    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [March 1, 1993]
    [Pages 217-224]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at the Adult Learning Center
    in New Brunswick, New Jersey
    March 1, 1993

        Judy Kesin. Welcome, Mr. President. We are so thrilled and pleased
    and honored to have you with us today. And we also would like to welcome
    Governor Florio, the attorney general Del Tufo, Eli Segal from your
    office who works with national community service. This is just such a
    treat. My name is Judy Kesin, and I am the principal of the Adult
    Learning Center of the New Brunswick Public Schools. We are so thrilled
    you could visit our program.

    [At this point, Ms. Kesin described the center's educational and
    community service programs and the involvement of Rutgers University
    students and then presented the President with a gift. Several
    participants then discussed the effect of education and involvement in
    community service on their lives.]

        The President. Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who
    spoke. And maybe in a minute I could give some of you who haven't spoken
    a chance to say something, if you want to say something.
        Let me tell you why I came here today. First of all, I've been very
    impressed by a lot of the efforts that the State of New Jersey has
    already made to serve people who need an education and need a second
    chance and to give people a chance to serve their communities.
        Secondly, this center reflects two very important things that I'm
    trying to do in my national economic program that I'm asking the
    Congress to pass. The first is what I came here to talk about, and I'm
    going over to Rutgers to talk to the students about in a few moments,
    and that is the idea of giving people a chance to serve their country in
    their community, and in return, giving them the opportunity to further
    their education.
        I've got the gentleman who was introduced here a minute ago with me
    to my right. Eli Segal and I have been friends since we were about your
    age, since we were very young. And I've asked him to head up our
    national and community service program. What we want to do is to provide
    young people the opportunity to do the following things.
        Number one, if you go to college and you have loans outstanding, we
    want to give people the opportunity to go out in the community and do
    community service work, work as teachers or police officers or work with
    the homeless or work in hospitals or work on immunizing children who
    need it, and doing that for a lower rate of pay for a couple of years
    and then pay off their college loans by doing the same. Number two, we
    want to give people some credit for community service they do while
    they're in college. And number three, we want to give people like you
    the opportunity to earn some credits to get college or job training by
    doing community service before you go. So the idea is to make higher
    education available to more people, in return for the service they give
    to the community.
        Now, in addition to all that, we're going to change the way young
    people pay their college loans back. We're going to make it possible for
    people who get out of college to pay their loans back as a percentage, a
    limited percentage, of their income. Because what happens now is a lot
    of young people get out of college, they have big college loans. Because
    they have to pay the loans back, they might want to get out, let's say,
    and do community service work which doesn't pay very much, but instead
    they may take a job paying a higher salary just to make their loan
    repayment. So we're going to try to restructure the college loan program
    so that if people want to serve over a long period of time,

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    they won't be discouraged from taking community service type jobs just
    because they pay less. They'll be able to pay their loans back as a
    percentage of their income.
        Now, the other thing I want to emphasize is there's also an
    investment in this education program that helps centers like this: more
    money for adult education for people who come back after dropping out of
    school, more money to help welfare mothers move from dependence to
    independence, more money to help young people who drop out of school and
    come back. When I was Governor of my State over the period of about 1983
    to 1992, we increased by about 6 times the amount of investment in
    remaking education programs like this. It just exploded the number of
    people in it.
        Now, why is that an important economic investment? Because this lady
    with her three children--it wasn't her fault that her husband, first of
    all, is out of the service and then gets hurt, right? She can either
    draw taxpayer dollars by taking public assistance, or get an education
    and pay taxes to educate other people's children. One of the things we
    have to realize in this country is that an economic investment is not
    just building an airport or a road or investing in new technology. It's
    also investing in people who are prepared to help themselves, to make
    sure that all of you can contribute in a world that is dominated by
    knowledge, in a world in which the living you make depends on what you
    know and what you can learn.
        And if every person, if every single mother in the United States
    could stand up and give the speech you just gave with the determination
    you just gave, it would not only help people like you but you'd be
    helping people like me. Right? I mean, we're all better off, right? We
    are. And if you look at our country, if you look at all the different
    racial and ethnic groups in our country, all the different levels of
    education, if you look at all the different levels of income, if you
    look at all the problems we've got, you just think about it--if
    everybody in our country had a chance to get a really good high school
    diploma or a GED and then get at least 2 years of education and training
    beyond that in some way or another, and if all the while they were doing
    it they were doing community service work, we'd have about half as many
    problems than we've got, wouldn't we?
        So that's why I wanted to come here today, to emphasize that this
    economic program that I'm trying to persuade the Congress to pass will
    help people to do what you've been doing in service, will help people
    who do it to pile up education credits, and will invest more money in
    programs like those here at this center.
        Developing the capacity of the American people to be all they can be
    is perhaps the most important job that I have as President. And people
    now all across America will see you today, and you may have no idea how
    many people you will inspire today because you had the courage to do
    what you did; you, or you, or you, or all of you for being here. And I
    really--I thank you very much. You were great.
        Would anybody else like to say anything or ask a question? I can't
    believe you have nine children. You're a beautiful mother to have nine
    children. Were one of you going to talk? Yes, go ahead. Tell us your
    name and how you happen to be here.

