But that should not lead our Nation to complacency. It is in our Nation's national interest that we develop more energy supplies at home. It is in our national interest that we look at safe nuclear power. It is in our national interest that we conserve more. It is in our national interest that we modernize the energy infrastructure of America. It is in our national interest to get a bill to my desk, and I urge the Senate to do so. And we can restore economic confidence by expanding trade. More open trade is essential to the growth of our Nation's economy. A part of our economic recovery program is to give me the ability to negotiate trade agreements. I need trade promotion authority to expand opportunity for businesses large and small, for entrepreneurs in America. I need trade promotion authority to expand the job base of this great Nation. I am the first ENTITY who has not had trade promotion authority. I need it now. It is in our Nation's best interest that we have it. And it is in the best interests of our world that we trade in freedom. We have a chance to draw all the people into the world in the world into an open market economy, and that will offer better living standards and more political freedom and will enhance human dignity all across our globe. Nobody is disqualified from an open world that trades freely. No one will be disqualified by religion, no one by nationality. No one will be disqualified by geography. Our enemies fear this world precisely because they know how attractive modernization is to the oppressed people around the globe. Our enemies fear open societies in which men and women can think for themselves, can decide their own destinies, can decently support their own families, can educate their sons and their daughters in a modern world. Our enemies fear a society which is pluralistic and open to worship an almighty God. Our enemies are right to fear open societies, because those societies leave no room for bigotry and tyranny. The promise of our time has no room for the vision of the Taliban or Al Qaida. This is a time of promise for America. I am incredibly optimistic about this Nation's future, because I understand America and I understand the people of America. Franklin Roosevelt warned us 70 years ago that fear feeds on itself and contributes to the very problems that first gave it rise. America has prevailed over fear in a Great Depression and in a global war, and we will do so again. The character of our country has not changed.


I have been under a promise to come to Boston and speak to its Chamber of Commerce for more than a year. It is a great pleasure to redeem that promise. To be the guest at a magnificent feast like this, to be thus received in Boston, one of the greatest centers of the wealth, of the culture and art, of the educational influences, and of the moral forces of our country, and to be welcomed by so distinguished a company, the Governor of the State, a Justice of the Federal Supreme Court, Foreign Ministers, members of the State Judiciary, United States Senators and Representatives, powerful and broad-minded prelates and ministers of religion, together with the men who are the bone and sinew of the commerce of this great section - make this occasion most memorable in my life, and properly call for an expression on my part of deep gratitude and high appreciation. I congratulate Boston on a union in one organization of all of her business men, for it insures a concentration of influence that must make for good. The opportunities for usefulness are great in civic improvement and progress and in State and National affairs. While you doubtless include in your ranks persons of all political views, many questions must arise upon which you can all unite, and thus exert a most effective influence. As Boston is the commercial center of New England, your association really speaks for New England, a part of the country whose importance can be measured by the emphasis with which sectional writers and speakers sometimes attack it. It is no mere exaggeration of speech or flattery, therefore, for me to point out that this Chamber of Commerce, by the ideals which it may maintain in the matter of business integrity and scrupulous business methods and in maintenance of law in the conduct of corporations, has great power and corresponding responsibility. I am very grateful for the hospitable reception which I have had on the North shore of Massachusetts. A vacation which I had planned of more than two months has been whittled down to a little more than one month; but every minute of it I have enjoyed. The beauties of that region are nothing but an expansion and enlargement of the wonderful park system and suburbs of Boston. I have attempted to keep within the speed limit and before a broad-minded judge I could establish this by satisfactory evidence. But it has not prevented me from motoring into every village and town and countryside of Essex County.

Remarks at the Banquet of the Boston Chamber of Commerce in Boston, Massachusetts


I am delighted at the prospect of returning here again next summer, when I hope and pray that no tariff or other bill will shorten my days of leisure. I am on the eve of beginning a journey 13,000 miles in length, which will enable me to see tens and hundreds of thousands of my fellow citizens, and enable them, I hope, to see me. Occasionally I hear a query, why should I start off on such a trip and what particular good does it do to anybody? Well, it certainly is not going to be a pleasure trip, although I shall enjoy it. It will involve much hard work and a great deal of mental effort to think of things to say, and to say them simply and clearly so that they can be understood. It will strain the digestion not only of myself and those who accompany me, but also of the many who extend hospitality along the way; and it will very considerably reduce the appropriation of $25,000 made by Congress for the traveling expenses of ENTITY. On the other hand, it will certainly give me a very much more accurate impression as to the views of the people in the sections which I visit. It will bring closely to me the needs of particular sections, so far as national legislation and executive action are concerned, and I believe it will make me a wiser man and a better public officer. Moreover, it will give the people an opportunity to see the man whom they have chosen, for the time being, to act as their chief executive, and who, because of this office, in a sense temporarily typifies nationality. I ought to be able to explain to the people some of the difficulties of government and some of the problems of solution from the standpoint of the executive and the legislator, as distinguished from that of the honest but irresponsible critic. The personal touch between the people and the man to whom they temporarily delegate power of course conduces to a better understanding between them. Moreover, I ought not to omit to mention as a useful result of my journeying that I am to visit a great many expositions and fairs, and that the curiosity to see the President will certainly increase the box receipts and tend to rescue many commendable enterprises from financial disaster. This is an innocent, but it has come to be a very useful, function of the presidential office. The thing that I most object to and look forward to with most fear is the necessity for speaking every day on some subject or other to a listening multitude.


It becomes a brain-racking performance before one gets through with a trip of two months. At first everything the President says is reported in the newspapers. If after a time he repeats himself, as he must do, and the correspondents and reporters exercise the discretion which they ought, and cut the report, a suffering public will thank them. One of the reasons why I hesitated to fix the time for meeting the Boston Chamber of Commerce on the eve of my departure for the West was because I would have to make a speech here and I needed all the material that I could think of for speeches in the West. When I explained this to the committee who were good enough to wait upon me to tender your hospitable invitation I was relieved greatly to hear from Mr. Frederick P. Fish, who was one of the committee, the statement that I need give myself no concern in that regard, because commonplace remarks would be entirely appropriate from me here. Now, whether Mr. Fish meant by this to characterize the intellectual capacity of the speaker, or the intellectual demands of the audience, I am at a loss to say. But if what I say to-night is commonplace, you may know that I am only filling the order which Mr. Fish gave me, and complying with the invitation as I have understood it. This is the second week of September. We are all ending our vacations and going home. This is the time of the year, rather than the first of the calendar year, when good resolutions ought to be made - and kept, as far as possible. This is the time when, looking forward to the coming again of Congress in December, one must consider the needs of the country so far as they may be relieved by congressional legislation, and attempt to state what that legislation should be. Your chairman has made some reference to a number of subjects to which the attention of Congress may well be directed. While it is probable that the Vreeland Bill passed by the last Congress would aid us in case of another financial crash, it is certain that our banking and monetary system is a patched-up affair which satisfies nobody, and least of all those who are clear-headed and have a knowledge of what a financial system should be. The matter has been referred by Congress to a monetary commission, which has been studying with much interest and enthusiasm the financial and banking systems of the great Governments of Europe and has embodied and will soon publish in interesting and attractive form the best accounts of the financial systems of the world.


It is quite apparent from the statements of Mr. Vreeland, who is now the head of the committee on banking and currency in the House of Representatives, and from the conversations of Mr. Aldrich, who is the chairman of the monetary commission and of the finance committee of the Senate, that the trend of the minds of the monetary commission is toward some sort of arrangement for a central bank of issue which shall control the reserve and exercise a power to meet and control the casual stringency which from time to time will come in the circulating medium of the country and the world. Aldrich states that there are two indispensable requirements in any plan to be adopted involving a central bank of issue. The one is that the control of the monetary system shall be kept free from Wall Street influences, and the other, that it shall not be manipulated for political purposes. These are two principles to which we can all subscribe. It is quite possible that the report of the commission of a definite conclusion may be delayed beyond the next session of Congress. Meanwhile, the members of the commission intend to substitute a campaign of education in order to arouse public opinion to the necessity of a change in our monetary and banking systems, and to the advantages that will arise from placing some form of control over the money market and the reserve in the hands of an intelligent body of financiers responsible to the Government. I am told that Mr. Aldrich will swing around the circle in the present fall, and will lecture in many of the cities of the Middle West on the defects and needs of our monetary system. I can not too strongly approve of this proposal. Aldrich, who is the leader of the Senate, and certainly one of the ablest statesmen in financial matters in either house, has been regarded with deep suspicion by many people, especially in the West. If, with his clear-cut ideas and simple but effective style of speaking, he makes apparent to the Western people what I believe to be his earnest desire to aid the people and to crown his political career by the preparation and passage of a bill which shall give us a sound and safe monetary and banking system, it would be a long step toward removing the political obstacles to a proper solution of the question. I do not need to argue with this audience that a change in our monetary and banking systems is necessary.


