corysub
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quote:
ORIGINAL: TheHeretic
Tonight is the night. Any last minute predictions on what he will have to say?
"My fellow Americans, republicans and libertarians, "change" has come to our country.
Today marks my first State of the Union address to you, a constitutional duty as old as our Republic itself.
President Washington began this tradition in 1790 after reminding the nation that the destiny of self-government and the "preservation of the sacred fire of liberty" is "finally staked on the experiment entrusted in the hands of the American people."
From this podium, Winston Churchill asked the free world to stand together against the onslaught of aggression. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of a day of infamy and summoned a nation to arms. Douglas MacArthur made an unforgettable farewell to a country he had loved and served so well. Dwight Eisenhower reminded us that peace was purchased only at the price of strength and John F. Kennedy spoke of the burden and glory that is freedom, and Bill Clinton pronounced, "I did not have sex with that woman Ms. Lewisnki".
When I visited this chamber last year as a relative newcomer to Washington, critical of past policies which I believe had failed, I proposed a new spirit of partnership between this Congress and this Administration and between Washington and our state and local governments.
In forging this new partnership for America we could achieve the oldest hopes of our Republic--- prosperity for our nation, peace for the world, and the blessings of individual liberty for our children and, someday, all of humanity, and chimpanzees.
It is my duty to report to you tonight on the progress we have made in our relations with other nations, on the foundations we have carefully laid for our economic recovery and, finally, on a bold and spirited intiative that I believe can change the face of American government and make it again the servant of the people.
Seldom have the stakes been higher for America. What we do and say here will make all the difference to auto workers in Detroit, lumberjacks in the Northwest, and steelworkers in Steubenville who are in the unemployment lines, to black teen-agers in Newark and Chicago; to hard-pressed farmers and small businessmen and to millions of everyday Americans who harbor the simple wish of a safe and financially secure future for their children.
To understand the State of the Union, we must look not only at where we are and where we are going but at where we've been. The situation at this time last year was truly ominous.
The last decade has seen a series of recessions. Government's response to these recessions was to pump up the money supply and increase spending.
This time, however, things are different. We have an economic program in place completely different from the artificial quick-fixes of the past.
If we had not acted as we did, things would be far worse for all Americans than they are today. Inflation, taxes and interest rates would all be higher.
A year ago, Americans' faith in their governmental process was steadily declining. Six out of 10 Americans were saying they were pessimistic about their future.
A new kind of defeatism was heard. Some said our domestic problems were uncontrollable-- that we had to learn to live with the seemingly endless cycles of high inflation and high unemployment.
There were also pessimistic predictions about the relationship between our administration and this Congress. It was said we could never work together. Well, those predictions were wrong.
The record is clear, and I believe history will remember this as an era of American renewal, remember this administration as an administration of change and remember this Congress as a Congress of destiny.
Together, after 50 years of taking power away from the hands of the people in their states and local communities, we have started returning power and resources to them.
Axelrod to the boss...talk louder and with more passion, Sir
Together, we have made a new beginning, but we have only begun.
No one pretends that the way ahead will be easy. I warned that the "ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away ... because we Americans have the capacity now, as we've had in the past, to do whatever needs to be done to preserve this last and greatest bastion of freedom."
The economy will face difficult moments in the months ahead. But, the program for economic recovery that is in place will pull the economy out of its slump and put us on the road to prosperity and stable growth by the latter-half of this year.
That is why I can report to you tonight that in the near future the State of the Union and the economy will be better-- much better-- if we summon the strength to continue on the course we have charted.
And so the question: If the fundamentals are in place, what now?
Two things. First, we must understand what is happening at the moment to the economy. Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that is only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe. They are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, spend and spend.
Second, because our economic problems are deeply rooted and will not respond to quick political fixes, we must stick to our carefully integrated plan for recovery.
The only alternative being offered to this economic program is a return to the policies that gave us trillions of dollars of debt, and unemployment.
So I will not ask you to try to balance the budget on the backs of the American taxpayers. I will seek no tax increases this year and I have no intention of retreating from our basic program of tax relief. I promised the American people to bring their tax rates down and keep them down-- to provide them incentives to rebuild our economy, to save, to invest in America's future. I will stand by my word.
Tonight I am urging the American people: seize these new opportunities to produce, save and invest, and together we will make this economy a mighty engine fo freedom, hope and prosperity again.
The budget deficit this year will exceed our earlier expectations. The recession did that. It lowered revenues and increased costs. To some extent, we are also victims of our own success.
We will continue to redirect our resources to our two highest budget priorities--a strong national defense to keep America free and at peace and a reliable safety net of social programs for those who have contributed and those who are in need.
Contrary to some of the wild charges you may have heard, this administration has not and will not turn its back on America's elderly or America's poor. Under the new budget, funding for social insurance programs will be more than double the amount spent only six years ago.
But it would foolish to pretend that these or any programs cannot be made more efficient and economical.
