This year we must again make the hard choices to live within the hard spending ceilings we have set.  We must do it.  We have proved we can bring the deficit down without choking off recovery, without punishing seniors or the middle class, and without putting our national security at risk.  If you will stick with this plan, we will post three consecutive years of declining deficits for the first time since Harry Truman lived in the White House.  And once again, the buck stops here.

Trade

Our economic plan also bolsters our strength and our credibility around the world.  Once we reduced the deficit and put the steel back into our competitive edge, the world echoed with the sound of falling trade barriers.  In one year, with NAFTA, with gatt, with our efforts in Asia and the national export strategy, we did more to open world markets to American products than at any time in the last two generations.  That means more jobs and rising living standards for the American people, low deficits, low inflation, low interest rates, low trade barriers and high investments.  These are the building blocks of our recovery.  But if we want to take full advantage of the opportunities before us in the global economy, you all know we must do more.

As we reduce defense spending, I ask Congress to invest more in the technologies of tomorrow.  Defense conversion will keep us strong militarily and create jobs for our people here at home.

As we protect our environment, we must invest in the environmental technologies of the future which will create jobs.  This year we will fight for a revitalized Clean Water Act and a Safe Drinking Water Act and a reformed Superfund program.

And the vice president is right; we must also work with the private sector to connect every classroom, every clinic, every library, every hospital in America into a national information superhighway by the year 2000.  Think of it.  Instant access to information will increase productivity.  It will help to educate our children.  It will provide better medical care.  It will create jobs.  And I call on the Congress to pass legislation to establish that information superhighway this year.

As we expand opportunity and create jobs, no one can be left out.  We must continue to enforce fair lending and fair housing and all civil rights laws, because America will never be complete in its renewal until everyone shares in its bounty.  But we all know, too, we can do all these things—­ put our economic house in order, expand world trade, target the jobs of the future, guarantee equal opportunity.

But if we’re honest, we’ll all admit that this strategy still cannot work unless we also give our people the education, training and skills they need to seize the opportunities of tomorrow.  We must set tough, world-class academic and occupational standards for all our children and give our teachers and students the tools they need to meet them.