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A PEOPLE'S STATE OF THE UNION
January 1992
by Dr. Robert M. Bowman

I have been rather critical of President Bush's State of the Union Address. It would therefore be fair for people to ask me if I thought I could do any better. Maybe I can't. I certainly don't have the time or resources he had to apply to the task. Nonetheless, that's not going to stop me from trying. Let me state at the start that I have no delusions of grandeur. I am not a candidate for president or anything else. I'm too outspoken to ever be elected to anything. If you don't believe me, just read on. But there are things which I sure wish some president, some day would say to the American people -- but they probably won't. However, in the off chance that these words give somebody an idea, I am sending copies of this to all the presidential candidates of both major parties. [This long, written version will be condensed for oral delivery.]

I now ask you to suspend reality and pretend (just pretend, remember) that I am speaking to you as President of the United States and giving my State of the Union Address.

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Mister Speaker, Madam President, Distinguished Members of the Congress, honored guests, and my fellow Americans: I have been your president for but a short time, and I still have much to learn. I hesitate to act in haste, and yet the times cry out for change. We can never know for how long we are privileged to play our role in life's drama, and this thought gives me a sense of urgency. I believe, for example, that John Kennedy had decided to end our involvement in Vietnam, but was convinced to go slowly and methodically. I am therefore not inclined to prudence, being content to let others supply that for me. Lord knows the ponderous machinery of this government has a momentum of staggering proportions. To change its direction is not an easy task. Yet change, I believe, it must, and I will therefore speak plainly and with candor.

My talk tonight will have three main parts. In the first I will describe a changing world and what I believe should be our changing role in it. In the second I will attempt to describe the current state of our Union, its resources, and its challenges. In the third, I will describe my proposals for restoring, protecting, and enhancing those resources in what I call a New Stewardship of the blessings God has bestowed upon us.

OUR ROLE IN A CHANGING WORLD

The Cold War is over. True, and good riddance! My predecessor said that Communism was dead. That must come as a surprise to the Chinese and Cubans, among others. The Communist economic system is widely discredited, but not dead. What died with the Cold War was a global conspiracy to rule the world out of a totalitarian bureaucracy headquartered in Moscow.

Because that conspiracy died, everything else has changed. Countries like Cuba who choose to be Communist can no longer be viewed as part of a global Soviet threat. When Cuba was providing our sworn enemy, the USSR, with a naval base 90 miles off our coast, our hostility toward them was understandable. Now that their former patrons are our close friends the Russians, Cuban Communism is no threat to anyone except Cubans. Our relationship with them, as with any other nation, should be based on mutual interest and on an honest evaluation of their human rights record. The human rights record of Cuba, according to Amnesty International and our own intelligence sources, is less than perfect. Still, it is significantly better than that of China (which is also Communist and to whom we have given Most Favored Nation status), and much better than that of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel (to all of whom we give substantial military and financial assistance). I therefore find it difficult to justify continuation of an embargo which punishes the Cuban people and our own businesses far more than it does Fidel Castro. I have therefore asked the Secretary of State, Mr. Jimmy Carter, to meet with representatives of the Cuban government, with an eye toward normalization of relations. I fully expect these discussions to bear fruit and to result in a resumption of full diplomatic relations and an end to the embargo.

I have dealt at some length with Cuba, not because it is the most important foreign policy issue facing us, but because it typifies the kind of reevaluation we must, and will, conduct across the board in light of the changing world in which we now live. During the Cold War, most of the world fell into either our camp or their camp. Any nation which befriended the Soviet Union, no matter how civilized (like Hungary, for example), was automatically our enemy. And any dictator which declared himself to be anti-Communist, no matter how reprehensible

(like Somosa, Marcos, Duvalier, the Shah of Iran, etc.), was automatically our friend and a candidate for military aid. Even when a Communist government was freely and democratically elected by the people of Chile, the United States cast them into the enemy camp. Allende was demonized, undermined, and ultimately overthrown by the CIA.

But the Soviet Union no longer exists. All these artificial pro and con relationships based on Cold War divisions are now meaningless. Since there is no longer a global Soviet threat, we no longer need to demonize nations just because their economies are more socialized than ours. And we no longer need to coddle, finance, and arm right wing tinhorn dictators around the world.