The entitlement programs that make up our safety net for the truly needy have worthy goals and many deserving recipients. We will protect them. But there is only one way to see to it that these programs really help those whom they were designed to help, and that is to bring their spiraling costs under control.
Today we face the absurd situation of a federal budget with three-quarters of its expenditures routinely referred to as "uncontrollable", and a large part of this goes to entitlement programs.
Committee after committee of this Congress has heard witness after witness describe many of these programs as poorly administered and rife with waste and fraud. Virtually every American who shops in a local supermarket is aware of the daily abuses that take place in the food stamp program-- which has grown by 16,000% in the last 15 years. Another example is Medicare and Medicaid--programs with worthy goals but whose costs have increased from $11.2 billion to almost $60 billion, more than five times as much, in just 10 years.
Waste and fraud are serious problems. One official said many of the people who are chearing the system were "very confident that nothing was going to happen to them."
Well, something is going to happen. Not only the taxpayers are defrauded-- the people with real dependency on these programs are deprived of what they need because available resources are going not to the needy but to the greedy.
The time has come to control the uncontrollable.
I am confident the economic program we have put into operation will protect the needy while it triggers a recovery that will benefit all Americans. It will stimulate the economy, result in increased savings, and thus provide capital for expansion, mortgages for home building and jobs for the unemployed.
Now that the essentials of that program are in place, our next major undertaking must be a program-- just as bold, just as innovative--
Our faith in the American people is reflected in another major endeavor. Our private-sector initiatives task force is seeking out successful community models of school, church, business, union, foundation and civic programs that help community needs. Such groups are almost invariably far more efficient than government in running social programs.
We are not asking them to replace discarded and often discredited government programs dollar for dollar, service for service. We just want to help them perform the good works they choose, and help others to profit by their example. Three-hundred Eighty Five Thousand corporations and private foundations are already working on social programs ranging from drug rehabilitation to job training, and thousands more Americans have written us asking how they can help. The volunteer spirit is still alive and well in America.
Our nation's long journey towards civil rights for all our citizens--once a source of discord, now a source of pride--must continue with no backsliding or slowing down. We must and shall see that those basic laws that guarantee equal rights are preserved and, when necessary, strengthened. Our concern for equal rights for women is firm and unshakable.
Our foreign policy is a policy of strength, fairness, and balance. By restoring America's military credibility, by pursuing peace at the negotiating table wherever both sides are willing to sit down in good faith, and by regaining the respect of America's allies and adversaries alike, we have strengthened our country's position as a force for peace and progress in the world.
When action is called for, we are taking it.
Meanwhile, we are working for reduction of arms and military activities.
Building a more peaceful world requires sound strategy and the national resolve to back it up. When radical forces threaten our friends, when economic misfortune creates conditions of instability, our response can make the difference between peaceful change or disorder and violence. That is why we have laid such stress not only on our own defense, but on our vital foreign assistance program. . Our foreign policy must be rooted in realism, not naivete or self-delusion.
We intend to keep the peace--we will also keep our freedom.
We have made pledges of a new frankness in our public statements and worldwide broadcasts. In the face of a climate of falsehood and misinformation, we have promised the world a season of truth--the truth of great civilized ideas: individual liberty, representative government, the rule of law under God.
We have never needed walls, mine fields and barbwire to keep our people in. Nor to declare martial law to prevent our people from voting for the kind of govenment they want.
Yes, we have our problems. Yes, we are in a time of recession. And it's true, there is no quick fix to instantly end the tragic pain of unemployment. But we will end it--the process has already begun and we'll see its effect as this year goes on.
We speak with pride and admiration of the little band of Americans who overcame insuperable odds to set this nation on course 200 years ago. But our glory didn't end with them --- Americans ever since have emulated their deeds.
And then there are countless quiet, everyday heroes of American life--parents who sacrifice long and hard so their children will know a better life than they have known; church and civic volunteers who help to feed, clothe, nurse and teach the needy; millions who have made our nation, and our nation's destiny, so very special---unsung heroes who may not have realized their dreams themselves but who then reinvest those dreams in their children.
Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her--that the American spirit has been vanquished. We've seen it triumph too often in our lives to stop believing in it now.
One hundred and twenty years ago, the greatest of all our Presidents delivered his second State of the Union message in this chamber: "We cannot escape history," Abraham Lincoln warned. "We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves." The "trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation."
That president and that Congress did not fail the American people. Together, they weathered the storm and preserved the union.
Let it be said of us that we, too, did not fail. That we, too, worked together to bring America through difficult times. Let us so conduct ourselves that two centuries from now, another Congress and another President, meeting in this Chamber as we are meeting, will speak of us with pride, saying that we met the test and preserved for them in their day the sacred flame of liberty--this last, best hope of man on Eart
However, it ain't gonna be easy. It may get a lot worse before it gets better because of the past eight years of George Bush. We will come back from the economic cliff in time, we Americans are a resilient people.
Ok..so I didn't write this...It was "stolen" from Ronald Reagans 1st State of the Union :)
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan's_First_State_of_the_Union_Speech
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