    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 30, 1993]
    [Pages 540-543]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session on National Service in New
    Orleans, Louisiana
    April 30, 1993

        The President. Thank you. It's good to see you. How many of you are
    students here? Okay. And how many of you are in the Delta Service Corps?
    And then, who's here from Teach For America? That's good. I've got it.
        Let me, first of all, say how delighted I am to be here and how much
    I appreciate all of you taking a little time out to talk with me. You
    probably know that I am going from here over to the University of New
    Orleans to speak about the national service plan and the new direct loan
    plan for college students that will be announced today and will be
    introduced shortly into the Congress.
        I have with me today Senator Johnston and many Members of your
    congressional delegation and your Lieutenant Governor and many State
    officials here and some people who have come all the way from Washington
    to be with us, the Secretary of Education and Gen. David Jones, former
    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a lot of people who believe in
    you and your future and all the other young people in this country.
        What I wanted to do today is to try to sort of set the stage for
    this speech that I'm going to go give and also to listen to you a little
    bit about the kinds of things that you do now: Why did you get into this
    service? Do you believe if there were more opportunities, more young
    people would do it?
        This program we're going to propose will provide opportunities for
    tens of thousands of young people to work before, during, or after
    college to build up credit against a college education or, if they do it
    afterward, to pay off their college loans. It will also change the way
    young people borrow money to go to college so that you won't have to pay
    money back that you can't afford to pay back. Even if you borrow a lot
    of money to go to college, you'll always pay it back as a percentage of
    your income, so that people will be able to, and if you're not working,
    you don't have to pay it back. Then you pay it back as you work. But
    we're going to use the tax system and make sure that you have to pay it
    back if you can, so there won't be all the defaults we have now. That
    will lower the cost of and the threshold of going to college for every
    young person in America who wants to deal with it.
        So I want to increase access to college, but also it's very
    important for me to increase the number of people, starting in our high
    schools, who will engage in some form of service.
        So I think it would be helpful to me to know--we can maybe start
    with the high school students. If you could talk a little bit about the
    service projects you've been involved in and why you do it and whether
    you think we can get a lot more people involved.
        Who wants to go first?

    [At this point, a student discussed her experience as a volunteer with
    the Girl Scouts of America and the importance of being a role model.]

        The President. You know, one of the things that I think is good
    about this program is we're going to build on the organizations at work
    now and set it up on a State-by-State basis. And

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    a State can certify any program that's working in that State to be
    eligible to take young people for the national service program. So we're
    not going to create a whole new network of things. We're going to build
    on the programs that are working.
        Anybody else? Anybody from the Delta Service Corps? Go ahead.

    [A National Summerbridge Program volunteer discussed that program.]

        The President. Anyone else?

    [A student discussed a volunteer program funded by the Nestle Corp.]

        The President. And how many young people were involved in the
    project?
        Q. We started out with about 40, and then through attrition, we
    ended up with about 8 or 10 of us at the end. But it was just a great
    feeling to go down there and do that.
        The President. What did you learn about homeless people?
        Q. That they're just like us; that they're families and that they
    want to succeed as badly as we do and that there are more of them in the
    city than I ever thought possible. The line for that lunch just kept
    going forever.

    [A Delta Service Corps member then discussed that program.]

        The President. Do you have a feeling in the Teach For America
    program that you're actually helping people change their lives?

    [A teacher discussed how teachers and the Teach For America program can
    be a positive influence in a student's life.]

        The President. The Teach For America program has worked very well.
    This should help increase the recruitment, because you'll get some
    credit against whatever your accumulated college loans are to go do
    that.
        What about you? What are you doing?

    [A VISTA volunteer stressed the importance of the literacy program.]

        The President. You know, one of the things that we discovered when
    we started trying to put this national service program together is that
    there were a whole lot of programs like that that had been funded at a
    very limited level in one Government agency or another. No one had ever
    put them all together and figured out how to get them all to work
    together. It's one of the things we're trying to do.
        Another thing I want to say about the literacy issue is that when I
    was Governor of my State, I devoted a lot of time to trying to
    dramatically increase the number of people who would go back to get
    their GED and get into adult literacy programs. We had a huge increase.
    And one of the things that we can now tell those folks, too, is if
    you're involved in any kind of service program, you can earn credit to
    go on after high school. But you can't get any money until you get your
    GED, which I think is important. You know, that will sort of reinforce
    that.

    [A participant stressed that local agencies should have a role in the
    national service program.]

        The President. That's great. Yes, sir?

    [A participant suggested that communities be given a leading role in the
    national service program and expressed concern about the motivation of
    some students in the program.]

        The President. You might, but first, you raise two issues. Let me
    respond to the first one. I, 100 percent, agree with you about having to
    be community-based. That's why we went out of our way not to create some
    big new Federal bureaucracy but to require the States to have community
    representatives on a board that can just certify a project in a
    community that's plainly working, because otherwise this whole thing is
    going to fail. There's no way we know what's good for your home town or
    mine or anybody else's of the Federal Government.
        The second thing is: That may be right. You may have more young
    people--I hope you do have more young people coming into the service. It
    may be that some of them will be just doing it for the money. But
    frankly, if you look at, for example, the GI bill, there's a lot of
    evidence people enroll in the military service in part because of the
    benefits, but no evidence that they do it only because they think
    they're going to get money on the back end, because you have to make the
    effort, you have to go to it. And I think--or one of you alluded to this
    earlier, one of you has already talked--I don't think you can be in
    these service programs without being changed yourself. I think it's
    pretty hard to go all the way through one and not get connected to the
    people you're trying to help. I think it's worth the risk to get more
    people.

