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President[ Ronald Reagan

         Date[ February 4, 1986

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, distinguished Members of the Congress, honored

guests, and fellow citizens:

Thank you for allowing me to delay my address until this evening. We paused

together to mourn and honor the valor of our seven Challenger heroes. And I

hope that we are now ready to do what they would want us to do: Go forward,

America, and reach for the stars. We will never forget those brave seven,

but we shall go forward.

Mr. Speaker, before I begin my prepared remarks, may I point out that

tonight marks the 10th and last State of the Union Message that you've

presided over. And on behalf of the American people, I want to salute you

for your service to Congress and country. Here's to you!

I have come to review with you the progress of our nation, to speak of

unfinished work, and to set our sights on the future. I am pleased to

report the state of our Union is stronger than a year ago and growing

stronger each day. Tonight we look out on a rising America, firm of heart,

united in spirit, powerful in pride and patriotism. America is on the move!

But it wasn't long ago that we looked out on a different land: locked

factory gates, long gasoline lines, intolerable prices, and interest rates

turning the greatest country on Earth into a land of broken dreams.

Government growing beyond our consent had become a lumbering giant,

slamming shut the gates of opportunity, threatening to crush the very roots

of our freedom. What brought America back? The American people brought us

back with quiet courage and common sense, with undying faith that in this

nation under God the future will be ours; for the future belongs to the

free.

Tonight the American people deserve our thanks for 37 straight months of

economic growth, for sunrise firms and modernized industries creating 9

million new jobs in 3 years, interest rates cut in half, inflation falling

over from 12 percent in 1980 to under 4 today, and a mighty river of good

works--a record $74 billion in voluntary giving just last year alone. And

despite the pressures of our modern world, family and community remain the

moral core of our society, guardians of our values and hopes for the

future. Family and community are the costars of this great American

comeback. They are why we say tonight: Private values must be at the heart

of public policies.

What is true for families in America is true for America in the family of

free nations. History is no captive of some inevitable force. History is

made by men and women of vision and courage. Tonight freedom is on the

march. The United States is the economic miracle, the model to which the

world once again turns. We stand for an idea whose time is now: Only by

lifting the weights from the shoulders of all can people truly prosper and

can peace among all nations be secure. Teddy Roosevelt said that a nation

that does great work lives forever. We have done well, but we cannot stop

at the foothills when Everest beckons. It's time for America to be all that

we can be.

We speak tonight of an agenda for the future, an agenda for a safer, more

secure world. And we speak about the necessity for actions to steel us for

the challenges of growth, trade, and security in the next decade and the

year 2000. And we will do it--not by breaking faith with bedrock principles

but by breaking free from failed policies. Let us begin where storm clouds

loom darkest--right here in Washington, DC. This week I will send you our

detailed proposals; tonight let us speak of our responsibility to redefine

government's role: not to control, not to demand or command, not to contain

us, but to help in times of need and, above all, to create a ladder of

opportunity to full employment so that all Americans can climb toward

economic power and justice on their own.

But we cannot win the race to the future shackled to a system that can't

even pass a Federal budget. We cannot win that race held back by

horse-and-buggy programs that waste tax dollars and squander human

potential. We cannot win that race if we're swamped in a sea of red ink.

Now, Mr. Speaker, you know, I know, and the American people know the

Federal budget system is broken. It doesn't work. Before we leave this

city, let's you and I work together to fix it, and then we can finally give

the American people a balanced budget.

Members of Congress, passage of Gramm-Rudman-Hollings gives us an historic

opportunity to achieve what has eluded our national leadership for decades:

forcing the Federal Government to live within its means. Your schedule now

requires that the budget resolution be passed by April 15th, the very day

America's families have to foot the bill for the budgets that you produce.

How often we read of a husband and wife both working, struggling from

paycheck to paycheck to raise a family, meet a mortgage, pay their taxes

and bills. And yet some in Congress say taxes must be raised. Well, I'm

sorry; they're asking the wrong people to tighten their belts. It's time we

reduce the Federal budget and left the family budget alone. We do not face

large deficits because American families are undertaxed; we face those

deficits because the Federal Government overspends.

