Now, we must work to renew our national community as well for the 21st century. Last year, the House passed the bipartisan campaign finance reform legislation sponsored by Representatives [Christopher] Shays (R-Conn.) and [Martin T.] Meehan (D-Mass.) and Sens. [John] McCain (R-Ariz.) and [Russell] Feingold (D-Wis.). But a partisan minority in the Senate blocked reform. So I would like to say to the House, pass it again—quickly.
And I’d like to say to the Senate, I hope you will say yes to a stronger American democracy in the year 2000.
Since 1997, our Initiative on Race has sought to bridge the divides between and among our people. In its report last fall, the Initiatives Advisory Board found that Americans really do want to bring our people together across racial lines.
We know it’s been a long journey. For some it goes back to before the beginning of our republic. For others, back since the Civil War; for others, throughout the 21st century. But for most of us alive today, in a very real sense this journey began 43 years ago, when a woman named Rosa Parks sat down on a bus in Alabama and wouldn’t get up.
She’s sitting down with the first lady tonight, and she may get up or not as she chooses.
We know that our continuing racial problems are aggravated, as the presidential initiative said, by opportunity gaps.
The initiative I’ve outlined tonight will help to close them. But we know that the discrimination gap has not been fully closed either. Discrimination or violence because of race or religion, ancestry or gender, disability or sexual orientation, is wrong and it ought to be illegal. Therefore, I ask Congress to make the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the Hate Crimes Prevention Act the law of the land.
You know, now since every person in America counts, every American ought to be counted. We need a census that uses modern scientific methods to do that.
Our new immigrants must be part of our one America. After all, they’re revitalizing our cities, they’re energizing our culture, they’re building up our economy. We have a responsibility to make them welcome here, and they have a responsibility to enter the mainstream of American life.
That means learning English and learning about our democratic system of government. There are now long waiting lines of immigrants that are trying to do just that.
Therefore, our budget significantly expands our efforts to help them meet their responsibility. I hope you will support it.
Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships; whether they came to Ellis Island or Lax in Los Angeles; whether they came yesterday or walked this land 1,000 years ago, our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be one America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as one America.
You know, barely more than 300 days from now we will cross that bridge into the new millennium. This is a moment, as the first lady has said, to honor the past and imagine the future.