It is a pleasure to join you all today to talk with you about the President's proposal to help Americans save for retirement through new Universal Savings Accounts.

As a result of President Clinton's strong leadership in restoring fiscal discipline to our country, we have moved from an era of large and growing budget deficits to actual budget surpluses now and projected budget surpluses well into the future and to what is almost universally considered the best economic conditions in many decades. The consequence of that, I believe, is an historic opportunity to increase national savings for the long term and to improve retirement security. The President has put forward a strong plan to realize exactly that opportunity.

President Clinton's budget plan would reduce the publicly held debt of the federal government by over two thirds to its lowest level as a percentage of the total economy since before World War I. That use of the projected surplus is a powerful contribution to improving national savings. In addition, the President's plan would extend the solvency or exhaustion dates of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. To further increase national savings, he has proposed a strong new incentive for personal savings which we are discussing today, Universal Savings Accounts. The reduction of the federal debt and the Universal Savings Accounts, taken together, would apply roughly 89 percent of the projected budget surpluses to increasing national savings. That, in turn, should result in lower interest rates, more investment, greater job creation, and higher standards of living. Other uses of these surpluses might be more popular, but just as deficit reduction and the restoration of fiscal discipline, beginning with the President's powerful deficit reduction program of 1993, have been central to the strong economic performance of the last six years, so too will fiscal discipline be critical to promoting strong economic conditions in the years and decades ahead.

With respect to USA Accounts, let me make a couple of observations. These accounts will be separate from Social Security, and as such, offer an innovative way to promote savings with contributions from the government, while at the same time maintaining Social Security as the bedrock of our nation's retirement system. They will especially benefit the 50 percent of Americans who do not have an employer-provided retirement saving vehicle.

Let me close by saying once again that I believe that we have a historic opportunity to use the fruits of the fiscal discipline of the last six years and the economic growth it helped produce to best position our country for growth and economic well being the years ahead through increasing national savings and retirement security.

Now it is my pleasure to introduce Andrew Goldschmidt and his wife Theresa, from Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania, who can explain how USA Accounts will benefit their family.