[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 117 (Wednesday, July 19, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10305-S10309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


           PRESIDENT CLINTON'S ADDRESS ON AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, earlier today, President Clinton 
delivered an eloquent and excellent address on one of the most 
important issues the Nation faces--the future of affirmative action.
  In my view, and I believe in the view of the vast majority of the 
American people, President Clinton is doing the right and courageous 
thing. He is preserving and improving the best of affirmative action, 
and eliminating its abuses.
  For a generation, beginning with the Supreme Court's landmark 1954 
decision outlawing school segregation, America has made significant 
bipartisan progress in attempting to end the most blatant forms of 
discrimination and racism in our society.
  Much of this progress has been achieved through affirmative action, 
involving the leadership of government at every level--Federal, State, 
and local--and the action of dedicated private citizens.
  Unfortunately, discrimination persists, often in subtle forms. We 
have made real progress, but much more remains to be done. Good jobs 
still too often remain closed or less available to qualified minorities 
and women because of bigotry. By helping to assure that every 
individual has an equal opportunity, affirmative action is one of our 
most effective means and best hopes for rooting out that bias. 

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  The President is right to broaden set-asides, to oppose quotas, to 
reject preferences for unqualified individuals and reverse 
discrimination, and to end programs that have achieved their goals. 
Every Federal affirmative action program deserves review to see whether 
abuses have occurred and whether it accords with the Supreme Court's 
current guidelines.
  I commend President Clinton for his leadership and his vision of a 
more just America. Today was one of his finest hours. At a time when 
some in the Party of Lincoln are seeking to divide America because of 
race, we must not retreat from our commitment to fulfill the 
Constitution's fundamental promise of equal justice for all.
  Mr. President, I believe the President's address will be of interest 
to all of us in Congress and to all Americans, and I ask unanimous 
consent that it may be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the address was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

   Address by President Clinton on Affirmative Action, July 19, 1995

       Thank you very much. To the members of Congress who are 
     here, members of the Cabinet and the administration, my 
     fellow Americans: In recent weeks I have begun a conversation 
     with the American people about our fate and our duty to 
     prepare our nation not only to meet the new century, but to 
     live and lead in a world transformed to a degree seldom seen 
     in all of our history. Much of this change is good, but it is 
     not all good, and all of us are affected by it. Therefore, we 
     must reach beyond our fears and our divisions to a new time 
     of great and common purpose.
       Our challenge is twofold: first, to restore the American 
     dream of opportunity and the American value of 
     responsibility; and second, to bring our country together 
     amid all our diversity into a stronger community, so that we 
     can find common ground and move forward as one.
       More than ever, these two endeavors are inseparable. I am 
     absolutely convinced we cannot restore economic opportunity 
     or solve our social problems unless we find a way to bring 
     the American people together. To bring our people together we 
     must openly and honestly deal with the issues that divide us. 
     Today I want to discuss one of those issues: affirmative 
     action.
       It is, in a way, ironic that this issue should be divisive 
     today, because affirmative action began 25 years ago by a 
     Republican president with bipartisan support. It began simply 
     as a means to an end of enduring national purpose--equal 
     opportunity for all Americans.
       So let us today trace the roots of affirmative action in 
     our never-ending search for equal opportunity. Let us 
     determine what it is and what it isn't. Let us see where it's 
     worked and where it hasn't and ask ourselves what we need to 
     do now. Along the way, let us remember always that finding 
     common ground as we move toward the 21st century depends 
     fundamentally on our shared commitment to equal opportunity 
     for all Americans. It is a moral imperative, a constitutional 
     mandate, and a legal necessity.
       There could be no better place for this discussion than the 
     National Archives, for within these walls are America's 
     bedrocks of our common ground--the Declaration of 
     Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. No paper 
     is as lasting as the words these documents contain. So we put 
     them in these special cases to protect the parchment from the 
     elements. No building is as solid as the principles these 
     documents embody, but we sure tried to build one with these 
     metal doors 11 inches thick to keep them safe, for these 
     documents are America's only crown jewels. But the best place 
     of all to hold these words and these principles is the one 
     place in which they can never fade and never grow old--in the 
     stronger chambers of our hearts.
