EXCERPTS: ‘We Don’t Have a Moment to Waste’

Here are excerpts of President Clinton’s State of the Union address Tuesday night:

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of the 105th Congress, distinguished guests, my fellow Americans:

I think I should start by saying thanks for inviting me back. . . .

My fellow Americans, the state of our union is strong, but now we must rise to the decisive moment, to make a nation and a world better than any we have ever known.

The new promise of the global economy, the Information Age, unimagined new work, life-enhancing technology--all these are ours to seize. That is our honor and our challenge. We must be shapers of events, not observers, for if we do not act, the moment will pass and we will lose the best possibilities of our future.

‘A Call to Action’

We face no imminent threat, but we do have an enemy. The enemy of our time is inaction.

So tonight I issue a call to action--action by this Congress, action by our states, by our people to prepare America for the 21st century; action to keep our economy and our democracy strong and working for all our people; action to strengthen education and harness the forces of technology and science; action to build stronger families and stronger communities and a safer environment; action to keep America the world’s strongest force for peace, freedom and prosperity; and above all, action to build a more perfect union here at home.

The spirit we bring to our work will make all the difference. . . .

The people of this nation elected us all. They want us to be partners, not partisans. They put us all right here in the same boat. They gave us all oars, and they told us to row. Now, here is the direction I believe we should take.

Balancing the Budget

First, we must move quickly to complete the unfinished business of our country: to balance the budget, renew our democracy, and finish the job of welfare reform. . . .

Now we must keep our economy the strongest in the world. We here tonight have an historic opportunity. Let this Congress be the Congress that finally balances the budget. . . .

And let me say something that’s not in my script tonight. I know this is not going to be easy. But I really believe one of the reasons the American people gave me a second term was to take the tough decisions in the next four years that will carry our country through the next 50 years. I know it is easier for me than for you to say or do. But another reason I was elected is to support all of you, without regard to party, to give you what is necessary to join in these decisions. We owe it to our country and to our future.

Campaign Finance Reform

Our second piece of unfinished business requires us to commit ourselves tonight, before the eyes of America, to finally enacting bipartisan campaign finance reform.

Now, Sens. McCain and Feingold, Reps. Shays and Meehan have reached across party lines here to craft tough and fair reform. . . .

So let’s set our own deadline. Let’s work together to write bipartisan campaign finance reform into law, and pass McCain-Feingold by the day we celebrate the birth of our democracy--July the 4th.

Welfare Reform

There is a third piece of unfinished business: Over the last four years, we moved a record two-and-a-quarter million people off the welfare rolls. Then last year we enacted landmark welfare reform, demanding that able-bodied recipients assume the responsibility of moving from welfare to work.

Now, each and every one of us has to fulfill our responsibility--indeed, our moral obligation--to make sure that people who must work, can work. Now, we must act to meet a new goal: 2 million more people off the welfare rolls by the year 2000. . . .

We must join together to do something else too . . . to restore basic health and disability benefits when misfortune strikes immigrants who came to this country legally, who work hard, pay taxes and obey the law. . . .

‘Best Education in the World’

Next, the greatest step of all--the high threshold to the future we now must cross--and my No. 1 priority as president for the next four years--is to ensure that Americans have the best education in the world. Let’s work together to meet these goals: Every 8-year-old must be able to read; every 12-year-old must be able to log on to the Internet; every 18-year-old must he able to go to college; and every adult American must be able to keep on learning.

My balanced budget makes an unprecedented commitment to these goals--$51 billion next year. But far more than money is required.

I have a plan, a call to action for American education, based on these 10 principles.

First, a national crusade for education standards . . . representing what all of our students must know to succeed in the knowledge economy of the 21st century. . . .

Second, to have the best schools, we must have the best teachers. . . .

Third, we must do more to help all our children read. . . .

This leads to the fourth principle: Learning begins in the first days of life. . . . The first lady has spent years studying and writing about this issue. She and I will convene a White House Conference on Early Learning and the Brain this spring . . .

We already know we should start teaching children before they start schools. That’s why my budget expands Head Start to 1 million children by 2002. . . .

Fifth: Every state should give parents the power to choose the right public school for their children. . . .

Sixth: Character education must be taught in our schools. . . .

Seventh: We cannot expect our children to raise themselves up in schools that are literally falling down. . . . My budget includes a new initiative: $5 billion to help communities finance $20 billion in school construction over the next four years.