The detailed budget that we will submit will meet the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings

target for deficit reductions, meet our commitment to ensure a strong

national defense, meet our commitment to protect Social Security and the

truly less fortunate, and, yes, meet our commitment to not raise taxes. How

should we accomplish this? Well, not by taking from those in need. As

families take care of their own, government must provide shelter and

nourishment for those who cannot provide for themselves. But we must revise

or replace programs enacted in the name of compassion that degrade the

moral worth of work, encourage family breakups, and drive entire

communities into a bleak and heartless dependency. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings

can mark a dramatic improvement. But experience shows that simply setting

deficit targets does not assure they'll be met. We must proceed with Grace

commission reforms against waste.

And tonight I ask you to give me what 43 Governors have: Give me a

line-item veto this year. Give me the authority to veto waste, and I'll

take the responsibility, I'll make the cuts, I'll take the heat. This

authority would not give me any monopoly power, but simply prevent spending

measures from sneaking through that could not pass on their own merit. And

you can sustain or override my veto; that's the way the system should work.

Once we've made the hard choices, we should lock in our gains with a

balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

I mentioned that we will meet our commitment to national defense. We must

meet it. Defense is not just another budget expense. Keeping America

strong, free, and at peace is solely the responsibility of the Federal

Government; it is government's prime responsibility. We have devoted 5

years trying to narrow a dangerous gap born of illusion and neglect, and

we've made important gains. Yet the threat from Soviet forces, conventional

and strategic, from the Soviet drive for domination, from the increase in

espionage and state terror remains great. This is reality. Closing our eyes

will not make reality disappear. We pledged together to hold real growth in

defense spending to the bare minimum. My budget honors that pledge, and I'm

now asking you, the Congress, to keep its end of the bargain. The Soviets

must know that if America reduces her defenses, it will be because of a

reduced threat, not a reduced resolve.

Keeping America strong is as vital to the national security as controlling

Federal spending is to our economic security. But, as I have said before,

the most powerful force we can enlist against the Federal deficit is an

ever-expanding American economy, unfettered and free. The magic of

opportunity--unreserved, unfailing, unrestrained--isn't this the calling

that unites us? I believe our tax rate cuts for the people have done more

to spur a spirit of risk-taking and help America's economy break free than

any program since John Kennedy's tax cut almost a quarter century ago.

Now history calls us to press on, to complete efforts for an historic tax

reform providing new opportunity for all and ensuring that all pay their

fair share, but no more. We've come this far. Will you join me now, and

we'll walk this last mile together? You know my views on this. We cannot

and we will not accept tax reform that is a tax increase in disguise. True

reform must be an engine of productivity and growth, and that means a top

personal rate no higher than 35 percent. True reform must be truly fair,

and that means raising personal exemptions to $2,000. True reform means a

tax system that at long last is profamily, projobs, profuture, and

pro-America.

As we knock down the barriers to growth, we must redouble our efforts for

freer and fairer trade. We have already taken actions to counter unfair

trading practices and to pry open closed foreign markets. We will continue

to do so. We will also oppose legislation touted as providing protection

that in reality pits one American worker against another, one industry

against another, one community against another, and that raises prices for

us all. If the United States can trade with other nations on a level

playing field, we can outproduce, outcompete, and outsell anybody, anywhere

in the world.

The constant expansion of our economy and exports requires a sound and

stable dollar at home and reliable exchange rates around the world. We must

never again permit wild currency swings to cripple our farmers and other

exporters. Farmers, in particular, have suffered from past unwise

government policies. They must not be abandoned with problems they did not

create and cannot control. We've begun coordinating economic and monetary

policy among our major trading partners. But there's more to do, and

tonight I am directing Treasury Secretary Jim Baker to determine if the

nations of the world should convene to discuss the role and relationship of

our currencies.