Pending a case-by-case review by the state department, I am ordering an immediate suspension of weapons transfers and military assistance disguised as foreign aid. In no case will such assistance be reinstated to help a government fight its own people.

Yes, the Cold War is over. My predecessor said we won it. That's not really true. We just didn't lose as badly as the Russians. Just as in a hot war, there really wasn't a winner -- just losers and worse losers. The only winners were the Japanese and Germans, because we wouldn't let them play the game.

What did we lose? We lost the ten trillion dollars spent on the military since World War II. We lost over a hundred thousand young men and women who gave their lives in Korea and Vietnam. We lost our invincibility, failing in war for the first time in Vietnam. And we lost our innocence.

In World War I and World War II, America fought on the side of right and democracy and freedom and justice. We fought to end all wars and to secure the peace. We were the good guys. GI Joe was beloved around the world. Even in Korea, we seemed to be fighting alongside the other good guys of the world against an evil aggressor.

But then came Vietnam. Gradually, it dawned on those of us fighting the war that we were fighting the people of the country we were supposed to be protecting. We were no longer the good guys. We had lost our innocence as well as the war.

In Lebanon, we lost again. Then came a string of victories: Libya, Panama, and Iraq. We shook the loser image we had inherited in Vietnam. But we failed to shake the image of the bully. It's time, once again, for Americans to be the "good guys." It's time for America to regain its lost innocence.

Those of us who risked our lives in Vietnam, and those who gave their lives there, were told that America's security, our freedom, and our very existence were at stake. Well, we lost the war, but America is still here. Obviously, that war had nothing whatsoever to do with the security of the United States of America. Neither did the war in Iraq. Neither did any of the many times in this century that the Marines were sent into Nicaragua or Honduras or some other banana republic, to protect the financial interests of the United Fruit Company. Each time, the American people and soldiers were told that American security was at stake. Each time, it was a lie. Well, no more. The time for lies is over.

There's no more Soviet Union to bully its neighbors. And it's time we quit playing bully as well. It's time for an end to gunboat diplomacy. It's time for an end to American youth being used as cannon fodder for power politics. It's time for an end to our idealistic servicemen and women being used as hired killers for corporate America and its overseas interests. It's time to end the lying. It's time for the truth. And here it is.

If America is attacked, I will call upon the brave young men and women in our Armed Forces to repel the invaders, whoever they are. If the world faces another Hitler, I will ask our forces to help by fighting under the Command of the Military Committee of the United Nations to uphold international law and the UN Charter. But this I pledge: Never again, as long as I am Commander-in-Chief, will American forces be used in violation of international law and common morality, merely because we're strong enough to get away with it.

The end of the Cold War has revived the United Nations as an effective instrument for peace. All throughout the Cold War, US-Soviet belligerence had rendered the UN ineffective. Every aggressor was a client of one side or the other and could count on them to veto any Security Council action against them. The Cold War made the world safe for petty aggressors. But, as Saddam Hussein found out, things have changed.

Now (before another conflict arises which threatens the unanimity of the Security Council), now is the time to reform the United Nations. We must ensure that the world community of nations is never again held hostage to a veto, by us or anyone else. My predecessor, in violation of the law, refused to appoint members to the US Commission for Improving the United Nations, thus preventing progress from being made. It's time the Commission got on with its work. I have therefore appointed Walter Hoffman, Sam Levering, Charles Percy, Cyrus Vance, Lester Brown, John Anderson, and Patricia Mische to the Commission. They will have the full cooperation of the State Department and our Ambassador to the United Nations, Ramsey Clark.

Just before the end of World War II, the United Nations was created. What high hopes we all had for it. Unfortunately, the superpower rivalry prevented the highest of those hopes from being realized. But in its 47 years, it has nonetheless contributed mightily to the citizens of this earth. Its many working agencies go about curing disease, preventing famine, allocating global resources, controlling international aviation, post, and electronic transmissions, and just doing good.

Now, in this post-Cold War world, the UN can at last tackle the bigger problems and satisfy those higher hopes. Now it can take on these four major challenges: international security and disarmament, international law and justice, global environmental protection, and development in the Third World. In each of these challenges, the United States has an important role to play.

