Now, today, we also find ourselves engaged in expanding peaceful commerce across the world.  We will work to expand our opportunities in international markets through the Uruguay round of trade negotiations and to complete an historic free trade arrangement between the world’s two largest trading partners, Canada and the United States.  Our basic trade policy remains the same:  We remain opposed as ever to protectionism, because America’s growth and future depend on trade.  But we would insist on trade that is fair and free.  We are always willing to be trade partners but never trade patsies.

Now, from foreign borders let us return to our own, because America in the world is only as strong as America at home.  This 100th Congress has high responsibilities.  I begin with a gentle reminder that many of these are simply the incomplete obligations of the past.  The American people deserve to be impatient, because we do not yet have the public house in order.  We’ve had great success in restoring our economic integrity, and we’ve rescued our nation from the worst economic mess since the Depression.  But there’s more to do.  For starters, the Federal deficit is outrageous.  For years I’ve asked that we stop pushing onto our children the excesses of our government.  And what the Congress finally needs to do is pass a constitutional amendment that mandates a balanced budget and forces government to live within its means.  States, cities, and the families of America balance their budgets.  Why can’t we?

Next, the budget process is a sorry spectacle.  The missing of deadlines and the nightmare of monstrous continuing resolutions packing hundreds of billions of dollars of spending into one bill must be stopped.  We ask the Congress once again:  Give us the same tool that 43 Governors have—­a lineitem veto so we can carve out the boondoggles and pork, those items that would never survive on their own.  I will send the Congress broad recommendations on the budget, but first I’d like to see yours.  Let’s go to work and get this done together.

But now let’s talk about this year’s budget.  Even though I have submitted it within the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings deficit reduction target, I have seen suggestions that we might postpone that timetable.  Well, I think the American people are tired of hearing the same old excuses.  Together we made a commitment to balance the budget.  Now let’s keep it.  As for those suggestions that the answer is higher taxes, the American people have repeatedly rejected that shop-worn advice.  They know that we don’t have deficits because people are taxed too little.  We have deficits because big government spends too much.