The President's President of the United States of America
is the President of the United States of America.
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President,
members of Congress, honored guests, my fellow Americans,
tonight I have the honor of reporting to you on the State of the Union.
Let me begin by saluting the new Speaker of the House and thanking him,
especially tonight for extending an invitation to two guests sitting in the gallery with Mrs. Hastert.
Lynn Gibson and Wendling Chestnut are the widows of the two brave Capitol Hill police officers
who gave their lives to defend Freedom's House.
Thank you.
Mr. Speaker, at your swearing-in,
you ask us all to work together in a spirit of civility
and bipartisanship.
Mr. Speaker, let's do exactly that.
Thank you.
Tonight, I stand before you to report that America has created the longest peacetime economic
expansion in our history.
With nearly 18 million new jobs, wages rising at more than twice the rate of inflation,
the highest home ownership in history, the smallest welfare rolls in 30 years, and the
the lowest peacetime unemployment since 1957.
For the first time in three decades, the budget is balanced.
From a deficit of $290 billion in 1992,
We had a surplus of $70 billion last year, and now we are on course for budget surpluses
for the next 25 years.
Thanks to the pioneering leadership of all of you,
we have the lowest violent crime rate in a quarter century
and the cleanest environment in a quarter century.
America is a strong force for peace,
from Northern Ireland to Bosnia to the Middle East.
Thanks to the leadership of Vice President Gore,
we have a government for the information age.
Once again, a government that is a progressive instrument
of the common good, rooted in our oldest values of opportunity, responsibility, and community,
devoted to fiscal responsibility, determined to give our people the tools they need to
make the most of their own lives in the 21st century, a 21st century government for 21st
century America.
My fellow Americans, I stand before you tonight to report that the state of our union is strong.
Thank you.
Now, America is working again.
The promise of our future is limitless.
But we cannot realize that promise if we allow the hum of our prosperity to lull us into
complacency.
How we fare as a nation far into the 21st century depends upon what we do as a nation
today.
So with our budget surplus growing, our economy expanding, our confidence rising, now is the
moment for this generation to meet our historic responsibility to the 21st century.
Our fiscal discipline gives us an unsurpassed opportunity to address a remarkable new challenge,
the aging of America. With the number of elderly Americans set to double by 2030, the baby
boom will become a senior boom. So first, and above all, we must save Social Security
for the 21st century.
Thank you Early in this century being old meant being poor
When President Roosevelt created Social Security, thousands wrote to thank him for eliminating
what one woman called the stark terror of penniless, helpless old age.
Even today, without Social Security, half our nation's elderly would be forced into poverty.
Today Social Security is strong, but by 2013 payroll taxes will no longer be sufficient
to cover monthly payments. By 2032 the trust fund will be exhausted and Social Security
will be unable to pay the full benefits older Americans have been promised.
The best way to keep Social Security a rock-solid guarantee is not to make drastic cuts in benefits,
not to raise payroll tax rates, not to drain resources from Social Security in the name
of saving it. Instead, I propose that we make the historic decision to invest the surplus
to save Social Security.
Specifically, I propose that we commit 60 percent of the budget surplus for the next
15 years to Social Security, investing a small portion in the private sector just as any
private or state government pension would do.
This will earn a higher return and keep Social Security sound for 55 years.
But we must aim higher.
We should put Social Security on a sound footing for the next 75 years.
We should reduce poverty among elderly women who are nearly twice as likely to be poor
as our other seniors.
And we should eliminate the limits on what seniors on Social Security can earn.
Now, these changes will require difficult but fully achievable choices over and above
the dedication of the surplus.
They must be made on a bipartisan basis. They should be made this year.
So let me say to you tonight, I reach out my hand to all of you in both houses, in both parties,
and ask that we join together in saying to the American people, we will save Social Security now.
Now, last year we wisely reserved all the surplus until we knew what it would take to save Social Security.
Again, I say, we shouldn't spend any of it, not any of it, until after Social Security is truly saved.
First things first.
Second, once we have saved Social Security, we must fulfill our obligation to save and
approve Medicare. Already we have extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by 10
years, but we should extend it for at least another decade. Tonight I propose that we
use one out of every six dollars in the surplus for the next 15 years to guarantee the soundness
of Medicare until the year 2020.
But again, we should aim higher.
We must be willing to work in a bipartisan way and look at new ideas, including the upcoming
report of the bipartisan Medicare Commission.
If we work together, we can secure Medicare for the next two decades
and cover the greatest growing need of seniors, affordable prescription drugs.
Third, we must help all Americans from their first day on the job to save, to invest, to
create wealth. From its beginning, Americans have supplemented Social Security with private
pensions and savings. Yet today, millions of people retire with little to live on other
than Social Security. Americans living longer than ever simply must save more than ever.
Therefore, in addition to saving Social Security and Medicare, I propose a new pension initiative
for retirement security in the 21st century. I propose that we use a little over 11 percent
of the surplus to establish universal savings accounts, USA accounts, to give all Americans
the means to save. With these new accounts, Americans can invest as they choose and receive
funds to match a portion of their savings with extra help for those least able to save.
USA accounts will help all Americans to share in our nation's wealth and to enjoy a more
secure retirement, I ask you to support them.
Fourth we must invest in long care I propose a tax credit of for the aged ailing or disabled and the families who care for them
Long-term care will become a bigger and bigger challenge with the aging of America,
and we must do more to help our families deal with it.