You are too good business men not to know it, and I sincerely hope that the whole force of your association will be exerted to insist upon the adoption of a satisfactory system before the end of this Administration. It is a subject that the general public has very little conception of, and when they suffer from the radical defects of the system they are utterly unable to tell how and why. We all need education on the subject. We must all unite to mend our roof before the storm and rain shall show us again its leaky and utterly inadequate character. I am not going to discuss the merits and demerits of the new tariff bill with you. I shall have often to refer to that before my journey is ended and I must save something for other audiences. Suffice it to say that the passage of the bill has removed a disturbing element in business. Nor shall I dwell at length on the necessity for amendments to the interstate-commerce law, to the anti-trust law, and the organization of the Departments in Washington with a view to promoting greater efficiency and expedition in the settlement of controversies arising under them. During Mr. Roosevelt's Administration we were all struck with the necessity for reform in business methods, for more scrupulous attention to the conduct of business in accordance with the law, and with the necessity for simplifying the law in such a way as to make it clear to corporate managers what they can do and what they can not do. We are, I believe, unless all signs fail, on the eve of another great business expansion, and an era of prosperity. Indeed it is already here in many branches of business. The hum of prosperity and the ecstasy of great profits are likely to dull our interest in these reforms and to lead us back again to the old abuses, unless we insist upon legislation which shall clinch and enforce those standards by positive law. Nothing revolutionary, nothing disturbing to legitimate business is needed; but we must set the marks clear in the statute by which the lines can be drawn and the proper legitimate paths be laid down upon which all business shall proceed, and must have it understood by means of prompt prosecution and punishment that the law is for all and is to be enforced even against the most powerful.


Then, too, the needs in respect to the conservation of our national resources; the amendment to the public land system; the execution of the pure-food law; and all the rest of the important matters that should demand attention, make the legislative and executive labor of the next three years heavy enough, if our purposes are carried out, to exhaust the energy of the most enthusiastic and hopeful. Still the world is making progress - our country is making progress. Occasionally one hears a note like that of Governor Johnson, denouncing the East and calling upon the West to organize in a sectional way against the East, because the East is deriving more benefit from the governmental policy than the West, and at the expense of the West. It is difficult for one to treat such an appeal seriously. Throughout the country there is free trade of the freest character; and due to this the prosperity of the West, especially of the agricultural West, is even more pronounced than that of the East. Moreover, the East is too close to the Pacific Coast, too close to the Middle West, too close to the Rocky Mountains, because all the people of these western stretches have eastern ancestry and eastern associations and eastern connections, and because they have eastern capital with which their sections have been largely built up, and because they are too much assisted by eastern markets in enhancing the prices which their products bring, to make such an attempt at sectionalism successful. It is true that at times public questions will be given a local color by what is thought to be a local benefit, as distinguished from the general and the national benefit. But such attitude is generally temporary, and it takes but a few years of business experience, it takes but a panic or two, to present the most convincing evidence that in this country we are all in the same business boat, and that the prosperity of one section adds to the prosperity another, and the business disaster in one section is only the forerunner of business depression and disaster in another. I was born and brought up in the Middle West. I have had a New England ancestry and New England associations. Fortune threw me out into the Pacific so that I know something of the feelings of the West coast. Jurisdiction as a judge gave me a somewhat intimate knowledge of Southern feelings and Southern aspirations.


McClure, my mother is up in heaven smiling at that introduction. And she is probably the only person who heard it who believes every word of it. But I liked it, and I thank you. I thank you so much, all of you, for welcoming me. To your chair-elect, Joann Boyd-Scotland, who sat with me for a few moments; your CEO, my long-time friend Dr. Henry Ponder; Dr. Earl Richardson, who welcomed me to Morgan State not too many years ago, and then Vice President Gore yesterday; to Dr. Iris Ish and all the members of my Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; to my president, the Arkansas Baptist College president, Dr. William Keaton, my longtime friend. I want to also have a special word of acknowledgement to your vice president, Dr. Wilma Roscoe. Her daughter, Jena, works in the White House; that is really why I am here tonight, to preserve peace in the family. the Director of our Office of Public Liaison, Mary Beth Cahill; and Ben Johnson, who has done a wonderful job for us. I also would like to thank Catherine LeBlanc, who is Executive Director of our Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. And I congratulate all the alumni award winners here tonight. everybody counts; everybody ought to have a chance; everybody's got a role to play; we all do better when we help each other. The work I have done to build one America for a new century was a joy every day. Even on the darkest days, the fact that I had this job to do for you and for our children and our children's children made this a joy. And I think of all you have done to make the last 7 years possible. Think about what a different country America would be today had it not been for the institutions all of you represent. Think about what a different administration I would have had. We have Alexis Herman, the Secretary of Labor, graduate of Xavier. Togo West, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs; Bob Nash the hardest job in the White House he handles my appointments. I get the credit when they get it; he takes the blame when they do not . And Judith Winston, who ran our One America initiative when I put my White House committee together on race. All graduated from Howard.

Remarks at the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education Dinner


But if you think about this economy we have, which is not only the longest expansion in history but has given us the lowest African-American unemployment rate ever recorded and the lowest poverty rate in 20 years and the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years that would not have happened if it had not been for the educational opportunities provided by the people in this room and their forebears, and you should be very, very proud of that. I was very glad to be invited to come by here and to be able to redo our schedule so I could come, because I wanted to make one simple point to you. Everybody knows how important your institutions were to 20th century America. I want everybody to know how important your institutions will be to 21st century America. A third of all the undergraduate and advanced degrees awarded to African-Americans are awarded by your institutions. I want America to know that and to know what a vital role you play in building your communities, nurturing new businesses, and revitalizing neighborhoods, as Howard is doing here in our hometown of Washington. I want America to know about your enormous contributions to research. I want every American to know that last November Tennessee State astronomers made the world's first direct detection of a planet orbiting another star. We have done what we could to play our role. The Vice President and I have worked hard to be good partners to you. I told Earl, Al Gore was so happy that he got to go to Morgan State yesterday, because when I got to go to Morgan State to give a commencement address, to talk about, of all things, science and technology not him, I got to talk about that he was so jealous. And I just told him, I said, It will not be long before nobody pulls rank on you anymore, but I am going there. And we want you to be able to define a mission for the 21st century that will help to create opportunity for every responsible American. We now have 30 agencies in our Government all singing out of the same hymnal, working for you, to help you reach your goals and your aspirations. The budget I just submitted to Congress includes almost a 40 percent increase in HBCU funding, including the new dual degree program Secretary Riley talked about yesterday. I want to ask you now to think beyond that. In the State of the Union, I said that I thought America should be proud of what we had done together these last 7 years, but not satisfied.


We should remember that we got to where we are as a country with the right vision and the right values and an awful lot of effort an awful lot of effort. All of you know, because of the work you do, that the one constant of the time in which we live is change; that there is an inherent dynamism in this moment which rewards people who are educated, who work hard, who can think and create, and punishes the sluggards mercilessly. And I do not want to see our country become a sluggard in 2000 just because we are feeling good about ourselves. I do not want to see Washington become a sluggard in 2000 just because there is an election on the horizon that will occupy the headlines, because what is rewarded is action. And so I ask you to help me convince our country and our Congress that this may be an election year, but it is still got to be an action year. We have an action agenda. You know, I think we can really say with the HOPE scholarships, with the direct student loan program, with a million work-study positions, with the increases in the Pell grants we have opened the doors of at least 2 years of college now to every American who will work for it. But it is time to open the doors of college for 4 years to every American who will work for it. That is why we want to raise the Pell grant again. That is why I want to make college tuition tax deductible up to $10,000, and I want to do it in a progressive way so that whether the family is in the 15 percent income tax bracket or the 28 percent income tax bracket, they get a 28 percent tax deduction for college tuition. This can make a huge difference to help children stay in school. One of the things that bothers me most is that since 1993 we have a 10 percent increase in the percentage of our high school graduates going on to college. A couple years ago, for the first time in history, the percentage of African-Americans graduating from high school on time was almost identical to the white majority. The percentage going on to college has significantly increased. And it will give you a profile of the American people and their incomes and their prospects. People with an education do well; people without an education work harder for less. We have got to get these kids into college; we have got to keep them in college. And you have to help us, financially, academically, in every way.


