    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 30, 1993]
    [Pages 543-549]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the National Service Initiative at the University of New
    Orleans
    April 30, 1993

        Thank you very much. I ought to quit while I'm ahead. [Laughter] It
    is wonderful to be back in New Orleans and in Louisiana and to have the
    first chance I've had since the election to thank you for your support,
    your electoral votes, and the education you gave me on my many trips
    here during the campaign last year. I'm glad to be back on this campus.
    I want to thank your student body president, Robert Styron. I thought he
    gave a good speech. I think he's got a future in politics, don't you?
    [Applause] And Chancellor O'Brien. I want to thank Senator Breaux for
    his kind remarks and for his leadership of the Democratic Leadership
    Council. I want to acknowledge the presence here of Senator Johnston and
    many members of the Louisiana House and many other Members of the United
    States Congress, along with many others who are here with the Democratic
    Leadership Council, including my good friend and

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    former colleague, the Governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, who's here.
    There are two members of my Cabinet here, the Secretary of Education,
    Dick Riley, and the Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, also a DLC Vice
    Chair.
        I want to thank all the people who are here representing volunteer
    organizations. I met with some young people just before I came in here
    who are scattered around near me from Benjamin Franklin High School just
    across the way. [Applause] Absolutely no enthusiasm in that place.
    [Laughter] From the Delta Service Corps., from VISTA, from Summerbridge,
    from Teach for America, we also have some students here, apart from all
    of you from UNO, we have some students here who have worked in service
    projects at Xavier University and at Tulane. We also have people here
    who have been involved in service for a long time from ACTION, from the
    Older Americans Volunteer Program, from the National Association of
    Senior Companions and Foster Grandparents and the National Association
    of Retired Senior Volunteers. All these people I am very grateful to.
        I'd like to just acknowledge in general the people who are here from
    law enforcement organizations and firefighters' organizations and public
    employees and teachers' groups who have helped us on this national
    service project. And I want to say a special word of thanks to three
    other people. First of all, Gen. David Jones, a former Chairman of the
    Joint Chiefs of Staff who has worked very hard helping us put together
    this program, who is here. General Jones, thank you for being here.
    Secondly, a remarkable gentleman from New Jersey, an immensely
    successful businessman who retired early and is devoting his entire life
    to community service to rebuild the lives and the neighborhoods of the
    people in his community in New Jersey and now helping others around the
    country, a founding Member of the Points of Light Foundation, Mr. Ray
    Chambers, who is here. And I'd like to pay a little special attention to
    two members of Congress who are not here and to one who is, for their
    long work on the whole idea of national service. The two in the Senate
    who are not here are Senator Harris Wofford from Pennsylvania and
    Senator Sam Nunn from Georgia. And then Representative Dave McCurdy from
    Oklahoma, thank you for all of the work you've done on this over the
    years.
        I am glad to be here. You know, when I come down here I always sort
    of relax. I don't know why that is. I timed it just in time for the Jazz
    Festival, but I left my saxophone at the White House.
        This is the 100th day of my administration. In Washington, some say
    it marks a milestone. But in many ways it's just another day at the
    office for what we're trying to do in changing America. In the last 99
    days we have worked relentlessly to address the pressing and long-
    ignored needs of the American people and to bring to the Government
    something it has not seen in a long time: an acknowledgment that bold
    action is needed, and needed now, to secure and enlarge America's
    future, and that in order to do it we not only have to change programs,
    we have to change the way the Government works and engage the energies
    of the American people in the process.
        In the last 100 days I think we have begun to change the direction
    in which our country has been going for a long time, and to go toward a
    new direction more like the one the American people demanded last
    November. We've also started an unprecedented debate in our Nation's
    capital about big ideas and better lives across our Nation, ideas that
    in many cases were shaped and nurtured by some of the people who are
    here today, as Senator Breaux said earlier, the members of the
    Democratic Leadership Council, of which I am proud to be a founding
    member. Unlike most organizations, the DLC has done more than just talk
    about the problems in our country. It has made an honest effort to
    develop real ideas about how to restore the American economy, and make
    the Government work, and rebuild the confidence and the link that exists
    between the American people and their Government when things are at
    their best here. And it's been a laboratory for experimentation and
    solutions.
        During my years with the DLC we really tried to refine our
    philosophy of what it would mean to take not only the Democratic Party
    but the United States of America in a new direction, to make our country
    work again and to reward work and family, to encourage education and
    enterprise, to establish what I have often called a new covenant with
    the American people: Creating opportunity but demanding responsibility
    from all so that once again we could be a true American community where
    we know and believe and live as if we're all in this together. This
    group has conceived many of the ideas that I've advocated since I've
    been in