Confident in our future and secure in our values, Americans are striving

forward to embrace the future. We see it not only in our recovery but in 3

straight years of falling crime rates, as families and communities band

together to fight pornography, drugs, and lawlessness and to give back to

their children the safe and, yes, innocent childhood they deserve. We see

it in the renaissance in education, the rising SAT scores for 3 years--last

year's increase, the greatest since 1963. It wasn't government and

Washington lobbies that turned education around; it was the American people

who, in reaching for excellence, knew to reach back to basics. We must

continue the advance by supporting discipline in our schools, vouchers that

give parents freedom of choice; and we must give back to our children their

lost right to acknowledge God in their classrooms.

We are a nation of idealists, yet today there is a wound in our national

conscience. America will never be whole as long as the right to life

granted by our Creator is denied to the unborn. For the rest of my time, I

shall do what I can to see that this wound is one day healed.

As we work to make the American dream real for all, we must also look to

the condition of America's families. Struggling parents today worry how

they will provide their children the advantages that their parents gave

them. In the welfare culture, the breakdown of the family, the most basic

support system, has reached crisis proportions--in female and child

poverty, child abandonment, horrible crimes, and deteriorating schools.

After hundreds of billions of dollars in poverty programs, the plight of

the poor grows more painful. But the waste in dollars and cents pales

before the most tragic loss: the sinful waste of human spirit and

potential. We can ignore this terrible truth no longer. As Franklin

Roosevelt warned 51 years ago, standing before this Chamber, he said,

"Welfare is a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit." And we

must now escape the spider's web of dependency.

Tonight I am charging the White House Domestic Council to present me by

December 1, 1986, an evaluation of programs and a strategy for immediate

action to meet the financial, educational, social, and safety concerns of

poor families. I'm talking about real and lasting emancipation, because the

success of welfare should be judged by how many of its recipients become

independent of welfare. Further, after seeing how devastating illness can

destroy the financial security of the family, I am directing the Secretary

of Health and Human Services, Dr. Otis Bowen, to report to me by year end

with recommendations on how the private sector and government can work

together to address the problems of affordable insurance for those whose

life savings would otherwise be threatened when catastrophic illness

strikes.

And tonight I want to speak directly to America's younger generation,

because you hold the destiny of our nation in your hands. With all the

temptations young people face, it sometimes seems the allure of the

permissive society requires superhuman feats of self-control. But the call

of the future is too strong, the challenge too great to get lost in the

blind alleyways of dissolution, drugs, and despair. Never has there been a

more exciting time to be alive, a time of rousing wonder and heroic

achievement. As they said in the film "Back to the Future," "Where we're

going, we don't need roads."

Well, today physicists peering into the infinitely small realms of

subatomic particles find reaffirmations of religious faith. Astronomers

build a space telescope that can see to the edge of the universe and

possibly back to the moment of creation. So, yes, this nation remains fully

committed to America's space program. We're going forward with our shuttle

flights. We're going forward to build our space station. And we are going

forward with research on a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the

next decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the

speed of sound, attaining low Earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within 2

hours. And the same technology transforming our lives can solve the

greatest problem of the 20th century. A security shield can one day render

nuclear weapons obsolete and free mankind from the prison of nuclear

terror. America met one historic challenge and went to the Moon. Now

America must meet another: to make our strategic defense real for all the

citizens of planet Earth.

Let us speak of our deepest longing for the future: to leave our children a

land that is free and just and a world at peace. It is my hope that our

fireside summit in Geneva and Mr. Gorbachev's upcoming visit to America can

lead to a more stable relationship. Surely no people on Earth hate war or

love peace more than we Americans. But we cannot stroll into the future

with childlike faith. Our differences with a system that openly proclaims

and practices an alleged right to command people's lives and to export its

ideology by force are deep and abiding. Logic and history compel us to

accept that our relationship be guided by realism--rock-hard, cleareyed,

steady, and sure. Our negotiators in Geneva have proposed a radical cut in

offensive forces by each side with no cheating. They have made clear that

Soviet compliance with the letter and spirit of agreements is essential. If

the Soviet Government wants an agreement that truly reduces nuclear arms,

there will be such an agreement.

