Now tomorrow, like every day, 3,000 children will start smoking, and a thousand will die early as a result.  Let this Congress be remembered as the Congress that saved their lives.

In the new economy, most parents work harder than ever.  They face a constant struggle to balance their obligations to be good workers, and their even more important obligations to be good parents.

The Family and Medical Leave Act was the very first bill I was privileged to sign into law as president in 1993.  Since then, about 15 million people have taken advantage of it, and I’ve met a lot of them all across this country.  I ask you to extend the law to cover 10 million more workers, and to give parents time off when they have to go see their children’s teachers or take them to the doctor.

Child care is the next frontier we must face to enable people to succeed at home and at work.  Last year, I co-hosted the very first White House conference on child care with one of our foremost experts, America’s first lady.  From all corners of America, we heard the same message—­without regard to region or income or political affiliation—­we’ve got to raise the quality of child care, we’ve got to make it safer, we’ve got to make it more affordable.

So here’s my plan:  Help families to pay for child care for a million more children; scholarships and background checks for child-care workers, and a new emphasis on early learning; tax credits for businesses that provide child care for their employees; and a larger child-care tax credit for working families.

Now, if you pass my plan, what this means is that a family of four with an income of $35,000 and high child-care costs will no longer pay a single penny of federal income tax.

You know, I think this is such a big issue with me because of my own personal experience.  I have often wondered how my mother, when she was a young widow, would have been able to go away to school and get an education and come back and support me, if my grandparents hadn’t been able to take care of me.  She and I were really very lucky.

How many other families have never had that same opportunity?  The truth is, we don’t know the answer to that question, but we do know what the answer should be.  Not a single American family should ever have to choose between the job they need and the child they love.

A society rooted in responsibility must provide safe streets, safe schools, and safe neighborhoods.  We pursued a strategy of more police, tougher punishment, smarter prevention with crime-fighting partnerships, with local law enforcement and citizen groups, where the rubber hits the road.

I can report to you tonight that it’s working.  Violent crime is down, robbery is down, assault is down, burglary is down for five years in a row all across America.  Now, we need to finish the job of putting 100,000 more police on our streets.