       Beyond all else, our country is a set of convictions: ``We 
     hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are 
     created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
     certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, 
     Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.''
       Our whole history can be seen first as an effort to 
     preserve these rights, and then as an effort to make them 
     real in the lives of all our citizens. We know that from the 
     beginning, there was a great gap between the plain meaning of 
     our creed and the meaner reality of our daily lives. Back 
     then, only white male property owners could vote. Black 
     slaves were not even counted as whole people, and Native 
     Americans were
      regarded as little more than an obstacle to our great 
     national progress. No wonder Thomas Jefferson, reflecting 
     on slavery, said he trembled to think God is just.
       On the 200th anniversary of our great Constitution, Justice 
     Thurgood Marshall, the grandson of a slave, said, ``The 
     government our founders devised was defective from the start, 
     requiring several amendments, a civil war, and momentous 
     social transformation to attain the system of constitutional 
     government and its respect for the individual freedoms and 
     human rights we hold as fundamental today.''
       Emancipation, women's suffrage, civil rights, voting 
     rights, equal rights, the struggle for the rights of the 
     disabled--all these and other struggles are milestones on 
     America's often rocky, but fundamentally righteous journey to 
     close up the gap between the ideals enshrined in these 
     treasures here in the National Archives and the reality of 
     our daily lives.
       I first came to this very spot where I'm standing today 32 
     years ago this month. I was a 16-year-old delegate to the 
     American Legion Boys Nation. Now, that summer was a high-
     water mark for our national journey. That was the summer that 
     President Kennedy ordered Alabama National Guardsmen to 
     enforce a court order to allow two young blacks to enter the 
     University of Alabama. As he told our nation, ``Every 
     American ought to have the right to be treated as he would 
     wish to be treated, as one would wish his children to be 
     treated.''
       Later that same summer, on the steps of the Lincoln 
     Memorial, Martin Luther King told Americans of his dream that 
     one day the sons of former slaves and the sons of former 
     slaveowners would sit down together at the table of 
     brotherhood; that one day his four children would be judged 
     not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their 
     character. His words captured the hearts and steeled the 
     wills of millions of Americans. Some of them sang with him in 
     the hot sun that day. Millions more like me listened and wept 
     in the privacy of their homes.
       It's hard to believe where we were, just three decades ago. 
     When I came up here to Boys Nation and we had this mock 
     congressional session, I was one of only three or four 
     southerners who would even vote for the civil rights plank. 
     That's largely because of my family. My grandfather had a 
     grade school education and ran a grocery store across the 
     street from the cemetery in Hope, Arkansas, where my parents 
     and my grandparents are buried. Most of his customers were 
     black, were poor, and were working people. As a child in that 
     store I saw that people of different races could treat each 
     other with respect and dignity.
       But I also saw that the black neighborhood across the 
     street was the only one in town where the streets weren't 
     paved. And when I returned to that neighborhood in the late 
     '60s to see a woman who had cared for me as a toddler, the 
     streets still weren't paved. A lot of you know that I am an 
     ardent movie-goer. As a child I never went to a movie where I 
     could sit next to a black American. They were always sitting 
     upstairs.
       In the 1960s, believe it or not, there were still a few 
     courthouse squares in my state where the rest rooms were 
     marked ``white'' and ``colored.'' I graduated from a 
     segregated high school seven years after President Eisenhower 
     integrated Little Rock Central High School. And when 
     President Kennedy barely carried my home state in 1960, the 
     poll tax system was still alive and well there.
       Even though my grandparents were in a minority, being poor 
     Southern whites who were pro-civil rights, I think most other 
     people knew better than to think the way they did. And those 
     who were smart enough to act differently discovered a lesson 
     that we ought to remember today. Discrimination is not just 
     morally wrong, it hurts everybody.
       In 1960, Atlanta, Georgia, in reaction to all the things 
     that were going on all across the South, adopted the motto, 
     ``The city too busy to hate.'' And however imperfectly over 
     the years, they tried to live by it. I am convinced that 
     Atlanta's success--it now is home to more foreign 
     corporations than any other American city, and one year from 
     today it will begin to host the Olympics--that that success 
     all began when people got too busy to hate.
       The lesson we learned was a hard one. When we allow people 
     to pit us against one another or spend energy denying 
     opportunity based on our differences, everyone is held back. 