    [A Rutgers student presented the President with a sweatshirt.]

        The President. I wish I had this this morning in Washington.
    [Laughter] The wind chill factor was 13 when I was on my jog this
    morning. Thank you very much. It's beautiful.

    Funding for Arts Programs

        Q. My name is Shantel Ehrenberg. I'm a dance major at the School of
    the Arts, and I'm originally from Minnesota. I have a question as during
    our program with the children and teaching them about art and through
    art, eliminating the prejudices and educating them on something that
    they find kind of foreign to them. I was wondering what you were going
    to do, if you have any plans for the arts, funding the arts?
        The President. Programs like the one you're in will be funded
    basically based on the initiative of people at the local level. So if
    there's a program like this one at the local level which you're
    participating in, then it will be eligible to get community service
    funding.
        So the answer is maybe yes, maybe no. And let me tell you why that's
    important. We don't want to set up a big new national bureaucracy to
    tell every State and every community what they should teach and what
    they should do. What we want to do is to build on the strengths of
    existing community programs like the one you're involved in. In other
    words, why should we come into New Jersey and create some big

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    bureaucracy and waste a lot of money hiring people to administer
    programs when you've got a perfectly good program here who can access
    the money and use it all to put people to work teaching art or whatever
    else you're doing.
        So the answer is that the people who are interested in arts
    education throughout America, once this national program is passed,
    should make sure that that is an important part of the community service
    efforts in every State and every community. Because they will be
    certainly eligible for it, but we're not going to tell people what to
    do.
        As a matter of fact, we'll have relatively few mandates in this
    program. The two things we are going to do is to require every State to
    try to provide opportunities for college graduates to be either teachers
    or police officers, because we know we've got a shortage of both of them
    in every State. But otherwise, particularly with the college students
    themselves or with young people who are like you, who are in school and
    may be earning credit toward going to college or getting job training,
    we're going to let that be highly decentralized so that you can meet the
    needs in each community and State.

    National and Community Service Program

        Q. I'm a Rutgers College graduating senior in May. And I was
    wondering when you think that law you're trying to instate or whatever
    is going to come into effect. I'm worrying, like, when I graduate in
    May, whether I'm going to go pursue chiropractic college, or because I
    may not have the money for it, I may have to get a job or get in more
    debt to try to get into chiropractic school. And I think it's a good
    program that you're trying to instate, but how soon would it come that
    we would have a chance to excel?
        The President. It's up to the Congress. We'll present the law, the
    bill, soon. And I'm hoping it will pass this year and become immediately
    effective.

    [A participant explained how improving her education would enable her to
    pass the citizenship test. Another participant said how happy she was to
    meet the President.]

        The President. Anybody else want to say anything?

    [A participant presented the President with a gift from the New Jersey
    Youth Corps.]

