Prepared text of State of the Union address
January 27, 2000
Web posted at: 8:55 p.m. EST (0155 GMT)
WASHINGTON - Following is the prepared text of President Bill Clinton's State of the Union address, as provided by the White House:
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 or 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 budget
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 seven years in a row and 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 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 above 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 asked: "America: What went wrong?"
In the best traditions of our nation, Americans determined to set
things right. We restored the vital center, replacing outdated ideologies
with a new vision anchored in basic, enduring values: opportunity for all,
responsibility from all, and 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 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 work and at home -- with family leave, which
20 million Americans have 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 also helping them earn their way through college.
In 1992, we had a roadmap. Today, we have results. More important,
America again has the confidence to dream big dreams. But we must not let
our renewed confidence grow into complacency. We 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, 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 which takes the long look ahead."
Tonight let us take our look long ahead -- and set great goals for our
nation.
To 21st Century America, let us pledge that:
Every child will begin school ready to learn and graduate ready to
succeed. 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 healthcare for all
Americans. We will make America the safest big country on earth. We will
bring prosperity to every American community. We will reverse the course
of climate change and leave a cleaner, safer 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 seven years-is that great goals
are reached step by step: always building on our progress, always gaining
ground.
Of course, you can't gain ground if you're standing still. For too
long this Congress has been standing still on some of our most pressing
national priorities. Let's begin with them.
I ask you again to pass a real patient's bill of rights. Pass
common-sense gun-safety legislation. Pass campaign finance reform. Vote
on long overdue judicial nominations and other important appointees. And,
again, I ask you to raise the minimum wage.
Two years ago, as we reached 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 seven years ago: We are
actually paying down the national debt. If we stay on this path, we can
pay down the debt entirely in 13 years 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, winning passage in both houses by just one vote. Your
former colleague, my first Secretary of the Treasury, led that effort. He
is here tonight. Lloyd Bentsen, you have served America well.
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. I ask you tonight 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 to ensure that it is strong and sound for the next 50 years.
But this is just the start of our journey. Now we must 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 child can learn. Because education is more
than ever the key to our children's future, we must make sure all our
children have that key. That means quality preschool and afterschool, the
best trained teachers in every classroom, and college opportunities for all
our children.
For seven years, 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. And some of the
most impressive gains are in schools in poor neighborhoods.
All successful schools have followed the same proven formula: higher
standards, more accountability, so all children can 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, the national government invests more than $15 billion
in our schools. It's time to support what works and stop supporting what
doesn?t.
As we demand more than ever from our schools, we should invest more
than ever in our schools.
Let?s double our investment to help states and districts turn around
their worst-performing schools-or shut them down.
Let's double our investment in afterschool and summer school programs --
boosting achievement, and keeping children off the street and out of
trouble. If we do, we can give every child in every failing school in
America the chance to meet high standards.
Since 1993, we've nearly doubled our investment in Head Start and
improved its quality. Tonight, I ask for another $1 billion to Head Start,
the largest increase in the program's history.
We know that children learn best in smaller classes with good
teachers. For two years in a row, Congress has supported my plan to hire
100,000 new, qualified teachers, to lower class sizes in the early grades.
This year, 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 there are 1,700. I ask you to help us meet our goal of
3,000 by next year.
We know we must connect all our classrooms to the Internet. We're
getting there. In 1994, only three 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
connection to the Internet.
But we can't finish the job when a third of all schools are in serious
disrepair, many with walls and wires too old for the Internet. Tonight, I
propose to help 5,000 schools a year make immediate, urgent repairs. And
again, to help build or modernize 6,000 schools, to get students out of
trailers and into high-tech classrooms.
We should double our bipartisan GEAR UP program to mentor 1.4 million
disadvantaged young people for college. And let's offer these students a
chance to take the same college test-prep courses wealthier students use to
boost their test scores.
To make the American Dream achievable for all, we must make college
affordable for all. For seven 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. 67 percent of high school graduates now go on to
college, up almost 10 percent since 1993. Yet millions of families still
strain to pay college tuition. They need help.
I propose a landmark $30-billion college opportunity tax cut -- a
middle-class tax deduction for up to $10,000 in college tuition costs.
We've already made two years of college affordable for all. Now let's make
four years of college affordable for all.
If we take all these steps, we will move a long way toward making sure
every child starts school ready to learn and graduates ready to succeed.
We 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 their children. That means making
sure that 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 don't have health
care coverage through their employers at least can get it for their
children. So far, we've enrolled 2 million children, and we're well on our
way to our goal of 5 million.
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State of the Union address - Clinton walk-in and introduction
Republican response