     But when we give all Americans a chance to develop and use 
     their talents, to be full partners in our common enterprise, 
     then everybody is pushed forward.
       My experiences with discrimination are rooted in the South 
     and in the legacy slavery left. I also lived with a working 
     mother and a working grandmother when women's work was far 
     rarer and far more circumscribed than it today. But we all 
     know there are millions of other stories--those of Hipsanics, 
     Asian Americans, Native Americans, people with disabilities, 
     others against whom fingers have been pointed. Many of you 
     have your own stories, and that's why you're here today--
     people who were denied the right to develop and use their 
     full human potential. And their progress, too, is a part of 
     our journey to make the reality of America consistent with 
     the principles just behind me here.
       Thirty years ago in this city, you didn't see many people 
     of color or women making their way to work in the morning in 
     business clothes, or serving in substantial numbers in 
     powerful positions in Congress or at the White House, or 
     making executive decisions every day in business. In fact, 
     even the employment want ads were divided, men on one side 
     and women on the other.
       It was extraordinary then to see women or people of color 
     as television news anchors, or, believe it or not, even in 
     college sports. There were far fewer women and minorities as 
     job supervisors, or firefighters, or police officers, or 
     doctors, or lawyers, or college professors, or in many other 
     jobs that offer stability and honor and integrity to family 
     life.
       A lot has changed, and it did not happen as some sort of 
     random evolutionary drift. It 

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     took hard work and sacrifices and countless acts of courage and 
     conscience by millions of Americans. It took the political 
     courage and statesmanship of Democrats and Republicans alike, 
     the vigilance and compassion of courts and advocates in and 
     out of government committed to the Constitution and to equal 
     protection and to equal opportunity. It took the leadership 
     of people in business who knew that in the end we would all 
     be better. It took the leadership of people in labor unions 
     who knew that working people had to be reconciled.
       Some people, like Congressman Lewis there, put their lives 
     on the line. Other people lost their lives. And millions of 
     Americans changed their own lives and put hate behind them. 
     As a result, today all our lives are better. Women have 
     become a major force in business and political life, and far 
     more able to contribute to their families' incomes. A true 
     and growing black middle class has emerged. Higher education 
     has literally been revolutionized, with women and racial and 
     ethnic minorities attending once overwhelmingly white and 
     sometimes all male schools.
       In communities across our nation, police departments now 
     better reflect the make-up of those whom they protect. A 
     generation of professionals now serve as role models for 
     young women and minority youth. Hispanics and newer immigrant 
     populations are succeeding in making America stronger.
       For an example of where the best of our future lies, just 
     think about our space program and the stunning hook-up with 
     the Russian space station this month. Let's remember that 
     that program, the world's finest, began with heroes like Alan 
     Shepard and Senator John Glenn, but today it's had American 
     heroes like Sally Ride, Ellen Ochoa, Leroy Child, Guy Bluford 
     and other outstanding, completely qualified women and 
     minorities.
       How did this happen? Fundamentally, because we opened our 
     hearts and minds and changed our ways. But not without 
     pressure--the pressure of court decisions, legislation, 
     executive action, and the power of examples in the public and 
     private sector. Along the way we learned that laws alone do 
     not change society; that old habits and thinking patterns are 
     deeply ingrained and die hard; that more is required to 
     really open the doors of opportunity. Our search to find ways 
     to move more quickly to equal opportunity led to the 
     development of what we now call affirmative action.
       The purpose of affirmative action is to give our nation a 
     way to finally address the systemic exclusion of individuals 
     of talent on the basis of their gender or race from 
     opportunities to develop, perform, achieve and contribute. 
     Affirmative action is an effort to develop a systematic 
     approach to open the doors of education, employment and 
     business development opportunities to qualified individuals 
     who happen to be members of groups that have experienced 
     longstanding and persistent discrimination.
       It is a policy that grew out of many years of trying to 
     navigate between two unacceptable pasts. One was to say 
     simply that we declared discrimination illegal and that's 
     enough. We saw that that way still relegated blacks with 
     college degrees to jobs as railroad porters, and kept women 
     with degrees under a glass ceiling with a lower paycheck.
