State of the Union | Page 2

move us from a defense to a domestic high-tech economy. This Congress produced a new law �C the motor voter bill �C to help millions of people register to vote. It produced family and medical leave �C all passed, all signed into law, with not one single veto.
These accomplishments were all commitments I made when I sought this office, and in fairness, they all had to be passed by you in this Congress. But I am persuaded that the real credit belongs to the people who sent us here, who pay our salaries, who hold our feet to the fire. But what we do here is really beginning to change lives. Let me just give you one example.
Family And Medical Leave
I will never forget what the family and medical leave law meant to just one father I met early one Sunday morning in the White House. It was unusual to see a family there touring early Sunday morning, but he had his wife and his three children there, one of them in a wheelchair. And I came up, and after we had our picture taken and had a little visit, I was walking off, and that man grabbed me by the arm and he said, "Mr. President, let me tell you something. My little girl here is desperately ill. She's probably not going to make it.
But because of the family leave law, I was able to take time off to spend with her, the most important I ever spent in my life, without losing my job and hurting the rest of my family. It means more to me than I will ever be able to say. Don't you people up here ever think what you do doesn't make a difference. It does."
Though we are making a difference, our work has just begun. Many Americans still haven't felt the impact of what we've done. The recovery still hasn't touched every community or created enough jobs. Incomes are still stagnant. There's still too much violence and not enough hope in too many places.
Abroad, the young democracies we are strongly supporting still face very difficult times and look to us for leadership.
And so tonight, let us resolve to continue the journey of renewal, to create more and better jobs, to guarantee health security for all, to reward welfare �C work over welfare, to promote democracy abroad and to begin to reclaim our streets from violent crime and drugs and gangs to renew our own American community.
Deficit Reduction
Last year, we began to put our house in order by tackling the budget deficit that was driving us toward bankruptcy. We cut $255 billion in spending, including entitlements, in over 340 separate budget items. We froze domestic spending and used honest budget numbers.
Led by the vice president, we've launched a campaign to reinvent government. We've cut staff, cut perks, even trimmed the fleet of federal limousines. After years of leaders whose rhetoric attacked bureaucracy but whose actions expanded it, we will actually reduce it by 252,000 people over the next five years. By the time we have finished, the federal bureaucracy will be at its lowest point in 30 years.
Because the deficit was so large and because they benefited from tax cuts in the 1980s, we did ask the wealthiest Americans to pay more to reduce the deficit. So on April the 15th, the American people will discover the truth about what we did last year on taxes. Only the top one -- the top 1.2 percent of Americans, as I said all along, will face higher income tax rates �C let me repeat, only the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans will face higher income tax rates and no one else will, and that is the truth. Of course, there were, as there always are in politics, naysayers who said this plan wouldn't work, but they were wrong. When I became president, the experts predicted that next year's deficit would be $300 billion, but because we acted, those same people now say the deficit's going to be under $180 billion, 40 percent lower than was previously predicted.
The Economy
Our economic program has helped to produce the lowest core inflation rate and the lowest interest rates in 20 years, and because those interest rates are down, business investment and equipment is growing at seven times the rate of the previous four years. Auto sales are way up, home sales at a record high. Millions of Americans have refinanced their homes and our economy has produced 1.6 million private-sector jobs in 1993, more than were created in the previous four years combined.
The people who supported this economic plan should be proud of its early results �C proud. But everyone in this chamber should know and acknowledge that there is more to do. Next month I will send you one