Documents / Official release
This release contains White House Exchange Mail records dated January 1998 to October 1999. Most of it is a transcript of a January 29, 1998 press briefing by Press Secretary Mike McCurry covering Iraq, Iran, the budget and the Lewinsky inquiry, plus a 1998 presidential speech. An October 19, 1999 email among Transnational Threats staff forwards a Florida Today article on how scientists expect alien contact would spark a media frenzy rather than a cover-up, describing the 1989 SETI detection protocol.
“Harder”1 page
34FE5F7E.FIN Page 7 of 12 Now, it's also known, however, that the changes that are underway toda http://classified/email/data_source/exchange/record/cd008/febl998/34fe5f7e.html 1/5/2010 To give you an idea of the profound success of the program over the las years — as you know, there have been increasing number of children bei raised in single-parent households, where the incomes are not so high — the ch poverty rate in America is almost twice that. But no one can begrudge tl So the first thing we need to say is, Social Security has succeeded in ending stark terror of a penniless old age. And that is a terrific achievement for American society. Now, for more than half a century Social Security has been a dramatic success. If you just look at the first chart over here on the right, you will see that 1959 - I don't see as well as I once did -- (laughter) - the poverty rate among seniors was still 35 percent. As recently as 1959, still over a third of sen lived in poverty. By 1979, it had dropped to 15.2 percent. By 1996, it he dropped to 10.8 percent. place great stresses on the Social Security safety net. The baby boomers getting grey. When my generation retires — and I'm the oldest of the bat boomers; I was bom in 1946, I'm 51 - and the generation is normally h( run for the 18 years after that, that's normally what people mean when they ■ about the baby boomers — it will dramatically change the ratio of worke If you ever have a chance you ought to read some of the books that have thousands of letters that older people sent to President Roosevelt, beggii him, in the words of one typical letter writer, to eliminate — and I quote - "th stark terror of penniless, helpless old age." That's what prompted Presid' Roosevelt to launch the Social Security system in 1935, to create what h called the cornerstone of a civilized society. Let me back up just a minute, mostly for the benefit of the young people the audience, to talk a little bit about the importance of this effort. It's hard for even people in my generation to understand this, much less yours. B early in this century, to be old meant to be poor. To be old meant to be poor.r vast majority of people over 65 in America early in this century were In in poverty. Their reward for a lifetime of work, for doing right by their children, for helping with their grandchildren, unless their kids could take care of them, was living in poverty.
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Official release, from the nara collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. 88 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.