“This speech was my eleventh State of the State. Its principal emphases were similar to those that characterized President Clinton’s first presentations to the country a month later. I called for massive investments in New York’s infrastructure, high-tech centers, health system and education. Further governmental reform was on my agenda, as it has been each year of my administration. Our legislature, like Congress, makes changes slowly.
There was one major difference between my approach and the president’s. He asked for tax increases at the federal level to help reduce the huge projected deficit. I continued to hold the line on our major tax rates, having already reduced them substantially during my governorship. The truth is that our state taxes had been increased so dramatically during the so-called Rockefeller years from the late fifties to the early seventies that we have had to struggle to reduce them since then because of their adverse effect on our competitiveness with other states. Federal tax rates, on the other hand, were slashed dramatically during the Reagan years, helping to create a staggering national debt.
The reference to the NewYork Proposition near the end of the speech was the second such formulation of our state’s underlying values, and would follow by several more in later addresses.”
- Mario M. Cuomo, More than Words The Speeches of Mario Cuomo, 1993
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Announcer: Next from Albany, New York, it's the state of the state address delivered by Governor Mario Cuomo. Governor Cuomo, a Democrat, was first elected in 1982 and was reelected in 1986 and 1990. His current term will expire in January 1995. Governor Cuomo gained national attention when he delivered the keynote address at the 1984 Democratic convention. He's also noted for the speech he gave at the University of Notre Dame on church state relations. Governor Cuomo is also the author of several books. Here now is the New York State of the State Address by Governor Mario Cuomo.
Governor Mario Cuomo: Thank you very much. First, my congratulations to all the members of the legislature who have won the opportunity to serve again. And a special welcome to those of you who join us for the first time. I'd like to acknowledge the presence gratefully of the distinguished chief judge of the Court of Appeals, Richard Simons, and the associate judges of the Court of Appeals. Thank you very much for being with us. I know that somewhere out there we are graced by the presence of one of the greatest governors this state ever saw. Hugh Carey. And I'm pleased to have him with us.
And I welcome my other distinguished colleagues in government who are here on the dais with me. Before anything else, I'm sure that I speak for all New Yorkers when I express to President George Bush and his family, our respect and our gratitude for his service as our president. And when I wish him and Barbara Bush a long and happy life together. At the same time, we extend our congratulations, our pledge of support and our prayers for success as he assumes leadership of the nation, to President elect Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton.
We all know that the national recession has battered this state and the rest of the nation for some years now. For the first time in their lifetime, some of our people in New York are not able to earn a living. Denied the one staple that has always before nourished the American dream, a job. As a result, the people are hurt. They are concerned. They are angry. And everywhere in the nation, we hear their unconditional demands of those of us in public office to change our ways, to control taxes, to produce more jobs, to find less expensive ways to produce better health care. And they demand that we make the government more accessible and more accountable. I think we have a head start in New York. We have disciplined our finances in recent years. We are putting an end to the 34 year old practice of spring borrowing. We have improved our overall efficiency. We have controlled spending instead of raising our tax rates to balance our budgets when times got tough in recent years, as some other states did. We found ways to cut seven billion dollars in anticipated spending over the last two years alone. And as a result, spending from taxes has grown less here than the national average since 1983. While leaving our basic institutions in this state stronger than those in most other states in the country.
And there's more that we will do and can do immediately this session. Debt reform, for example, Comptroller Regan and I have agreed on a plan to give the people more say on how much debt we create and to stop backdoor financing all together. And I'm sure that before the end of the session, you'll agree and that will be a giant step forward. But we have to do still more. We have a new administration in Washington and the worst of the recession appears to be behind us. But you know and I know that national economic growth will be slow. Your fiscal staffs have already agreed with us that our still lagging revenues will fall very far short of the current statutory spending commitments. And as a result, in order to avoid huge tax increases that could slow our recovery, we will once again have to make dramatic cuts in statutory spending. It will be difficult because our previous cuts, as you know, have brought us so much closer to muscle and bone.
