Also, I ask your support for a dramatic increase in federal support for adult literacy to mount a national campaign aimed at helping the millions and millions of working people who still read at less than a fifth-grade level.  We need to do this.

Here’s some good news.  In the past six years, we have cut the welfare rolls nearly in half.

Two years ago, from this podium, I asked five companies to lead a national effort to hire people off welfare.  Tonight our welfare-to-work partnership includes 10,000 companies who have hired hundreds of thousands of people, and our balanced budget will help another 200,000 people move to the dignity and pride of work.  I hope you will support it.

We must bring the spark of private enterprise to every corner of America, to build a bridge from Wall Street to Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta, to our Native American communities, with more support for community development banks for empowerment zones, for 100,000 more vouchers for affordable housing.

And I ask Congress to support our bold new plan to help businesses raise up to $15 billion in private sector capital, to bring jobs and opportunities and inner cities, rural areas, with tax credits, loan guarantees, including the new American Private Investment Companies, modeled on the Overseas Private Investment Companies.

Now, for years and years we’ve had this OPIC, this Overseas Private Investment Corporation, because we knew we had untapped markets overseas.  But our greatest untapped markets are not overseas—­they are right here at home.  And we should go after them.

We must work hard to help bring prosperity back to the family farm.

As this Congress knows very well, dropping prices and the loss of foreign markets have devastated too many family farmers.  Last year, the Congress provided substantial assistance to help stave off a disaster in American agriculture, and I am ready to work with lawmakers of both parties to create a farm safety net that will include crop insurance reform and farm income assistance.

I ask you to join with me and do this.  This should not be a political issue.  Everyone knows what an economic problem is going on out there in rural America today, and we need an appropriate means to address it.

We must strengthen our lead in technology.  It was government investment that led to the creation of the Internet.  I propose a 28-percent increase in long-term computing research.

We also must be ready for the 21st century from its very first moment by solving the so-called Y2K computer problem.  We had one member of Congress stand up and applaud.  And we may have about that ration out there applauding at home in front of their television sets.  But remember, this is a big, big problem, and we’ve been working hard on it.  Already we’ve made sure that the Social Security checks will come on time.

But I want all the folks at home listening to this to know that we need every state and local government, every business large and small to work with us to make sure that this Y2K computer bug will be remembered as the last headache of the 20th century, not the first crisis of the 21st.