At the ballot box in November, Americans rejected a Congress bogged down by the impeachment of the President. They also demanded that both parties find common ground and unite to address the most serious issues before us. We work together to guarantee a secure future as we cross the threshold of the next century.

We cannot begin a serious debate about that future without meeting the needs of our youngest citizens. No one can deny the extraordinary challenge of reversing a course of so many children being born out of wedlock; so many children without supervision after school and in the evenings; so many children with inadequate child care in a marketplace where mothers are required to work. That is why we will insist on meaningful efforts to leverage, without new bureaucracy - to equip our children for productive lives.

Last year I worked with my colleague, Senator Christopher Bond (R-MO), to develop legislation to enable local organizations, like the YMCA and the Girls and Boys Clubs of America, to better address the child care and early childhood development needs in their communities. This legislation offers us a new model of public-private partnership in which the government equips civic organizations at the grassroots to protect the interests of our children. I look forward to joining with members from both sides of the aisle to secure passage of this legislation in 1999.

As we join together to take responsibility for our children in their earliest years, we must also act expediently, in a bipartisan fashion to reform the public school system into which we send 50 million children every year.

Congress chose to make education a partisan issue in 1998, promoting private school vouchers rather than the broader reform interests of our children. The Senate passed legislation that put a mere $7 into the pockets of the average public school student. The debate was divisive and produced minimal reform.

Sound bites and raw partisanship - and so called silver bullet remedies like private school vouches - will only exacerbate the crisis in public education 90% of our children are in the public school system. It is clear that the only way to prepare our children for the demands of the new knowledge based economy is to fix those public schools before we lose a generation of Americans.

Democrats and Republicans should unite in 1999 to pass common sense legislation that liberates our schools to succeed, enabling the comprehensive reforms that offer students a world class education. It is time both parties forge grand compromise to save public education.

We must foster competition, raise teaching standards to make available after-school programs, increase investment, instill accountability, and allow greater local control in the public school system. I am joining with my colleague Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to provide us all with a starting point in that effort to educate America’s children.

We must move forward to save the generation of children in our public schools and those that will follow. Congress must also help tackle another general issue for American families - retirement security in a rapidly changing world.

The overwhelming conviction of the American people underscores the importance of saving Social Security. After evaluating the policy options before us, Congress must develop a bi-partisan plan to modernize and preserve this program.

Beyond that reform effort, however, we must remember that Social Security was meant to be one leg in a three legged retirement stool along with pension plans and private savings.

We must embrace reforms to better guarantee pension security and prepare for an Information Age where the average worker will switch jobs more frequently than in any previous era. Congress should pay close attention to a growing inequity in out work force. Only 40 percent of workers receive pensions through work today. Women make up over 60 percent of our elderly, a number that will only increase in the decades to come.

We must also begin to provide answers to an unheralded crisis in the area of retirement security. Americans save significantly less of their income than do citizens of any other industrialized nation. We must pursue innovations in tax policy to empower Americans to save, to generate wealth for retirement and future economic expansion, keeping with the Democratic Party’s best traditions, we must renew private savings as a path to secure retirement and expand the winner’s circle to include more Americans.

In 1999 I will join with Democrats and my colleagues form across the aisle to fight for a realistic agenda which reflects the strong message sent by the American people of the election of 1998. Together we will ensure that as Americans work harder and harder to make ends meet, that they will have the ability to protect their families.

We will call upon all Americans to join together to restore a spirit of community in our lives. We will fight for the things we all share in common - our families and our children - and that agenda will speak to the full measure our values.