    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 14, 1993]
    [Pages 430-434]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Summer Jobs Conference in Arlington, Virginia
    April 14, 1993

        Thank you very much. The speech that Octavius gave says more than
    anything I will be able to say today about why it's important to give
    all of our young people a chance to get a work experience and to
    continue to learn, to merge the nature of learning and work; why it's
    important to honor the efforts of people like Jerry Levin and Nancye
    Combs and Pat Irving and all of those who are here.
        I want to thank the Secretaries of Labor and Education and all the
    people who work with them for sponsoring this; my good friend, Governor
    Wilder, for being here and for speaking; and all of the business and
    local community leaders from the city and county and State level from
    around America who are here.
        This has been a pretty fun day. I loved hearing the young people
    sing. It was music to my ears because it is their future that we are
    really struggling about. A year and a half ago I began the quest to seek
    the Presidency because I was concerned about their future, because I
    believe that our country, which had always been a beacon of hope for the
    young, had too little opportunity, was too divided among ourselves
    across lines of income and race and region and other ways, without a
    vision to take us into the future.
        I entered with the hope that together we could create more
    opportunity and insist on much more responsibility from all of our
    people. But in the process we might recreate the best of America's
    community, knowing that together we could always do more than we could
    individually and that we might secure our future.
        All of you here today are committed to that. The 1,000 jobs that
    Jerry Levin has committed Time-Warner to is symbolic of the commitments
    made by many of the private sector people who are here, and those who
    are around the country. The work that Nancye Combs does, and the
    successes of all the young people like those on this stage, and
    especially the eloquent statement by Octavius Jeffers, all those things
    show that together we know what we need to do, and we're on the right
    track.
        Last July when I was traveling across Ameri-

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    ca's heartland in my luxurious bus, I visited Seneca High School in
    Louisville, Kentucky. And there I met young people and business people
    who were participating in the Louisville Education and Employment
    Partnership. I saw what Nancye Combs talked about today. I saw how the
    young people were making an extra effort to succeed both in school and
    at work. I saw, as I have seen many times in my own State, the principle
    illustrated that Octavius talked about: that for millions of American
    young people it is really an impediment to both their learning and their
    ability to be good workers, to draw a sharp dividing line between what
    is work and what is learning.
        In the world in which we are living, the average young person will
    change the nature of work seven or eight times in a lifetime. We must
    learn to merge the work world and the learning world much better. And we
    must determine that all of our young people see the opportunities that
    some of them have had showcased here today.
        Whether you're in business or in government or in education, you
    know that we have a big job to do when it comes to building a future
    that really, honestly includes opportunity for all of our people. There
    are still a lot of people who say, ``Well, things are pretty good here
    in Washington. Everything's fine. The best thing we can do about this
    whole thing is nothing.'' They all have jobs, all the people who say
    that. They all have health insurance. They all have a pretty good
    education. And they all have a pretty secure knowledge that they'll be
    okay no matter what happens. I say that not to be either political or
    unduly critical but to point out that one of the great challenges of
    this age for every advanced nation, everyone, is to fully develop the
    capacities of all of its people and then find work for them to do.
        All the European countries have higher unemployment rates than we do
    but also stronger support systems for the unemployed. The Japanese
    unemployment rate has been going up. They're going to adopt a stimulus
    that, even if you count it in its most rigorous terms, is 3 or 4 times
    bigger than the one that I have proposed to create jobs. In West Germany
    alone, the unemployment rate is now about as high as ours.
        This is a big problem for advanced nations. It costs a lot of money
    to add an extra employee, with a lot of pressure from low-wage producers
    in other countries that are growing their own economies and trying to
    provide new opportunity for their people. But it is especially important
    for America for two reasons. One is, we have a whole lot of folks who,
    unless we move aggressively, will not have the education and skills we
    need to be competitive and productive in a nation like this. The second
    is, even if we educate them all, if there aren't jobs, they will be
    robbed of the fruits of their educational labors. People need to be able
    to work in this country.
        We have always had some unemployment, and indeed, some of it is
    normal. You've always got some people leaving jobs and moving around the
    country and doing first one thing and another. We have now, at this
    moment in our history, the necessity for all big organizations,
    including the Government, to reexamine the way they are organized and to
    ask whether there are too many people working at some kinds of jobs. But
    in the whole, we must still be able to create jobs in a country like
    America, to provide people with the chance to work.
        It's going to be difficult for me to make the welfare reform
    proposals that I will make to Congress in the next couple of months.
    It's going to be hard for me to make those work if at the end of all
    this work to get off welfare, there isn't a job.
        So we have two tasks. One is to develop the capacity of the American
    people to perform without regard to race or income or the circumstances
    of their birth. The other is to make sure that there are some
    opportunities for them to bring to bear for their talent and to be
    rewarded with a paycheck. It is a great challenge. I do not pretend that
    all of the answers are simple. But I know if you want to ask the
    American people, all of them, to be more responsible, if you want to
    recreate a sense of community in this country that bridges the lines of
    race and income and region, you have got to have opportunity in that
    mix.
        A part of our vision for America has to be a future for every young
    person in this country who's willing to play by the rules and work hard
    and strive for the end of the rainbow. There has to be something at the
    end of that rainbow. And that is what we are basically here to talk
    about today: What can we all do as partners, recognizing none of us can
    do it alone, to develop the capacities of our people to succeed wherever
    they live and whatever their

