Excerpt of Remarks in Concord, New Hampshire

"The next presidential election will offer Americans an historic choice. A choice between runaway spending and a real balanced budget. A choice between higher taxes and tax reform. A choice between the status quo and real conservative change. But it's even more than that. The 1996 presidential election will be a fight about the character of our nation. About the heart and soul of the people of this state. About values. About you and your family.

"I don't know if you saw my response to the State of the Union address on Tuesday, but the media didn't like it. Well, we're sorry. I'm concerned about America -- not about the media. They're having little heart palpitations about my speech because it wasn't the liberal message they wanted to hear. If you don't sing their songs, you don't get good reviews. I can only imagine how the press would have reacted to the first draft of the speech -- before I took out the tough language.

"But what I said Tuesday night was the truth, and I'll say it again: President Clinton may well be the rear guard of the welfare state. He is the chief obstacle to a balanced budget and the Balanced Budget Amendment. And he is almost tie last defender of t discredited status quo. For three years the Clinton administration has valued dependence on government over self-reliance; federal power over community; federal planning over individual enterprise. It has tried to place government experts in charge of our economy and our health and our lives. That's because President Clinton shares a view of America hold by our country's elites. In fact--and this is what T didn't have time to say on Tuesday--this administration has found its best friends among the entertainment elite -the industry with a strategy to make profits degrading our culture.

"Ronald Reagan may have come from Hollywood, but his values were shaped in Middle America. President Clinton hails from Arkansas, but no president has ever been more closely tied to Hollywood..... The only solution is more corporate and individual responsibility. We can encourage that by naming names and shaming those who debase our culture. We want to restore the ideas of individual responsibility and personal integrity.

"This is a great country. Our strength has always come from the truth. From sacrifice and honor. And from the bottomless reservoir of hope and work and courage that is the American people. Today, we feel ourselves beset by many difficulties. Yet the blood of greatness, of noble forebears, of men and women of incredible achievement still runs through us all. That birthright is what it means to bear the name "American."