Clinton Vows Moral, Economic Renewal : State of the Union: President pleads for support for health, welfare reform. He says U.S. is back on track.

President Clinton, pledging an economic and moral renewal of the nation, appealed in his State of the Union Address on Tuesday night for congressional and public support for his aggressive, but still unfulfilled, domestic agenda.

Clinton declared that the nation is basically sound and is headed in the right direction once again but nonetheless needs fundamental reform of its health care and welfare systems. On health care, the centerpiece of his domestic agenda, Clinton sought to rekindle the sense of urgency that his strategists believe must be maintained if his plan for a comprehensive overhaul is to win approval.

Clinton again offered to cooperate with Republicans in drafting a health care bill. But in a moment of drama, he bluntly threatened to veto any health reform bill that does not meet his fundamental requirement.

“If you send me legislation that does not guarantee every American private health insurance that can never be taken away, you will force me to take this pen, veto that legislation, and we’ll come right back here and start all over again.”

Notably, Clinton did not propose many new programs, as presidents often have on such occasions in the past. Senior White House advisers believe that voters think the President has already promised more than he can accomplish. In fact, White House officials fear the image of over-promising, seeing it as the President’s major vulnerability--one that his Republican opponents already have begun to talk about.

So, rather than make a raft of new promises, Clinton devoted most of his speech to convincing Americans that he is hard at work on the promises he already has made, and that he can deliver.

“In 1992 the American people demanded that we change,” Clinton said. “A year ago I asked all of you to join me in accepting responsibility for the future of our country. Well, we did. We replaced drift and deadlock with renewal and reform. And I want to thank every one of you here who heard the American people, who broke gridlock, who gave them the most successful teamwork between a President and a Congress in 30 years,” Clinton told his audience, referring to a record of legislative action not exceeded since the early years of the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration.

On a second issue of increasing public concern, Clinton said the epidemic of violence across the land must be addressed but acknowledged that the role of the federal government is limited and that many of the country’s ills can only be handled by family, school, church and community.

Clinton took credit for an expanding economy and a shrinking federal budget deficit but said too many Americans remain unemployed and unprepared for the job market of the future. He said that he would continue to press for new job training programs and that he wants to transform unemployment insurance plans into a reemployment program for displaced workers.

The multitude gathered in the chamber of the House of Representatives for Clinton’s speech included, by tradition, both houses of Congress, the Cabinet, members of the Supreme Court, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the diplomatic corps.

As has been true in past major Clinton speeches, the White House reserved special symbolic seats flanking First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in the House gallery. This time, Mrs. Clinton sat between AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland and Jack Smith, chairman of General Motors Corp. Organized labor and the auto companies are the Administration’s two biggest allies in the health care battle. Clinton has also been anxious to mend fences with labor after the strains caused by the debate last fall on the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Also seated near Mrs. Clinton were Tommy O’Neill, son of the late House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), and James S. Brady, President Ronald Reagan’s former press secretary who was wounded in the 1981 assassination attempt on his boss.

Clinton cited the gun control measure named after Brady on his list of major legislative accomplishments. He also touted the smaller budget deficit, tax cuts for low-income workers, the trade agreement, a national service program providing young Americans the opportunity to earn money for college by performing public service, family leave and the motor-voter registration bill.

“All passed. All signed into law with no vetoes,” Clinton said. “These accomplishments were all commitments I made when I sought this office and they were all passed by this Congress. But the real credit belongs to the people who sent us here, pay our salaries and hold our feet to the fire.”

With an eye toward future legislative battles, Clinton took aim at the credibility of his Republican opponents--arguing that they were wrong about his economic plan and, by extension, cannot be trusted to be right about issues such as health care.

“The naysayers said our plan wouldn’t work,” Clinton said, referring to the budget bill passed last year. “Well, they were wrong.” The budget deficit, Clinton said, had declined from a projected $300 billion to $180 billion and both inflation and interest rates are at historically low levels.

“If you will stick with our plan,” he said, “we will post three consecutive years of declining deficits for the first time since Harry Truman lived in the White House. Once again, the buck stops here.”

White House aides began work on the speech shortly before Christmas and Clinton first reviewed a proposed outline for the address over the New Year’s holiday, which he spent at Hilton Head, S.C., at the Renaissance Weekend annual public policy retreat.

Clinton saw a first complete draft of the address just before leaving for Europe in early January but did not devote serious attention to it until last week as he was flying back from Los Angeles after viewing earthquake damage.

The President worked extensively on the sections on health care and welfare reform and wrote the passages that linked the two, according to aides. He worked closely with Mrs. Clinton and senior advisers David Gergen and George Stephanopoulos in honing the message of moral renewal that infused the sections on crime and middle class values.