But the truth is, there is no real alternative. If we are not only to balance the budget, which we must by law, but also to help reignite the engine of our economy, and that must be our goal. You and I must help create a new prosperity for New York. Building on good jobs for New Yorkers. That's how we became the Empire State. And it is how we will reach those heights again. Private sector jobs, putting people to work, a new prosperity. That must be our goal. Now, we are vitally aware that over the last few years, we've lost hundreds of thousands of jobs, many of them, incidentally, lost to America altogether by our faltering national competitiveness. The IBM jobs did not go next door. They're gone, as are the General Motors jobs and some of the others, lost to our faltering competitiveness. We know that, but we must be just as aware that we are we are blessed here in New York State with all the advantages that a state needs to create extraordinary new economic growth and strength in the global marketplace. Consider it just for a moment. This state is in the center of the richest market in the hemisphere. Put a dot in the middle of New York State make a circle of 750 miles radius: Canada, North America, New York State, the richest market in the hemisphere. And we are tied to the emerging, powerful European market by proximity, by history and by mutuality. Our trade relationships with Japan and the rest of Asia are growing, faster than other states. We already have the most extensive infrastructure in the country. We already have a powerful network of high technology centers. There's no network like it anywhere else in the country. We have America's strongest system of higher education, private and public together. And the most productive workforce in the United States of America. We have ample energy sources and a history of providing opportunity to generation after generation.
Now to build on this strength. And to stimulate the economy, we need to generate good, solid jobs, not make work jobs, jobs that will enhance our economic strength, create economic assets, spinning off still more permanent jobs in the future. And we need to do it right now, particularly in the (applause). We've grown unaccustomed to the sound of applause in recent years, so feel free. We need to do it particularly. We need to do it particularly in the construction industry, because in the construction industry, in this state and some of the trades, you have 60 and 70 percent unemployment. Now, in my time as governor, we have committed massively to the rebuilding of this state. Now we must do more and we will with one of the largest and most productive building programs in the history of this state or any other. I propose that over the next five years, we invest over 25 billion dollars in projects to match the needs and opportunities of every region in this state, creating more than three hundred thousand jobs in the construction phase. Three hundred thousand people earning their own living, instead of being on welfare or unemployment, earning their own dignity, winning back their confidence. Three hundred thousand jobs. Creating permanent strength that produces even more jobs in the years to come. Now, there are not enough hours available to us today to list for you, every one of the specific projects that this will entail. They are, of course, all available to you. But they stretch from one end of the state to the other. They include railways. They include roads and bridges. They include construction for the state university. For the city university. They include court facilities work. They include construction for school houses, construction for airports, for libraries, for hospitals. All of it valuable. All of it unarguably worthwhile.
Another of the state's greatest strengths, which I think, frankly, has not received the attention it deserves, is our growing mastery in high technology. Other states have talked about this, perhaps more than we have. I doubt that there's another state that can match the complex we have. And we are leaders in this field, once again, not followers. No one knows better than you that at the turn of the century, General Electric created the nation's first industrial research laboratory in the country. They did it here in Schenectady. And since then, New York has produced nearly a thousand industrial research and development facilities. And this year, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Centers of Advanced Technology Program. You know what that is, University based all over the state. The first in the nation to use state funds for private research and development in fields like biotechnology, advanced materials, ceramics, robotics, optics. That's the future, a language some of us don't even understand. That is the future. And we have leadership there. Creating out of high technology, new ideas, new companies, new jobs, new opportunities. And we're going to celebrate this year, our 10th anniversary, with a 10 point plan that will be the cornerstone of an even more dynamic new emphasis on technology. Our plan includes an ambitious collaboration between the public and private sectors, to bring government on line. What does it mean? It means a network to link every branch and level of government. For those of us who still struggle with the notion of why when you depressed the key on the old typewriter, an arm comes up and then leaves an impression, this is mind boggling stuff, but it is the future. This network will make it possible for a doctor in Watertown to evaluate an X-ray with a specialist in Buffalo at the same time and without either of them leaving the office. It will give a student in Elmira instant access to the same research material and at the same time as the student in Scarsdale. And it will make it as easy and automatic as it should be for New Yorkers to find and use the services and information that they need from government to get a permit, to get a certificate, to get a license. Moving us, in a real way, closer to the time when our people will no longer feel that state government means waiting on line.
Emerging technologies, they also offer an answer to our current energy and environmental challenges. From complying with the Clean Air Act. Many, many formidable challenges there, to reducing our dependance on fossil fuels. This year, we will combine all the tremendous expertize and intelligence of our high tech sectors, private, scientific, academic, to help identify the most promising of these technologies and then unite them and create out of them practical products and productive jobs. Now these, as you'll see when you get into the material in the book,these are only small pieces of the broad, exciting high tech program that I propose. I urge you to study it. All of it is in the book. Now, the future is high tech, I remind you, and we will be in the forefront thanks to the programs we have already established and the things we propose to do this year.