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    Washington from setting a limit on welfare and putting people to work to
    police reform and community policing to rewarding work of low-income
    working people by having an earned-income tax credit that would lift the
    working poor with children out of poverty. So we could say if you work
    40 hours a week in this country, you have a child in the house, you
    ought not to be poor. These are the kinds of things that this
    organization has done. They helped to develop the idea I want to talk to
    you today about that has so much to do with the future of the young
    people here and throughout our country: national service. This is an
    organization about ideas.
        Now in Washington, as you might imagine, we don't always agree with
    one another. And that is good--that's why we've got a system where the
    Government's divided up and we have two parties and we have people
    fighting all the time--as long as it's about ideas. But too often we've
    seen that the debate over big ideas gets mired in petty politics. I know
    one thing: The American people are tired of gridlock and petty politics.
    If we're going to fight, they want us to fight over ideas and the future
    of this country.
        In the past 99 days we tried to address the problems the American
    people told me they wanted to be addressed. We focused more than
    anything else on the economy, passing the outline of a budget that will
    reduce the deficit by more than $500 billion, increase investment in
    education and technologies and the things that will create the economy
    of the 21st century that all of you need so that you'll have good and
    decent jobs and a decent future laying the groundwork for a more
    prosperous tomorrow.
        Just in 100 days we've announced a policy to help to convert the
    defense cutbacks and the economic opportunities for people who are
    losing their jobs because of the military cutbacks; to take a new
    direction in technology to create more opportunities for our people; to
    be more aggressive in preserving the environment, but do it in a way
    that creates jobs, not a way that costs jobs; to have a trade policy
    that will really reflect our common interest with other nations and
    expanding jobs and opportunities everywhere. We've begun the long-
    overdue renovation of the American economic base. The question now,
    unlike 100 days ago, the question is now not whether we're going to
    reduce the deficit but how and how much. The question now is not whether
    the Government will have a new partnership with the private sector to
    shape the economy but exactly what the details will be and how much our
    part will be.
        We've also taken on the issue of health care, something million of
    Americans cried out for last year. I got a letter today from a young
    woman I shook hands with whose--literally, her life is on the line, and
    she cannot get health insurance. It is wrong that in this Nation--we are
    the only advanced country in the world with 34 million people without
    health insurance. It is wrong that millions of Americans cannot change
    their jobs without losing their health insurance because they or a child
    or a spouse has been sick. It is wrong that the price of health care
    goes up 2.5 times the rate of inflation every year. And it is wrong that
    we spend 30 percent more of our income than any other country on Earth
    on health care and have less to show for it. But it is also wrong to
    assume that there is some magic, quick answer. That's why we've been
    working with a task force headed by the First Lady and over 400 people
    from all aspects of health care to do something about this.
        But now, for the American people the issue is no longer whether
    we're going to address the health care crisis, whether we're going to
    provide security to hard-working middle class Americans, whether we're
    going to cover the people who aren't covered, whether we're going to
    control costs, but how are we going to do it and how fast and when are
    we going to begin. I hope the answer is soon. And not too soon is soon
    enough for me.
        There was a lot of discussion last year about how bad the Government
    was, and it didn't work, and it was bloated, it needed a change. Look at
    the last 100 days: I've tried to set an example by offering a budget to
    reduce the White House staff by 25 percent; by putting the lid on and
    reducing the Federal bureaucratic expenses, the administrative expenses
    of the Federal Government by over $10 billion; by moving dramatically to
    reduce the influence of special interests on Executive Branch
    appointments by having the toughest ethics laws and restrictions on
    people becoming lobbyists for other interests when they leave the
    payroll of the President of the United States; by asking the Vice
    President to share the most sweeping review of the way the Federal
    Government works in a generation, with a promise of real

