together the world around freedom, democracy, and peace and to

oppose those who would tear it apart.

Here are the fundamental challenges I believe America must meet to

shape the 21st century world:

First, we must continue to encourage our former adversaries, Russia

and China, to emerge as stable, prosperous, democratic nations. Both

are being held back today from reaching their full potential, Russia by

the legacy of communism, an economy in turmoil, a cruel and self-

defeating war in Chechnya; China by the illusion that it can buy

stability at the expense of freedom.

But think how much has changed in the past decade. Five thousand

former Soviet nuclear weapons taken out of commission, Russian soldiers

actually served with us in the Balkans, Russian people electing their

leaders for the first time in 1,000 years. In China, an economy more

open to the world than ever before. of course no one, not a single

person in this Chamber tonight, can know for sure what direction these

great nations will take. But we do know for sure that we can choose

what we do. We should do everything in our power to increase the chance

that they will choose wisely, to be constructive members of our global

community.

That is why we should support those Russians who are struggling for a

democratic, prosperous future, continue to reduce both our nuclear

arsenals and help Russia to safeguard weapons and materials that

remain.

That is why I believe Congress should support the agreement we

negotiated to bring China into the WTO by passing permanent normal

trade relations with China as soon as possible this year.

I think you ought to do it for two reasons. First of all, our markets

are already open to China. This agreement will open China's markets to

us. Second, it will plainly advance the cause of peace in Asia and

promote the cause of change in China.

No, we do not know where it is going. All we can do is decide what we

are going to do. But when all is said and done, we need to know we did

everything we possibly could to maximize the chance that China will

choose the right future.

A second challenge we have got is to protect our own security from

conflicts that pose the risk of wider war and threaten our common

humanity. We cannot prevent every conflict or stop every outrage. But

where our interests are at stake and we can make a difference, we

should be and we must be peacemakers.

We should be proud of our role in bringing the Middle East closer to

a lasting peace, building peace in Northern Ireland, working for peace

in East Timor and Africa, promoting reconciliation between Greece and

Turkey and in Cyprus, working to defuse these crises between India and

Pakistan and defending human rights and religious freedom.

We should be proud of our men and women in our armed forces and those

of our allies who stopped the ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, enabling a

million people to return to their homes.

When Slobodan Milosevic unleashed his terror on Kosovo, Captain John

Cherrey was one of the brave airmen who turned the tide. When another

American plane was shot down over Serbia, he flew into the teeth of

enemy air defenses to bring his fellow pilot home. Thanks to our armed

forces' skill and bravery, we prevailed in Kosovo without losing a

single American in combat.

I want to introduce Captain Cherrey to you. We honor Captain Cherrey.

We promise you, Captain, we will finish the job you began. Stand up so

we can see you.

A third challenge we have is to keep this inexorable march of

technology from giving terrorists and potentially hostile nations the

means to undermine our defenses. Keep in mind the same technological

advances that have shrunk cell phones to fit in the palms of our hands

can also make weapons of terror easier to conceal and easier to use.

We must meet this threat by making effective agreements to restrain

nuclear and missile programs in North Korea, curbing the flow of lethal

technology to Iran, preventing Iraq from threatening its neighbors,

increasing our preparedness against chemical and biological attack,

protecting our vital computer systems from hackers and criminals, and

developing a system to defend against new missile threats while working

to preserve our ABM missile treaty with Russia.

We must do all these things. I predict to you, when most of us are

long gone but sometime in the next 10 to 20 years, the major security

threat this country will face will come from the enemies of the

nation's state, the narcotrafficers, the terrorists and organized

criminals who will be organized together, working together with

increasing access to ever more sophisticated chemical and biological

weapons.

I want to thank the Pentagon and others for doing what they are doing

right now to try to help protect us and plan for that so our defenses

will be strong. I ask for your support so that they can succeed.

I also want to ask you for a constructive bipartisan dialogue this

year to work to build a consensus which I hope will eventually lead to

the ratification of the comprehensive nuclear test ban treaty.

I hope we can also have a constructive effort to meet the challenge

that is presented to our planet by the huge gulf between rich and poor.

We cannot accept a world in which part of humanity lives on the cutting

edge of a new economy and the rest live on the bare edge of survival. I

think we have to do our part to change that with expanded trade,

expanded aid, and the expansion of freedom.