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        I may mess up the numbers here, but there's a man here with me from
    New Jersey who is very successful in business, named Ray Chambers, who
    has given the rest of his life to try to help the people in his
    community and other communities like his community all over the country,
    poor kids growing up with all kinds of problems. And we were talking
    about trying to get more mentors. And he said there's something like 15
    million children who need these mentors and only 100,000, 150,000 of the
    mentors out there. So I think you have to take some risk if you put
    these incentives out that there will be some people doing it who may not
    care that much about it. But first of all, the benefit is not so great
    as to look like you're just giving somebody something. And secondly, I
    think most people will themselves be changed by this, will be
    reconnected to our country.
        Go ahead.
        Q. I'm a volunteer for Habitat. We help build homes for families who
    might otherwise not have an opportunity to own a home of their own.
        The President. It's a great program.

    [The volunteer discussed both the Habitat for Humanity and Delta Service
    Corps experiences and the importance of giving people the opportunity to
    provide community service.]

        The President. You know, I'm really particularly proud of the Delta
    Service Corps because it grew out of the work that was done a few years
    ago by the States of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and then
    Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois and the parts that are right along the
    river. And we studied the conditions of the lower Mississippi Delta, and
    one of the things that we urged was that some way be found to bring
    young people in here to this area to work. And then the legislators and
    the Congressmen from our States sponsored this bill that's really been
    very impressive. I'm glad to see all of you here. Walter, did you have--
    --

    [A Delta Service Corps member stressed the importance of making sure
    that the volunteers are suited for their jobs. Another volunteer then
    suggested that the Delta Service Corps become a nationwide program.]

        The President. I think it may. And certainly, things like it will. I
    think new organizations will spring up from the grassroots. Just to go
    back to the point you made about that, what's the most likely thing that
    will happen is that there will be communities where there are people
    like you, but there's no organization. And when this thing comes out and
    young people start talking about it and thinking about it, it'll
    probably be much more likely that in every community in America there
    will be groups like this.
        You know, when I hear all of you talk, one of the things that, as
    you know, I worry about most of the time is how to find enough jobs for
    the American people in a world in which we've had a difficult time in
    our country creating jobs, and other wealthy countries are having
    trouble creating jobs. And a lot of the good things that happen in the
    economy now--a lot of you can do this; most of you probably are
    proficient with computers and things like that--a lot of the things that
    happen in the economy now mean that people can do more with fewer
    workers, because they have all this technology.
        But one of the things that you cannot substitute people for are the
    kind of human contacts that you all are engaged in. I mean, a lot of the
    people problems of America can only be solved by people in very small
    groups or one on one. So I think there will be a huge increase in the
    demand for folks like you to do what you're doing in the years ahead.

    [A student stated that the national service program will probably
    encourage more students to become involved in community service.]

        The President. That's a terrific point. I know we've got to quit in
    a minute, and I want to give you a chance to talk. But let me say that
    people say to me, ``Well, can you afford this program, and what if
    250,000, what if 500,000, what if a million young people want to do
    this?'' Well, if you think about it, think what we're paying now for the
    failures of the present society, think what we're paying now for all the
    young people who drop out of school, who have children when they're
    children, who get involved in drugs, who wind up in prisons, who can't
    work and draw welfare or food stamps or unemployment or who wind up in
    homeless shelters, you think what it's cost us now to do that.
        We're living in a world where we need every person. And I agree with
    you. I think when people like you get out of college, you get a world-
    class education in a place like Tulane, if you can get people like that
    who still are really aware of what is going on and who understand the
    point you made, that homeless people are

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    just like us. There are a lot of kids out there in these homeless
    shelters. A lot of them can learn and do real well if they're given a
    chance. And if they do well, this is going to affect you much more than
    me. One in ten Americans now is on food stamps.
        Now, you think about what your life is going to be like when you're
    my age, you have children getting ready to go to college, if we don't
    reverse these trends. What's the unemployment rate in America going to
    be? What's your tax burden going to be? What are you going to be paying
    it for? What's it going to be like to be in the streets of your country?
    This service thing has so much more to do with your future in a way than
    with mine. And I think the point you made is terrific.
        I know we've got to quit, but I want to--go ahead.

    [A participant stated that working on community service projects fosters
    a desire to continue serving others.]

        The President. Good for you.
        Q. Thank you for visiting.
        The President. Thank you all very much. You're terrific. I feel a
    lot better about my country every time I see young people like you.
    We're going to be fine. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:52 a.m. in the courtyard at Benjamin
    Franklin High School. In his remarks, he referred to Lt. Gov. Melinda
    Schwegmann of Louisiana.