I have proposed some new college completion grants to try to help schools experiment with new strategies to keep young people in school within the TRIO program. I know that this is a big concern of yours. This is a big issue to America. I want you to help me convince the country and the Congress that we ought to bring economic opportunity to every area that has not seen it. We ought to increase the number of empowerment zones under the program the Vice President has headed so ably. We ought in every poor neighborhood in America, an inner city, a rural area, an Indian reservation we ought to give people the same tax incentives to invest there that we give them to invest overseas, in Latin America or Africa or Asia. I am for helping Americans to invest overseas, but we ought to give them the same incentives to invest in poor areas here, where people are dying to go to work or start businesses or have a better future. I want you to help me convince the country and convince the Congress that there are still a lot people out there in poverty; that they ought to have access to jobs and education; and that even though we have 2 million-plus fewer children in poverty, there are still too many. And as rich as we are now, as low as our unemployment rate is now, there is no excuse for any child in America living in poverty. And we ought to say as a goal, we are going to make sure that we increase the earned-income tax credit for working families; we are going to make sure that we increase child care support; we are going to do whatever it takes to make sure that every parent can succeed at home and work, and no child is raised in poverty. I want you to help me convince the Congress and the country that that is the right thing to do. The one thing you can play a big role in is making sure we close the digital divide it is okay to clap for that, that is good. I was so pleased to learn of your new agreement with Gateway to empower your students, your faculty, your alumni with a million affordable new computers; to put in place the E-commerce tools for improving distance learning, on-line admissions, registration, and financial aid. It is a good company, doing what I think we ought to do. I visited Gateway's offices in Belfast, Northern Ireland. I met with all their young employees who worked there.


They had young people from seven, eight, nine different countries working in one office there, talking all over the world where they were selling these computers. And Ted Waitt and the people at Gateway have decided that if they are trying to bring that kind of opportunity to the rest of the world, they ought to be closing the digital divide here at home. I applaud them, and I applaud you for working with them. We have to do more with that. There is so much we can do to help young people skip a generation of educational and economic development, in terms of time, if we close the digital divide. I ask you to help me persuade the Congress to give the biggest increase in civil rights enforcement in history we still have actual problems with bigotry and discrimination out there to enforce the equal pay laws; and to pass hate crimes legislation; to do things that will give us the tools to create one America. Let me just say this briefly in closing. I know you all agree with my agenda. I know you do, and I am grateful for the support you have given us in everything we have worked on through the years together. Things are going pretty well at home, are not they? Yes, you know some people in trouble, but more people are doing better. The great test of our people in this age is what we do with our good feeling. How many times anybody that is over 30 in this audience will identify with this how many times in your life have you made a mistake not because things were going badly but because things were going well? The whole history of the civil rights movement is about people who were saints under fire. People'd burn crosses in their yards, throw rocks or bullets through the front window. We are commemorating Selma this year. We honor these people. But how many times have you made a mistake and failed, and your courage and your vision has failed you, not because you were under duress but because things were going so well you thought there were no consequences to taking your eye off the prize? And I want you to have a good time here tonight, but I want you to hear me about this. I thank you for acknowledging what I have tried to do with you for America. If nobody ever did another thing for me in my life, and I spent the rest of my life doing for other people, I would never catch up, not ever.


So what I want to say to you is, take a little time tonight while you are having fun at dinner and clapping for the award recipients and feeling pretty good about where you are and where your institutions are, but think about what you are going to do with this good fortune and what your country is. You know, you talked about me being a little boy in Hope. I am talking to you now more as a citizen than as a President. I am not running for anything, you know. And most days, I am okay about it. And I think about the young people and how I have always said, do not stop thinking about tomorrow; keep your eyes on the future; always have a vision. But I also know that to understand today and tomorrow, you have to have some sense of what yesterday was like. This month when we celebrated the longest economic expansion in history, I did a little looking into, and thinking about, what was the longest economic expansion until this one. Now, I remember what that was like. I remember in the beginning how full of hope we were when President Kennedy was elected. I remember when President Kennedy was assassinated, how heartbroken we were, but how we rallied as a country behind President Johnson. All these people that look back at the sixties and say American cynicism started when President Kennedy was assassinated are just wrong. This country was heartbroken, but we stood up together, and we joined hands. And Lyndon Johnson provided great leadership, and he pulled us together. So in 1964, I am graduating from high school into an America that was the nearest like this America. We had low unemployment, low inflation, high growth. And everybody thought as difficult as the civil rights problems were, they were going to be resolved in a peaceable manner, with this wizard in the White House and the votes in Congress, to lawfully give African-Americans what they were constitutionally entitled to. And all the while we would win the cold war against communism, and we would create the greatest society America had ever known. That is what I believed the night I graduated from high school. Two years later, we had riots in the streets, a half a million people in Vietnam; the country was beginning to be deeply divided. Two years after that, I graduated from college in this city, 2 days after Robert Kennedy was assassinated, 2 months and 4 days after Martin Luther King was killed, 5 weeks after Lyndon Johnson said he could not see his way clear to run for President again.


This afternoon I have a very serious message to deliver to our country Present high inflation threatens the economic security of our Nation. Since my economic and budget reports were made to the Congress and to the people in January, rapid changes in world events and economic prospects have made it necessary to intensify our anti-inflation fight. In the last 8 weeks inflation rates and interest rates have surged to unprecedented heights. During the last 2 reporting months, for instance, the increases in the wholesale price index in Italy, Great Britain, and Japan have all increased more than 25 percent. And even in Germany, West Germany, where the prime consideration, equal to national defense, is inflation, the wholesale price index has increased more than 13 percent. The inflation that we face today is deep-rooted. Its many causes have been built up over more than a decade. The most important of these causes are the soaring prices for energy throughout the world, declining productivity growth in our Nation, and our failure in government and as individuals, as an entire American society, to live within our means. Inflation is a symptom of economic distress. The truth is that we have inflation because our economy is not productive enough to do all the things that we demand of it. We want it to give us higher incomes, bigger profits, and bigger government programs in the areas where we have a special interest. The Federal Government must stop spending money we do not have and borrowing to make up the difference. Our whole society, the entire American family, must try harder than ever to live within its means. As individuals and as a nation, we must begin to spend money according to what we can afford in the long run and not according to what we can borrow in the short run. We cannot abolish inflation overnight by just passing a law against it. Only a long-term effort, with a partnership of business and labor and individual citizens and government at all levels, can succeed in bringing this serious problem under control. This dangerous situation calls for urgent. measures. We must remove any doubt about our Nation's will to take the painful steps that will be required to control inflation. We cannot accept high rates of inflation as a permanent fact of American life. first, discipline by reductions in the Federal Government; second, discipline by restraints on credit; third, discipline in wage and price actions; fourth, discipline by greater conservation of energy; and fifth, structural changes over a long period of time to encourage productivity, savings, and research and development.

Anti-Inflation Program Remarks Announcing the Administration's Program.


Let me discuss these one by one. I will soon set forth a revised budget for fiscal year 1981, beginning next October 1. And the Congress and I are determined to keep this budget in balance. Since the last balanced budget 12 years ago-and there has been only one balanced budget since 1961-we have added almost one-half trillion dollars to our Nation's debt. In 1981 we will thus achieve an objective that has escaped us, eluded our country in good times and in bad times, and that is a balanced budget. By the end of this month, I will send to Congress a major revision in both my 1980 and 1981 budgets. It will propose significant reductions of budget authority from the current proposals in order to cut spending this fiscal year and next fiscal year. I will cut spending in the 1981 budget by more than $18 billion. To reach that goal, I will defer or reduce or cancel most of the new or the expanded programs which were originally proposed in the 1981 budget. I will cut expenditures for personnel, operating, and maintenance throughout the Government. I will freeze Federal civilian employment immediately and maintain rigid ceilings, so that by the end of October of this year, we will have 20,000 fewer Federal employees on the payroll. I will reduce ongoing spending programs throughout the Federal Government. I urgently request from the Congress the savings and the revenue measures in the budget that I proposed back in January. I want to stress in particular the legislation needed to hold down hospital costs, to reform Federal pay, and to speed up collections in revenue. When budget cuts demand sacrifices from many Americans, it is intolerable for some to evade prompt payment of the taxes which they owe. I will send to the Congress legislation to make sure that taxes that are owed on interests and on dividends are actually paid and paid in a timely manner. I will maintain my commitment, through all of this procedure, to a strong defense and to the level of real growth in defense spending which I committed on the honor of our Nation to our NATO Allies. But the Defense Department will not be immune from budget austerity. In particular, I will require that Department to make savings that do not affect adversely our military preparedness. I consider the proposed defense budget adequate to meet our Nation's needs. We must maintain budget restraint and fiscal responsibility in every single agency of the Federal Government. Based on our estimates of economic and budgetary developments, the action that I have just described will produce a balanced budget in 1981.