       The other path was simply to try to impose change by 
     leveling draconian penalties on employers who didn't meet 
     certain imposed, ultimately arbitrary, and sometimes 
     unachievable quotas. That, too, was rejected out of a sense 
     of fairness.
       So a middle ground was developed that would change an 
     inequitable status quo gradually, but firmly, by building the 
     pool of qualified applicants for college, for contracts, for 
     jobs, and giving more people the chance to learn, work and 
     earn. When affirmative action is done right, it is flexible, 
     it is fair, and it works.
       I know some people are honestly concerned about the times 
     affirmative action doesn't work, when it's done in the wrong 
     way. And I know there are times when some employers don't use 
     it in the right way. They may cut corners and treat a 
     flexible goal as a quota. They may give opportunities to 
     people who are unqualified instead of those who deserve it. 
     They may, in so doing, allow a different kind of 
     discrimination. When this happens, it is also wrong. But it 
     isn't affirmative action, and it is not legal.
       So when our administration finds cases of that sort, we 
     will enforce the law aggressively. The Justice Department 
     files hundreds of cases every year, attacking discrimination 
     in employment, including suits on behalf of white males. Most 
     of these suits, however, affect women and minorities for a 
     simple reason--because the vast majority of discrimination in 
     America is still discrimination against them. But the law 
     does require fairness for everyone and we are determined to 
     see that that is exactly what the law delivers. (Applause.)
       Let me be clear about what affirmative action must not mean 
     and what I won't allow it to be. It does not mean--and I 
     don't favor--the unjustified preference of the unqualified 
     over the qualified of any race or gender. It doesn't mean--
     and I don't favor--numerical quotas. It doesn't mean--and I 
     don't favor--rejection or selection of any employee or 
     student solely on the basis of race or gender without regard 
     to merit.
       Like many business executives and public servants, I owe it 
     to you to say that my views on this subject are, more than 
     anything else, the product of my personal experience. I have 
     had experience with affirmative action, nearly 20 years of it 
     now, and I know it works.
       When I was Attorney General of my home state, I hired a 
     record number of women and African American lawyers--every 
     one clearly qualified and exceptionally hardworking. As 
     Governor, I appointed more women to my Cabinet and state 
     boards than any other governor in the state's history, and 
     more African Americans than all the governors in the state's 
     history combined. And no one ever questioned their 
     qualifications or performance. And our state was better and 
     stronger because of their service.
       As President, I am proud to have the most diverse 
     administration in history in my Cabinet, my agencies and my 
     staff. And I must say, I have been surprised at the criticism 
     I have received from some quarters in my determination to 
     achieve this.
       In the last two and a half years, the most outstanding 
     example of affirmative action in the United States, the 
     Pentagon, has opened 260,000 positions for women who serve in 
     our Armed Forces. I have appointed more women and minorities 
     to the federal bench than any other president, more than the 
     last two combined. And yet, far more of our judicial 
     appointments have received the highest rating from the 
     American Bar Association than any other administration since 
     those ratings have been given.
       In our administration, many government agencies are doing 
     more business with qualified firms run by minorities and 
     women. The Small Business Administration has reduced its 
     budget by 40 percent,
      doubled its loan outputs, and dramatically increased the 
     number of loans to women and minority small business 
     people, without reducing the number of loans to white 
     businessowners who happen to be male, and without changing 
     the loan standards for a single, solitary application. 
     Quality and diversity can go hand in hand, and they must. 
     (Applause.)
       Le me say that affirmative action has also done more than 
     just open the doors of opportunity to individual Americans. 
     Most economists who study it agree that affirmative action 
     has also been an important part of closing gaps in economic 
     opportunity in our society, thereby strengthening the entire 
     economy.
       A group of distinguished business leaders told me just a 
     couple of days ago that their companies are stronger and 
     their profits are larger because of the diversity and the 
     excellence of their work forces achieved through intelligent 
     and fair affirmative action programs. And they said we have 
     gone far beyond anything the government might require us to 
     do, because managing diversity and individual opportunity and 
     being fair to everybody is the key to our future economic 
     success in the global marketplace.