In recent years, barely noticed by the general public, we have begun to tap another rich new vein of opportunity. Our exports to countries like Japan, Italy, Canada and Argentina and investments by those countries here have grown dramatically. I've said publicly a number of times our exports are growing now faster than any state in the Union. And investments from places like Japan in our state are growing faster than anywhere in the Union. Our global New York initiative, only two years old under Vincent Tese, has helped more than 3500 businesses break into or expand sales to international markets. And we already surpass every other state in foreign investment in critical areas like banking and finance and retail. I propose that during the next three years we help thousands of more companies increase their export sales by at least a half billion dollars. I would just think about this for a moment. These are not. Thank you. Thank you very much. You know what you do, it's easier if you save it all for the end. But the truth is, we haven't thought a lot about these subjects. Let's be candid. A lot of you have been around 20 years, 15 years, 10 years. These are not subjects you heard a lot of discussion about the global New York programs, only two years old. The high tech is a language we don't speak easily. Some of us were not educated to it, lLet's be candid. Tourism is not something we spend a lot of time on. But all those three locked together guarantee you a golden future if we do it right. What else would you need? What else would you need than high tech, the ability to sell to foreign countries that are so close to you. Incidentally, most of our exports now, growing as they are, are done by a handful of companies, maybe 50 companies do 80 percent of the exports. When you get to the hundreds, the thousands of other companies that can be involved with a little prodding, a little encouragement, the future is virtually unlimited.
And I've made a mistake in my early years as governor, one of a number, I'm afraid. I didn't travel enough. The business leaders encouraged me to and I didn't listen. I'm going to correct that mistake. Our missions in Israel and Italy this year and to Japan the year before were even more productive than I had hoped, frankly. And so this year I plan to go again to Asia and to Europe and also make a trip to Mexico, incidentally, with no expense to the taxpayers of the state.
To name the most vigorous and delightful possibilities of the economy, we need to include perhaps more than any other subject, a subject that now is troubling the entire United States of America. You cannot compete. You cannot be strong economically as a nation, let alone as a state, unless we have a healthy, productive workforce. And today, companies all across the state are struggling to avoid layoffs and workers are praying that they keep their jobs because recent health care simply costs too much. Health care was a tremendous issue all of last year during the national elections. It has been a tremendous issue for us for years. If you allow health care costs to grow at the current rate, they will bankrupt the nation. Period. There is no hyperbole there. There is no exaggeration there. We are doing better in this state than most states in controlling health care costs. But still, at the current rate of growth, we can not make it. Something must be done internationally. One of the most serious threats to the competitiveness of this country is the skyrocketing cost of health care. Thanks to Governor Carey and David Axelrod, I wish to repeat, we're doing better than most states, but not well enough to feel secure. This subject is so complicated. This subject is so significant that I think it deserves a special treatment by you and by me. And for that reason, I will be delivering to you a special message on the subject of health care in a few weeks.
The the health care issue, the question of technology. The question of tourism, all of these things together deal basically with this subject of opportunity and the subject of opportunity through the development of jobs. We must also make sure that if we are to make jobs available, they be made available to people here in New York State. And that means that we have to have a workforce that is trained, skilled, educated to replenish those who must be replaced. In addition to top quality higher education, we must see to it that our elementary and secondary schools give our children the best start possible. At the moment, we have some of the finest public schools in the United States of America. I note with pride that the United States Department of Education recently declared Voorheesville Elementary a blue ribbon school. That means, that means that Voorheesville has now received an honor at the elementary level that it had already received at the middle school and high school levels. So Voorheesville has three blue ribbon schools and I think we ought to congratulate them. We're all proud of their achievement.
We win forty-six percent of the Westinghouse scholarships every year, did you know that? Forty six percent of the National WestinghouseScholarships, we win mostly from three high schools. We are leaders in the National Merit commendations every year. We have two school systems, one of the best in the United States and therefore presumably in the world. And one of the worst, because at the same time that you have all of that excellence, you have hovels that we call schoolhouses. You have schools in desperate need of assistance. And you have schools where students graduate, illiterate, if they haven't dropped out already. And all of this while some other schools, let's be candid, squander their money outrageously with salaries as high as two hundred thousand dollars a year for a superintendent and annual pensions even higher. In one well publicized disgrace recently, there was a nine hundred and sixty thousand dollar going away kiss to a superintendent who was retiring. Think about it. Nearly a million dollars after a two hundred thousand dollar salary and a three hundred thousand dollar pension, for a superintendent of a BOCES. Think about it. This was in the same year that we told other school districts all over this state that we did not have the money to afford fairness. This is a travesty and we all know it.