Of course, in our system the Congress controls the power of the purse. The recent intense efforts, one of the most inspiring demonstrations of congressional leadership that I have ever seen, and my close cooperation and consultation with these congressional leaders, have all convinced me that the Congress will indeed enact and maintain a balanced budget that I have just described to you. But to ensure that outcome I will use every power at my command, as ENTITY, as I did last week on a popular bill. I will veto any legislation that exceeds the spending limits which I consider to be inconsistent with a balanced budget. I will use lily full powers under the 1974 Budget Reform Act to hold down Federal spending, including some expenditures which have already been authorized by the Congress and for which money has been appropriated. If, during the course of the year, I judge these actions and powers which I have just described as being insufficient, I will ask the Congress for a temporary grant of extraordinary powers to ensure that spending by the Federal Government of our country is contained. Cutting back Federal spending to match revenue is not a cure-all, but it is an essential first step. The sources of inflation are far too complex to be treated by a single remedy. But nothing will work in an overall anti-inflation program until the Federal Government has demonstrated to the American people that it can discipline its own spending and its own borrowing-not just as a 1-year exercise but as a longterm policy. Together, we will do just that. We will dispel the notions that Federal budget deficits must always be with us. I want to be absolutely honest about these budget cuts. We have been cutting out waste and fraud and trimming the bureaucratic fat. But this time, there will also have to be cuts in good and worthwhile programs-programs which I support very strongly. In this critical situation we must all look beyond some of our most worthwhile immediate aims to the overriding permanent needs of our Nation. Our second area of action is restraining the growth of credit. When we try to beat inflation with borrowed money, we just make the problem worse. Inflation is fed by credit-financed spending. Consumers have gone in debt too heavily. The savings rate in our Nation is now much lower than it has been for more than 25 years. Less than 3 percent of the earnings of Americans now go into savings. As inflationary expectations have been worsened, business and other borrowers are also tempted to use credit to finance speculative ventures .as well as productive activities.


The traditional tools used by the Federal Reserve to control money and credit expansion are a basic part of the fight against inflation. But in present circumstances, these tools need to be reinforced so that effective constraint can be achieved in ways that spread the burden reasonably and fairly. I am therefore using my power under the Credit Control Act of 1969 to authorize the Federal Reserve to impose new restraints on the growth of credit on a limited and on a carefully targeted basis. Under this authority the Federal Reserve will first establish controls for credit cards and other unsecured loans but not for secured loans on homes, automobiles, and other durable goods, and second, to restrain credit extensions by commercial banks that are not members of the Federal Reserve System and also by certain other money market lenders. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve will announce a voluntary program effective immediately to restrain excessive growth in loans by larger banks and by other lenders. At the same time, the program will encourage the flow of available credit supplies for investment and for other productive uses. Special attention will be given to the particular needs of small businesses, farmers, and homeowners, and I support these initiatives by the Federal Reserve. These carefully targeted actions will not damage the productive capacity of our Nation. To help curtail the excessive uses of credit and by dampening inflation they should, along with the budget measures that I have described, speed prospects for reducing the strains which presently exist in our financial markets. In addition, I am taking steps to reduce the extension of credit by the Federal Government. Federal loans and loan guarantees will be cut by nearly $4 billion in fiscal year 1981. As a longer run measure, I urge Congress to institute the credit budget which I proposed in January. It will help us control more effectively the loans and the loan guarantees provided by the Federal Government. Our third area of action is the voluntary wage and price standards. I do not have authority to impose mandatory controls. I will oppose such authority being approved at all by the Congress. We will not impose mandatory wage and price controls. Government wage and price controls have never worked in peacetime. They create unfair economic distortions, and they hurt productivity. These results always force price controls first to be eased and then to be dismantled while inflation roars ahead. Controls create inequities, and the greatest inequity is their effect on the average American family.


As even the most ardent advocates of mandatory wage and price controls will admit, the cost of vital necessities such as food and fuel would be passed on to those who are living on frozen wages and on fixed incomes. We simply cannot outlaw inflation with a massive Federal bureaucracy or wish it away with a magic formula. On the other hand, voluntary wage and price restraints offer the flexibility we need to deal with our complex economy. The Council on Wage and Price Stability has just issued revised pay standards and confirmed an extension of the price standards. The new pay standards were developed from the recommendation of a tripartite advisory committee, with members from business, labor, and the public. The committee unanimously recommended standards for pay increases in the range of 7 1/2 to 9 1/2 percent and stated that under normal circumstances increases should average 8 1/2 percent. I am determined to meet this goal. In the face of last year's 13-percent increase in the Consumer Price Index, and the even higher rate of recent months, this unanimous recommendation of the Pay Advisory Committee, designed to produce an average wage and salary increase of 8 1/2 percent, reflects a commendable spirit of restraint and cooperation. With business, labor, and public support, we can meet this goal of restraint. I am sharply expanding the price and wage monitoring activities of the Council on Wage and Price Stability. Its current staff of 80 people will be more than tripled. The Council will then establish teams of experts to track wage and price developments in each major industry. The Council will meet with leaders from specific industries to secure their cooperation in this fight against inflation. Where necessary, we will ask large firms for prenotification of significant price increases. We will investigate wage and price increases that seem out of line with the standards. I mean to apply these standards with vigor and toughness to both business and labor. Our fourth area of action is energy. The plain truth is that we will never be completely strong at home or secure abroad until we have at last solved our Nation's excessive dependence on imported oil. This year, we expect to spend $90 billion of America's hard-earned income to foreign countries to buy their oil. The price of imported oil has more than doubled-more than doubled in the last 12 months. Last year's increase alone in 1979 was greater than all other increases combined since the oil embargo of 1973. In fact, last year alone the price of oil increased more than it has since oil was first discovered.


We must forge ahead toward the goal that I set last July-cutting in half the amount of oil that we will import in 1990. To do this, we will require increased conservation and increased production of domestic oil, natural gas, and coal, and the rapid development of alternative energy supplies. For 3 years, as every Member of the Congress well knows, I have fought for a national energy policy to achieve each of these goals, and we have worked closely together. Today, at long last, we are close to enacting such a policy into law, and we must not falter now. I am asking the Congress to finish without delay the three essential elements of the energy policy. These bills are the cornerstone for energy security, for our national security, and for our fight against inflation. I have recently submitted to the Congress a proposal to conserve energy in electric powerplants and to convert them from oil to coal. But we can never solve our energy dependence unless we meet the problem of America's extravagant gasoline use. Gasoline is the most important and the most wasted petroleum product in the United States. It accounts for some 40 percent of all the petroleum we use in our country. In almost every other industrial country, the average amount of gasoline used by each citizen is much less and the price for gasoline is much higher-more than twice as high in most other industrialized countries than it is today in the United States. Americans have done well in the past year in gasoline conservation. But if we are going to reduce further our dependence on foreign oil, we must do more. Therefore, I am exercising my Presidential authority to impose a gasoline conservation fee on imported oil. This will amount to about 10 cents a gallon and will be imposed only on gasoline. The fee will not add to the cost of any other petroleum product, and it will not add at all to the profit of oil companies. It should reduce imports by 100,000 barrels per day in 1 year, and within about 3 years, it will reduce the imports of oil from foreign countries by more than 250,000 barrels every day. I will submit to Congress a request for a specific gasoline tax, in the same amount exactly, which will replace the conservation fee. The funds from this gasoline conservation charge will be held in reserve or used to reduce the national debt. I do not intend to use these revenues to balance the budget or as a substitute for necessary spending cuts. That would not contribute substantially to the control of inflation.


But these revenues, which will begin occurring immediately, will give the budget, which will be balanced, a margin of safety, ensuring that it will remain in balance if conditions or estimates change in a way that we do not anticipate. We can now set new State targets for gasoline consumption which will, within a year, reduce consumption by 400,000 barrels per day. This action also underscores a commitment to greater conservation that our friends abroad, both the producing countries and the consuming countries, can both join and support. Finally, the Secretary of Energy is pursuing an intensified national energy conservation plan. Our aim is to involve every level of government, business and labor-in fact, every single citizen in our country-in conserving American energy. Our fifth area of action involves longterm structural changes to encourage productivity, savings, and research and development. We must face the fact that over the last 10 years the pace of productivity growth in the United States has slowed sharply. This trend is an important longterm factor in inflation. I am asking my Presidential commission on an agenda for the 1980's as part of their work to develop specific recommendations for revitalizing our Nation's economy. Our priority now is to balance the budget, but once these spending limitations have actually been achieved, we can then provide tax relief to encourage investment. Through fiscal discipline today, we can free up resources tomorrow, through tax deductions, for the productivity increase which our Nation needs. This discipline which I have described to you will not be easy. But [he most important thing we cannot afford is the national delusion which we have been harboring about inflation. We cannot afford the fairy-tale that inflation can somehow be passed along to the next person or somehow be passed along to the next generation. The actions I have outlined involve costs. They involve pain. But the cost of acting is far less than the cost of not acting. The temporary pain of inconvenience and discipline is far less for all of us together than the still worst permanent pain of constantly rising inflation. For all of us, but especially for the most disadvantaged among us, inflation is indeed the most cruel tax of all. When we take these necessary steps against inflation, it will not result in a quick victory. Over the next several months inflation is likely to continue at a high level. But I am confident that the steps that I have outlined today will make the inflation rate be declining later on this year.


