Bill Clinton: “As you know, we are here to receive the annual Economic Report of the President. So I want to begin by thanking the…”

“As you know, we are here to receive the annual Economic Report of the President. So I want to begin by thanking the Council of Economic Advisers: Dr. Laura Tyson, our Chair; Dr. Joseph Stiglitz; and Dr. Martin Baily. This economic report is an important milestone for me. It measures our success in fulfilling the mission that I brought to the Presidency. I ran for this office to help to restore the American dream and to guarantee its availability for all Americans into the 21st century, to make sure that the middle class would still be growing and that work would still be rewarded. The best way to do that is by building a new partnership between Americans and their Government and Americans and each other, the partnership that I have called the New Covenant. Essentially, it means that our responsibility here in Washington is to expand opportunity while shrinking bureaucracy, to empower people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security, not only abroad but here at home as well. At the same time, it means that we must demand more responsibility from every citizen, especially those who seek the benefits of Government action, responsibility for our country, for our communities, for our families, and for ourselves. These responsibilities have defined our economic strategy. We have pursued deficit reduction to make more of our Nation's resources available for private investment, growth, and jobs. We have reduced the size of the Government's bureaucracy, cutting the Federal work force to its lowest level in 30 years. We have expanded trade to provide more opportunity for jobs and higher incomes. And we have invested in the American people, from Head Start to the Goals 2000 program, to the program to help young people who don't go to college but do need further training, and of course, what we've done in national service and student loans. We've done all of that to help our people get the skills they need so that they can grow and prosper in a global economy. And now, 2 years into our administration, we can see the positive results of this strategy: almost 6 million new jobs, the lowest core rate of inflation in 30 years, the deficit reduced by over $600 billion. It's not enough. Too many of our people are still working harder for less, with less security. So today I'm sending Congress two new bills that are the next installment in our comprehensive effort to raise the wages and the incomes f working Americans and to give them more opportunity in return for their responsibility of learning and working. These bills reward work. They raise living standards. They allow people to invest in themselves and to make the most of their own lives. The ``Working Wage Increase Act'' would increase the minimum wage by 90 cents over 2 years. This would benefit over 11 million workers and their families. It would be the equivalent of an $1,800 raise or about 7 months of groceries for a family. The middle class bill of rights has four provisions that will also benefit those who are working to help themselves: a $500 tax cut for families with children under 13; a way to allow more families to invest in an IRA and withdraw those investments, tax-free, to pay for education, health care, purchase of a first home, or the care of an elderly parent; a voucher to improve worker skills worth $2,600 a year for 2 years for people who are unemployed or who are working for wages low enough to qualify for Federal training; and of course, I think, over the long run most importantly, a tax deduction for the cost of education beyond high school. The success of the United States is clearly dependent upon our ability to educate and develop the capacities of every one of our citizens. That's what the middle class bill of rights is all about. It goes with our previous efforts to expand Head Start, to work to help public schools achieve excellence, to move people into the work force who don't go to college, and of course, to expand the student loan program. This Economic Report of the President shows that this strategy is working. We should not abandon it. Instead, we should build on it. We should deepen it. When you're doing something that's working, you shouldn't turn around and do something else. You should do what you're doing better, do more of it, keep going in the same direction. That's what we're trying to do. We're reducing Government spending. We're cutting Government bureaucracy. But we are increasing our investment in the American people. The middle class bill of rights, raising the minimum wage, these are things we ought to do. The evidence that we ought to do them is in the success of the last 2 years' strategy in the Economic Report to the President. I thank Dr. Tyson and the others and, of course, all of those on our economic team and all of those in the Congress and throughout the country who've done so much to make this report a reality. Thank you. Minimum Wage”