For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
February 24, 2001
Radio Address by the President to the Nation
THE
PRESIDENT: Good morning. This coming week I will
be making the trip up Pennsylvania Avenue to address a joint session of
Congress. We have some business to attend to called the
budget of the United States.
The federal
budget is a document about the size of a big city phone book, and about
as hard to read from cover to cover. The blueprint I submit
this week contains many numbers, but there is one that probably counts
more than any other -- $5.6 trillion. That is the surplus
the federal government expects to collect over the next 10 years; money
left over after we have met our obligations to Social Security,
Medicare, health care, education, defense and other priorities.
The plan I
submit will fund our highest national priorities. Education gets the
biggest percentage increase of any department in our federal
government. We won't just spend more money on schools and
education, we will spend it responsibly. We'll give states
more freedom to decide what works. And as we give more to
our schools we're going to expect more in return by requiring states
and local jurisdictions to test every year. How else can we
know whether schools are teaching and children are learning?
Social
Security and Medicare will get every dollar they need to meet their
commitments. And every dollar of Social Security and
Medicare tax revenue will be reserved for Social Security and
Medicare.
My budget
blueprint will restrain spending, yet meet growing needs with a
reasonable 4 percent growth rate, which is a little more than
inflation. After paying the bills, my plan reduces the
national debt, and fast. So fast, in fact, that economists
worry that we're going to run out of debt to retire. That
would be a good worry to have.
Finally,
along with funding our priorities and paying down debt, my plan returns
about one out of every four dollars of the surplus to the American
taxpayers, who created the surplus in the first place. A
surplus in tax revenue, after all, means that taxpayers have been
overcharged. And usually when you've been overcharged, you
expect to get something back.
Tax relief
means real help for both American families and the American
economy. Everybody who pays income taxes will receive a tax
cut. Nobody will be targeted in, and nobody will be targeted
out. The typical family will get about $1,600 in tax relief,
and that's real money. And that's money that will help
American families manage their own accounts, manage your own balance
sheets.
My
address to Congress comes on Tuesday night at 9:00 o'clock Eastern
Time. I hope you'll tune in and consider what I have to
say. I hope you'll agree that my plan is good for you and
for your family. But, even more, I hope you'll agree it's
good for America.
Thank you
for listening.
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