This is interesting. From Nigeria to Indonesia, more people fought

for the right to choose their leaders in 1999 than in 1989 when the

Berlin Wall fell. We have got to stand by these democracies, including,

and especially tonight, Colombia, which is fighting narcotraffickers

for its own people's lives and for our children's lives.

I have proposed a strong 2-year package to help Colombia win this

fight. I want to thank the leaders and both parties in both Houses for

listening to me and the President of Colombia about it. We have got to

pass this. I want to ask your help. A lot is riding on it. It is so

important for the long-term stability of our country and for what

happens in Latin America.

I also want you to know I am going to send you new legislation to go

after what these drug barons value the most, their money. And I hope

you will pass that as well.

Now, in a world where over a billion people live on less than a

dollar a day, we also have got to do our part in the global endeavor to

reduce the debts of the poorest countries so they can invest in

education, health care and economic growth. That is what the Pope and

other religious leaders have urged us to do. Last year, Congress made a

down payment on America's share. I ask you to continue that. I thank

you for what you did and ask you to stay the course.

I also want to say that America must help more nations to break the

bonds of disease. Last year, in Africa, 10 times as many people died

from AIDS as were killed in wars, 10 times. The budget I give you

invests $150 million more in the fight against this and other

infectious killers. Today, I propose a tax credit to speed the

development of vaccines to diseases like malaria, TB, and AIDS. I ask

the private

[[Page H34]]

sector and our partners around the world to join us in embracing this

cause. We can save millions of lives together, and we ought to do it.

I also want to mention our final challenge which, as always, is the

most important. I ask you to pass a national security budget that keeps

our military the best trained and best equipped in the world, with

heightened readiness and 21st century weapons, which raises salaries

for our service men and women, which protects our veterans, which fully

funds the diplomacy that keeps our soldiers out of war, which makes

good on our commitment to our UN dues and arrears. I ask you to pass

this budget.

I also want to say something, if I might, very personal tonight. The

American people watching us at home, with the help of all the

commentators, can tell from who stands and who sits and who claps and

who does not that there is still modest differences of opinion in this

room.

But I want to thank you for something, every one of you. I want to

thank you for the extraordinary support you have given, Republicans and

Democrats alike, to our men and women in uniform. I thank you for it.

I also want to thank especially two people. First, I want to thank

our Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen for symbolizing our bipartisan

commitment to national security. Thank you so much. Even more, I want

to thank his wife Janet who, more than any other American citizen, has

tirelessly traveled this world to show the support we all feel for our

troops. Thank you, Janet Cohen. I appreciate it. Thank you.

These are the challenges we have to meet so that we can lead the

world toward peace and freedom in an era of globalization.

I want to tell you that I am very grateful for many things as

President. But one of the things I am grateful for is the opportunity

that the Vice President and I have had to finally put to rest the bogus

idea that you cannot grow the economy and protect the environment at

the same time.

As our economy has grown, we have rid more than 500 neighborhoods of

toxic waste, ensured cleaner air and water for millions of people. In

the past 3 months alone, we have helped preserve 40 million acres of

roadless lands in the National Forests, created three new national

monuments.

But as our communities grow, our commitment to conservation must

continue to grow. Tonight I propose creating a permanent conservation

fund to restore our wildlife, protect coastlines, save natural

treasures, from the California redwoods to the Florida Everglades. This

Lands Legacy endowment would represent by far the most enduring

investment and land preservation ever proposed in this House.

I hope we can get together with all the people with different ideas

and do this. This is a gift we should give to our children and

grandchildren for all time across party lines. We can make an agreement

to do this.

Last year, the Vice President launched a new effort to make

communities more liberal--livable. Liberal, I know. No. Wait a minute.

I have got a punch line now. That is this year's agenda. Last year was

livable, right? That is what Senator Lott is going to say in the

commentary afterwards.

To make our communities more livable. This is big business. This is a

big issue. What does that mean? You ask anybody that lives in an

unlivable community, and they will tell you. They want their kids to

grow up next to parks, not parking lots. The parents do not want to

have to spend all their time stalled in traffic when they can be home

with their children.

Tonight I ask you to support new funding for the following things to

make American communities more liberal--livable. I have done pretty

well with this speech, but I cannot say that right.