       Now, there are those who say, my fellow Americans, that 
     even good affirmative action programs are no longer needed; 
     that it should be enough to resort to the courts or the Equal 
     Employment Opportunity Commission in cases of actual, 
     provable, individual discrimination because there is no 
     longer any systematic discrimination in our society. In 
     deciding how to answer that, let us consider the facts.
       The unemployment rate for African Americans remains about 
     twice that of whites. The Hispanic rate is still much higher. 
     Women have narrowed the earnings gap, but still make only 72 
     percent as much as men do for comparable jobs. The average 
     income for an Hispanic woman with a college degree is still 
     less than the average income of a white man with a high 
     school diploma.
       According to the recently completed Glass Ceiling Report, 
     sponsored by Republican members of Congress, in the nation's 
     largest companies only six-tenths of one percent of senior 
     management positions are held by African Americans, four-
     tenths of a percent by Hispanic Americans, three-tenths of a 
     percent by Asian Americans; women hold between three and five 
     percent of these positions. White males make up 43 percent of 
     our work force, but hold 95 percent of these jobs.
       Just last week, the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank reported 
     that black home loan applicants are more than twice as likely 
     to be denied credit as whites with the same qualifications; 
     and that Hispanic applicants are more than one and a half 
     times as likely to be denied loans as whites with the same 
     qualifications.
       Last year alone, the federal government received more than 
     90,000 complaints of employment discrimination based on race, 
     ethnicity or gender. Less than three percent were for reverse 
     discrimination.
       Evidence abounds in other ways of the persistence of the 
     kind of bigotry that can affect the way we think, even if 
     we're not conscious of it, in hiring and promotion and 
     business and educational decisions.
       Crimes and violence based on hate against Asians, 
     Hispanics, African Americans and other minorities are still 
     with us. And, I'm sorry to say that the worst and most recent 
     evidence of this involves a recent report of federal law 
     enforcement officials in Tennessee attending an event 
     literally overflowing with racism--a sickening reminder of 
     just how pervasive these kinds of attitudes still are.
       By the way, I want to tell you that I am committed to 
     finding the truth about what happened
      there and to taking appropriate action. And I want to say 
     that if anybody who works in federal law enforcement 
     thinks that that kind of behavior is acceptable, they 
     ought to think about working someplace else. (Applause.)
       Now, let's get to the other side of the argument. If 
     affirmative action has worked and if 

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     there is evidence that discrimination still exist on a wide scale in 
     ways that are conscious and unconscious, then why should we 
     get rid of it, as many people are urging? Some question the 
     effectiveness or the fairness of particular affirmative 
     action programs. I say to all of you, those are fair 
     questions, and they prompted the review of our affirmative 
     action programs, about which I will talk in a few moments.
       Some question the fundamental purpose of the effort. There 
     are people who honestly believe that affirmative action 
     always amounts to group preferences over individual merit; 
     that affirmative action always leads to reverse 
     discrimination; that ultimately, therefore, it demeans those 
     who benefit from it and discriminates against those who are 
     not helped by it.
       I just have to tell you that all you have to decide how you 
     feel about that, and all of our fellow countrymen and women 
     have to decide as well. But I believe if there are no quotas, 
     if we give no opportunities to unqualified people, if we have 
     no reverse discrimination, and if, when the problem ends--the 
     program ends, that criticism is wrong. That's what I believe. 
     But we should have this debate and everyone should ask the 
     question. (Applause.)
       Now let's deal with what I really think is behind so much 
     of this debate today. There are a lot of people who oppose 
     affirmative action today who supported if for a very long 
     time. I believe they are responding to the sea change in the 
     experiences that most Americans have in the world in which we 
     live.
       If you say now you're against affirmative action because 
     the government is using its power or the private sector is 
     using its power to help minorities at the expense of the 
     majority, that gives you a way of explaining away the 
     economic distress that a majority of Americans honestly feel. 
     It gives you a way of turning their resentment against the 
     minorities or against a particular government program, 
     instead of having an honest debate about how we all got into 
     the fix we're in and what we're all going to do together to 
     get out of it.
       That explanation, the affirmative action explanation for 
     the fix we're in, is just wrong. It is just wrong. 
     Affirmative action did not cause the great economic problems 
     of the American middle class. (Applause.)
