    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [June 15, 1993]
    [Pages 853-855]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the College Democrats of America
    June 15, 1993

        I want to thank Adam Kreisel and Jamie Harmon and Jenny Ritter for
    this gift and for their leadership in the College Democrats, and I want
    to welcome all of you here. I know I'm not the first person to speak to
    you. I've been over lobbying Members of Congress and being lobbied by
    them about various issues today, and I'm awfully glad to see all of you
    here.

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        The first time I came to these grounds was in the summer of 1963, 30
    years ago next month, before virtually everybody on these steps was
    born, long before most of you were born. That visit made a lasting
    impression on me, and I hope this visit makes a lasting impression on
    you. I was raised at a time when mothers wanted their children to grow
    up to be President, and I hope there will be another time when people
    want their children to grow up to be President. Now there can be
    daughters as well as sons who can really make a difference in our
    future.
        There is around here a wonderful old photograph of three great
    Democrats standing on the steps of this building together: President
    Franklin Roosevelt, who was then a young Assistant Secretary of the
    Navy, standing next to his President, Woodrow Wilson, and alongside them
    was William Jennings Bryan, who was then the Secretary of State in the
    Wilson administration during World War I. Between those 3 men, they
    represented 9 Democratic Presidential candidacies in 13 consecutive
    elections. Maybe there's magic on the steps that will rub off on some of
    you someday. I hope so. I hope some of you will be here.
        But I also want to remind you that even though I am profoundly
    grateful about the help you have given to me and to the Vice President
    in the past election--and without the young people of this country
    voting in record numbers, we might not have been able to come here--I
    remind you that the reason for your party identification and the reason
    for your work in elections is to change people's lives for the better.
    That change is, under the best of circumstances, never easy. And after
    12 years in which people have been given siren song after siren song
    after siren song about how evil Government is and all we have to do is
    just get it out of your lives and everything will go away, all the
    problems will go away, and every year the problems get worse and worse
    and worse, still people get used to being told what they want to hear.
    And now the President is not telling people what they want to hear.
        The President is saying we have to bring down the deficit, find some
    money to invest in jobs and education and our future. We have to be
    competitive with other nations. We've got to do some tough things. We
    have to cut spending and raise taxes. But I have given the Congress a
    proposal that essentially, for every dollar of deficit reduction, takes
    50 cents in spending cuts, 37 or 38 cents in taxes on people with
    incomes above $100,000, and 12 cents in taxes on the middle class, and
    holds people with incomes of under $30,000 harmless. It's a proposal
    that puts all the money into a deficit reduction trust fund. It has led
    to lower interest rates already. The head of the Federal Reserve was in
    to see me last week saying if we could just keep going and pass an
    economic program that will keep interest rates down, he believes there
    will be a significant continuation of our economic recovery.
        If someone had told you in December, as you looked forward to the
    Inauguration of the new President and Vice President, that by June 1st,
    after 3 years of recession, we would be on our way to passing a budget
    in record time--the first budget to be seriously considered by the
    Congress since 1981, presented by a President--if someone had told you
    that by June 1st, as a result of the serious efforts of this
    administration to get the economy going and bring the deficit down and
    to do it in a fair way so that those who benefited most in the 1980's
    would pay most in our efforts to do this, that we would have a 20-year
    low in home mortgages, a 7-year high in housing sales, unemployment
    under 7 percent for the first time in a year and a half, and 755,000 new
    jobs in the private sector, I think you would think that's a pretty good
    record.
        And let me remind you of what else has already happened. We have
    passed the family leave bill so people don't lose their jobs when they
    have to go home for a baby or a sick parent. We overcame a filibuster in
    the Senate to pass the motor voter bill to open the franchise to more
    people. After thwarting the attempts to build a responsible global
    environmental policy for years, on June 4th the United States signed the
    Biodiversity Treaty and once again resumed its leadership in the effort
    to promote responsible environmental policies.
        And we have introduced into the Congress a vigorous campaign finance
    reform bill. And I pleaded again today with the Republican Senators who
    voted for the same sort of bill last year not to filibuster and kill
    that bill this year. We need to lower the cost of political campaigns,
    limit the influence of PAC's, open the airwaves to honest debate, and
    give the American people their political system back. If you want
    economic reform, we need political reform;