I was born in 1946, the first year of the baby boom.
I can tell you that one of the greatest concerns of our generation
is our absolute determination not to let our growing old place an intolerable burden on our children
and their ability to raise our grandchildren.
Our economic success and our fiscal discipline now give us an opportunity to lift that burden from their shoulders, and we should take it.
Saving Social Security, Medicare, creating USA accounts, this is the right way to use the surplus.
If we do so, if we do so, we will still have resources to meet critical needs in education and defense.
And I want to point out that this proposal is fiscally sound.
Now, listen to this. If we set aside 60 percent of the surplus for Social Security and 16
percent for Medicare, over the next 15 years, that saving will achieve the lowest level
of publicly held debt since right before World War I in 1917.
So with these four measures, saving Social Security, strengthening Medicare, establishing
the USA accounts, supporting long-term care, we can begin to meet our generation's historic
responsibility to establish true security for 21st century seniors.
Now, there are more children from more diverse backgrounds in our public schools than at any
time in our history. Their education must provide the knowledge and nurture the creativity
that will allow our entire nation to thrive in the new economy.
Today we can say something we couldn't say six years ago.
With tax credits and more affordable student loans, with more work study grants and more
Pell grants, with education IRAs and the new HOPE scholarship tax cut that more than five
million Americans will receive this year, we have finally opened the doors of college
to all Americans.
With our support, nearly every state has set higher academic standards for public schools,
And a voluntary national test is being developed to measure the progress of our students.
With over $1 billion in discounts available this year,
we are well on our way to our goal of connecting every classroom and library to the Internet.
Last fall, you passed our proposal to start hiring 100,000 new teachers
to reduce class size in the early grades.
Now I ask you to finish the job.
Thank you.
You know, our children are doing better.
SAT scores are up.
Math scores have risen in nearly all grades.
But there's a problem.
While our fourth graders outperform their peers in other countries in math and science,
our eighth graders are around average, and our twelfth graders rank near the bottom.
We must do better.
Now, each year, the national government invests more than $15 billion in our public schools.
I believe we must change the way we invest that money
to support what works, and to stop supporting what does not work.
First, later this year I will send to Congress a plan that for the first time holds states
in school districts accountable for progress and rewards them for results.
My Education Accountability Act will require every school district receiving federal help
to take the following five steps.
First, all schools must end social promotion.
Now, no child should graduate from high school with a diploma he or she can't read.
We do our children no favors when we allow them to pass from grade to grade without mastering the material.
But we can just hold students back because the system fails them So my balanced budget triples the funding for summer school and after school programs to keep a million children learning If you doubt this will work just look at Chicago which ended social promotion and made
summer school mandatory for those who don't master the basics.
and reading scores are up three years running with some of the biggest gains in some of
the poorest neighborhoods. It will work, and we should do it.
Second, all states and school districts must turn around their worst-performing schools
or shut them down.
That's the policy established in North Carolina by Governor Jim Hunt.
North Carolina made the biggest gains in test scores in the nation last year.
Our budget includes $200 million to help states
turn around their own failing schools.
Third,
all states and school districts must be held responsible for the quality of their
teachers.
The great majority of our teachers do a fine job, but in too many schools, teachers don't
have college majors or even minors in the subjects they teach.
New teachers should be required to pass performance exams, and all teachers should know the subjects
they're teaching.
This year's balanced budget contains resources to help them reach higher standards.
And to attract talented young teachers to the toughest assignments, I recommend a six-fold
increase in our program for college scholarships for students who commit to teach in the inner
cities and isolated rural areas and in Indian communities.
Let us bring excellence to every part of America.
Thank you.
Fourth, we must empower parents with more information and more choices.
In too many communities, it's easier to get information on the quality of local restaurants
than on the quality of the local schools.
Every school district should issue report cards on every school.
And parents should be given more choices in selecting their public schools.
When I became president, there was just one independent public charter school in all America.
With our support, on a bipartisan basis, today there are 1,100.
My budget assures that early in the next century there will be 3,000.
Fifth, to assure that our classrooms are truly places of learning
and to respond to what teachers have been asking us to do for years,
we should say that all states and school districts must both adopt
and implement sensible discipline policies.
Now, let's do one more thing for our children.
Today, too many schools are so old, they're falling apart,
are so overcrowded, students are learning in trailers.
Last fall, Congress missed the opportunity to change that.
This year, with 53 million children in our schools,
Congress must not miss that opportunity again.
I ask you to help our communities build or modernize 5,000 schools.
Thank you.
Now,
If we do these things, end social promotion, turn around failing schools, build modern ones, support qualified teachers, promote innovation, competition, and discipline, then we will begin to meet our generation's historic responsibility to create 21st century schools.
Now, we also have to do more to support the millions of parents who give their all every
day at home and at work.
The most basic tool of all is a decent income.
So let's raise the minimum wage by a dollar an hour over the next two years.
And let's make sure that women and men get equal pay for equal work by strengthening enforcement of the equal pay laws.
That was encouraging, you know.
There was more balance on the seesaw. I like that.
Let's give him a hand.
Working parents also need
quality childcare.
Again this year, I asked Congress to support our plan for tax credits
and subsidies for working families, for improved safety and quality, for
expanded afterschool program. And our plan also includes a new tax credit for stay-at-home
parents, too. They need support as well.