       And because most minorities or women are either members of 
     that middle class or people who are poor who are struggling 
     to get into it, we must also admit that affirmative action 
     alone won't solve the problems of minorities and women who 
     seek to be part of the American Dream. To do that, we have to 
     have an economic strategy that reverses the decline in wages 
     and the growth of poverty among working people. Without that, 
     women, minorities, and white males will all be in trouble in 
     the future.
       But it is wrong to use the anxieties of the middle class to 
     divert the American people from the real causes of their 
     economic distress--the sweeping historic changes taking all 
     the globe in its path, and the specific policies or lack of 
     them in our own country which have aggravated those 
     challenges. It is simply wrong to play politics with the 
     issue of affirmative action and divide our country at a time 
     when, if we're really going to change things, we have to be 
     united. (Applause.)
       I must say, I think it is ironic that some of those--not 
     all, but some of those--who call for an end to affirmative 
     action also advocate policies which will make the real 
     economic problems of the anxious middle class even worse. 
     They talk about opportunity
      and being for equal opportunity for everyone, and then they 
     reduce investment in equal opportunity on an evenhanded 
     basis. For example, if the real goal is economic 
     opportunity for all Americans, why in the world would we 
     reduce our investment in education from Head Start to 
     affordable college loans? Why don't we make college loans 
     available to every American instead? (Applause.)
       If the real goal is empowering all middle class Americans 
     and empowering poor people to work their way into the middle 
     class without regard to race or gender, why in the world 
     would the people who advocate that turn around and raise 
     taxes on our poorest working families, or reduce the money 
     available for education and training when they lose their 
     jobs or they're living on poverty wages, or increase the cost 
     of housing for lower-income, working people with children?
       Why would we do that? If we're going to empower America, we 
     have to do more than talk about it, we have to do it. And we 
     surely have learned that we cannot empower all Americans by a 
     simple strategy of taking opportunity away from some 
     Americans. (Applause.)
       So to those who use this as a political strategy to divide 
     us, we must say, no. We must say, no. (Applause.)
       But to those who raise legitimate questions about the way 
     affirmative action works, or who raise the larger question 
     about the genuine problems and anxieties of all the American 
     people and their sense of being left behind and treated 
     unfairly, we must say, yes, you are entitled to answers to 
     your questions. We must say yes to that.
       Now, that's why I ordered this review of all of our 
     affirmative action programs--a review to look at the facts, 
     not the politics of affirmative action. This review concluded 
     that affirmative action remains a useful tool for widening 
     economic and educational opportunity. The model used by the 
     military, the Army in particular--and I'm delighted to have 
     the Commanding General of the Army here today because he set 
     such a fine example--has been especially successful because 
     it emphasizes education and training, ensuring that it has a 
     wide pool of qualified candidates for every level of 
     promotion. That approach has given us the most racially 
     diverse and best-qualified military in our history. There are 
     more opportunities for women and minorities there than ever 
     before. And now there are over 50 generals and admirals who 
     are Hispanic, Asian or African Americans.
       We found that the Education Department had programs 
     targeted on under-represented minorities that do a great deal 
     of good with the tiniest of investments. We found that these 
     programs comprised 40 cents of every $1,000 in the Education 
     Department's budget.
       Now, college presidents will tell you that the education 
     their schools offer actually benefits from diversity--
     colleges where young people get the education and make the 
     personal and professional contacts that will shape their 
     lives. If their colleges look like the world they're going to 
     live and work in, and they learn from all different kinds of 
     people things that they can't learn in books, our systems of 
     higher education are stronger.
       Still, I believe every child needs the chance to go to 
     college. Every child. That means every child has to have a 
     chance to get affordable and repayable college loans, Pell 
     Grants for poor kids and a chance to do things like join 
     AmeriCorps and work their way through school. Every child is 
     entitled to that. That is not an argument against affirmative 
     action. It's an argument for more opportunity for more 
     Americans until everyone is reached. (Applause.)
       As I said a moment ago, the review found that the Small 
     Business Administration last year increased loans to 
     minorities by over two-thirds, loans to women by over 80 
     percent, did not decrease loans to
      white men, and not a single loan went to an unqualified 
     person. People who never had a chance before to be part of 
     the American system of free enterprise now have it. No one 
     was hurt in the process. That made America stronger.
