If we want it to stay that way, those who work and lift our nation must have more of its benefits.

Today, too many of those people are being left out.  They’re working harder for less.  They have less security, less income, less certainty that they can even afford a vacation, much less college for their kids or retirement for themselves.

We cannot let this continue.  If we don’t act, our economy will probably keep doing what it’s been doing since about 1978, when the income growth began to go to those at the very top of our economic scale.  And the people in the vast middle got very little growth and people who worked like crazy but were on the bottom then, fell even further and further behind in the years afterward, no matter how hard they worked.

We’ve got to have a Government that can be a real partner in making this new economy work for all of our people, a Government that helps each and every one of us to get an education and to have the opportunity to renew our skills.

Education

That’s why we worked so hard to increase educational opportunities in the last two years from Head Start to public schools to apprenticeships for young people who don’t go to college, to making college loans more available and more affordable.

That’s the first thing we have to do:  We’ve got to do something to empower people to improve their skills.

Taxes

Second thing we ought to do is to help people raise their incomes immediately by lowering their taxes.

We took the first step in 1993 with a working family tax cut for 15 million families with incomes under $ 27,000, a tax cut that this year will average about $ 1,000 a family.

And we also gave tax reductions to most small and new businesses.  Before we could do more than that, we first had to bring down the deficit we inherited and we had to get economic growth up.  Now we’ve done both, and now we can cut taxes in a more comprehensive way.

But tax cuts should reinforce and promote our first obligation:  to empower our citizens through education and training to make the most of their own lives.  The spotlight should shine on those who make the right choices for themselves, their families and their communities.

Middle Class Bill Of Rights

I have proposed a middle-class bill of rights, which should properly be called the bill of rights and responsibilities, because its provisions only benefit those who are working to educate and raise their children and to educate themselves.  It will, therefore, give needed tax relief and raise incomes, in both the short run and the long run, in a way that benefits all of us.

There are four provisions: 

First, a tax deduction for all education and training after high school.  If you think about it, we permit businesses to deduct their investment, we permit individuals to deduct interest on their home mortgages, but today an education is even more important to the economic well-being of our whole country than even those things are.  We should do everything we can to encourage it, and I hope you will support it.