Step Eight:  Congress should enact the bold reform proposals that are still awaiting congressional action:  bank reform, civil justice reform, tort reform, and my national energy strategy.

And finally, we must strengthen the family, because it is the family that has the greatest bearing on our future.  When Barbara holds an aids baby in her arms and reads to children, she’s saying to every person in this country, “Family Matters”.

And I am announcing tonight a new commission on America’s urban families.  I’ve asked Missouri’s governor, John Ashcroft, to be chairman, former Dallas Mayor Annetter Strauss to be co-chair.  You know, I had Mayors, the leading mayors from the League of Cities, in the other day at the White House, and they told me something striking.  They said that every one of them, Republican and Democrat, agreed on one thing:  That the major cause of the problems of the cities is the dissolution of the family.  And they asked for this commission, and they were right to ask, because it’s time to determine what we can do to keep families together, strong and sound.

There’s one thing we can do right away:  Ease the burden of rearing a child.  I ask you tonight to raise the personal exemption by $500 per child for every family.  For a family with four kids, that’s an increase of $2000.  This is a good start in the right direction, and it’s what we can afford.  It’s time to allow families to deduct the interest they pay on student loans.  And I’m asking you to do just that.  And I’m asking you to allow people to use money from their IRAs to pay medical and educational expenses, all without penalties.  And I’m asking for more.  Ask American parents what they dislike about how things are going in our country, and chances are good that pretty soon they’ll get to welfare.

Americans are the most generous people on Earth.  But we have to go back to the insight of Franklin Roosevelt who, when he spoke of what became the welfare program, want that it must not become a narcotic and a subtle destroyer of the spirit.  Welfare was never meant to be a life style.  It was never meant to be a habit.  It was never supposed to be passed on from generation to generation like a legacy.  It’s time to replace the assumptions of the welfare state and help reform the welfare system.

States throughout the country are beginning to operate with new assumptions:  that when able-bodied people receive government assistance they have responsibilities to the taxpayer.  A responsibility to seek work, education, or job training.  A responsibility to get their lives in order.  A responsibility to hold their families together and refrain from having children out of wedlock.  And a responsibility to obey the law.  We are going to help this movement.  Often, state reform requires waiving certain federal regulations.  I will act to make that process easier and quicker for every state that asks our help.  And I want to add, as we make these changes, we work together to improve this system, that our intention is not scapegoating and finger-pointing.  If you read the papers or watch TV you know there’s been a rise these days in a certain kind of ugliness:  racist comments, anti-Semitism, an increased sense of division.  Really, this is not us.  This is not who we are.  And this is not acceptable.