Full Text of Clinton's Farewell Speech
Thursday, January 18, 2001

Clinton: My fellow citizens, tonight is my last opportunity to speak to you
from the Oval Office as your president.

I am profoundly grateful to you for twice giving me the honor to serve, to
work for you and with you to prepare our nation for the 21st century. And
I'm grateful to Vice President Gore, to my Cabinet secretaries, and to all
those who have served with me for the last eight years.

This has been a time of dramatic transformation, and you have risen to
every new challenge. You have made our social fabric stronger, our families
healthier and safer, our people more prosperous.

You, the American people, have made our passage into the global information
age an era of great American renewal.

In all the work I have done as president, every decision I have made, every
executive action I have taken, every bill I have proposed and signed, I've
tried to give all Americans the tools and conditions to build the future of
our dreams, in a good society, with a strong economy, a cleaner
environment, and a freer, safer, more prosperous world.

I have steered my course by our enduring values. Opportunity for all.
Responsibility from all. A community of all Americans. I have sought to
give America a new kind of government, smaller, more modern, more
effective, full of ideas and policies appropriate to this new time, always
putting people first, always focusing on the future.

Working together, America has done well. Our economy is breaking records,
with more than 22 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years,
the highest home ownership ever, the longest expansion in history.

Our families and communities are stronger. Thirty-five million Americans
have used the family leave law. Eight million have moved off welfare. Crime
is at a 25-year low. Over 10 million Americans receive more college aid,
and more people than ever are going to college. Our schools are better —
higher standards, greater accountability and larger investments have
brought higher test scores, and higher graduation rates.

More than three million children have health insurance now, and more than 7
million Americans have been lifted out of poverty. Incomes are rising
across the board. Our air and water are cleaner. Our food and drinking
water are safer. And more of our precious land has been preserved, in the
continental United States, than at any time in 100 years.

America has been a force for peace and prosperity in every corner of the
globe.

I'm very grateful to be able to turn over the reins of leadership to a new
president, with America in such a strong position to meet the challenges of
the future.

Tonight, I want to leave you with three thoughts about our future. First,
America must maintain our record of fiscal responsibility. Through our last
four budgets, we've turned record deficits to record surpluses, and we've
been able to pay down $600 billion of our national debt, on track to be
debt free by the end of the decade for the first time since 1835.

Staying on that course will bring lower interest rates, greater prosperity
and the opportunity to meet our big challenges. If we choose wisely, we can
pay down the debt, deal with the retirement of the baby boomers, invest
more in our future and provide tax relief.

Second, because the world is more connected every day in every way,
America's security and prosperity require us to continue to lead in the
world. At this remarkable moment in history, more people live in freedom
that ever before. Our alliances are stronger than ever. People all around
the world look to America to be a force for peace and prosperity, freedom
and security. The global economy is giving more of our own people, and
billions around the world, the chance to work and live and raise their
families with dignity.

But the forces of integration that have created these good opportunities
also make us more subject to global forces of destruction, to terrorism,
organized crime and narco-trafficking, the spread of deadly weapons and
disease, the degradation of the global environment.

The expansion of trade hasn't fully closed the gap between those of us who
live on the cutting edge of the global economy and the billions around the
world who live on the knife's edge of survival.

This global gap requires more than compassion. It requires action. Global
poverty is a powder keg that could be ignited by our indifference.

In his first inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson warned of entangling
alliances. But in our times, America cannot and must not disentangle itself
from the world. If we want the world to embody our shared values, then we
must assume a shared responsibility.

If the wars of the 20th century, especially the recent ones in Kosovo and
Bosnia, have taught us anything, it is that we achieve our aims by
defending our values and leading the forces of freedom and peace. We must
embrace boldly and resolutely that duty to lead, to stand with our allies
in word and deed, and to put a human face on the global economy so that
expanded trade benefits all people in all nations, lifting lives and hopes
all across the world.

Third, we must remember that America cannot lead in the world unless here
at home we weave the threads of our coat of many colors into the fabric of
one America. As we become ever more diverse, we must work harder to unite
around our common values and our common humanity.

We must work harder to overcome our differences. In our hearts and in our
laws, we must treat all our people with fairness and dignity, regardless of
their race, religion, gender or sexual orientation and regardless of when
they arrived in our country, always moving toward the more perfect union of
our founders' dreams.

Hillary, Chelsea and I join all Americans in wishing our very best to the
next president, George W. Bush, to his family and his administration in
meeting these challenges and in leading freedom's march in this new
century.

As for me, I'll leave the presidency more idealistic, more full of hope
than the day I arrived and more confident than ever that America's best
days lie ahead.

My days in this office are nearly through, but my days of service, I hope,
are not. In the years ahead, I will never hold a position higher or a
covenant more sacred than that of president of the United States. But there
is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.


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Herbert Jamieson