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    background. And then, what can we do to make sure that there's something
    there for them to do?
        The summer jobs program we're discussing today is an integral part
    of that plan, because it will promote the values of work and opportunity
    and fairness, community. It will put the people first, and it does have
    a partnership between the public and private sector.
        I said when I addressed the United States Congress in February on
    this program that I would seek to create about 700,000 extra summer jobs
    from Government sources and then challenge the American business
    community to meet that target so that we can create more than a million
    new summer jobs over and above what had been created before.
        Many, many people have responded to that challenge. And Jerry is
    just a shining example of that which has been replicated in this room
    and around the country, people who are going to do more than they
    otherwise would in the private sector to give young people a work
    experience. And it is terribly important.
        I want to emphasize that this summer jobs program is part of an
    overall commitment to increase the capacity of the American people, from
    retraining defense workers who lose their jobs and other adults who need
    to acquire new skills, to improving the transition from school to work
    for young people who don't go to college but do need at least 2 years of
    post-high school training either on the job or in a community college or
    a vocational setting, so that they can be competitive workers, making it
    possible for more people to go on to college who do want to go. All
    these things are part and parcel of a comprehensive plan.
        It's also important, as I said, that we create more jobs. The
    emergency jobs program that I asked the Congress to adopt would create a
    half a million extra jobs over the next year and a half, and that would
    reduce the unemployment rate by a half a percent. It would also enable
    us to absorb more young people coming into the work force in jobs that
    otherwise will not be created. It also will help a lot of cities and
    counties to invest in things that need to be done at the grassroots
    level: projects long delayed, water projects, sewer projects, park
    projects, new industries and particularly in small- and medium-size
    communities, a whole range of things that will improve the economy and
    improve the environment.
        The summer jobs program is an important part of that because we have
    tried for the first time, through the work of the Labor Department and
    the Education Department and through reaching out to people like you, to
    make this more than just a one-shot summer jobs program; to integrate it
    with private sector efforts; to hopefully replicate it in each coming
    summer; to move these young people into further educational
    opportunities and to further job opportunities; and to have a strong,
    meaningful education component to these summer jobs, something that the
    United States Government has never fully emphasized before.
        A lot of these young people, as you well know, because they come
    from difficult backgrounds, because they go to school in difficult and
    challenging circumstances, need extra help in building their basic
    skills in math and language, reasoning, and in other areas. And a lot of
    educational studies show that young people who have difficulty in school
    often forget as much as 30 percent of what they learn over the summer
    and then that has to be repeated the next year.
        What we are trying to do here is to give people the opportunity to
    learn good work habits and to reinforce their learning skills and to put
    them together, and then, hopefully, over the next couple of years, if
    our entire program passes, to give every school in this country the
    opportunity to have a good work and learning environment.
        There will be more applied academics, more opportunities for people
    to learn and work during the school year, so that this will not simply
    be an isolated moment for these young folks but will be a part of
    building a whole new educational experience, a whole new work
    experience, and moving on a pathway to a better future.
        The summer jobs programs are not designed to be make-work jobs.
    They're designed to make a future for the people holding the job. And
    that's what they will do. In the process, they'll help to build local
    communities, to strengthen local economies, to solve local problems--
    real jobs renovating housing, repairing public buildings, doing clerical
    work, providing nursing assistance in hospitals, supervising and
    training children at child care centers, and learning all the way,
    challenging young people to learn while they earn but letting them earn.
        You know, it's very difficult to make a case