I hesitate to bring back the past in this new era, which is going to be one of pure conciliation and constructive mutual effort, I absolutely assure you. But the truth is that last year, before the revelation, I asked for two hundred thousand dollars to audit those BOCES. And I was told by the legislature it wasn't necessary. And so this year, I'm going to do it differently. I am going to use all the executive powers I have to conduct my own salary investigation. I will report to the people of this state every single substantial public salary affecting taxpayers in the state, including every salary in the entire education system. I've begun that work and as soon as I get the material, I will share it.
Then, then instead of settling for episodic explosions of indignation, which we're all very good at, you, and I can come together and cure some of this outrageous fairness, and I'm absolutely certain you want to do it at least as much as I do. Nowhere. Nowhere do we need, nowhere do we need change more than we need it in the education system. The educational system, remember, the public and elementary schools are about 30 percent of our budget. People say cut the budget, cut the budget. There are two things you'd have to cut to cut the budget and you know it. One is education and the other is Medicaid and health care. And between those two, you're talking about 60 or 70 percent of your budget. And that's the end of the game. Let's be honest, because 13 or 14 percent, you can't do anything about. Its interest that you have to pay. And now you're down to state police and a few other things that you can't cut enough to make a difference. So that when you talk about let's cut, you're talking about education and you're talking about sick people in beds, some of them so poor that if you take the bed away from them with your public assistance, they have no bed. And so we need to change. Yes, we need to deal with Medicaid and we're doing that. Yes, we need to deal with health care. That will be a whole new message for you. But you can't exempt education. We're afraid of education. Politically, it's too tough for us. Our education isn't good enough for the money we're giving them. And we have to get our money's worth. And we're not fair in the way we dole out that money. And so we have to address this with more vigor than ever, ever before. We have to, first of all, look at the school aid formula. To the extent that you can understand the school aid formula, it's an atrocity. If you can understand it, you know, it's palpably unfair and it is unfair. It is unfair to the middle class and to the poor. That's who it's unfair to.
Now, you say, I'll tell you what I have discovered, I have discovered that this is easier to do than to write a bill. I really, you know, this you can do. We can all do, that's easy. Monkeys do that. What we need to do is write a bill this year to change the formula and to do that. And that's that includes me. I'm going to give you one. I'm going to give you a bill to change the education aid formula once and for all. We must pursue vigorously all the recommendations, all the recommendations that Tom Sobol gave us, all the recommendations in the new Compact for Learning. That's like allowing individual schools to make more of their own decisions, get the principal and get the teachers in at the school level. Let them make decisions. To get parents more involved. We should expand choice. The chancellor of the New York City system says there should be choice. all through the public school system. I agree. In the public schools system, parents should give be given as much opportunity as possible to pick the school that they think is best for their child and be assisted with transportation to the extent that we can do them. I do not agree with choice that would take children out of the public school and pay for they're going to St. Monica's or to some private school that is nonreligious. I do not approve of that. I believe that would be the end of our public school system. But I believe in choice in the public school system.
We have to help young people prepare for this new tough marketplace through new apprenticeships and the Career Pathways initiative that you're going to find. I think a very, very exciting and very interesting and innovative approach to apprenticeships for young people who want to work, who have the ability to work and the willingness to work, but who are not inclined to go on to an academic future in higher education. Career Pathways is what it's called and the Lieutenant Governor Stan Lundine is heading up that effort. And I know he will be working closely with you.
There's another way that we can help unlock opportunity in New York, and that is by increasing our assistance to local governments and reducing the burdens we put on them. I talked to a couple of you earlier this morning just before I came down, as a matter of fact, on this issue. I think it needs some special attention because I think we have some misunderstanding here. When I took office in 1983, the highest rate in income tax was 14 percent. And when Governor Carey took office, it was much higher than that. But when I took office, it was 14 percent. Today, it is less than eight percent. When I took office as governor, the sales tax rate, state tax was four percent. It is today four percent.
When sales taxes go up, they go up because locals increase the sales tax. But the state taxes, when I became governor made us 14th in the United States in terms of our impact on people's wealth. 14th in the United States, that was kind of high. Now we are 24th in the United States because others have been raising their taxes, while all of your Republicans and all of your Democrats have been pushing for tax cuts and you've gotten them. And so the state is now 24th in the United States. That's a good direction, I think. I do not intend to reverse it. I will not raise or propose a raise in the rates of any of our broad based taxes, no matter what.