A strengthened, effective United Nations will eventually make it unnecessary for individual nations to support large standing armies for their own protection. The long-standing goal of general and complete disarmament can once more be pursued, and the elimination of nuclear weapons contemplated. But these things cannot happen until new structures have been implemented which prevent any nation or small group of nations from controlling UN peacekeeping forces. Only when these new structures for peace have been put in place, tested, and proven trustworthy can disarmament at last become a reality. We will proceed with caution and care, for we must not and will not jeopardize the security of our country. But proceed we must, and proceed we will.

It's also time to make international law effective and enforceable by giving the International Court of Justice jurisdiction over individuals as well as governments and by withdrawing reservations whereby individual nations may choose whether or not to abide by the Court's decisions. If law is to be effective, it must apply to the strong as well as the weak, the rich as well as the poor. The worst offenders in the past have been the United States and the Soviet Union. When the World Court condemned our mining of Nicaragua's harbors, we undermined their authority by denying their jurisdiction and ignoring their decisions. This must not happen again.

I ask that Congress pass legislation accepting, without reservation, the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice. President Yeltsin has pledged similar action. I am also announcing another reversal of previous policy. The United States now supports the establishment of an international criminal court.

Global environmental protection is a challenge which can no longer be ignored. No nation is an island unto itself. Fallout from Chernobyl contaminated most of Northern Europe. Industrial pollution from Poland poisons lakes in the Ukraine; that from the United States causes acid rain in Canada. Greenhouse gases from the burning of Amazon rainforests and from auto exhausts threaten to cause rising seas, inundating Bangladesh, the Netherlands, Florida, New York, and most of the coastal cities of the world. We all share the same seas and the same ocean of air. No Great Wall of China, no Spanish Armada, no Star Wars system can keep out pollution. The impending environmental collapse is a global problem. It can only be solved on a global basis.

This June, we are participating in the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). This Earth Summit will be one of the most important events of the decade. Our delegates have my pledge of full support. We in the United States produce about 40% of the world's greenhouse gases and are a major source of the problem. Without our full cooperation, efforts to prevent catastrophe are doomed to failure. But we will cooperate. It will mean some changes in how we get our energy and how we power our automobiles, but those changes are overdue anyway. I'll describe them more in the sections on domestic policy.

I have also asked our delegation to drop their objection to the UNCED Conference discussing the environmental effects of military activity. What happened in the Persian Gulf must never happen again.

The UNCED Conference will also discuss development. For years, Mikhail Gorbachev talked about ending the arms race and using part of the money to help people in the developing world. Now that the arms race is over, both his country and ours are so impoverished from the Cold War that we must concentrate on the problems of our own people. Nevertheless, it is in our interest to turn poor nations into trading partners and poor people into customers. And it is right that we allocate a portion of the peace dividend to alleviating suffering in those parts of the world where help is needed most. Every three seconds, somewhere in the world, a child dies, needlessly, of starvation. Yet, we produce enough grain so that every person on earth could have two loaves of bread a day, far more than is needed. They say it's a matter of distribution. Well, let me tell you this: Back in the Cold War, we developed the capability to deliver a nuclear weapon to any window in the Kremlin. And they say we can't get a loaf of bread to where it's needed? Well, there are a lot of American soldiers without enemies out there, and a lot of empty transports. I'm asking the Secretary of Defense, General David Jones, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Colin Powell, to come up with a plan for feeding the children of the world. I'm not sure how much we can accomplish, but don't sell our troops short. They've accomplished miracles before. And this time, they'll be the good guys once again. This, too, is part of our changing role in a changing world.

The Defense Budget & the Peace Dividend:

This brings me to a subject which is part foreign policy and part domestic policy: The Defense Budget, the Peace Dividend, and the future of the US Armed Forces.

Secretary Jones, General Powell, and I have defined four missions for our armed forces: (1) deterring anyone from attacking the United States with weapons of mass destruction, (2) defending our shores and borders from foreign invasion, (3) assisting the UN Military Committee in defeating aggression, maintaining freedom of the seas and airlanes, and performing peacekeeping functions, and (4) engaging in humanitarian and relief efforts at home or abroad.