And there are just a couple of people I want to acknowledge. First of all, obviously, Harvey and Georgina have just been great friends and have done so much for us, not just in this election, but in the previous one. your Governor, Dan Malloy, is here, who is doing outstanding work here in Connecticut. I want to thank Anne Hathaway for taking the time to host us. And I did get a chance to see Batman. And she was the best thing in it. Aaron Sorkin, who writes the way every Democrat in Washington wished they spoke. Joanne and Paul were not only I think what was best about American film, but also just embodied the American spirit in so many ways. And their love story and the way they took so many people under their wing and helped so many people I think made them something more important than just folks in film. Now, you know, in these kind of intimate settings, I usually do not make a long speech because what I want to do is have a conversation. And so let me just say a few things at the top. I will give you a sense of the kind of season we are in. Jim Messina, my campaign manager, tells this story. He was at an event like this, and there was a young couple; they had a 4-year-old boy, cute as can be. And so the parents, very proudly, prompt the son, Who is that? And they say, Well, and what does Barack Obama do? And he thinks for a second, and he says, Barack Obama approves this message. Now, that speaks to the state of affairs in politics today. Unless you have-you do not have a TV set or your cable is busted, you are seeing an awful lot of stuff about politics. And the reason I think there is so much intensity is because we have got a choice that is as stark and as critical as any that we have seen in my lifetime, in some ways, more important than 2008. the idea that if you work hard, that hard work is rewarded, that you can make it here if you try, regardless of what you look like, where you come from, what your last name is. And for a decade, we had seen job growth slow, and we had seen jobs moving overseas, and we had seen people working harder and harder, but coming up with less because the costs were going up a lot faster than their wages and their incomes.

Remarks at an Obama Victory Fund 2012 Fundraiser in Westport, Connecticut


And this all culminated in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. We have spent 3 1/2 years, a little over 3 1/2 years now, trying to make sure that this country gets back on its feet. 4.5 million new jobs, half a million new manufacturing jobs, an auto industry that is reinvigorated. But we did not work this hard in 2008 just to get back to where we were in 2007. Our notion was that we needed to rebuild a country where the foundations for people who were willing to act responsibly were there for them either to feel security in the middle class or to climb into the middle class and maybe do even better. And that means making sure that we have an education system that works, which is why we have initiated more aggressive education reform across the country than any President in a very long time and the reason that we put so much emphasis on making college more affordable for young people. It meant health care, because in a country this wealthy, we should not go bankrupt when we get sick. And the Affordable Care Act means that 30 million people will have health insurance, but it also means that people who already have health insurance have a little more security. We did an event just before we came here, and there was a woman who clearly is doing fine and is well insured, but she personally thanked me for the health care bill because she said, my husband just got cancer and we were not sure whether we were going to hit that $1 million limit on our insurance policy. Well, that limit is no longer allowed under the Affordable Care Act, which means they may not lose their house because of an illness. It means making investments in science and research that are what made us an economic superpower. It means having a Tax Code that is fair so that we bring down our deficit not on the backs of folks who are struggling, but we ask those of us who are-who've been incredibly blessed by this country to do a little bit more, understanding that when folks in the middle and the bottom are doing well, everybody does well and the economy grows. It means a foreign policy that recognizes the force of our example and our ideals and our capacity to engage with countries diplomatically is a complement to our incredible military power. And it is not a sign of weakness to say that we are going to reach out around the world and engage people.


So we have had a lot of work to do over the last 3 1/2 years, and we are not done. We are just-we have gotten on track, but these gains are reversible. And you have got the other party and the other candidate who do not just want to reverse the gains that we have made over the last 3 1/2 years, but in many ways, want to reverse gains we have made over the last 40 or 50 or 60 years. When you look at their budget, and they say that they want to initiate a $5 trillion tax cut on top of the Bush tax cut, what that functionally means is that either you blow up the deficit by another $5 trillion-which they say is irresponsible-or you are going to have to eliminate funding for education, for infrastructure, for basic science and research. Medicare is going to be a voucher system, which means that seniors may end up paying thousands of dollars more for care that they were counting on. When Mitt Romney says he wants to eliminate funding for Planned Parenthood, I think he means it. When he says that Arizona is a model for how we should deal with immigration, I think that fundamentally misunderstands that we are a nation of laws, but also a nation of immigrants. So on a whole host of issues, you have got very stark differences. And when you walk into that ballot box-or do not walk into the ballot box. That is the second time I have said this today. When you walk into the voting booth-it is illegal, I am sure, to walk into a ballot box. When you cast your ballot, you will have the opportunity to determine the course of this country's direction not just tomorrow or next year or 5 years from now, but probably for decades to come. And the great privilege of being President is you interact with people from every walk of life, from every corner of the country. And what you discover is the faith that I brought into this office in the American people-their core decency and their values and their resilience and their fundamental fairness-they have never disappointed me. And I am confident that they will not this time either-despite the fact that we have got all these negative ads raining down on our heads and super PACs running around with folks writing $10 million checks-because when the American people focus and are paying attention, their instincts are sound and they know what makes this country great.


You know, I only wish we knew how Barbra really feels about all of this. It is so hard when people hold back like that. And thank you, Bob and Carole, for opening your beautiful home and leaving it open day after day after day while I carried on at the Wye River. We were sitting there singing those songs with you, and I said, You know, every time Carole King opens her mouth, you can make 30 years of my life vanish. I am glad to be here with Senator Boxer and Stu and Doug and Nicole and Tony and my nephew, Zach. I talked to her just before I came out. This is the third talk I have made, and I have started with the same story, but it is true, so I am going to say it again. So I want to tell another true story. Every time I give a talk, my staff prepares a little card like this. At the top it says, Barbra Streisand, Carole King, Bob Daly, Carole Bayer Sager. I am glad to be here to support Senator Barbara Boxer for the Senate. And it says why I am for her here. And then before I do it, I make out little notes like this in my handwriting. And at my age, in dilapidated condition, I cannot read it anyway, so I have no idea what I said. So before I got off the plane I swear, before I got off the plane, my staff said, When you were at this Middle East peace thing, every night you got home at 2 or 3 in the morning, and then the last night you did not come home at all. I was up for 39 hours before I went to bed last night. I did not even do that in college. So they said, Read this card because the press is listening in, and Lord only knows what you will say. So I talked to Hillary; she said, Read the card; read the card. But I am not going to read the card. Anyway, I want to say just a couple of things about Barbara Boxer and then a couple of things about where we are right now and what is at stake. First of all, apart from our relationship by marriage and our deep friendship, I care a lot about her. And you should know that I see people in Washington in ways that their constituents often do not . I see Senators when they are mad at me, sometimes.

Remarks at a Dinner for Senator Barbara Boxer in Los Angeles


I see Senators when they call and want me to do things, and sometimes I cannot do it. I see the tough votes and easy shots and just the whole thing. This woman has a good mind, a good heart, a fierce spirit, and she would make you proud every day if you could see her as I do. And I will also tell you that of all the members of the California delegation this is no disrespect to the others she has called me more than any other member of the California delegation on issues relating specifically to California. Sometimes it gets to the point where I hear she is calling me again, I just say, Whatever she wants, just tell her, yes; I am tired of dealing with her. Just tell her, yes; I am tired of dealing with her. So I think she has earned the right to be reelected. But she made a couple of points I'd like to reinforce. In August of '93, when I'd been through a rocky 8 months, a lot of controversy, and I knew our ability to really get this economy going again rested on the capacity of the Congress to vote for an economic plan I gave them to slash the deficit but keep investing in education and children and the environment and research; and that it would require a lot of controversial choices, but that if we did not do it and it was not enough of a cut in the deficit, we'd never get the interest rates down; we'd never get the economy going again. Now, at the time we did that, the stock market was at about 3200; interest rates were much higher; the unemployment rate was a whole lot higher; and the budget passed by a single vote in the Senate and in the House one vote. So it is literally true that if in the last 6 years California had been represented by her opponent, we would not have had the economic recovery to the extent we have, and I might not be here giving this talk tonight. She voted to ban assault weapons. She voted for the Brady bill. She voted which has kept a quarter of a million people with criminal histories and mental health problems from buying handguns. Lord knows how many lives we saved. Roughly 15 million Americans have taken advantage of the family and medical leave law, which says you can take some time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick without losing your job. I mean, she is done things that have made a difference to the life of the country.


