What is true for families in America is true for America in the family of free nations.  History is no captive of some inevitable force.  History is made by men and women of vision and courage.  Tonight freedom is on the march.  The United States is the economic miracle, the model to which the world once again turns.  We stand for an idea whose time is now:  Only by lifting the weights from the shoulders of all can people truly prosper and can peace among all nations be secure.  Teddy Roosevelt said that a nation that does great work lives forever.  We have done well, but we cannot stop at the foothills when Everest beckons.  It’s time for America to be all that we can be.

We speak tonight of an agenda for the future, an agenda for a safer, more secure world.  And we speak about the necessity for actions to steel us for the challenges of growth, trade, and security in the next decade and the year 2000.  And we will do it—­not by breaking faith with bedrock principles but by breaking free from failed policies.  Let us begin where storm clouds loom darkest—­right here in Washington, DC.  This week I will send you our detailed proposals; tonight let us speak of our responsibility to redefine government’s role:  not to control, not to demand or command, not to contain us, but to help in times of need and, above all, to create a ladder of opportunity to full employment so that all Americans can climb toward economic power and justice on their own.

But we cannot win the race to the future shackled to a system that can’t even pass a Federal budget.  We cannot win that race held back by horse-and-buggy programs that waste tax dollars and squander human potential.  We cannot win that race if we’re swamped in a sea of red ink.  Now, Mr. Speaker, you know, I know, and the American people know the Federal budget system is broken.  It doesn’t work.  Before we leave this city, let’s you and I work together to fix it, and then we can finally give the American people a balanced budget.

Members of Congress, passage of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings gives us an historic opportunity to achieve what has eluded our national leadership for decades:  forcing the Federal Government to live within its means.  Your schedule now requires that the budget resolution be passed by April 15th, the very day America’s families have to foot the bill for the budgets that you produce.  How often we read of a husband and wife both working, struggling from paycheck to paycheck to raise a family, meet a mortgage, pay their taxes and bills.  And yet some in Congress say taxes must be raised.  Well, I’m sorry; they’re asking the wrong people to tighten their belts.  It’s time we reduce the Federal budget and left the family budget alone.  We do not face large deficits because American families are undertaxed; we face those deficits because the Federal Government overspends.