Eighth: We must make the 13th and 14th years of education--at least two years of college--just as universal in America as a high school education is today, and we must open the doors of college to all. . . .

Ninth: In the 21st century, we must expand the frontiers of learning across a lifetime. All our people, of whatever age, must have a chance to learn new skills. . . .

Tenth: We must bring the power of the Information Age into all our schools. Last year, I challenged America to connect every classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000 . . . I ask your support to complete this historic mission. . . .

Science and Medicine

We must continue to explore the heavens, pressing on with the Mars probes and the international space station. . . . We must speed the remarkable advances in medical science. The human genome project is now decoding the genetic mysteries of life. American scientists have discovered genes linked to breast cancer and ovarian cancer, and medication that stops a stroke in progress and begins to reverse its effects--and treatments that dramatically lengthen the lives of people with HIV and AIDS. . . .

Over the past four years, the Family and Medical Leave Act has helped millions of Americans take time off to be with their families. With new pressures on people in the way they work and live, we should expand family leave so that workers can take time off for teacher conferences and a child’s medical checkup. . . .

We must continue, step by step, to give more families access to affordable, quality health care. . . .

My Medicare plan modernizes Medicare, increases the life of the trust fund to 10 years, provides support for respite care for the many families with loved ones afflicted with Alzheimer’s--and for the first time, it would fully pay for annual mammograms. . . .

‘Start With Safe Streets’

. . . We must build stronger communities. We should start with safe streets. . . . we must finish the job of putting 100,000 community police on our streets. We should pass the victims’ rights amendment to the Constitution.

And I ask you to join me in mounting a full-scale assault on juvenile crime. . . .

Protecting the Environment

We must protect our environment in every community. In the last four years, we cleaned up 250 toxic waste sites, as many as in the previous 12. Now we should clean up 500 more of them, so that our children grow up next to parks, not poison. Big polluters must live by this simple rule: If you pollute our environment, you pay to clean it up. . . .

Tonight, I announce that this year I will designate 10 American Heritage Rivers, to help communities alongside them revitalize their waterfronts and clean up pollution in the rivers, proving once again that we can grow the economy as we protect the environment. . . .

Global leadership

To prepare America for the 21st century, we must master the forces of change in the world and keep American leadership strong and sure for an uncharted time.

Fifty years ago, a farsighted America led in creating the institutions that secured victory in the Cold War and built a growing world economy. As a result, today more people than ever embrace our ideals and share our interests. . . .

Our first task is to help build, for the first time, an undivided, democratic Europe. When Europe is stable, prosperous and at peace, America is more secure.

To that end, we must expand NATO by 1999, so that countries that were once our adversaries can become our allies. At the special NATO summit this summer, that is what we will begin to do. . . .

Second, America must look to the East no less than the West. . . .

Together with South Korea, we must advance peace talks with North Korea and bridge the Cold War’s last divide. And I call on this Congress to fund our share of the agreement under which North Korea must continue to freeze and then dismantle its nuclear weapons program.

We must pursue a deeper dialogue with China--for the sake of our interests and our ideals. . . .

Third . . . we must act to expand our exports, especially to Asia and Latin America. . . . That is why we need the authority now to conclude new trade agreements that open markets to our goods and services even as we preserve our values. . . .

Fourth, America must continue to be an unrelenting force for peace--from the Middle East to Haiti--from Northern Ireland to Africa. . . .

Fifth, we must move strongly against new threats to our security. . . . we must rise to a new test of leadership: ratifying the Chemical Weapons Convention. . . .

Finally, we must have the tools to meet all these challenges.

We must maintain a strong and ready military. We must increase funding for weapons modernization by the year 2000, and we must take good care of our men and women in uniform. They are the world’s finest. . . .

America Is an Idea

All over the world, people are being torn asunder by racial, ethnic, and religious conflicts that fuel fanaticism and terror. We are the world’s most diverse democracy. And the world looks to us to show that it is possible to live and advance together across those kinds of differences. . . .

My fellow Americans, we must never believe that diversity is a weakness--it is our greatest strength. . . .

America is far more than a place. It is an idea, the most powerful idea in the history of nations. We are now the bearers of that idea, leading a great people into a new world. A child born tonight will have almost no memory of the 20th century. Everything that child will know of America will be because of what we do now to build a new century.

We don’t have a moment to waste. Tomorrow morning, there will be just over 1,000 days until the year 2000; 1,000 days to prepare our people; 1,000 days to work together. My fellow Americans, we have work to do. Let us seize the days and the century.

Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.