But despite this, local taxes have continued to increase, damaging tax payers and damaging our chances to do business. And they have continued to grow, you should recall, despite the fact that over the last 10 years we've increased the portion of the state budget that we give to the locals from 60 percent on January one, 1983, to sixty-eight percent at the moment. And also in that period, we have picked up 80 percent of the long term Medicaid care cost at the local level, which altogether is six billion dollars that we picked up for the locals. Now, that's six billion dollars you could have been spending that we didn't. We gave up all those political options, all that chance for adulation and for the gratitude of our constituencies. We gave it up by simply picking up 80 percent of the long term care costs, over six billion dollars. Our budget goes from 60 to 68 percent for local assistance. And that means the share that you spent on your Department of Insurance, Department of Banking, your state police, all of that was diminished.
Now, from the twenty-five percent it was to probably at this point under 20 percent, you are spending less on your own needs more on the local leads dramatically. You've kept your taxes down, but the local taxes have gone up. That is the reality of the situation. And whatever local people do to you politically, understand at least that your case is a very good one. You have, unlike the federal government, which denied the state and local governments more and more assistance while they cut taxes. See, the federal taxes were cut by the federal government and senators and congressmen and presidents said, see, we reduced your income taxes. They did indeed. But in the process, they slid the whole burden onto our shoulders because they were giving us less and less money. We were giving more to the locals at the state level. The federal government was giving us less as a percentage of what they used to give us.
If you look at New York City, for example, if New York City were now getting the percentage of the budget from the federal government it got 10 years ago, they would have a two billion dollar surplus in New York City. We would be asking them for money. Now, that is the background. That is the background. What do we need to do now? Well, not just engage in the polemic. It is frankly irritating to be blamed for taxes that we didn't raise. But but put that aside for the moment. What we should do is try to help them even more than we have in the past. We can, there are opportunities we haven't used yet. The Medicaid takeover. You must pass the Medicaid takeover. We did it our way. We would pick up the rest of their Medicaid burden. At least one point six billion dollars worth of it. Wrap up insurance. We must offer relief from scores of other laws that require localities to spend money. Call them mandates. And we must offer that release, relief, this year by passing the proposals I have in the book. And if you past those proposals, together, they will save local governments, local school districts, not millions, but billions of dollars over the next several years. And you say, well, how are you going to do that and not raise your own taxes? We did it. That's what you have done since 1983.
You picked up much more than six billion dollars in their costs and cut your taxes. Now, you should be getting credit for one of the extraordinary accomplishments instead of pedaling backward trying to explain why the local taxes are so high. But again, that having been said, let's try harder to help the local governments despite whatever else they are or not doing for themselves. Let's do my mandate relief package. Let's do the Medicaid pick up. If you have a better way to do it, we'll certainly look at it.
Here's another good idea, I think, for local governments. The property tax is perhaps the least intelligent of all of our taxes. Why? Because it has lost its relationship to wealth. It really has. And everybody agrees that it is the most onerous of our taxes. It is a tax that often imposes an unfair burden on those who can least afford to pay it. No tax is pleasant. But there is another way to pay for schools. Why not consider allowing school districts to change from real estate taxes to local income taxes for the portion at least that's on residences now? If the locals want it, if the locals are willing to do it, why shouldn't we at the state level empower them to do it? They may find when they look at it, that instead of some elderly woman living in a house all by herself, where the assessment theoretically going up every year because the value goes up every year, she doesn't plan to move. She couldn't buy another house with the money. Instead of her having to pay more and more for the school children, why not an income tax that at least is more progressive, at least has a closer relationship to what you're able to pay? I'm not recommending that you vote it on them because then you'd have to take all the responsibility. And frankly, we're not getting the fairness I think we're entitled to already. So I wouldn't suggest that to you. But I would suggest we empower them to do it. We let them consider an income tax for a real estate tax substitute.
Mandates, unfunded mandates. I said it before, I'll say it for a second time if I didn't say it before, and now I'm going to say it for the first time. I have a pledge to make this year. No more unfunded mandates. We will not put unfunded mandates in the budget. I'm asking you, I'm asking you to join in the pledge, I'm asking you to join in the pledge. They got cameras on you, those of you who didn't applaud. But I'm asking you to join me in the pledge no more. Here's another one. Entitlements. That's our fastest growing part of the budget. Right? Medicaid, tuition assistance programs. No, these are these are public assistance. These are entitlement programs. I make a pledge. Please join me. No new entitlements this year. No expansion of the entitlements this year we can't afford it. OK. All of those who join in that pledge, please applaud.