One, I want to help us to do three things. We need more funding for

advanced transit systems. We need more funding for saving open spaces

in places of heavy development. And we need more funding, this ought to

have bipartisan appeal, we need more funding for helping major cities

around the Great Lakes protect their waterways and enhance their

quality of life. We need these things, and I want you to help us.

Now, the greatest environmental challenge in the new century is

global warming. The scientists tell us the 1990s were the hottest

decade of the entire millennium. If we fail to reduce the emission of

greenhouse gases, deadly heatwaves and droughts will become more

frequent, coastal areas will flood, and economies will be disrupted.

That is going to happen unless we act.

Many people in the United States, some people in this Chamber, and

lots of folks around the world still believe you cannot cut greenhouse

gas emissions without slowing economic growth.

In the Industrial Age that may well have been true. But in this

digital economy, it is not true anymore. New technologies make it

possible to cut harmful emissions and provide even more growth.

For example, just last week, automakers unveiled cars that get 70 to

80 miles a gallon, the fruits of a unique research partnership between

government and industry. Before you know it, efficient production of

biofuels will give us the equivalent of hundreds of miles from a gallon

of gasoline.

To speed innovation in these kinds of technologies, I think we should

give a major tax incentive to business for the production of clean

energy and the families for buying energy saving homes and appliances

and the next generation of super-efficient cars when they hit the

showroom floor.

I also ask the auto industry to use the available technologies to

make all new cars more fuel efficient right away. And I ask this

Congress to do something else. Please help us make more of our clean

energy technology available to the developing world. That will create

cleaner growth abroad and a lot more new jobs here in the United States

of America.

Now, in the new century innovations in science and technology will be

key not only to the health of the environment but to miraculous

improvements in the quality of our lives and advances in the economy.

Later this year, researchers will complete the first draft of the

entire human genome, the very blueprint of life. It is important for

all our fellow Americans to recognize that Federal tax dollars have

funded much of this research and that this and otherwise investments in

science are leading to a revolution in our ability to detect, treat,

and prevent disease.

For example, researchers have identified genes that cause

Parkinson's, diabetes, and certain kinds of cancer. They are designing

precision therapies that will block the harmful effects of these genes

for goods.

Researchers already are using this new technique to target and

destroy cells that cause breast cancer. Soon we may be able to use it

to prevent the onset of Alzheimer's.

Scientists are also working on an artificial retina to help many

blind people to see. And listen to this. Microchips that would actually

directly stimulate damaged spinal cords in a way that could allow

people now paralyzed to stand up and walk.

These kinds of innovations are also propelling our remarkable

prosperity. Information technology only includes 8 percent of our

employment. But now it accounts for a third of our economic growth,

along with jobs that pay, by the way, about 80 percent above the

private sector average.

Again, we ought to keep in mind government funded research brought

supercomputers to the Internet and communication satellites into being.

Soon researchers will bring us devices that can translate

foreign languages as fast as you can talk; materials 10 times stronger

than steel at a fraction of the weight; and this is unbelievable to me,

molecular computers the size of a teardrop with the power of today's

fastest supercomputers.

To accelerate the march of discovery across all these disciplines of

science and technology, I ask you to support my recommendation of an

unprecedented $3 billion in the 21st century research fund, the largest

increase in civilian research in a generation. We owe it to our future.

Now, these new breakthroughs have to be used in ways that reflect our

values. First and foremost, we have to safeguard our citizens' privacy.

Last year, we proposed to protect every citizen's medical records.

This year we will finalize those rules. We have also taken the first

steps to protect the privacy of banks and credit

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card records and other financial statements. Soon I will send

legislation to you to finish that job.

We must also act to prevent any genetic discrimination whatever by

employers or insurers. I hope you will support that.

These steps will allow us to lead toward the far frontiers of science

and technology. They will enhance our health, the environment, the

economy in ways we cannot even imagine today.

But we all know that at a time when science technology and the forces

of globalization are bringing so many changes into all our lives, it is

more important than ever that we strengthen the bonds that root us in

our local communities and in our national community. No tie binds

different people together like citizen service.

There is a new spirit of service in America, a movement we try to

support with AmeriCorps, expanded Peace Corps, unprecedented new

partnerships with businesses, foundations, community groups,

partnerships, for example, like the one that enlisted 12,000 companies

which have now moved 650,000 of our fellow citizens from welfare to

work, partnerships to battle drug abuse, AIDS, teach young people to

read, save America's treasures, strengthen the arts, fight teen

pregnancy, prevent violence among young people, promote racial healing.