        Q. It's my pleasure to have you here, not only because you're the
    President but because you're a President we all like. [Laughter] And I
    just wanted to ask you one question. As a minority student in the United
    States I have experience of some kind of prejudice in the country, and
    how we have to struggle a little bit harder than everyone else. And I
    just wanted to tell you that all this that you're doing is great,
    especially for Hispanics, Latinos, blacks. We all recognize how you're
    trying to make it seem that this is not only a white country anymore but
    all a mixture of all different cultures. And one of the groups that I've
    seen that has not been seen and they are a minority group, and there has
    not been putting any attention toward the handicapped people. I think
    that I wanted to ask you are you thinking of doing anything for them,
    because I think that they're there, and we should put some kind of value
    to them and some kind importance. I'm very close to one family that they
    have experienced with their handicapped child many different problems.
    And one of the things was the Reagan administration; they always had
    been cutting down on those programs, especially for the handicapped. And
    they had to have been placed in different schools, which is not
    appropriate for handicapped people. And they have, you know, have many
    problems because it's not where they should be. Do you plan to do
    anything for them?
        The President. Yes, I'm glad you brought that up. Let's talk about
    two or three things. Let me say, first of all, a lot of people with
    disabilities have problems that aren't easy to solve, as you know. But
    they also have enormous potential to contribute to this country. I can
    make the same argument for people with disabilities I made for all of
    you: that it is in our interest to see that everyone develops to the
    maximum of his or her capacity and serves to the maximum of his or her
    capacity.
        Let me just mention two or three things: Number one, last year
    before I became President, the Congress passed and President Bush signed
    a bill called the Americans with Disabilities Act. It has not been fully
    implemented. One of the commitments I made in this campaign is to try to
    bring that law to life for Americans with disabilities. It provides all
    kinds of extra effort to make America accessible and to invest in the
    potential of people with disabilities.

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        The second thing is, I hope that a lot of these service programs
    will involve special services to people with disabilities working toward
    independence, not dependence. There are a lot of Government programs now
    which if you know someone with disabilities, you know it's basically--it
    favors funding that is designed almost to keep disabled people dependent
    instead of independent. And more and more disabled people want to and
    are able to, given technological supports, to live on their own, to work
    on their own, to live in at least assisted-living environments. And this
    is a very big deal for me and for my administration. My Domestic Policy
    Adviser has a child, whom I've known since he was a little boy, who had
    cerebral palsy and is now living out on his own in an assisted-living
    environment. And he will soon get his high school diploma. So I believe
    in that.
        The third thing I would say is we're going to do a lot of work
    through the Department of Education to try to make sure that children
    get appropriate placements and at least have the chance that they need
    to get a public education.
        I don't know if you've noticed this but, not this Saturday, the
    Saturday before last, I did a little town meeting like this with
    children. And there was a 9-year-old child with cerebral palsy who was
    very eloquent on the show. And she said she had a twin sister who was
    also in a wheelchair, but her twin sister couldn't speak except with the
    use of a computer, which is not uncommon. And she said because she could
    speak, she was in a regular classroom; because her sister had to use the
    computer to speak, she was in a special ed classroom. And she felt that
    they had the same mental capacity. So she said, ``Can you help get my
    sister in my classroom?'' And I asked--it was an interesting thing to
    question--I asked her, I said, ``Would you, if your sister couldn't do
    the work, would you then favor her getting special assistance?'' And she
    said, ``Yes.'' And I said, ``What you really want is for your sister
    just to have a chance to do what you do?'' And she said, ``That's what I
    want. I just want her to have a chance.'' It was very moving.
        But a lot of schools and school districts are just now learning what
    they can do. And we're always learning more and more about proper
    placements of these children. So anyway, those are some of the things
    that I will work on for persons with disabilities.
        I appreciate the other comment you made, because I am trying to
    demonstrate to the American people that we are all one country. We have
    to live together not only with tolerance for one another but with
    absolute appreciation for one another's differences. We shouldn't just
    put up with one another; we should actually enjoy the fact that this is
    a country of people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
        When you look at what's going on today in the former Yugoslavia with
    the ethnic hatred--the Serbs and the Croatians and the Bosnian Muslims
    shooting and killing each other and starving each other, with
    differences, cultural and historic differences that are deep and long-
    lasting but, at least to the naked eye, not near as different as the
    cultural differences represented just in this room--for all of the
    problems we have in this country, we are moving forward on that. And I
    really believe that a great test of whether we will go into the next
    century and maintain our position as the greatest and strongest nation
    in the world may well be whether we can learn to live together across
    racial and ethnic lines, and not just put up with one another but
    absolutely enjoy the fact and make the most of it.
        One of our counties, Los Angeles County in California, has 150
    different racial and ethnic groups within one county. I once spoke at a
    university there that had students from 122 different countries. You
    know what that meant. This can be an enormous strength of us in a world
    that is getting smaller and smaller and smaller. If you look around this
    room, the fact that some of you can come from such different cultures is
    a very big positive in a world that's getting smaller. The fact that we
    have a huge Hispanic population, for example, will be an enormous asset
    to us as more and more of our trade goes to Mexico, Central America, and
    South America to try to build up their economy. That's just one example.
    If you look at the fact that we have a substantial Asian population, it
    can be an enormous strength to us with the fastest growing economies in
    the world being in Asia. There are lots of examples. The fact that we
    have a big African-American population will be an enormous strength to
    us when 20 years from now we might find out that Africa then has the
    fastest growing economy in the world, if they can solve some of their
    political problems. So America is in an incredible position to have
    another great century as a nation