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    to people who have never seen opportunity on their own street that they
    should do this, that, or the other thing if there's no evidence of the
    opportunity that's at the end of the effort. I have not been sparing in
    going for the last year-and-a-half into places where it isn't exactly
    popular to say it and say I wanted to reform the welfare system; I
    wanted to toughen child support; I wanted to require people to work; I
    was sick and tired of people being irresponsible in the use of guns on
    the streets, and I wanted to change all that. But if you're going to
    summon people to greater responsibility, you have to reward them when
    they do the right thing with opportunity.
        The young people we propose to put to work under our program will
    spend 90 hours learning basic skills, such as math, reading, writing,
    either on the job or in the classroom. They will stretch their minds as
    well as work up a sweat. They will have a sense of accomplishment. It
    will literally be a summer challenge but a challenge that will take them
    into a different life.
        So I want to ask all of you to support this effort even as I, as
    your President, support your effort. At the end of the summer we will
    evaluate all the young people who participate. We'll see whether they,
    instead of falling behind over the summer academically as too many young
    people do, they stayed even or moved ahead. I suspect that they will.
        This summer, Secretary Reich and Secretary Riley and I will be
    visiting many of your communities. We'll really try to learn from you
    which of these efforts are working, what we should do next summer, how
    we can build it in to what goes on during the school year, how we can
    build in our job training efforts and the works that we do with your
    companies to make sense of this whole thing, so that we maximize the
    impact of the taxpayer dollar and your private investments as well.
        We want to honor the companies and the communities, the business
    leaders and the young people who do the very best jobs this summer. And
    again, I want to say to all of you in private business who have matched
    our effort, I thank you. And to all of you who haven't and those across
    the country who may listen or learn about this event today, I want to
    implore other private employers to stretch a little bit to give other
    young people a chance to work this summer. I'm telling you, we cannot go
    through another 10 years when we don't give these children anything to
    say yes to. If we exhort them to do right, we've got to be able to
    reward them.
        When the other speakers were talking, I was sitting up here on the
    platform, listening and reveling. And they got talking about work, and I
    got to thinking about all the different things I've done to make a
    living in my life. When I was 13, I made a very foolish short-term
    business investment: I set up a comic book stand and sold two trunks
    full of comic books. Made more money than I had ever had in my life. But
    if I had saved those trunks, they'd be worth $100,000 today. [Laughter]
    That does not mean young people should not be entrepreneurial. It just
    means that you can't foresee a generation ahead. I have mowed yards and
    cleared land and built houses and worked in body shops and the parts
    departments of a car dealership. And I've done a lot of different things
    for a living. Some people say I got into politics to escape work.
    [Laughter]
        I learned something from every job I ever had. But I grew up in a
    generation where I literally did not know a living soul, without regard
    to race or income, who wanted to work who didn't have a job. I grew up
    in a generation when all you had to really say to people is, get an
    education, and you'll be all right. You'll get a job, and you'll make
    more money next year than you did this year. Now I live in a generation
    full of people, most of whom don't make any more money in real dollars
    than they did 10 years ago, and they're working longer hours, and
    they're paying more for the basics of life. And we are now wondering
    whether we can create the jobs that these young people want.
        Now, I want to close by reemphasizing these two things: It doesn't
    matter what kind of economic policies this administration pursues or how
    much productivity increases there are in the private sector. If young
    Americans don't get a good education, don't learn how to work, and can't
    be productive, those jobs will not be created in this country. Machines
    will do the work, or the work will be done off-shore by people who have
    the same skill levels and can work for a third or a fourth or a fifth
    the wages. So nothing we can do economically will matter unless we build
    the skills and capacities of America's work force. And anybody that
    pretends otherwise is just kidding.
        On the other hand, we need to be honest. Every wealthy country in
    the world, including

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    the United States, is having difficulty creating jobs. If I knew
    everything that needs to be done, I'd be glad to tell you, and we could
    just call off the whole deliberations of Congress and everything else. I
    don't have all the answers. But I know this: Doing nothing is not the
    answer.
        And so the jobs program that I have presented to Congress, with the
    summer jobs, with the money for the cities and the counties, through the
    community development program, with the infrastructure money, is a small
    part of a big budget. It is an attempt to engage in an experiment to see
    whether or not, with the economy recovering in terms of corporate
    profit, we can give a little boost to it, give opportunities to young
    people, create a half a million jobs, and maybe get the engine going
    again.
        Most of the jobs in this program are going to be jobs in the private
    sector, not Government jobs, even though it's Government money. And the
    lion's share of the work in rebuilding the American economy obviously
    will come from the private sector. That's the kind of system we have,
    and it works pretty well.
        But this is the challenge we have. So I ask all of you here today to
    support the summer jobs program, to ask your friends and neighbors to
    support it, to go back home and ask your employers to make a little
    extra effort, to do what you can to help me pass the funds to create the
    700,000 jobs that the United States Government should create this
    summer, so that together we can have this partnership. Because more than
    anything else, we have to give a future, a future that our young people
    can believe in.
        We need to send them a message that here in America if you study
    hard and work hard, if you obey the law and contribute something to your
    community, you will be rewarded by your country. You can build a future
    from your own dreams.
        That has always been the promise of America. Together that's what
    this summer of challenge needs to be: a reaffirmation of the promise of
    America for so many young people to whom that promise has been an
    illusion. We can make it a reality.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:22 a.m. in the Regency Ballroom at the
    Hyatt Regency Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Octavius Jeffers,
    1992 Summer Youth Program participant; Jerry Levin, chairman of the
    board, Time-Warner, Inc.; Nancye Combs, chair, Private Industry Council;
    and Patricia Irving, president and chief executive officer, Private
    Industry Council of Philadelphia.