We have another responsibility, and that is producing jobs for people who will not be part of the new prosperity of the state. We have to help them too, those who do not share in our good fortune. But it will impair our effort to assist these people. If the programs don't run efficiently or if they tend to encourage a cycle of dependency, you're not helping people if what you encourage them to do is to stay on public assistance instead of working. We all know that. Or if the program is unfair to taxpayers, because if it's unfair to taxpayers, eventually a resentment builds up and it gets harder to do the assistance program. We are national leaders in New York in welfare reform. We have been for a long time. Recently, our child assistance program CAP, so called, which helps make sure that child support is paid. Now, there's a non-custodial parent has an obligation to support. Well, this program makes sure that we get that money and it also allows the spouse at home, the parent at home, usually a woman allows her a chance to get a job. It is the only program of its kind in the United States of America. It was recently recognized as such by the Ford Foundation. It won the Innovations in Government Award. I think it was a one hundred thousand dollar award, incidentally. And I congratulate all the people at the state level and all the people at the local levels who participated in the CAP program for showing us that it can be done.
And that program, that program and another program called Working toward Independence, which also gives people on assistance a chance to work. For example, now we're making the Port Authority available to them. If you get welfare and you haven't been able to find a job in the public sector, but you understand that, you know, working is a good thing, you're allowed to work off your grant. You're asked to. That's been our law for a long time. What's happened up until now is that well there are not opportunities to do it now, we're proliferating those opportunities by making available things like the state facilities, the Port Authority. And it's working very well. Because these two programs are working well, to give people the chance to work, we are expanding them. The CAP program and the Working toward Independence Program.
Despite all of this, it appears, frankly, we're not making a lot of success. We're not having a lot of success. Nor making a lot of progress in the areas of greatest need. Usually these areas are kind of concentrated areas, very dense areas. They call them ghettos. But these particularly impaired neighborhoods, there are concentrations all over the state, we don't seem to be making the progress we should in them, despite the fact that we've tried very hard. I think one of the reasons is that these people in those communities are caught up, tangled in a complex web of all kinds of problems, social, economic, medical. And many of our programs are offered with a full heart by us, but they only go at a strand of that web at a time. And I think what we need to do, now, as part of the decade of the child is try a different approach.
I propose an initiative called Neighborhood Based Alliance that will help us make a difference by focusing our resources on target neighborhoods in places like central Islip, in places like Bed Stuy, in Newburgh, in Washington Heights, in Port Henry. And in each of these neighborhoods, we will combine the power of a number of our best programs, including Economic Development Zone. It's a zone, put the Gateway initiative in it, put community policing in it, put community schools in it, right in the same concentrated area.
The result, I believe, can be a neighborhood in which a little girl, child, can get a measles vaccine in the same building where she goes to school. And at night, her father or mother can get literacy instruction after their completed work. A building in which her mother could get a low interest loan to open a shop in the community and feel safe walking home because the police on the beat know her name. That's the kind of community it could be. If you brought all of these programs together and look around, you will find that there is heavy concentration. I suspect that that density is one of the reasons that the problems are so great. You take people who have trouble and you pile them on top of one another in relatively small areas and they become too much for the police, too much for the hospitals, too much for the schools, because there are just too many difficult situations in one area. We have to focus and this new approach is a way to do it. I think it's a good idea and I hope you will join me in trying it.
The recent, the recent election produced an unprecedented expression of disapproval, not only of prevailing economic conditions, that was most obvious, but let's face it, disapproval as well of the way that elected government conducts its business. None of us is happy about this. Those of us who have given our life to the business, and who are very proud of what we do, uut the truth is, the people disapprove of the way we are handling our mission. The people of this state, despite that, have not been benefited by substantial reforms in recent years. We have refused to make them, over and over, saying, in effect, we think the system is good enough the way it is. I don't think the people agree with us. Let me, let me ask you a question, all of you, not just the legislators in the room now. However you personally feel about this subject, I would like to ask you, on term limitations, whether you believe that there are many people in this state who would like a chance to vote on the question of term limitations, what do you think? Do you think that there are people who would like to do that? Do you think, do you think that there are a lot of people, I didn't ask your legislators or governors. Do you think that there are a lot of people out there like some of the people in here, who would like the chance to be heard on this subject, why shouldn't there be tighter limits on the amount of money that lobbyists and special interests can give to the governor and legislators to win their favor? You think people would like to get a chance to speak on that subject? You see something very interesting is happening here, and if you develop it a little bit it gets very apparent. Let me ask you another question. However you feel about the subject of the death penalty, I think it is debasing, degrading, however you feel about it. And you know how I feel about it. Do you believe that there are people in our state who want the chance to vote on the death penalty or life imprisonment without parole? Do you think so? Now you know what's happened. The people applauded and the government didn't. And we're here for them.