We have determined that, for the foreseeable future, these four missions can be accomplished with about a third of our current forces and for about a fourth of the cost. This will, after a few years of transition, result in a peace dividend of over $200 Billion per year, about twenty times that proposed by my predecessor. Now we can't get all that the first year or so, because to try to do so would result in massive unemployment. Instead, we're determined to do it in such a way that no one becomes jobless because peace has broken out.

This is my number one domestic priority -- the transition from a wartime economy to a peacetime economy without a single person joining the ranks of the jobless. Here's how we propose to do it.

First, I'm asking Congress to approve a new and expanded GI Bill, so that the young men and women leaving military service can get a college education. This does two things: (1) it spreads their return to the work force over a period of years, instead of dumping them into it all at once, and (2) it gives them the opportunity to prepare for the new jobs of the 90s. Even today, in the midst of recession, there are many thousands of jobs available, but they require specialized skills the unemployed lack. The new GI Bill will enable returning soldiers to acquire those skills and successfully compete in the job market.

Second, we're going to offer career military personnel an opportunity to transfer to other federal agencies without losing their rank, their pay grade, their benefits, or their retirement. In the past, senior military officers have successfully gone back and forth between the military, NASA, and the Department of Energy. There's no reason this cannot apply to all ranks and all parts of government. The leadership and management skills learned in the military can be applied in the Department of Commerce or Agriculture or Transportation. In addition, those who are offered jobs in the private sector can take early retirement at a reduced pension. In a similar way, career civil service employees will be given the opportunity to transfer within the government or to leave early for the private sector. They will not be dumped on the street.

Most of the peace dividend will come from lower operations and maintenance costs and from the cancellation of weapons programs. In addition to those terminated by my predecessor, we intend to cancel the "Brilliant Pebbles" space weapon portion of SDI and return the remainder to laboratory research, a savings of about four billion the first year. We will cancel the DDG-51 cruiser, the F/A-18 Hornet fighter, Milstar, ATF (F-22) fighter, F-16C/D Falcon, and about 30 other programs, for an annual savings of 40 Billion dollars.

Now before anybody in the aerospace industry starts jumping out the window, just sit down and hear me out. When my predecessor cancelled the B-2 and Seawolf programs, it sent shockwaves through the defense industry, and resulted in an immediate jump in unemployment. I don't intend for that to happen. We in the federal government are responsible for the dependence of whole industries and, in some cases, entire communities on the defense budget, and we have a responsibility to the people involved. I have told the management of each of the major contractors involved that other contracts, for civilian systems, will be coming. During the transition, we will pay them to retrain their work force, provided there are no layoffs. One more time: we don't want anybody becoming jobless because peace has broken out. If we can pay farmers not to grow crops, we can pay engineers and machinists not to build weapons.

In addition, we are at long last responding to public opinion all around the world, and living up to our obligations under existing treaties by announcing an immediate and permanent halt to all nuclear testing. Russia and the other Commonwealth Republics have already joined with us by making their moratorium permanent. We call upon The United Kingdom, France, China, and all other nuclear states to join in this historic moment, the end of the nuclear age.

The Department of Energy, which has been spending 80% of its budget on nuclear weapons, will now have only two jobs: (1) clean up the radioactive and toxic mess created by half a century of weapons production, so that at least a portion of the land involved can be returned to productive use, and (2) what their name implies: energy. Their primary mission will be to develop clean, renewable, safe, non-polluting sources of energy for this country and to improve energy efficiency. Under the guidance of the new Secretary of Energy, Amory Lovins, I'm sure this can be accomplished.

RESOURCES AND CHALLENGES

 With all of our problems, we are still the richest nation on earth. In measuring our riches, we can divide our blessings into five categories: natural resources, material resources, financial resources, human resources, and spiritual resources. Let's start by taking stock of these resources and looking at the challenges threatening them.

Natural Resources:

We in America are blessed with a beautiful, varied, and bounteous land. It lies mostly within the temperate zone and stretches from sea to shining sea, with our most recent states extending well into the Arctic and halfway to Asia. The land is fertile, productive, and rich in minerals. much of it is covered with forests and woodlands teeming with wildlife. An abundant supply of lakes, rivers, and aquifers provide water to a quarter of a billion thirsty people. Our coastlines have some of the world's best ports and harbors. We are rich, indeed, in natural resources.