This last budget you heard them talking about it all those funds for after-school programs would not be in that budget if it were not for Barbara Boxer. Let me just give you an example of what this means, just one. During all the years I served as Governor I think most of you know Hillary is from Chicago, and we used to spend a lot of time in Illinois. And the Chicago school system had a reputation for being the worst big-city school system in the country. They had a teacher strike in Chicago every year whether they wanted one or not, even whether the teachers wanted one. They just sort of automatic and they changed the whole way of governing the school system. The teachers basically are a part of the governance of the school system now. And the schools all have parent councils and lots of other changes have been made. Chicago big-city school system ended social promotion. If you do not pass a test, you cannot go on to the next grade. But they did not declare children failures because the system failed them. Instead, they guaranteed summer school to all the kids that do not do well. The summer school is now the sixth biggest school system in the United States the summer school. And there are now in Chicago alone 40,000 children that eat 3 meals a day in the school system. That is what this after-school program means. And she did it, and she deserves the credit for it. First of all, in spite of the fact that the country is doing well economically, and that a lot of our social problems are abating, and we have, fortunately, been able to advance the cause of peace around the world and to become, I think, much more capable of dealing with the world as it is going to be, from Africa to China, to Bosnia and Kosovo, to Northern Ireland and the Middle East, we have got a lot of challenges at home and abroad. And this next Congress will have a lot to do with what 21st century America looks like for a long time. I want to mention two or three things. Barbara mentioned the Patients' Bill of Rights. A hundred sixty million Americans are in managed care, and I support it. I always say this. You know, I was never against managed care in the beginning. A lot of people do not remember this, but in 1993, when I became ENTITY, the inflation rate in health care costs was 3 times the inflation rate in the economy as a whole.


You have to manage any system that is taking that much money up. It will consume the economy. On the other hand, no management technique or device can ever be allowed to consume the fundamental purpose of the endeavor, whatever it is. If you make movies or CD's, you want to do them as efficiently as possible; you do not want to do them in a way that you have a low quality CD or a lousy movie. If you run a grocery store, you want to run it as efficiently as possible; but you do not want to run it with bad milk or rotten fruit. You can save money a lot of ways; any endeavor that you are doing, you can save money. But if you undermine the purpose of the endeavor, you have thwarted the very reason you are trying to be more efficient. You have got people who are out there dying, because their doctors say they need to have certain procedures or certain specialists, and it has to be approved by a managed care company, and the first person that gets it is a modestly paid accountant, a claims reviewer. And put yourself in the position of the claims reviewer we are talking about 160 million Americans now suppose instead of being an Academy Award winning actor, you are a claims reviewer for an HMO. What do you know? You know you are making a modest salary; you'd like a bonus at Christmastime; you'd like to have your job next year; you'd like to get a promotion someday. And all day long you are reviewing claims, and they are always the same thing, you know. The doctor says, Well, so-and-so ought to see a specialist, or so-and-so ought to have this procedure that may be experimental, and all this. What do you know about your job? You will never get in trouble for saying no. I want you to understand this from a human point of view. You will not get in trouble if you say no. Because if you make a mistake, they can always appeal the decision. And the doctor can ultimately, you say, make the right decision. Some of the biggest damage being done to the quality of health care in America today is being done on the way up the appeals ladder, when ultimately a doctor will say, Okay, yeah, this person should have the bone marrow transplant or whatever, you name it, or should see the plastic surgeon instead of just a general surgeon.


But by then it is too late to do the thing that was recommended in the first place. Now, if we had to pay a modest amount more, all of us, just a modest believe me, it is a modest amount; we are talking small bucks here more, to have the benefits of a managed system, but a system where the purpose was protected so that if your doctor says you ought to be able to see a specialist or you ought to have a certain procedure or if you get in an accident, you ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room, not one all the way across town because it is the one that is covered; or if you are pregnant or getting chemotherapy and your employer changes health care providers, you ought to be able to keep your doctor until you finish a treatment, and you ought to be able to keep your medical records private throughout I think the American people would like that kind of system. And we did not do that this time because I did not have enough people in the Congress who agreed with me and Barbara Boxer. On the education, we fought and we fought and we finally got the funds for the 100,000 teachers. And if we keep funding this, we will get 100,000 teachers in the next few years, and that will enable us, because we are targeting them at the youngest children, to take average class size down to 18. This is the first year the last 2 years the first time we have had more kids in school than the baby boom generation. But unlike the baby boomers, there is no arc where it ends after 18 years. It looks like it is going to keep on going, because so many of our young children are immigrants, and we continue to bring immigrants in, and they are younger people and have children. Now, I was in a little town in Florida the other day 2 months ago a little town that had a grade school with 12 trailers out back for classrooms. I have been in big cities all across this country with beautiful old school buildings where whole floors were shut down because they were in such disrepair. So what we did not pass this time was a tax cut paid for in our budget that would have helped school districts to build or repair 5,000 schools. If you are going to hire the teachers, they have to have some place to teach. If you want a smaller classroom, there has to be more classrooms.


If you are going to say, Okay, end social promotion, give the kids after-school, give the kids summer school, have smaller classes, bring excellence in education back then you send a huge signal to children a huge signal by the buildings that they attend school in. We have people there are teachers in this country today conducting classes in broom closets. So we have got to win that. The next Congress this year we saved off this ill-advised election-year tax cut with the first surplus we have had in 29 years so we could reform Social Security. Now, when all us baby boomers get in the retirement system, there will only be two people drawing for every one person two people working for every one person drawing Social Security. To most of us, it will not make any difference. I have got a better pension than most Americans will have. Most Americans do not have a big pension. But today, half the seniors in this country are living above the poverty line only because of Social Security. Now, we have got to change the system. The system we have now will not support itself when there are only two people working for every one person drawing. Now, if we start now, we take this surplus and some portion of the surpluses we expect in the years ahead and make modest reforms, we can extend the life of Social Security so that the baby boomers can retire in dignity without bankrupting their kids. If we squander the money now or just avoid the tough decisions now, we will have some really tough decisions to make in a few years. We can either lower the standard of living of retirees, which will kill our consciences, or we can maintain the standard of living with a broken system by raising taxes on our kids in a way that undermines their ability to raise our grandkids. And one reason you ought to vote for her is because she will vote, A, to change it, but she will do it in a way that is humane and decent. And she will not throw all this money away that you have worked so hard to get us out of debt in with. One other issue I will just mention one other. There are lots of them, but one other I have had two people at these events tonight come up and mention it to me. We have a lot at stake in America in the success of the global economy.


No country has benefited more, and no State has done better in the last 6 years than California, because of our ability to trade with Asia, our ability to trade with Latin America. Now, you all know there are a lot of troubles out there. Some of it is just pure growing pains, and nobody has good times all the time. Some of it is just the cycle of things. But a lot of it is the direct result of the fact that in addition to global trade and global investment, the global flow of money has grown so rapidly and in such sweeping volumes. Now over one trillion dollars a day crosses national borders over a trillion dollars a day a lot of it in highly leveraged instruments where people only put up a small percentage of what it is they are investing. A vast amount of funds cross national borders every day just betting for and against national currencies. If you want to have high volumes of investment, if you want to have high volumes of trade, if you want to have high volumes of travel, if you want all that, you have got to have some way of moving money around. But the system that has we have modified over the last 50 years is not adequate to keep the global economy growing and going without running the risk of the kind of boom/bust cycles that used to afflict countries before the Great Depression. After the Great Depression, the United States, Europe, Japan, every country figured out how to avoid it ever happening again. We have not had another Great Depression, have we? We had some stiff recessions. We had some bad times. What we have to do is to devise a system for the global financial movement that will get the benefit of this money moving around without the risk of total collapse that you see affecting some of the countries in Asia and elsewhere. I think it is inconceivable we will be able to do all that without having somebody help in Congress. I tried to get the Congress this year to raise the minimum wage. Because the minimum wage is 5 bucks and 15 cents an hour, and you cannot raise a family on it. And when you have got low unemployment and low inflation and the rest of us are doing pretty well, that is the time when you ought to raise it. I tried to pass legislation to protect children from the dangers of tobacco. Because it is the biggest public health problem in the country for kids. I tried to pass campaign finance reform so you would not have to go to so many of these dinners every year.


And, you know, there are a lot of things to be done. Now, the last thing I want to say is this what Barbra said. I want you to focus on this, just because and I want to thank Barbra Streisand because she said she is going on the Internet to try to get people to vote. It is generally accepted now that our agenda this year is the winning agenda; that the American people support what we are trying to do; they believe in this; that they believe that we ought to be a force for peace and freedom around the world. They support us stopping another Bosnia from happening in Kosovo. They support us being involved in the peace process in Ireland and in the Middle East. They support these domestic agenda items that saving Social Security and more classrooms and the Patients' Bill of Rights. The difficulty is that almost without exception when you have an election for Congress and you do not have an election for President, you get a big drop in the turnout. And a lot of our folks do not go lower income working women that have a big enough hassle every day to figure out how to get the kids to child care, to school, and get to work; or inner-city residents who have to ride a bus to work every day, and the polling place is not on the bus route coming home. And just a lot of things happen. And a lot of people just do not think it is that big a deal. I am telling you, this is a big deal. And so what I would like to ask you to do is to think about what you could do between now and a week from Tuesday. Is there who do you come in contact with? Everybody you come in contact with at work or socializing or in any other way, that you could tell this is a big deal, and they need to show up. This election, in its potential significance, is like a Presidential election because these issues will shape the way we live for a long time to come. And we do not live in a dictatorship. So the President does not call all the shots. A lot of this has to be done by Congress and the President working together. Now, I just cannot tell you how important it is. But let me ask you to think about this when I close. The most heartbreaking thing that is happened in the last several days in America, I think, that is really seared the heart of the country, was the death of that young man out in Wyoming.


