Bill Clinton

Nothing can be more bittersweet than sending a child you once cradled off in your arms off to college for the first time.

We must make sure that every child has a safe and enriching place to go after school.

There is no more important job than raising a child.

The centerpiece of our plan will let many more of these Americans buy into one of our Nation's greatest achievements, Medicare.

Taken together, these steps will help to take our health care system into the 21st century, providing more American families with the health care they need to thrive.

Access to quality health care can mean the difference between a secure, healthy, and productive life, and the enormous burden of illness and worry and enormous financial strain.

Hillary and I were deeply saddened to learn this morning of the death of Representative Sonny Bono.

We want to continue to do everything possible to ensure that the same system that served our parents can also serve our children.

It is a fiscally responsible plan that finances itself by charging an affordable premium up front and a small payment later to ensure that this places no new burdens on Medicare.

This is an entirely new way of adapting a program that has worked in the past to the needs of the future.

He made us laugh even as he brought his own astute perspective to the work of Congress.

The answer to the first question is yes.

I will do everything that I can to prevent anyone from using a projected future surplus as a pretext for returning to the failed policies of the past.

Any policy we adopt must not—it cannot—run any risk of returning to the failed policies of the past.

I can now say that we believe that the deficit this year will be less than $22 billion.

I want to say just exactly what I said. We don't have a surplus.

That means that it will decline for the 6th year in a row, a truly historic event.

We reversed 12 years of trickle-down economics in which the deficit of this country exploded year after year and our national debt was quadrupled.

We do not want to go back to the terrible conditions that paralyzed our Government and paralyzed our own people's potential in 1992 when I took office.

Actually, I liked it quite a lot.

My first priority is to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco, from the illegal dangers of tobacco.

It continues the successful economic policy that we adopted beginning with the budget in 1993.

I can also say that the budget that I present to the Congress in February will be a balanced budget for 1999.

We created AmeriCorps, which has already given more than 100,000 young Americans the opportunity to serve our Nation and earn money for a college education.

Strengthening the Peace Corps, giving more Americans opportunities to serve in humanity's cause is both an opportunity and an obligation we should seize in 1998.