Unfortunately, these natural resources are endangered by the same environmental hazards threatening the rest of the planet, particularly the greenhouse effect and global warming. We also have some homegrown threats. Among them are the dumping of toxic chemicals from industry into our air, land, and water; intense concentrations of toxic smog from automobile exhausts; and the loss of virgin rainforest to logging.

If we are to remain a rich nation, we must find a way to preserve our natural resources.

Material Resources:

We are rich in material resources. We have modern cities designed for the automotive age. We have the world's first and most extensive interstate highway system. We have a network of railroads reaching into all parts of the country. We have dams, factories, theme parks, Levis, television sets, and more cars per capita than any other nation. We are rich, indeed, in material resources.

Unfortunately, these resources are threatened by obsolescence and decay. Our cities weren't built to last for hundreds of years, like those in Europe. Neither was anything else, it seems. The American way was to build it fast and cheap, and throw it away when it wears out. Built-in obsolescence meant profit. It kept people buying new cars every two years -- at least until the Volkswagen showed up.

But then came the Cold War, and we spent that ten trillion dollars on the arms race, instead of on other things. You know what that ten trillion dollars would buy? Every car, every piece of clothing, every work of art, every piece of jewelry, every house, every factory, every dam, every machine tool, every hospital, every schoolbook, every piece of furniture, ... everything in the country except the land. That means that on the average, all of our material resources are one generation older than they should be. Things that should have been replaced, weren't. Our cities, water supplies, sewers, bridges, and roads are decaying. Our factories and machine tools are obsolete. Our schools and hospitals are antiquated and in disrepair.

If we are to remain a rich nation, we must find a way to renew our material resources.

Financial Resources:

In purely monetary terms, we in the United States, until about 1980, were clearly the richest nation on earth. Our standard of living was the highest in the world. Our workers were the highest-paid in the world. We were the world's largest creditor nation. Everybody owed us money. Our corporations owned huge pieces of other countries. Our tourists traveled the world, buying up bargains wherever they went.

Then came Reaganomics. During one presidency, we went from the world's biggest creditor to the world's biggest debtor. The deficits run up by Reagan were double the total of all the deficits run up by all our presidents from Washington to Carter.

To finance these deficits, our government borrowed from overseas and sold off pieces of America to foreigners. The Japanese now own Rockefeller Center, Pebble Beach, Columbia Pictures, most of the banks in California, and much of Hawaii. When George Bush went to Japan in January, the public envisioned him scolding them for the trade imbalance. He actually spent most of the time pleading with them to continue buying our bonds to finance our continuing deficit. If they quit buying, the US government would go broke. The only leverage we have on them is that if they bankrupted us, all the bonds they hold now would be worthless.

We are in the same position with respect to Japan as Israel is with respect to us.

At the same time as this was happening, our government was busting PATCO, the Air Traffic Controllers' union, and was helping corporations bust other unions. We no longer have the best-paid workers in the world. We're about tenth. (But we still have the best-paid corporate executives in the world. They're paid ten times what their counterparts in Japan are paid.) In this generation, the standard of living in America has gone down for the first time in memory (except for CEOs).

We still are a productive nation. But if we want to remain a rich nation, we must get our financial house in order and distribute our wealth more equitably.

Human Resources:

Our greatest source of riches has always been our people. Americans have been the best educated, hardest working, most creative, most innovative, most productive people in the world. That's what made us number one.

Unfortunately, even these precious human resources of ours are endangered. They are threatened by dying cities, terrible schools, unaffordable health care, and joblessness. They are threatened by drugs, drug-related crime, and desperation. The life expectancy of an American male born in Harlem is less than that of a boy born in Bangladesh!

If we want to remain a rich nation, we must protect, care for, nurture, and develop our human resources.

Spiritual Resources:

America, at least in this century, has been a land of happy, fun-loving people, quietly religious and generous of spirit. Courage, compassion, virtue, loyalty, patience, and optimism have exemplified the American character. You can see it in the illustrations of Norman Rockwell. He didn't create it out of nothing. It was there. He merely captured it.