And I called to talk to his parents and his brother hard to think of what to say. And it moved us all because you see the picture of this fine looking young guy, this intelligent, vital young man with his whole life before him. And it appears that he was taken out by people who thought he did not belong. So it offended our common sense of humanity. You all stood up and clapped for me, and I appreciated that, over this Middle East peace thing. But, you know, I felt lucky to be doing that. I loved it, even the ugly parts, the tough parts, and the long nights. That is what I hired on to do. That is why I ran for ENTITY. That is the kind of thing I wanted to do. I felt so fortunate to have been given the chance to do that. And I might add, it is easier for the honest broker than it is for the parties. You see I think Mr. Netanyahu has gotten some unfair criticism in this country for being too tough in the negotiating. If you have been watching the news today of what he is facing in Israel, you see that he has to bear the consequences of the commitments he made. Now, he made a good deal for his country. It will increase their security. But he is got a hill to climb to sell it to the people that are part of his coalition. I think Mr. Arafat made a good deal for the Palestinians. It will help them with land. It will help them with the economy. But I will guarantee you, there are people who do not want peace who will try to take him out over it. But why did you like that so much? I mean, think about it. Why did you do that? Because you know these folks have been fighting each other a long time. And you think about the wreckage all of that estrangement has wrought. And here are these people who reached across this divide and decided they'd hold hands and jump off this high dive together. It gives you energy. It gives you hope. It sort of chips away all those layers of cynicism that we carry around encrusted on us all the time. Because it is just the opposite of the murder of young Mr. Shepard. It reaffirms our common humanity. That is why we like it. Now, what is that got to do with this election and Barbara Boxer? I will tell you what.


I have found it a real privilege to be here to-night and to listen to the addresses which you have heard. Though you may not all of you believe it, I would a great deal rather hear somebody else speak than speak myself; but I should feel that I was omitting a duty if I did not address you to-night and say some of the things that have been in my thought as I realized the approach of this evening and the duty that would fall upon me. The astonishing thing about the movement which you represent is, not that it has grown so slowly, but that it has grown so rapidly. No doubt for those who have been a long time in the struggle, like your honored president, it seems a long and arduous path that has been trodden, but when you think of the cumulating force of this movement in recent decades, you must agree with me that it is one of the most astonishing tides in modern history. Two generations ago, no doubt Madam President will agree with me in saying, it was a handful of women who were fighting this cause. Now it is a great multitude of women who are fighting it. And there are some interesting historical connections which I would like to attempt to point out to you. One of the most striking facts about the history of the United States is that at the outset it was a lawyers' history. Almost all of the questions to which America addressed itself, say a hundred years ago, were legal questions, were questions of method, not questions of what you were going to do with your Government, but questions of how you were going to constitute your Government,-how you were going to balance the powers of the States and the Federal Government, how you were going to balance the claims of property against the processes of liberty, how you were going to make your governments up so as to balance the parts against each other so that the legislature would check the executive, and the executive the legislature, and the courts both of them put together. The whole conception of government when the United States became a Nation was a mechanical conception of government, and the mechanical conception of government which underlay it was the Newtonian theory of the universe. If you pick up the Federalist, some parts of it read like a treatise on astronomy instead of a treatise on government. They speak of the centrifugal and the centripetal forces, and locate the President somewhere in a rotating system. The whole thing is a calculation of power and an adjustment of parts.

Address at the Suffrage Convention, Atlantic City, New Jersey


There was a time when nobody but a lawyer could know enough to run the Government of the United States, and a distinguished English publicist once remarked, speaking of the complexity of the American Government, that it was no proof of the excellence of the American Constitution that it had been successfully operated, because the Americans could run any constitution. A great question arose in this country which, though complicated with legal elements, was at bottom a human question, and nothing but a question of humanity. And is it not significant that it was then, and then for the first time, that women became prominent in politics in America? Not many women; those prominent in that day were so few that you can name them over in a brief catalogue, but, nevertheless, they then began to play a part in writing, not only, but in public speech, which was a very novel part for women to play in America. After the Civil War had settled some of what seemed to be the most difficult legal questions of our system, the life of the Nation began not only to unfold, but to accumulate. Life in the United States was a comparatively simple matter at the time of the Civil War. There was none of that underground struggle which is now so manifest to those who look only a little way beneath the surface. Stories such as Dr. Davis has told to-night were uncommon in those simpler days. The pressure of low wages, the agony of obscure and unremunerated toil, did not exist in America in anything like the same proportions that they exist now. And as our life has unfolded and accumulated, as the contacts of it have become hot, as the populations have assembled in the cities, and the cool spaces of the country have been supplanted by the feverish urban areas, the whole nature of our political questions has been altered. They have more and more become social questions, questions with regard to the relations of human beings to one another,-not merely their legal relations, but their moral and spiritual relations to one another. This has been most characteristic of American life in the last few decades, and as these questions have assumed greater and greater prominence, the movement which this association represents has gathered cumulative force. So that, if anybody asks himself, What does this gathering force mean, if he knows anything about the history of the country, he knows that it means something that has not only come to stay, but has come with conquering power.


I get a little impatient sometimes about the discussion of the channels and methods by which it is to prevail. It is going to prevail, and that is a very superficial and ignorant view of it which attributes it to mere social unrest. It is because the women have seen visions of duty, and that is something which we not only cannot resist, but, if we be true Americans, we do not wish to resist. America took its origin in visions of the human spirit, in aspirations for the deepest sort of liberty of the mind and of the heart, and as visions of that sort come up to the sight of those who are spiritually minded in America, America comes more and more into her birthright and into the perfection of her development. So that what we have to realize in dealing with forces of this sort is that we are dealing with the substance of life itself. I have felt as I sat here to-night the wholesome contagion of the occasion. Almost every other time that I ever visited Atlantic City, I came to fight somebody. I hardly know how to conduct myself when I have not come to fight against anybody, but with somebody. I have come to suggest, among other things, that when the forces of nature are steadily working and the tide is rising to meet the moon, you need not be afraid that it will not come to its flood. We feel the tide; we rejoice in the strength of it; and we shall not quarrel in the long run as to the method of it. Because, when you are working with masses of men and organized bodies of opinion, you have got to carry the organized body along. The whole art and practice of government consists not in moving individuals, but in moving masses. I have not come to ask you to be patient, because you have been, but I have come to congratulate you that there was a force behind you that will beyond any peradventure be triumphant, and for which you can afford a little while to wait.


Earlier this week, I visited Arizona and Texas to observe firsthand our efforts to protect our Southwest border. And I met with customs and border protection agents who are working tirelessly to enforce our laws and keep our borders secure. Illegal immigration and border security are issues that concern Americans. We are a nation built on the rule of law, and those who enter the country illegally break the law. In communities near our border, illegal immigration strains the resources of schools, hospitals, and law enforcement. And it involves smugglers and gangs that bring crime to our neighborhoods. We are going to protect our borders. Since I took office, we have increased funding for border security by 60 percent, and our border agents have caught and sent home more than 4.5 million illegal immigrants, including more than 350,000 with criminal records. Yet we must do more to build on this progress. This week I outlined my comprehensive strategy to reform our immigration system. The strategy begins with a three-part plan to protect our borders. First, we will promptly return every illegal entrant we catch at our border with no exceptions. For illegal immigrants from Mexico, we are working to expand an innovative program called interior repatriation, in which those caught at the border are returned to their hometowns far from the border, making it more difficult for them to attempt another crossing. For non-Mexican illegal immigrants, we are changing the unwise policy of catch-and-release to a policy of catch-and-return, and we are speeding up the removal process. Second, we must fix weak and unnecessary provisions in our immigration laws, including senseless rules that require us to release illegal immigrants if their home countries do not take them back in a set period of time. Third, we must stop people from crossing the border illegally in the first place. So we are hiring thousands more Border Patrol agents. We are deploying new technology to expand their reach and effectiveness, and we are constructing physical barriers to entry. Comprehensive immigration reform also requires us to improve enforcement of our laws in the interior of our country, because border security and interior enforcement go hand in hand. In October, I signed legislation that more than doubled the resources for interior enforcement, so we will increase the number of immigration enforcement agents and criminal investigators, enhance worksite enforcement, and continue to go after smugglers, gang members, and human traffickers. Our immigration laws apply across all of America, and we will enforce those laws throughout our land.