And I'm asking the government again this question, what are we afraid of? Why don't we vote for a constitutional convention? Why don't we give the people the chance to express themselves on each of these issues? What are you afraid of, other than the people's decision? Well, it really is very interesting, you should see it from here. It really is interesting from here. Well, here's what I think. I think you should vote for it. I have been saying this, incidentally, since 1977. In 1977, I ran for mayor. It was on the ballot. Nobody paid attention to it. They're going to pay attention next time. Next time is 1997. And whether we vote for it or not, before 1997, some of us are going to spend a lot of time and I'll be one of them going to the people with a package of important electoral reforms, some of which would be the subject of a constitutional convention, some of which would not. And I will try to explain to the public as well as I can, that in 1997, whether we want them to or not, they will have a chance to go in and vote for a constitutional convention. And I'm going to try to show them why they should, why they shouldn't be afraid to take this government back. It was written, this constitution, by them not by us. It wasn't written by elite delegates. It was written by the people. And they put right in it, "we know what we're doing, and every once in a while, we should do it again." And I think the time is here because frankly, you know it, I know it, this system is not working as well as it should. It's time for the people to be heard. And I'll continue to deliver that message.
Putting putting New Yorkers to work. Creating a new prosperity. Reinventing and reforming the government. All of that together seems a healthy agenda for us this year. I hope you will agree when you get a chance to study it in the book. We worked very hard on this year's message, perhaps harder than on any message that we have had the privilege of presenting to you. I think there are a lot of good ideas in it. But I think to understand the full scope of the challenge we face this year, we have to keep in mind that there's something more at work in New York and America, something more profound than people's concern for a feeble economy. And they are worried about that, something even more profound than their resentment over our imperfections and we do our best. There's something deeper that's troubling them. Many New Yorkers and many Americans are asking questions like what has happened to the families? What's produced this grotesque violence? The drugs, the loss of respect? What happened to discipline? What happened to the sense of obligation? A lot of us are old enough to remember when we took all those things for granted. And frankly, we've grown up in an era where we were kind of jolted by the departure from these assumptions. Where did people get the idea that they could choose not to work and still share in the fruits of our labor? Why are we fighting one another in the streets of our cities? People everywhere are asking what has happened to the American proposition? The values that we held at our best that allowed us, despite our differences, despite our tensions, to go forward together. Now, this question of traditional values, as was raised in the presidential election, but was eclipsed by other issues before it was over, and I think that's too bad because it really is a fundamental issue and a significant one. And so we must do more this year than make a budget that balances. By the contents of the budget and by the content of the other bills that we pass, we must make clear to the whole world what defines us as a people. What do we believe? What basic values? What ideas tie us together, loosely enough so that each of us is allowed a full measure of individual freedom, but firmly enough to make us one united, powerful people. Do we have values like that or is that some kind of teacher's fable? Well, I think we do have those values and I think we can put them together.
And this is the place to do it here in New York, because this is where much of America was born. And this is the time to do it, as you have a brand new president about to lead the country into a whole new era. Now, of course, making sense of this democracy is not easy, it's easy to make a speech about it, but trying to describe the essence of this extraordinary democracy, it requires an improbable level of agreement in a very diverse and stratified society. But it has worked here in America and especially in New York, because of a handful of crucial ideas that bind us all together. Ideas that unite the elderly white couple retired in Plattsburgh with a black or Latino children of Syracuse or Buffalo or the Bronx. Principles that linked the Adirondack logger with the New York City conservationist. Values that join the struggling young entrepreneur in Rochester or somewhere else with the unskilled worker desperate for a little training in Freeport.