But then came Vietnam. It seemed to sap the spirit from the nation. The dread trio of assassinations -- John, Martin, and Bobby -- drained it even more. Joblessness, homelessness, and despair strain the spirit of some. Hate, greed, fear, selfishness, and mean-spiritedness poison others.

In the wake of World War II, when we showed magnanimity and generosity in victory, we received God's blessing on our land. But when, as a nation, we became selfish, greedy, arrogant, and brutal, things changed. Psalm 37 says, "Trust in the Lord and do good, that you may dwell in the land and have security."

If we want to remain a rich nation, we must husband our spiritual resources.

A NEW STEWARDSHIP

 How then are we to protect and nurture our resources? For one thing, we must put them in the right order. In Biblical language, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and all else will be added unto you." Or put another way, "Cure the disease and the symptoms will take care of themselves." Or yet again, "You'll never go wrong by doing right."

The proper order for these resources is as follows: spiritual resources first, human resources second, natural resources third, material resources fourth, and financial resources last. The problem of the recent past is that they were put upside down.

Stewardship is also a Biblical concept. It means that nothing you have is your own. Your spouse, your children, your money, your time, your talents all were given into your care by God. Ultimately, they belong to God, not you, and you will be held accountable for your stewardship of them. There is a similar relationship between government and the people. Ultimately, nothing belongs to the government. It belongs to the people, and the government will be held accountable for its stewardship of the nation's resources.

Stewardship of our Spiritual Resources:

The first priority is easy. Doing evil destroys the spirit. Doing good nurtures it. Just do the right thing and our spiritual resources will automatically be taken care of. Sending our kids out to kill people so we can use the oil under their sand is wrong. It will destroy the spirit of the nation. Sending them out to feed the children of the world is good. It will build the nation's spirit. So never mind what seems more financially lucrative. That's the bottom priority. Never mind what's politically expedient. That has no priority. Do what is right.

Stewardship of Our Human Resources:

This is government's biggest, most expensive task. Through the private sector when possible, directly when necessary, the government must provide for the health, education, and well-being of its citizens. This does not mean welfare. (People's spiritual needs are at least as important as their material needs, and welfare is destructive of the spirit.) It does mean acknowledging certain things as fundamental rights. Among these are health care, an education, and a job at a living wage. And the three are related.

For too long, we have incentivized unemployment by how we handle health and education. We have burdened employers with the cost of health care, making it more expensive to hire workers. It has also resulted in 35 million unemployed, self-employed, and part-time workers and their families without any health coverage at all. We must completely sever the connection between employment and health care, by establishing a comprehensive national health system and recognizing basic health care as a right. This will simultaneously improve both health care and employment. Free, universal maternity and well-baby care will help improve our abysmal infant mortality rate and will reduce the need for long-term intensive care of premature and sickly infants. Some people call this socialized medicine. I call it an investment in our human resources. It is stewardship.

We have also burdened employers with the cost of education by forcing cities to support schools with property taxes. This has forced employers into the suburbs and left only the unemployed in the cities. This raises welfare and other urban costs, further increasing property tax rates and forcing still more employers out of the cities in a fatal spiral. The solution to this problem is simple. Essential services must be provided through taxes which are not affected by artificial boundaries. Our people and our businesses should be taxed at the same rate whether they are located in a city, a suburb, on a farm, or in the middle of a desert. And they should be taxed only on their income. (Property taxes are confiscatory. They tax something you paid for with money which was already taxed once when you earned it. And they too often force people on fixed incomes out of their homes.) Local school boards ought to run schools; but they shouldn't have to raise the money for them. That should be the job of the IRS. A good, high quality education must be recognized as a right, not just for the affluent in the suburbs, but for all the people. That is not socialism. It is an investment in our human resources. It is stewardship.

Quality education requires quality teachers and small classes. We need more and better teachers. To get them, we must give teachers the respect their importance to society deserves, and we must pay them accordingly. I am earmarking 30% of the Peace Dividend to augment teacher salaries. In a few years, this will enable us to double their pay.