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    if we can learn to really build on the strength of our diversity.
        Oh, yes. I want you all to be--you've been invited to ride a bus
    over to the speech. And I'm going to go with you. Do you want to go?
    Ready?

    World Trade Center Bombing

        Q. Mr. President, I have a question before you go, if you don't
    mind. It's not directly related to this event. But if you could, I know
    the American public is really interested in knowing what is going on
    with the World Trade Center explosion. Was it a terrorist incident?
        The President. I'm not in a position to say that now, and I don't
    mean because I know something that I'm not telling you. I think you know
    that there was severe structural damage done to the World Trade Center.
    And as I think Governor Cuomo has already announced, you know the
    Federal and State and local people have been working together ever since
    the incident occurred. It took a substantial amount of time just to get
    people down in the crater that the bomb made to begin the analysis. I
    can tell you this: that we have put the full, full resources, the
    Federal law enforcement agencies, all kinds of agencies, all kinds of
    access to information at the service of those who are working to figure
    out who did this and why and what the facts are. But I cannot answer
    your question yet.

    National and Community Service Program

        Q. Mr. President, on national service, you campaigned on the promise
    that anybody who wanted to go to school could go and then repay their
    loans in national service. I think in your economic plan, under
    investment, there's $3 billion allotted for national service.
        The President. More now.
        Q. Which would not be enough to provide this to everyone. How long
    would it take to phase it in? And do you think that you're not really
    fulfilling your campaign promise?
        The President. No. As a matter of fact, in the campaign, we only
    talked about making it available as an option. We talked about making it
    available for everybody to pay off their loans as a percentage of their
    income, and then the funding of national service slots will be college
    graduates. That's all we talked about in the campaign. Now, we're
    actually going to start funding slots for people before they go to high
    school. And we think we'll start--we think we'll have 35,000 of them,
    which is twice as many people as were ever in the Peace Corps in any
    given year, in addition to those coming out of college.
        What we don't know, and we may have to modify the funding I asked
    for from Congress over the next 4 years, but it is impossible to know
    how many people will choose the service option. So the funding we asked
    for is based on our best available effort to estimate how many people
    will choose the service option. All the students will be able to choose
    to pay their loans back as a percentage of their income immediately. And
    we think we'll be able to accommodate over the next 4 years, everybody
    who chooses the service option. We think we will.
        But we have to build it up a little in the first year or two so we
    learn how to do it. There has been a pilot project going, as you
    probably know, under legislation that was sponsored in the previous
    Congress by, I think, Senator Nunn, Senator Wofford, and others. And
    we're going to expand it just as quickly as we can, and we're going to
    do our level-best, once we get the system worked out over the next year
    or so, to make service available to everybody who wants it. We think
    their numbers are about right. We think we have funded it about the
    level of maximum participation for college graduates. But we're adding
    on pre-college students, which we think is a good thing. This is
    something I had not planned to do basically until I kept seeing programs
    like the L.A. Conservation Corps, City Year, programs like the ones the
    young people are involved in here.
        Q. Are you concerned, sir, that it may become a kind of a new
    entitlement, that it will grow beyond the ability to fund and out of
    control?
        The President. No, if we can't fund it, the entitlement will be
    access to a loan you can pay back based on a percentage of your income,
    which will be a huge--we're going to strengthen collection procedures,
    cut defaults, cut the cost of administering the program until we can
    fund a lot of that.
        The service issue cannot become an entitlement. If all of a sudden
    in one year a million people want to convert from a loan to service, we
    won't be able to afford that. But based on the experiences we have seen
    in the past, we think that this will be, by far, the biggest service
    program in the history of America. And we think we'll be able to take
    everybody who will choose the service option. We're just going on
    historical