Political adviser Paul Begala and pollster Stanley B. Greenberg also contributed ideas for the speech, which was written chiefly by mid-level aides David Dreyer, Robert Boorstin and Jeremy Rosner.

On Tuesday, Clinton practiced delivery of the address for almost two hours in the movie theater in the White House residence, as aides wandered in and out to offer suggestions on content and oratorical emphasis. He marked up the ninth draft of the speech Tuesday afternoon and the final version was still being polished a couple of hours before Clinton took the podium in the House chamber.

A senior White House official involved in crafting the speech said Tuesday that “rather than breaking new ground, it’s an opportunity to draw together his agenda and his themes for the coming year. Many Americans have not had the opportunity to hear him discuss crime, welfare and the crisis of values in this country.”

The absence of new promises, of course, does not mean that Clinton has suddenly changed into a leader with a small agenda. The White House has enough business left unfinished from last year to keep Clinton and Congress busy for months, perhaps years, to come.

At the top of the list--and the centerpiece of Clinton’s speech--is his promise of universal, lifetime health insurance for all Americans.

Clinton first outlined his ambitious health care plan last September, winning quick, but ultimately superficial, support in the country and on Capitol Hill. Since then, opponents have begun to strengthen their attacks with considerable impact.

Polls show that a slender majority of Americans have held steady in support of his plan. But the numbers of people opposed have grown markedly in the last few months, and even supporters concede that they know few of the plan’s details.

Both sides in the burgeoning debate have seen this speech as the opening event of the most intensive part of the struggle--a legislative battle certain to last many months.

Much of that battle will turn on how Americans and their representatives in Congress balance two opposing fears--the fear that failures in the existing medical system jeopardize their health care, versus the fear that Clinton’s ambitious proposals will backfire and make matters worse.

Republicans, after searching for several months for a theme to use in attacking Clinton’s plan, in recent weeks have honed in on that first fear--arguing that Clinton and First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton exaggerate when they say the nation faces a “crisis” in health care. Instead, the Republicans say, the health care system has a limited series of problems that can be fixed with a more modest plan.

Clinton tackled that assertion directly, in language that aides said he drafted himself.

Clinton also sought to defuse the potential battle for priority between supporters of health care reform--who include most of his party’s liberals--and backers of welfare reform, who by and large tend to be more conservative.

The two issues are not rivals, Clinton insisted, but are necessary partners.

Clinton specifically endorsed welfare reform proposals that would require minors receiving welfare to live with an adult and require absent parents not paying child support to perform public service work. He repeated his call for a two-year time limit on receiving public support payments.

“And to all those who depend on welfare, we offer this simple compact: We will provide the support, the job training, the child care you need for up to two years. But after that, anyone who can work must work--in the private sector if possible, in community service if necessary. We will make welfare what it ought to be: a second chance, not a way of life.”

He also directly linked welfare reform with health care reform, asserting that a million people are on welfare today because it is the only way they can get health care coverage.

Clinton also spend a considerable amount of time talking about the crime and violence that plague the nation.

“Every day, the national peace is shattered by crime. In Petaluma, Calif., an innocent slumber party gives way to agonizing tragedy for the family of Polly Klaas. An ordinary train ride on Long Island ends in a hail of 9-millimeter rounds. A tourist in Florida is nearly burned alive by bigots simply because he is black,” Clinton said.

“Violent crime and the fear it provokes are crippling our society, limiting personal freedom and fraying the ties that bind us,” Clinton said, echoing earlier speeches that addressed what he has called a “crisis of the soul” in America.

Clinton endorsed calls for a “three-strikes” law that would require life sentences for people convicted of three felonies. He also repeated his call for federal assistance to allow cities and towns to hire 100,000 more police officers.

At the same time, Clinton appealed to gun owners to join him in taking steps to reduce gun violence.

“Hunters must always be free to hunt and law-abiding adults should be free to own guns,” Clinton said. But, he said, “there is no sporting purpose on Earth that should stop us from banishing the assault weapons that outgun our police and cut down our children.”

“You didn’t create this problem,” Clinton said, addressing those who use guns for sport. “But we need your help to solve it.”

Although most of Clinton’s speech focused on domestic policy, he also sought to claim credit for the foreign-policy successes of the last year, while avoiding mention of bleaker scenes in Bosnia, Haiti and Somalia.

But the foreign-policy section of the speech was relatively brief and seemed more a matter of obligation than conviction.

A top foreign-policy adviser said before the speech that Clinton chiefly wanted to explain to the public why the United States must remain engaged abroad, even if the rules of engagement in a confusing new world remain murky. Clinton used the speech to restate the principles guiding U.S. foreign policy--opening markets for American goods, containing the spread of dangerous weapons and promoting democracy.