On Monday, February 15, I gave my first televised address from the Oval Office, a ten-minute outline of the economic program I would unveil two days later to a joint session of Congress. Even though the economy was in a statistical recovery, it was a jobless one, burdened by the quadrupling of the debt in the last twelve years. Since all the deficits were the result of the tax cuts for the wealthy, soaring health costs, and increases in defense spending, we were investing less in “the things that make us stronger and smarter, richer and safer,” like education, children, transportation, and local law enforcement. At the rate we were going, our living standards, which usually doubled every twenty-five years, wouldn’t do so again for another one hundred years. Reversing the trend would require a dramatic change in our national priorities, with a combination of tax increases and spending cuts to reduce the deficit and invest more in our future. I said that I had hoped to pursue this course without asking more of middle-class Americans, because they had borne hardships and had been treated unfairly in the previous twelve years, but the deficit had grown far beyond the earlier estimates on which I had built my budget proposals in the campaign. Now “more Americans must contribute today so that all Americans can do better tomorrow.” However, unlike what had happened in the 1980s, most of the new taxes would be paid by wealthier Americans; “for the first time in more than a decade, we’re all in this together.” In addition to deficit reduction, my economic plan would provide incentives to businesses to create new jobs; a shortterm stimulus to add 500,000 jobs right away; investments in education and training, with special programs to help displaced defense workers; welfare reform and the big increase in the EITC; Head Start opportunities and vaccinations for all children who need them; and the national service initiative to allow young people to earn money for college in return for serving in their communities. I acknowledged that these proposals would not be easily or quickly implemented, but when they were, we could “restore the vitality of the American dream.”
On Wednesday night, in the address to Congress, I explained the strategy behind the plan and outlined the specifics. Its guiding principles were four: to shift more public and private spending from consumption to investment in order to create more jobs; to honor work and family; to produce a budget with conservative estimates, not the unrealistic “rosy scenario” figures that had been used in the past; and to pay for the changes with real cuts in spending and fair taxes. To create more jobs, I proposed a permanent investment tax credit for small businesses, which employed 40 percent of the workforce but were creating most of our new jobs, and the establishment of community development banks and empowerment zones, two of my campaign commitments, which were designed to bring new loans and investments into poor areas. I also asked for more money for roads, bridges, mass transit, high-tech information systems, and environmental cleanups to increase productivity and employment.
On education, I recommended increased investments in and higher standards for public schools, and incentives to encourage more students to go to college, including my national service initiative. I complimented Congress on passing the family leave law, and asked them to follow up with tougher child-support enforcement. On crime, I asked for passage of the Brady bill, military-style boot camps for first-time nonviolent offenders, and my proposal to put 100,000 new police on the streets. I then asked Congress to help me change the way government worked, by enacting campaign finance reform and registration requirements for lobbyists, and eliminating the tax deduction for lobbyists’
