I propose to help other communities follow Chicago’s lead.  Let’s say to them stop promoting children who don’t learn, and we will give you the tools to make sure they do.

I also ask this Congress to support our efforts to enlist colleges and universities to reach out to disadvantaged children starting in the sixth grade so that they can get the guidance and hope they need so they can know that they, too, will be able to go on to college.

As we enter the 21st century, the global economy requires us to seek opportunity not just at home, but in all the markets of the world.  We must shape this global economy, not shrink from it.

In the last five years, we have led the way in opening new markets, with 240 trade agreements that remove foreign barriers to products bearing the proud stamp, “Made in the USA.”  Today, record high exports account for fully one-third of our economic growth.  I want to keep them going, because that’s the way to keep America growing and to advance a safer, more stable world.

Now, all of you know, whatever your views are, that I think this is a great opportunity for America.  I know there is opposition to more comprehensive trade agreements.  I have listened carefully, and I believe that the opposition is rooted in two fears:  first, that our trading partners will have lower environmental and labor standards, which will give them an unfair advantage in our market and do their own people no favors, even if there’s more business; and second, that if we have more trade, more of our workers will lose their jobs and have to start over.

I think we should seek to advance worker and environmental standards around the world.  It should—­I have made it abundantly clear that it should be a part of our trade agenda, but we cannot influence other countries’ decisions if we send them a message that we’re backing away from trade with them.

This year I will send legislation to Congress, and ask other nations to join us, to fight the most intolerable labor practice of all-abusive child labor.

We should also offer help and hope to those Americans temporarily left behind with the global marketplace or by the march of technology, which may have nothing to do with trade.  That’s why we have more than doubled funding for training dislocated workers since 1993.  And if my new budget is adopted, we will triple funding.  That’s why we must do more, and more quickly, to help workers who lose their jobs for whatever reason.

You know, we help communities in a special way when their military base closes.  We ought to help them in the same way if their factory closes.  Again, I ask the Congress to continue its bipartisan work to consolidate the tangle of training programs we have today into one single GI Bill for Workers, a simple skills grant so people can, on their own, move quickly to new jobs, to higher incomes and brighter futures.