(b.November 8, 1957), is a U.S. Representative from Oklahoma and Chairman of the House Conference Committee. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma, 1981; played professional football, 1981–86; was a youth minister at the Sunnyland Baptist Church, Del City, 1987–94; member of the Oklahoma Corp. Commission 1990–94, chairman 1993–94; elected to the 104th Congress from the 4th district of Oklahoma, 1995; member of the National Drinking Water Adv. Council; member of the electricity commission; and member of the National Association Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
On Tuesday, February 5, 1997, U.S. Representative J.C. Watts delivered the Republican response to President Clinton’s State of the Union Address:
We believe first of all that the state of this union really isn’t determined in Washington, D.C. It never has been, and it never will be. Gut for a long time the federal government has been grabbing too much power and too much authority over all of the people. …
The strength of America is not in Washington, the strength of America is at home in lives well lived in the land of faith and family. The strength of America is not on Wall Street but on Main Street, not in big business but in small business with local owners and workers. It’s not in Congress, it’s in the city hall. And I pray Republicans and Democrats both understand this. …
First, we can help our country by bringing back the knowledge, the ancient wisdom, that we’re nothing without our spiritual, traditional and family values. … I didn’t get my values from Washington. I got my values from my parents, from Buddy and Helen Watts, in Eufaula, Oklahoma. I got my values growing up in a poor black neighborhood on the east side of the railroad tracks, where money was scarce but dreams were plentiful and love was all around. I got my values from a strong family, a strong church and a strong neighborhood.
I wasn’t raised to be a Republican or Democrat. My parents just taught by example. They taught me and my brothers and sisters that, if you lived under their roof, you were going to work. They taught us, if you made a mistake, as we all do, you’ve got to own up to it, you call it what it is, and you try to turn it around. They taught us, if you spend more money than you make, you’re on a sure road to disaster.
I was taught to respect everyone for the simple reason that we’re all God’s children. I was taught, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and from my uncle, Wade Watts, to judge a man not by the color of his skin, but by the content of his character. And I was taught that character does count, and that character is simply doing what’s right when nobody’s looking. …
For the past 30 years our nation’s spent $5 trillion trying to erase poverty, and the result, as you know, is that we didn’t get rid of it at all. In fact, we spread it. We destroyed the self-esteem of millions of people, grinding them down in a welfare system that penalizes moms for wanting to marry the father of their children, and penalizes moms for wanting to save money. Friends, that’s not right. …
A number of my colleagues and I … are working on a package called The American Community Renewal Act. It seeks to return government to the side of the institutions that hold communities together: faith, family, hard work, strong neighborhoods. This will help rebuild low income communities through their own moral renewal and giving them economic opportunity. It also recognizes that faith-based institutions contribute to the healing of our nation’s problems. So our first priority is to bring values back and give them pride of place in our moral and economic renewal. And in the next few weeks we will be visiting a number of communities to highlight the accomplishments of active faith-based organizations. …
We are more than $5 trillion in debt. This year we will spend $330 billion on interest payments alone on the national debt. And you know what? Not one dime of that $330 billion will go to strengthen Medicare, Medicaid. Not one dime of it will go to find a cure for cancer or fight drugs and crime. And worse yet, not one dime will go toward learning, making the classrooms a centerpiece of our education. Over $5 trillion worth of national debt is more than financially irresponsible. Friends, its immoral, because someone is going to have to pay the piper. And you know who its going to be? It’s going to be our kids and our grandkids.
The American family is already overtaxed. Right now the average family spends about half of every dollar they earn in some type of government tax or government fee. Consider a 5–year-old child today. If things continue as they are, by the time they’re 25 they’ll pay about 84 cents of every dollar they make in some government tax or government fee. Friends, that’s more than a shame, it’s a scandal. …
I want to say a few words about the … vision of how we can continue to make this one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. … Too often when we talk about racial healing, we make the old assumption that government can heal the racial divide. … Republicans and Democrats—red, yellow, black and white—have to understand that we must individually, all of us, accept our share of responsibility. …
It does not happen by dividing us into racial groups. It does not happen by trying to turn rich against poor or by using the politics of fear. It does not happen by reducing our values to the lowest common denominator. And friends, it does not happen by asking Americans to accept what’s immoral and wrong in the name of tolerance. …
We must be a people who dare, dare to take responsibility for our hatred and fears and ask God to heal us from within. And we must be a people of prayer, a people who pray as if the strength of our nation depended on it, because it does. …
I’ve often told the story of a boy and his father. The father was trying to get some work done, and the boy wanted the daddy’s attention, but the father was busy at his desk with so much to do. To occupy the boy, this father. … remembered that he had seen a picture of the world in this magazine. In what he thought was a stroke of genius, the father tore out the picture and tore it into 20 different pieces, and he said, “Here son. Go put the world back together.”
And you know what happened? Five minutes later the little Michelangelo was back, saying, “Daddy, look what I’ve done.” The father looked, and he said, “Son, how did you do it so quickly? How did you put the world back together do quickly?” And the little boy answered, “Dad, it was easy. There was a picture of a man on the back of the map, on the back of the world. And once I put the man back together, the world fell into place.” And friends, this is our agenda: to put our men and women back together, and, in that way, get our country back together.
I am reminded of the final words of President John Kennedy’s inaugural address. He said this: “Let us go forth to lead the land we love, knowing that here on earth, God’s work truly must be our own.” I say Amen to that.
Thank you for your graciousness in listening to me so late in the evening. God bless you, and God bless our children.3951