No matter how schools are financed, however, and no matter how generously they are financed, good education depends on good students from good, stable families. In this the conservatives are absolutely right. Broken schools are caused by broken kids; broken kids are caused by broken families; and broken families are caused by welfare. For too long, we have had a system where the only way a father without a job could support his family was by abandoning them so they could qualify for welfare. Such a system destroys not only families, but the human spirit as well. We must turn the incentives around. We must give fathers jobs. There's nothing wrong with replacing welfare with workfare, as long as we recognize that for some, their "job" ought to be staying home taking care of the kids. Maybe we ought to actively give preference for the better jobs to those supporting families. Some will say this is a form of discrimination. I say it is investing in our human resources. It is stewardship.

Ideally, the government would have to directly provide few jobs. Its main function would be in creating a climate in which private sector jobs were readily available. This does not, however, mean cutting capital gains taxes. But it could mean eliminating payroll taxes. Payroll taxes penalize businesses for hiring and reward them for firing. That's backwards. If anything, we should be giving business tax credits for hiring more people. That would leave fewer jobs to be provided by the government. However it's done, we must recognize a steady job at a living wage as a right. Some will call that socialism. I call it investing in our human resources. I call it stewardship.

The next question to be asked is, "If government must provide jobs, either directly or through government contracts to the private sector, what kind of jobs do we provide, doing what?" The answer to that question is straightforward. We put them to work stewarding our natural and material resources.

First, a word about what kind of jobs we don't give them. We don't give them nonproductive or meaningless jobs. This is not a Communist bureaucracy. People don't want to scrub sidewalks with toothbrushes. Neither do they want to build useless MXs and B-2s, which amounts to the same thing. People want jobs that create real wealth in which they can share. Building an MX doesn't do that. You can't ride it to work. You can't eat it for breakfast. You can't wear it to a party. You can't even put it on your mantle and admire it. It does not contribute to our standard of living. It does not create wealth. It does not enlarge the pie in which we all must share. All it does is transfer money from the taxpayers to the fatcat CEOs of the weapons manufacturers. Not good enough!

Neither can we all flip Big Macs for each other. The so-called "service economy" is a fraud. Of course, we've always had nonproductive segments of society, earning money but not producing anything. But we can't all be politicians, investors, and lawyers. Somebody has to build something! That's the kind of job people want. People want to build a better, richer America for their children. They want to build for the future. And that's the kind of jobs we're going to give them. Fortunately, there are lots of such jobs just waiting to be done. Here are just a few examples:

Stewardship of our Natural Resources:

(1) We need to build a new energy system for our country. Our dependence on fossil fuels is causing us to have to sell off pieces of America to pay for foreign oil. It is causing us to maintain huge military forces and a militaristic foreign policy in order to guarantee access to oil that doesn't belong to us. It is causing us to pollute our air with toxic smog and kill our forests and lakes with acid rain. And it is causing us to hasten global warming and the inundation of coastal cities, including our own. It is slow suicide. Nuclear is no better. We still don't know how to get rid of the radioactive waste, much of which will remain deadly for thousands of years.

We know how to get energy from the sun, the wind, and the tides. We know how to use these renewable sources to produce electricity and hydrogen from seawater. We know how to use electricity and hydrogen to run cars, trucks, tractors, combines, and boats. New non-polluting power plants and distribution systems are needed. We know how to build them. In the past, our tax and regulatory policies have prevented utilities from changing over. Not any more. I'm asking Congress to work with the Secretary of Energy to develop new policies which will hasten the changeover from the energy of death (oil). Our workers have the know-how. They have the skills. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work building a clean, green energy future for America.

(2) We need to build a non-polluting transportation system for our country. Using the renewable energy I've already described, we need electric cars and trucks, non-polluting mass transit in our cities, magnetically levitated (MagLev) trains, and automated intercity highways. In general, we know how to do it. But it's going to take more than just bending tin and laying concrete. It's going to take research and development ... and the scientists and engineers no longer needed for MXs and such. The workers in our defense plants don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to pay their employers to retrain them, and then we're going to put them to work building a new transportation system for America.

(3) We need to build a reinvigorated civilian space program for our country. Why waste all our space scientists on "Star Wars" weapons and botched-up Space Stations full of macho symbolism but no usefulness. We need a Rescue Mission for Planet Earth, with satellites monitoring global change, tracking sources of air pollution, water pollution, acid rain, and deforestation. We need to better measure and understand the hole in our ozone layer, the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet, and the greenhouse effect. We also need to continue exploring our neighbors in the Solar System, perhaps finding the key that will enable us to escape their lifeless fate. The workers at NASA don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work building a new space program for America and for the global environment we must share with the rest of the world. This is not a Buck Rogers boondoggle. It's an investment in our most precious and irreplaceable natural resources. This is stewardshp.