    [[Page 855]]

    the bill is in the Congress.
        And finally, the issue which attracted so many college students to
    this campaign: The idea that we ought to open the doors of college
    education to all is making its way through the Congress in two bills.
    One is the national service bill, which will be marked up tomorrow in
    both the Senate and the House, with broad bipartisan support, to give
    more and more young people, tens of thousands of them, the chance to
    earn credit against college, to work in college, or to work off some of
    their college loans by giving service to their country here at home to
    rebuild America. And let me remind you what the other part of that
    pledge was, because it is also in the administration's economic program.
    It will save $4 billion over the next 5 years in excessive costs to the
    present student loan program and make a deal with the students of
    America. It will say anybody, without regard to income, can borrow the
    money they need to go to college and pay it back, not based on how much
    they borrow alone but on what they earn after they go to work. You don't
    have to pay it back until you go to work, and it's based on your
    earnings after you go to work. [Applause] Yes. Thank you. I think that's
    a pretty good record for 5 months, don't you?
        Yesterday I had an opportunity to do something no Democrat since
    Lyndon Johnson has done, and that is to nominate someone to serve on the
    Supreme Court of the United States. I nominated Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a
    judge on the Court of Appeals here, whose pioneering work for women in
    the 1970's, taking six cases to the United States Supreme Court and
    winning five of them, has a lot to do with the fact that all of you will
    be able to grow up and compete with one another and cooperate with one
    another on more equal terms in so many ways. She symbolizes, in my
    judgment, the kind of achievement that we ought to have in this country.
    When somebody works hard, when they play by the rules, when they are
    performing at a level of excellence that deserves to be recognized, they
    ought to be recognized. That should be the rule for everybody in this
    country.
        All of these things that we're talking about today in the end will
    produce more jobs and higher incomes, will offer more opportunity and
    demand more responsibility of people, and rebuild the seeds of the
    American community. I am tired of our people being divided by race, by
    region, by income, by party, and every other way. We've got to pull this
    country together again. But it can only be done when people have a sense
    that if they work hard and play by the rules, they'll be treated fairly.
        I hope that the people who have followed the work of the First Lady
    and all the health care task force also believe that that is going to be
    an effort to treat all the American people fairly. She went to the
    American Medical Association and reached out to the doctors. We've
    reached out to the hospitals. We've reached out to the people who
    consume health care, the people who provide it, and all the people in
    the middle. Let me remind you: If you really want to be able to raise
    your children in an environment that is free of this awful deficit,
    where there is still enough money left to invest in our future, we have
    got to bring health care costs under control, and we have got to restore
    to the American people a sense of family security. You cannot have
    millions of people waking up every morning terrified that they're going
    to lose their health care if somebody in their family gets sick or if
    they lose their jobs. We've got to do something about that if we really
    want to build America.
        When you leave here I want to ask you to go back home and gin up
    some support among your people for this economic program. Call the
    Members of the Senate, without regard to party, and ask them to do it.
    Tell them we cannot afford to turn away from our obligations to bring
    the deficit down, increase investment in our future, keep interest rates
    down, and rebuild the economy.
        This administration came to Washington to restore hope and jobs, to
    demand more responsibility but to reward people if they do it. We have
    got to do it. And when they ask you what we've done, give them the list
    I gave you. It's a pretty good list, it's a good beginning, and it
    justifies the faith you put in Bill Clinton and Al Gore last year. Let's
    keep working, and we can make the kind of a country we ought to.
        Goodbye. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:47 p.m. on the steps of the Old Executive
    Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to organization officers
    Adam Kreisel, president; Jamie Harmon, former president; and Jenny
    Ritter, vice president.