       This review also found that the executive order on 
     employment practices of large federal contractors also has 
     helped to bring more fairness and inclusion into the work 
     force.
       Since President Nixon was here in my job, America has used 
     goals and timetables to preserve opportunity and to prevent 
     discrimination, to urge businesses to set higher expectations 
     for themselves and to realize those expectations. But we did 
     not and we will not use rigid quotas to mandate outcomes.
       We also looked at the way we award procurement contracts 
     under the programs known as set-asides. There's no question 
     that these programs have helped to build up firms owned by 
     minorities and women, who historically had been excluded from 
     the old-boy networks in these areas. It has helped a new 
     generation of entrepreneurs to flourish, opening new paths to 
     self-reliance and an economic growth in which all of us 
     ultimately share. Because of the set-asides, businesses ready 
     to compete have had a chance to compete, a chance they would 
     not have otherwise had.
       But as with any government program, set-asides can be 
     misapplied, misused, even intentionally abused. There are 
     critics who exploit that fact as an excuse to abolish all 
     these programs, regardless of their effects. I believe they 
     are wrong, but I also believe, based on our factual review, 
     we clearly need some reform. So first, we should crack down 
     on those who take advantage of everyone else through fraud 
     and abuse. We must crack down on fronts and pass-throughs, 
     people who pretend to be eligible for these programs and 
     aren't. That is wrong. (Applause.)
       We also, in offering new businesses a leg up, must make 
     sure that the set-asides go to businesses that need them 
     most. We must really look and make sure that our standard for 
     eligibility is fair and defensible. We have to tighten the 
     requirement to move businesses out of programs once they've 
     had a fair opportunity to compete. The graduation requirement 
     must mean something--it must mean graduation. There should be 
     no permanent set-aside for any company.
       Second, we must, and we will, comply with the Supreme 
     Court's Adarand decision of last month. Now, in particular, 
     that means focusing set-aside programs on particular regions 
     and business sectors where the problems of discrimination or 
     exclusion are provable and are clearly requiring affirmative 
     action. I have directed the Attorney General and the agencies 
     to move forward with compliance with Adarand expeditiously.
       But I also want to emphasize that the Adarand decision did 
     not dismantle affirmative action and did not dismantle set-
     asides. In fact, while setting stricter standards to mandate 
     reform of affirmative action, it actually reaffirmed the need 
     for affirmative action and reaffirmed the continuing 
     existence of systematic discrimination in the United States. 
     (Applause.)
       What the Supreme Court ordered the federal government to do 
     was to meet the same more rigorous standard for affirmative 
     action programs that state and local governments were ordered 
     to meet several years ago. And the best set-aside programs 
     under that standard have been challenged and have survived.
       Third, beyond discrimination, we need to do more to help 
     disadvantaged people and distressed communities, no matter 
     what their race or gender. There are places in our 

[[Page S 10309]]
     country where the free enterprise system simply doesn't reach. It 
     simply isn't working to provide jobs and opportunity. 
     Disproportionately, these areas in urban and rural
      America are highly populated by racial minorities, but not 
     entirely. To make this initiative work, I believe the 
     government must become a better partner for people in 
     places in urban and rural America that are caught in a 
     cycle of poverty. And I believe we have to find ways to 
     get the private sector to assume their rightful role as a 
     driver of economic growth.
       It has always amazed me that we have given incentives to 
     our business people to help to develop poor economies in 
     other parts of the world, our neighbors in the Caribbean, our 
     neighbors in other parts of the world--I have supported this 
     when not subject to their own abuses--but we ignore the 
     biggest source of economic growth available to the American 
     economy, the poor economies isolated within the United States 
     of America. (Applause.)
       There are those who say, well, even if we made the jobs 
     available, people wouldn't work. They haven't tried. Most of 
     the people in disadvantaged communities work today, and most 
     of them who don't work have a very strong desire to do so. In 
     central Harlem, 14 people apply for every single minimum-wage 
     job opening. Think how many more would apply if there were 
     good jobs with a good future. Our job has to connect 
     disadvantaged people and disadvantaged communities to 
     economic opportunity, so that everybody who wants to work can 
     do so.