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    precedents now. We think we can more than fund the people who will
    choose the service option in the first 4 years. If they don't, I would
    consider going back. But we can't let that become an absolute
    entitlement.

    World Trade Center Bombing

        Q. [Inaudible]--economic aid, sir, to New York, and are you prepared
    to do that? Governor Cuomo has asked for it.
        The President. This morning I got a report on that, and it's my
    understanding that we are going through the regular agencies and that
    the request will be processed promptly. I don't think that there is any
    problem with the request that he made as far as I understand it. And
    we're giving that a high priority.

    Rutgers University and Community Service

        Q. Mr. President, why did you choose Rutgers for this announcement?
    And what impressed you about their community service program here?
        The President. I chose Rutgers because, first of all, the university
    was involved with this facility and because I want to keep highlighting
    adult education, education of welfare recipients, education of kids that
    drop out of school, and because I like this New Jersey Youth Program
    here. Under Governor Florio's administration, they started, I think, 9,
    10, 11 of these, something like that. Again, I do not want this to be a
    bureaucratic program. I want to encourage kind of an entrepreneurial
    spirit out there at the State and local level. I want States to be
    encouraged to set up Youth Corps. I want comprehensive community service
    centers like this to be able to get people doing national service.
        So I wanted to come here to say I really appreciate what these folks
    are doing, but also to give the rest of America an idea of what we mean
    by community service, what we mean by national service, and how it can
    embrace people of different ages and different backgrounds with
    different needs; because it's very important that to make this work,
    we're going to have to rely on the creativity of people at the
    grassroots level. And the last thing I want is another centralized
    bureaucracy telling people how to serve.
        As I said, right now, the only decisions we have made for categories
    of service that have to be approved in every State are in the area of
    police and teaching, because we know as a practical matter we need more
    community policing in high-crime areas where we can reduce crime and
    work with kids and not just be there after it happens. And we know we
    need more teachers in a lot of core areas to reduce the student-teacher
    ratio and increase learning. So we've done that. But otherwise, this
    program is not going to have a huge set of national requirements or
    bureaucracy.

    Neighborhood Corps Legislation

        Q. Mr. President, how closely, if at all, did you work with Senator
    Bradley's neighborhood corps bill?
        The President. We reviewed it very closely. I think he's going to
    meet us over at Rutgers today. I was very impressed by it. And as a
    matter of fact, I had a personal conversation with him about it. That's
    one of the reasons we wanted to come up here, too. And I invited him to
    come today, and I think he's going to be over there.

    Terrorism

        Q. Mr. President, do you fear that a fear of terrorism in America
    might change the way of life that most Americans have, if this bombing
    proves to be terrorism?
        The President. I certainly hope not. We've been very blessed in this
    country to have been free of the kind of terrorist activity that has
    gripped other countries. Even a country like Great Britain, that has a
    much lower general crime rate, has more of that sort of activity because
    of the political problems that it has been involved in.
        I don't want the American people to overreact to this at this time.
    I can tell you, I have put the--I will reiterate--I have put the full
    resources of the Federal Government, every conceivable law enforcement
    information resource we could put to work on this, we have. I'm very
    concerned about it. But I think it's also important that we not
    overreact to it. After all, sometimes when an incident like this
    happens, people try to claim credit for it who didn't do it. Sometimes
    if folks like that can get you to stop doing what you're doing, they've
    won half the battle. If they get you ruffled, if they get us to change
    the way we live and what we do, that's half the battle.
        I would discourage the American people from overreacting to this.
    It's a very serious thing. And I'm heartbroken for the people who were
    killed and their families and those who were

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    injured. There was some significant business disruptions, too, as you
    probably know and as I'm afraid we'll find out more about in the next
    day or two, just by shutting down the World Trade Center and all the
    activities that go on there. But I would plead with the American people
    and the good people of New York to right now keep your courage up, go on
    about your lives. And we're working as hard as we can to get to the
    bottom of this.