(4) We need to build new green versions of old industries. For too long, we have raped the land, clearcut our forests, and polluted our waters to line the pockets of tycoons. For too long the taxpayers have had to pay to clean up the messes made by chemical companies and other industries. In a true free-market capitalist society, they wouldn't get such subsidies. They would have to either pay for their own cleanup or learn to do things differently in the first place. This might mean hiring people to figure it out for them and build them new, safe, non-polluting plants. Good! There are millions of Americans ready, willing, and able. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. But we are going to quit subsidizing the polluters and rapers of the land, so they will have to put our people to work building new, clean, non-polluting industries for America.

These are just a few examples of jobs that need doing if we are to be stewards of our natural resources. Even more jobs are available rebuilding our nation's long-neglected material resources.

Stewardship of our Material Resources:

We need to build a new infrastructure for our country. Our roads, bridges, water supplies, and sewer systems are decaying. Schools, hospitals, and libraries are in need of renovation. These are all public facilities; only government can pay to get them fixed. Local governments don't have the money and can't raise it. If they try, people and corporations just move away, leaving them worse off than they were before. Only the federal government can do it, and we should, and we will. Many millions of able-bodied Americans are frustrated and idle. Millions more are underemployed. They don't want a handout, and we're not going to give them one. We're going to put them to work rebuilding America.

For years, the working people of America were told that the people in the peace movement were their enemy, because they wanted to eliminate their jobs. They were told that the environmentalists were their enemy, because they wanted to do away with their jobs. They were told that the people in the civil rights movement were their enemy, because they wanted to take their jobs away and give them to someone else. None of these things were true. The politics of division are over. All of us want the same thing, to be good stewards of the riches God has bestowed upon us, to live in peace with our neighbors, and to feel good about ourselves, knowing that we are doing good work and creating real wealth and a better life for ourselves, our families, and our fellow Americans.

Stewardship of our Financial Resources:

Finally, I must say a few words about financial resources. During the Reagan- Bush era, federal income tax rates were slashed, particularly the rates for those with the highest incomes. But because of cuts in federal domestic spending, state and local spending was forced to fill the gap. So state and local taxes went up. The end result of all this was that the total tax burden on the rich decreased dramatically, while that on the poor and middle class went up, even as their income went down.

I have called for this patchwork of overlapping federal, state, and local taxes to be completely eliminated and replaced with a single progressive federal income tax. Much of the receipts will be returned to the states and localities for local needs such as education. I have asked leaders of Congress to meet with members of my staff and with interested governors and mayors from around the country. They will develop the details. The important thing to remember is that financial resources exist to serve people, not the other way around.

IN CONCLUSION

Tonight, I divided my talk into three sections. In the first, I described our changing role in a changing world. If we are to be a great nation, we must first be a good nation. We will abide by international law and support a strong, effective United Nations. This time we can and must abolish war as an instrument of national policy. I also announced weapons cuts, an end to nuclear testing, an end to our isolation from Cuba, an end to military aid to dictators, and a peace dividend to be achieved without creating joblessness.

In the second section, I described the resources that we, the richest nation on earth, have been blessed with, and outlined the threats to those resources.

In the third section, I prioritized our spiritual, human, natural, material, and financial resources, in that order; and I described a New Stewardship in which the government accepts responsibility for protecting and nurturing these precious resources. In practical terms, this means always putting what's right ahead of what's expedient; recognizing that basic health care, a good education, and a steady job at a living wage are rights belonging to all Americans; and putting people to work on renewable energy, non-polluting vehicles, clean industry, and our infrastructure. Our objective is a nation at peace with the world, with itself, and with God. And that means NO jobless, NO homeless, and NO American without health care, adequate food, and as much education as they can absorb.

I'm pledged never to lie to you, so I'm not going to tell you all this will be easy. But with your help and your prayers, we can succeed. God has blessed America. Now we must do our part. Thank you, and goodnight.

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