The President's Radio Address


With the New Year just a few weeks away, Washington is starting to get ready for the 100th Congress, which will be sworn in this January. The most important challenge facing that Congress will be joining with us in keeping a growing America on the road to a brighter future, the road that you and I and all Americans started on just 6 years ago. through the ingenuity, energy, and determination of the American people. Together we set out to cut your taxes and cut the growth of government spending so that you could get on with the important work of building a better future for yourself, your family, and all America. We first cut tax rates with our 1981 tax cut. Since the lower tax rates in that bill took effect, America has created over 12 million new jobs. We have had 48 straight months of economic growth and one of the longest periods of uninterrupted growth in the last 50 years. And after a decade-long decline, the American family's real income has been rising again and rising faster. But that is just the beginning; because earlier this year, with your help, Congress pushed aside the special interests and the tax-and-spend crowd, rolled up its sleeves, and shaped the tools that will help you and all Americans build on that record. That is when Congress passed the new tax reform bill, which will cut the top tax rate from 50 percent to 28 percent and for 8 out of 10 Americans will mean a top rate of no more than 15 percent. For the 4 years since our first tax cut found its footing, the American economy has been climbing to the mountaintop. With tax reform, America is going to shoot for the stars. That is why I was disappointed this week to hear some talk from the new Congress that we should stop the climb, turn around, and start back in the direction we have come from. Even before they take their oath of office, some in the new Congress are talking about breaking faith with the American people and taking back part of tax reform before it has taken effect. Yes, they say that to reduce the deficit they want to keep some people's tax rates high. First, they take one step towards raising taxes and then another and then another, and pretty soon every family in America is paying more to the Government again and we are back to the days of high taxes and no economic growth.

Radio Address to the Nation on Economic Growth and Budget Reform


I hope that instead of trying to return to the tax-and-spend policies of the past, the new Congress will work with us in getting the growth of Federal spending under control. We have begun to make progress here, too. The figures are coming in now for the spending the Government is actually doing this year, and the news is good. When this year is ended, the deficit will be down by $50 billion. Yes, this year, for the first time in two decades, the Federal Government will spend less, after taking out inflation, than it did last year. That is an historic step on the road to a balanced budget, and it could not have happened without the Gramm-Rudman legislation. Now it is time to take a second step. On January 5th we will send next year's budget up to Capitol Hill. It will be lean enough to meet the Gramm-Rudman deficit targets, but it will also meet the Government's commitments. We will be spending more than ever before in such areas as support for America's elderly, law and drug enforcement to protect America's young people, and health care for America's finest-for our veterans. And yet in the coming budget, after taking out inflation, the Federal Government will spend less in the coming year than it will this year. That will be 2 years of real falling spending. We in the administration have worked hard to meet the new, earlier deadline for sending this budget to Congress. I hope Congress will work just as hard to meet its required deadlines and not let them slip by, as has happened too many times in the past. And I hope the new Congress will take a constructive approach to this firm but fair budget. We are bound to disagree here and there, but let us work together for the good of the country to iron out our differences. The leadership of the outgoing 99th Congress gave America lower tax rates and began the process of putting the lid on spending. to build on that record and help lead America into the future. I hope they will accept that challenge. Until next week, thanks for listening, and God bless you.


We have been friends a long time and, frankly, I had forgotten that I had done some of those things. I congratulate the members of the caucus on 20 years of leadership. I thank Women's Policy Inc. for hosting this event, and I am delighted to be here, not only with the Secretary of State but also with Audrey Haynes, the Director of the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach, and several other outstanding senior officials of the White House. I, too, want to pay tribute to Margaret Heckler and Elizabeth Holtzman for their vision in creating this office, for the leadership that thank you for the past leadership of Olympia Snowe and Pat Schroeder, Connie Morella and Nita Lowey. And of course, to Nancy Johnson and Eleanor Holmes Norton, who show no lack of energy in pressing your cause with the President. That is about 52 too few. And I was thinking it, too, based on your record. I think the thing that has been overlooked in this whole endeavor of trying to give more sensitivity to issues of special concern to women and trying to give women more opportunities to serve is that we live in an age where every public figure says, as if it were just a cliche, that the most important resource in any human endeavor in the private sector or the public sector is our people. And yet we cavalierly go on, in example after example after example, not giving all our people the chance to live up to the fullest of their God-given capacities and make the greatest service they can to the rest of us to promote the general welfare. I have done what I could to correct that, partly based on the example of my wife, my mother, and my grandmother, and partly because I have known so many of you personally, and partly because it is manifest that we have to find a way to reach across all the lines in our society and lift up everyone to the position of his or her highest and best use and potential. In that connection, I would like to thank the newly confirmed Ambassador to the Vatican, Lindy Boggs, for her willingness to serve. I have been proud to work with you on a lot of issues. Most of them have been mentioned tonightthe family and medical leave law, which has changed more lives than almost any bill that we have passed around here in a long time. Everywhere I go around the country now, people still come up to me and tell me personal stories of how that law changed their lives.

Remarks to the Congressional Caucus for Women's Issues


The Kassebaum-Kennedy bill, the minimum wage, the child care, the adoption tax credit, increased child support enforcement, the family violence initiativesall these things have made a difference. The hand of this caucus was felt heavily in the recent balanced budget, with the single biggest aid to education increase since '65, the biggest increase in aid to children's health since Medicaid in '65, and the children's tax credit. So, the country is in your debt. And I do believe that the bipartisan nature of this caucus has made a profound difference. I know that we are joined tonight by the Democratic leader, Dick Gephardt, and I believe Speaker Gingrich wanted to be here and had to be in Georgia tonight. I know Mr. Gephardt would agree with me that all of us have been impressed by how you are able to stay together, work together, and, in Eleanor's terms, get down to business no matter how crazy things get in this occasionally loony town. And for that, too, we are all in your debt, for you set an example that everyone else should follow. I'd like to talk just a moment about health issues. Hillary mentioned them and has worked on them so hard, and others have mentioned them. The budget not only provided for $24 billion to extend health coverage to 5 million children who do not have it, thus giving greater peace of mind to the parents who are raising them, both as parents and also when they are away at work, it did a lot more for the health of women. It expanded Medicare to cover bone mass measurement for women at risk of osteoporosis. Funding for osteoporosis research has now reached more than $100 million at NIH. It expanded Medicare to cover annual mammograms for all women over the age of 49 and eliminated the copayments to make these examinations more affordable. These were important things, and we have more to do. We have to continue our focus on women's health. Since I took office, funding for breast cancer research, prevention, and treatment has almost doubled, and we have discovered two breast cancer genes, holding great promise for the development of new prevention strategies, something that is profoundly important to all of us who have ever dealt with this in our families. We are unlocking the mysteries of the genetic code and continuing to discover new ways to diagnose and treat genetic disorders.


But we know that these breakthroughs also bring with them the need for new protections. Studies show the leading reason women do not take advantage of new genetic breast cancer tests is because they fear they will be discriminated in health plans if the tests come out the wrong way. So I want to work with you to get Congress to pass bipartisan legislation that will ban all health plans, group and individual, from denying coverage or raising premiums on the basis of genetic tests. After all, if we can get everybody to take the tests, if they know what they are up against, in the end we will prevent more severe illness, we will reduce cost to the health care system. And we should not punish individuals for doing something that we know is not only in their own interest but is in the interest of society. Also, legislation should prohibit all health plans from disclosing genetic information that could be misused by other insurers. It ought to protect researchers' ability to make the best use of this important tool. So, again, let me applaud those, especially Representative Slaughter and Senator Snowe, for their leadership. Genetic discrimination legislation deserves action now. Let me also say that many of you in this room have contributed to our efforts to support legislation to protect women who have had mastectomies. They should not be forced out of the hospital before they are ready because of pressure from a health plan. It is unacceptable that Congress has not yet held a hearing on the DeLauro-Dingell-Roukema 48-hour mastectomy patient protection bill, and we need to keep pushing for that. And finally, we need to keep breaking down the doors and breaking through the glass ceilings and acting to bring women the full measure of economic and legal equity to which they are entitled. This caucus and our administration, under the leadership of Aida Alvarez, continues to work to counter the effects of discrimination and long-developed networks which hinder the success of women- and minority-owned businesses. I am proud of the fact that the SBA in the last 5 years has tripled the number of loans to women businesses, and I thank you for your support of the disadvantaged business enterprise program, which has successfully increased the percentage of women- and minority-owned construction firms. I am pleased to say that this has now passed both Houses, and I hope you will keep up the fight so that it actually reaches my desk.