The American people are working together. But we should do more to

help Americans help each other. First, we should help faith-based

organizations to do more to fight poverty and drug abuse and help

people get back on the right track with initiatives like second chance

homes that do so much to help unwed teen mothers.

Second, we should support Americans who tithe and contribute to

charities but do not earn enough to claim a tax deduction for it.

Tonight I propose new tax incentives that would allow low- and

middle-income citizens who do not itemize to get that deduction. It is

nothing but fair, and it will get more people to give.

We should do more to help new immigrants to fully participate in our

community. That is why I recommend spending more to teach them civics

and English. And since everybody in our community counts, we have got

to make sure everyone is counted in this year's census.

Now, within 10 years, just 10 years, there will be no majority race

in our largest State of California. In a little more than 50 years,

there will be no majority race in America. In a more interconnected

world, this diversity can be our greatest strength.

Just look around this Chamber, look around. We have Members in this

Congress from virtually every racial, ethnic, and religious background.

And I think you would agree that America is stronger because of it. But

you will also have to agree that all those differences you just clapped

for all too often spark hatred and division, even here at home.

Just in the last couple of years, we have seen a man dragged to death

in Texas just because he was black. We saw a young man murdered in

Wyoming just because he was gay. Last year we saw the shootings of

African Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish children just because of

who they were.

This is not the American way, and we must draw the line. I ask you to

draw that line by passing without delay the Hate Crimes Prevention Act

and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act. And I ask you to reauthorize

the Violence Against Women Act.

Finally, tonight I propose the largest ever investment in our civil

rights laws for enforcement because no American should be subjected to

discrimination in finding a home, getting a job, going to school, or

securing a loan. Protections in law should be protections in fact.

Last February, because I thought this was so important, I created the

White House Office of One America to promote racial reconciliation.

That is what one of my personal heroes, Hank Aaron, has done all his

life. From his days as our all-time homerun king to his recent acts of

healing, he has always brought people together. We should follow his

example. We are honored to have him with us tonight. Stand up, Hank

Aaron.

I just want to say one more thing about this, and I want every one of

you to think about this the next time you get mad at one of your

colleagues on the other side of the aisle. This fall, at the White

House, Hillary had one of her millennium dinners and we had this very

distinguished scientist there who was an expert in this whole work in

the human genome; and he said that we are all, regardless of race,

genetically 99.9 percent the same.

Now, you may find that uncomfortable when you look around here. But

it is worth remembering. We can laugh about this, but you think about

it. Modern science has confirmed what ancient fates has also taught us,

the most important fact of life is our common humanity. Therefore, we

should do more than just tolerate our diversity. We should honor it and

celebrate it.

Thank you.

My fellow Americans, every time I prepare for the State of the Union,

I approach it with hope and expectation and excitement for our Nation.

But tonight is very special, because we stand on the mountaintop of a

new millennium. Behind us, we can look back and see the great expanse

of American achievement, and before us we can see even greater, grander

frontiers of possibility. We should, all of us, be filled with

gratitude and humility for our present progress and prosperity. We

should be filled with awe and joy at what lies over the horizon, and we

should be filled with absolute determination to make the most of it.

You know, when the framers finished crafting our Constitution in

Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin stood in Independence Hall and he

reflected on the carving of the sun. It was on the back of a chair he

saw. The sun was low on the horizon, so he said this. He said, I have

often wondered whether that sun was rising or setting. Today, Franklin

said, I have the happiness to know it is a rising sun.

Today, because each succeeding generation of Americans has kept the

fire of freedom burning brightly, lighting those frontiers of

possibility, we all still bask in the glow and the warmth of Mr.

Franklin's rising sun. After 224 years, the American revolution

continues. We remain a new Nation. And as long as our dreams outweigh

our memories, America will be forever young. That is our destiny. And

this is our moment.

Thank you, God bless you. And God bless America.

(Applause, the Members rising.)

At 10 o'clock and 47 minutes p.m. the President of the United States,

accompanied by the committee of escort, retired from the Hall of the

House of Representatives.

The Deputy Sergeant at Arms escorted the invited guests from the

Chamber in the following order:

The members of the President's Cabinet;

The Acting Dean of the Diplomatic Corps.