    [A student expressed appreciation and support for community service
    ideals.]

    Gun Control Legislation

        Q. The National Rifle Association right now, in New Jersey, is
    actively seeking to overturn the assault weapons ban that Governor
    Florio put on the books in 1990. They say if they're successful, then no
    other State will be able to enact rigid gun control and that you'll have
    a very tough time getting the Brady bill through Congress. Are you
    concerned about that?
        The President. I think Governor Florio is right. And I'm going to
    sure try to pass the Brady bill. I think Americans who want safer
    streets and still want people to be able to hunt and fish and pursue
    their sporting activities should take a lot of heart in the success that
    Governor Wilder had in Virginia recently. And Virginia, it has become a
    source, as you know, of weapons for a lot of illegal activity all up and
    down the Atlantic seaboard. And they've gone to that once-a-month
    limitation on the purchase of guns.
        You know, we can't be so fixated on our desire to preserve the
    rights of ordinary Americans to legitimately own handguns and rifles--
    it's something I strongly support--we can't be so fixated on that that
    we are unable to think about the reality of life that millions of
    Americans face on streets that are unsafe, under conditions that no
    other nation--no other nations--has permitted to exist. And at some
    point, I still hope that the leadership of the National Rifle
    Association will go back to doing what it did when I was a boy and which
    made me want to be a lifetime member because they put out valuable
    information about hunting and marksmanship and safe use of guns. But
    just to know of the conditions we face today in a lot of our cities and
    other places in this country and the enormous threat to public safety is
    amazing.
        I've got young Americans now in Somalia trying to create conditions
    of peaceful existence there in a country where it is difficult. But
    there are a lot of young Americans who are living in neighborhoods today
    that are about as dangerous or worse than what kids are facing in
    Somalia in terms of shots, not in terms of hunger and access to medicine
    and shelter, that's different.
        But I have to tell you I think that Governor Florio did a gusty
    thing here. I think Governor Wilder did a brave thing. I had my own
    encounters back home in Arkansas, and I just hope to be able to pass the
    Brady bill and do some other sensible things that do not unduly infringe
    on the right of the law-abiding citizen to keep and bear arms, but will
    help make these children's future safer. And I think we ought to do
    that.
        Q. Do you think that the NRA's contributing to that threat that you
    just talked about because it is opposing these gun control measures?
        The President. Well, I don't want to get into character. I think
    that it is an error for them to oppose every attempt to bring some
    safety and some rationality into the way we handle some of the most
    serious criminal problems we have. And these things do not unduly affect
    the right to keep and bear arms. It's not going to kill anybody to wait
    a couple of days to get a handgun while we do a background check on
    somebody that wants to buy a gun.
        I have personal experience with this. I live in a State where half
    the people have a hunting or a fishing license. I know somebody who once
    sold a weapon to a person who went out and killed a bunch of people
    because he was an escapee from a mental hospital. And the guy liked to
    never got over it. And if he had just had a law where he was supposed to
    wait 2 or 3 days to check, they would have found that out. I know that
    happens. I don't believe that everybody in America needs to be able to
    buy a semiautomatic or an automatic weapon, built only for the purpose
    of killing people, in order to protect the right of Americans to hunt
    and to practice marksmanship and to be secure in their own homes and own
    a weapon to be secure. I just don't believe that.
        So I hope that this is a debate that will continue. And I think, as
    I said, what Governor Florio did and what Governor Wilder did, I think
    will contribute to Americans facing this and trying to reconcile our
    absolute obligation under the Constitution to give people the right

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    to handle a firearm responsibly and our obligation to try to preserve
    peace and keep these kids alive in our cities.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:20 a.m. at the center.