       We've been working at this through our empowerment zones 
     and community development banks, through the initiatives of 
     Secretary Cisneros of the Housing and Urban Development 
     Department and many other things that we have tried to do to 
     put capital where it is needed. And now I have asked Vice 
     President Gore to develop a proposal to use our contracting 
     to support businesses that locate themselves in these 
     distressed areas or hire a large percentage of their workers 
     from these areas--not to substitute for what we're doing in 
     affirmative action, but to supplement it, to go beyond it, to 
     do something that will help to deal with the economic crisis 
     of America. We want to make our procurement system more 
     responsive to people in these areas who need help.
       My fellow Americans, affirmative action has to be made 
     consistent with our highest ideals of personal responsibility 
     and merit, and our urgent need to find common ground, and to 
     prepare all Americans to compete in the global economy of the 
     next century.
       Today, I am directing all our agencies to comply with the 
     Supreme Court's Adarand decision, and also to apply the four 
     standards of fairness to all our affirmative action programs 
     that I have already articulated: No quotas in theory or 
     practice; no illegal discrimination of any kind, including 
     reverse discrimination; no preference for people who are not 
     qualified for any job or other opportunity; and as soon as a 
     program has succeeded, it must be retired. Any program that 
     doesn't meet these four principles must be eliminated or 
     reformed to meet them.
       But let me be clear: Affirmative action has been good for 
     America. (Applause.)
       Affirmative action has not always been perfect, and 
     affirmative action should not go on forever. It should be 
     changed now to take care of those things that are wrong, and 
     it should be retired when its job is done. I am resolved that 
     that day will come. But the evidence suggests, indeed, 
     screams that that day has not come.
       The job of ending discrimination in this country is not 
     over. That should not be surprising. We had slavery for 
     centuries before the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15 
     Amendments. We waited another hundred years for the civil 
     rights legislation. Women have had the vote less than a 
     hundred years. We have always had difficulty with these 
     things, as most societies do. But we are making more progress 
     than many people.
       Based on the evidence, the job is not done.
        So here is what I think we should do. We should reaffirm 
     the principle of affirmative action and fix the practices. 
     We should have a simple slogan: Mend it, but don't end it. 
     (Applause.)
       Let me ask all Americans, whether they agree or disagree 
     with what I have said today, to see this issue in the larger 
     context of our times. President Lincoln said, we cannot 
     escape our history. We cannot escape our future, either. And 
     that future must be one in which every American has the 
     chance to live up to his or her God-given capacities.
       The new technology, the instant communications, the 
     explosion of global commerce have created enormous 
     opportunities and enormous anxieties for Americans. In the 
     last two and a half years, we have seen seven million new 
     jobs, more millionaires and new businesses than ever before, 
     high corporate profits, and a booming stock market. Yet, most 
     Americans are working harder for the same or lower pay. And 
     they feel more insecurity about their jobs, their retirement, 
     their health care, and their children's education. Too many 
     of our children are clearly exposed to poverty and welfare, 
     violence and drugs.
       These are the great challenges for our whole country on the 
     homefront at the dawn of the 21st century. We've got to find 
     the wisdom and the will to create family-wage jobs for all 
     the people who want to work; to open the door of college to 
     all Americans; to strengthen families and reduce the awful 
     problems to which our children are exposed; to move poor 
     Americans from welfare to work.
       This is the work of our administration--to give the people 
     the tools they need to make the most of their own lives, to 
     give families and communities the tools they need to solve 
     their own problems. But let us not forget affirmative action 
     didn't cause these problems. It won't solve them. And getting 
     rid of affirmative action certainly won't solve them.
       If properly done, affirmative action can help us come 
     together, go forward and grow together. It is in our moral, 
     legal and practical interest to see that every person can 
     make the most of his life. In the fight for the future, we 
     need all hands on deck and some of those hands still need a 
     helping hand.
       In our national community, we're all different, we're all 
     the same. We want liberty and freedom. We want the embrace of 
     family and community. We want to make the most of our own 
     lives and we're determined to give our children a better one. 
     Today there are voices of division who would say forget all 
     that. Don't you dare. Remember we're still closing the gap 
     between our founders' ideals and our reality. But every step 
     along the way has made us richer, stronger and better. And 
     the best is yet to come.
       Thank you very much. And God bless you.
       

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