These investments will help keep America competitive.  And I know this about the American people:  we welcome competition.  We’ll match our ingenuity, our energy, our experience, and technology our spirit and enterprise against anyone.  But let the competition be free, but let it also be fair.  America is ready.

Since we really mean it, and since we’re serious about being ready to meet our challenge, we’re getting our own house in order.  We have made real progress.  Seven years ago, the Federal deficit was 6 percent of our gross national product, 6 percent.  In the new budget I sent up two days ago the deficit is down to 1 percent of GNP.

That budget brings Federal spending under control.  It meets the Gramm-Rudman target.  It brings the deficit down further.  And balances the budget by 1993, with no new taxes.

And let me tell you, there’s still more than enough Federal spending.  For most of us, $1.2 trillion is still a lot of money.

And once the budget is balanced, we can operate the way every family must when it has bills to pay.  We won’t leave it to our children and grandchildren.  Once it’s balanced, we will start paying off the national debt.

And there’s something more, and there’s something more we owe the generations of the future:  stewardship, the safekeeping of America’s precious environmental inheritance.

As just one sign of how serious we are, we will elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to Cabinet rank.  Not, not more bureaucracy, not more red tape, but the certainty that here at home, and especially in our dealings with other nations, environmental issues have the status they deserve.

This year’s budget provides over $2 billion in new spending to protect our environment, with over $1 billion for global change research, and a new initiative I call America the Beautiful to expand our national parks and wildlife preserves and improve recreational facilities on public lands.

And something else, something that will help keep this country clean, from our forest land to the inner cities, and keep America beautiful for generations to come, the money to plant a billion trees a year.

And tonight, and tonight let me say again to all the members of the Congress, the American people did not send us here to bicker.  There is work to do, and they sent us here to get it done.  And once again, in the spirit of cooperation I offer my hand to all of you.  And let’s work together to do the will of the people—­clean air, child care, the educational excellence act, crime and drugs.  It’s time to act.  The farm bill, transportation policy, product liability reform, enterprise zones.  It’s time to act together.

And there’s one thing I hope we can agree on.  It’s about our commitments.  And I’m talking about Social Security.

To every American out there on Social Security, to every, every American supporting that system today, and to everyone counting on it when they retire, we made a promise to you, and we are going to keep it.