on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to 3, getting rid of over a hundred programs we do not need like the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Helium Reserve Program.
And we're working on getting rid of unnecessary regulations and making them more sensible. The programs and regulations that have outlived their usefulness should go. We have to cut yesterday's Government to help solve tomorrow's problems.
And we need to get Government closer to the people it's meant to serve. We need to help move programs down to the point where states and communities and private citizens in the private sector can do a better job. If they can do it, we ought to let them do it. We should get out of the way and let them do what they can do better.
Community Empowerment
Taking power away from Federal bureaucracies and giving it back to communities and individuals is something everyone should be able to be for. It's time for Congress to stop passing onto the states the cost of decisions we make here in Washington.
I know there are still serious differences over the details of the unfunded mandates legislation but I want to work with you to make sure we pass a reasonable bill which will protect the national interest and give justified relief where we need to give it.
For years, Congress concealed in the budget scores of pet spending projects. Last year was no different. There was a million dollars to study stress in plants and $ 12 million for a tick removal program that didn't work. It's hard to remove ticks; those of us who've had them know.
But I'll tell you something, if you'll give me the line-item veto, I'll remove some of that unnecessary spending.
But, I think we should all remember, and almost all of us would agree, that Government still has important responsibilities.
Our young people--we should think of this when we cut--our young people hold our future in their hands. We still owe a debt to our veterans. And our senior citizens have made us what we are.
Budget
Now, my budget cuts a lot. But it protects education, veterans, Social Security and Medicare, and I hope you will do the same thing. You should, and I hope you will.
And when we give more flexibility to the states, let us remember that there are certain fundamental national needs that should be addressed in every state, north and south, east and west.
Immunization against childhood disease, school lunches in all our schools, Head Start, medical care and nutrition for pregnant women and infants--all these things are in the national interest.
I applaud your desire to get rid of costly and unnecessary regulations, but when we deregulate let's remember what national action in the national interest has given us: safer food for our families, safer toys for our children, safer nursing homes for our parents, safer cars and highways and safer workplaces, cleaner air and cleaner water. Do we need common sense and fairness in our regulations? You bet we do. But we can have common sense and still provide for safe drinking water. We can have fairness and still clean up toxic dumps and we ought to do it.
Should we cut the deficit more? Well of course we should. Of course we should. But we can bring it down in a way that still protects our economic recovery and does not unduly punish people who should not be punished, but instead should be helped.
I know many of you in this chamber support the balanced-budget amendment. I certainly want to balance the budget. Our Administration has done more to bring the budget down and to save money than any in a very, very long time.
If you believe passing this amendment is the right thing to do, then you have to be straight with the American people. They have a right to know what you're going to cut, what taxes you're going to raise, how it's going to affect them.
And we should be doing things in the open around here. For example, everybody ought to know if this proposal is going to endanger Social Security. I would oppose that, and I think most Americans would.
Welfare
Nothing is done more to undermine our sense of common responsibility than our failed welfare system. This is one of the problems we have to face here in Washington in our New Covenant. It rewards welfare over work, it undermines family values, it lets millions of parents get away without paying their child support, it keeps a minority--but a significant minority--of the people on welfare trapped on it for a very long time.
I worked on this problem for a long time--nearly 15 years now. As a Governor I had the honor of working with the Reagan Administration to write the last welfare reform bill back in 1988.
In the last two years we made a good start in continuing the work of welfare reform. Our Administration gave two dozen states the right to slash through Federal rules and regulations to reform their own welfare systems and to try to promote work and responsibility over welfare and dependency.
Last year, I introduced the most sweeping welfare reform plan ever presented by an Administration. We have to make welfare what it was meant to be--a second chance, not a way of life.
We have to help those on welfare move to work as quickly as possible, to provide child care and teach them skills, if that's what they need, for up to two years. But after that, there ought to be a simple, hard rule. Anyone who can work must go to work.
If a parent isn't paying child support, they should be forced to pay.
We should suspend driver's licenses, track them across state lines, make them work off what they owe. That is what we should do. Governments do not raise children, people do. And the parents must take responsibility for the children they bring into this world.
I want to work with you, with all of you, to pass welfare reform. But our goal must be to liberate people and lift them from dependence to independence, from welfare to work, from mere childbearing to responsible parenting. Our goal should not be to punish them because they happen to be poor.
We should--we should require work and mutual responsibility. But we shouldn't cut people off just because they're poor, they're young or even because they're unmarried. We should promote responsibility by requiring young mothers to live at home with their parents or in other supervised settings, by requiring them to finish school. But we shouldn't put them and their children out on the street.
And I know all the arguments pro and con and I have read and thought about this for a long time: I still don't think we can, in good conscience, punish poor children for the mistakes of their parents.
My fellow Americans, every single survey shows that all the American people care about this, without regard to party or race or region. So let this be the year we end welfare as we know it.
But also let this be the year that we are all able to stop using this issue to divide America.
No one is more eager to end welfare.
I may be the only President who's actually had the opportunity to sit in the welfare office, who's actually spent hours and hours talking to people on welfare, and I am telling you the people who are trapped on it know it doesn't work. They also want to get off.
So we can promote, together, education and work and good parenting. I have no problem with punishing bad behavior or the refusal to be a worker or a student or a responsible parent. I just don't want to punish poverty and past mistakes. All of us have made our mistakes and none of us can change our yesterdays, but every one of us can change our tomorrows.
And