What we need now, I think, is to rearticulate those values, to recommit ourselves to them and then to put them to work in our everyday business of governing and living. That's what my message seeks to do. If you look at it closely, you will see that all of these ideas, all of these programs are twenty five billion dollars. The high technology, the Working Toward Independence, all of them, all of the criminal justice are offered to you in the context of specific values and principles. They all deal with those. And the composite of them is the re articulation of this New York proposition. I summarize them for you in just four words. And that's the way the book is written, in terms of those four words. These are the basic ideas that I think make up the New York proposition. The first: opportunity,that's the heart of what we've spoken about here today. For ten generations people came here for opportunity. They came here to work. Historically, the principal source of this nation's and this state's power has been an economy that allows people to achieve security and comfort, perhaps even affluence, by putting themselves to work productively. That's the first thing we must do. Jobs, opportunity. The word work for us in New York is like a talisman. It's the magic path to the American dream. The second word, liberty. It means many things, it means the right to pray to any god or to no god. It means the idea that a person should not be denied opportunity because of gender or color or creed or nationality, Should not be denied because of so-called disability or age. A person should not be denied because of sexual orientation. Liberty, liberty says, lberty says that a person should not be denied either because of a quota that in the name of justice, does injustice. We don't believe in quotas eithe in New York State. We believe in this state that liberty also means a woman's right to choose.
But liberty is more than that, liberty is also the freedom to feel safe in one's own neighborhood or any other place protected by the power of government. That's part of liberty. And in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the law may not be able to make us love one another, but it should be strong enough to keep us from lynching one another. What that means is that while we well well, that means very practical is that while we continue to attempt to conciliate contending groups in places like Crown Heights and Bensonhurst or wherever this situation arises, we must also provide all the legal resources, all the procedures needed to keep the peace, including things like a bias related violence, to make sure that government keeps people from hurting one another. There are a lot of ideas in the book on how to deal with the Crown Heights situation. It goes way beyond the few sparse words I've used here, but it is very much a function of liberty.
Here's another important word for us that we grew up with, especially in this state and as part of the New York proposition, responsibility. It means our basic duty to comply with the law. It means the obligation to work, if you can. It means the understanding that if you bring a child into the world, you should care for it and you should care for the parents who brought you into the world. Responsibility. Responsibility is also a government's obligation, while living within its means, to fulfill its duty to help those who have no one else to care for them. And because the Earth is ours to use, but not to waste, responsibility means preserving the planet for generations still to come.
The last word is the most familiar. The last word is the most familiar, but maybe the most intelligent and useful of all. And it is the word family. And it describes the simplest, most logical, I believe, most intelligent rationale for coming together in this disparate society. The needs, you have to come together in this complicated kind of society. The need to share benefits. The need to share burdens for the good of all, reasonably, honestly, fairly. Out of compassion. Yes. That's beautiful. Out of compassion. Yes. But out of much more than compassion. Not just compassion, out of enlightened self-interest. Because we cannot make it as a people, if we lose a generation of our children to drugs or AIDS or inadequate education, or if we are locked in combat with one another in our own streets. There is no way we can have a new prosperity unless we think of ourselves as equals, at least. We can not make it without understanding and believing in the idea of family, because business cannot survive without labor. Because the poet was right, No man is an island. No woman either. No nation and no state. You can not make it in a society like this one unless you accept the notion that we are part of a whole. Opportunity. Liberty. Responsibility, Family. The New York proposition. I believe that is what we are at our best. And I believe that is what America is at its best. Opportunity. Liberty. Responsibility. Family. You and I.
You, the legislature, and I think this is an extraordinarily competent legislature. People don't always understand how hard it is to do what we do. But we should remind some of the people who are not part of the legislature or the executive, that something like a thousand times a year we agree on bills. The Republicans in the Senate, the Democrats in the Assembly, the governor, we agree on things that are very important. In this last year, we had a very good year indeed. We put together a budget virtually on time. It was balanced and we did ourselves a lot of good. And that's important because you and I are charged with the duty to get this state as close to the best as we can.
And of course, we have problems, serious ones, but I don't think that we can claim they're unsolvable. I think you can't blame them on God for not giving us the resources. We can't blame them on our forebears. If we fail to deal with these problems, we can't charge that up to our forebears and say that they denied us resources. And we can't blame it on the people or say they're not willing to do the right thing. I'm afraid that if we do not succeed, we'll have to blame it on ourselves. I don't want to see that happen. I have given you a lot of solid proposals, I believe. I don't expect you to accept them and adopt them without change. You'll make them better. You always do come up with ideas that hadn't occurred to us. There are more of you. Many of you are brighter than we are. And so we look forward to your ideas. But I think that together, working cooperatively, we can give the people of this state, not the gridlock that they so disdain because they don't want to hear that from us, that we weren't able to get together. Believe me, I know what they're saying. They don't want gridlock. They want cooperation. They want us to be intelligently constructive and we can do it. And if we do it, we will give this state the new prosperity it deserves. I promise you, every ounce of strength I have, working with you every way I can to make it happen. Thank you very much for your patience.
Let's have a good year. Thank you.
Read the 1993 Message to the Legislature here.