But arms control is no substitute for peace. We know that peace follows in

freedom's path and conflicts erupt when the will of the people is denied.

So, we must prepare for peace not only by reducing weapons but by

bolstering prosperity, liberty, and democracy however and wherever we can.

We advance the promise of opportunity every time we speak out on behalf of

lower tax rates, freer markets, sound currencies around the world. We

strengthen the family of freedom every time we work with allies and come to

the aid of friends under siege. And we can enlarge the family of free

nations if we will defend the unalienable rights of all God's children to

follow their dreams.

To those imprisoned in regimes held captive, to those beaten for daring to

fight for freedom and democracy--for their right to worship, to speak, to

live, and to prosper in the family of free nations--we say to you tonight:

You are not alone, freedom fighters. America will support with moral and

material assistance your right not just to fight and die for freedom but to

fight and win freedom--to win freedom in Afghanistan, in Angola, in

Cambodia, and in Nicaragua. This is a great moral challenge for the entire

free world.

Surely no issue is more important for peace in our own hemisphere, for the

security of our frontiers, for the protection of our vital interests, than

to achieve democracy in Nicaragua and to protect Nicaragua's democratic

neighbors. This year I will be asking Congress for the means to do what

must be done for that great and good cause. As (former Senator Henry

M.)Scoop Jackson, the inspiration for our Bipartisan Commission on Central

America, once said, "In matters of national security, the best politics is

no politics."

What we accomplish this year, in each challenge we face, will set our

course for the balance of the decade, indeed, for the remainder of the

century. After all we've done so far, let no one say that this nation

cannot reach the destiny of our dreams. America believes, America is ready,

America can win the race to the future--and we shall. The American dream is

a song of hope that rings through night winter air; vivid, tender music

that warms our hearts when the least among us aspire to the greatest

things: to venture a daring enterprise; to unearth new beauty in music,

literature, and art; to discover a new universe inside a tiny silicon chip

or a single human cell.

We see the dream coming true in the spirit of discovery of Richard Cavoli.

All his life he's been enthralled by the mysteries of medicine. And,

Richard, we know that the experiment that you began in high school was

launched and lost last week, yet your dream lives. And as long as it's

real, work of noble note will yet be done, work that could reduce the

harmful effects of x rays on patients and enable astronomers to view the

golden gateways of the farthest stars.

We see the dream glow in the towering talent of a 12-year-old, Tyrone Ford.

A child prodigy of gospel music, he has surmounted personal adversity to

become an accomplished pianist and singer. He also directs the choirs of

three churches and has performed at the Kennedy Center. With God as your

composer, Tyrone, your music will be the music of angels.

We see the dream being saved by the courage of the 13-year-old Shelby

Butler, honor student and member of her school's safety patrol. Seeing

another girl freeze in terror before an out-of-control school bus, she

risked her life and pulled her to safety. With bravery like yours, Shelby,

America need never fear for our future.

And we see the dream born again in the joyful compassion of a 13 year old,

Trevor Ferrell. Two years ago, age 11, watching men and women bedding down

in abandoned doorways--on television he was watching--Trevor left his

suburban Philadelphia home to bring blankets and food to the helpless and

homeless. And now 250 people help him fulfill his nightly vigil. Trevor,

yours is the living spirit of brotherly love.

Would you four stand up for a moment? Thank you, thank you. You are heroes

of our hearts. We look at you and know it's true: In this land of dreams

fulfilled, where greater dreams may be imagined, nothing is impossible, no

victory is beyond our reach, no glory will ever be too great.

So, now it's up to us, all of us, to prepare America for that day when our

work will pale before the greatness of America's champions in the 21st

century. The world's hopes rest with America's future; America's hopes rest

with us. So, let us go forward to create our world of tomorrow in faith, in

unity, and in love.

God bless you, and God bless America.

NOTE: The President spoke at 8:04 p.m. in the House Chamber of the Capitol.

He was introduced by Thomas P. O'Neill, Jr., Speaker of the House of

Representatives. The address was broadcast live on nationwide radio

and television.

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