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    reform and reinventing Government, something else this organization has
    long believed in.
        We are moving. And the Congress is moving to join. The Congress has
    voted to cut the administrative costs of running the Congress, something
    many of you never thought you would see happen. They did that. The House
    of Representatives voted yesterday to give the President of the United
    States a modified line-item veto, and I hope the Senate will follow
    their lead. I hope soon they will send to my desk the motor voter bill
    which will make it easier for young people and other people to vote and
    participate in their country's political process. And there will be
    campaign finance reform and lobby reform legislation and a crime bill
    that will put more police on the street and give us the capacity we need
    to take our communities back. These things are going on. The question is
    no longer whether we're going to reform the way Government works but how
    fast and how much and how well. And those are the right questions, my
    fellow Americans, good questions to ask.
        And now I come to the last, and in many ways the most important
    issue that we have tried to address--the economy, yes; health care, yes;
    reform in the way the Government works, yes--but also what about the
    American people. How can each American make a contribution? How can each
    American do the work that all Americans must, taking responsibility for
    himself or herself and growing up into a vibrant community? We have
    tried to address those issues as well. The buzz word now people use is
    empowerment. I used to call it responsibility. I often have said, and I
    want to reiterate today, the United States Government cannot create an
    opportunity for anyone who will not be responsible enough to seize it.
    Opportunity is a two-way street and requires responsibility. That is the
    only way we'll ever rebuild the American community.
        In the days and months ahead, you will see the Secretary of
    Education talk about his remarkable education program to provide tougher
    national standards in education but also to give people at the
    grassroots level more flexibility in making public education work. You
    will see the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Housing and
    Urban Development talk about how we can empower even the poorest
    Americans to start their own businesses, save their own money, and take
    control of their own future. You will see other people talking about how
    we can reform the welfare system. All of these things are at the core of
    the notion that we ought to make it possible for every American to live
    up to the fullest of his or her God-given ability. And that is what in
    the end national service is all about: helping ourselves and helping
    each other at the same time.
        On this 100th day of my administration I want to recommit myself and
    those who work with me to the values that have made our Nation without
    peer in all human history, those of opportunity, responsibility,
    community, and respect for one another. Today I want to propose applying
    those values to a revolution of opportunity for our hard-pressed
    families and for those who have been left out. As a first step we're
    going to ease the terms of college loans, helping students from middle
    and lower-middle income families to clear a major path to the American
    dream, the path of higher education. In return we'll demand
    responsibility from young people. We'll make it easier to borrow money
    and much easier to pay it off, but this time you have to pay it off. You
    can't just default on the loan. And we will also offer the young people
    of America the opportunity of paying their loans back by serving their
    communities in a new program of national service.
        In just a few days I will send to the Congress two bills containing
    our proposals, first to strengthen college opportunity and to establish
    national service. Together they will revive America's commitment to
    community and make affordable the cost of a college education for every
    American. It's no secret that over the last 10 or 12 years the cost of a
    college education is about the only essential think that's gone up even
    more rapidly than health care costs. And middle class parents, and even
    upper middle class parents, not to mention lower income people, have
    borne the burden, paying now about five percent of median income just to
    put one child through a 4 year in-State public college. It costs an
    average of over $5,200 a year for that education. That means families
    are depleting savings and many students are faced with cutting back to a
    part-time course load or having to drop out simply because of the cost
    of a college education. A college dropout is now more than twice the
    high school dropout rate. We cannot afford that, and we can do better.
        I propose a new way to finance college for millions of students who
    seek loans every year.

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    We call it an EXCEL account. With it, students can repay the loans they
    take out not with a percentage of the loan they borrowed but with a
    percentage of their actual earnings. Now think about that. For students
    driven by debt into careers with high pay and low satisfaction this can
    be very liberating. Take a student torn, for example, between pursuing a
    career in teaching and corporate law. This student now can at least make
    the career choice based on what he or she wants to do and not the size
    of the outstanding student loan, because we propose to let everybody
    have the option of paying the student loan back based on how much they
    earn not just how much they owe. That is an incredible incentive.
        However, under the current system, as many of you know, students
    faced with big bills or just inconvenient responsibilities have too
    often taken the irresponsible route and defaulted on their loans or have
    been found in default because they couldn't find a job. Often times
    there's no serious effort to collect the loan because the Government
    guarantees 90 percent of it. So if the bank makes the loan, it costs
    more than 10 percent to go collect it. What's the result? The taxpayers
    every year pay about $3 billion on other people's loans, money that
    could be spent on your education, on the schools here, on the future of
    the children here, just for bad loans. It isn't right.
        Under our system, the Department of Education would engage the
    Internal Revenue Service. We would have the payroll records. And you
    wouldn't be able to beat the bill because you would have to pay the loan
    back as a percentage of your income, if you choose, but you'd have to
    pay it because you pay taxes and because we have your records and
    because you won't be able to get out of it. And that is the right thing
    to do.
        But these EXCEL accounts are just the beginning. We hope they will
    lead more and more Americans not only to seize the opportunity of a
    college education and to exert a stronger sense of responsibility but
    also to seek to serve their communities through a program of national
    service. It was Thomas Jefferson who first told the American people in
    essence that the more you know, the more you owe. In his words, and I
    quote, ``A debt of service is due from every man to his country
    proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to
    him.'' This statement reminds us that values never go out of fashion,
    that civic responsibility is as good for democracy today as it was when
    Thomas Jefferson said that, and that if you really want to be the best
    citizen of your country, you have to give something back to your
    country. With national service, we can literally open a new world to a
    new generation of Americans where higher learning goes hand-in-hand with
    the higher purpose of addressing our unmet needs, our educational, our
    social, our environmental needs, to secure the future that we all will
    share. National service will mark the start of a new era for America in
    which every citizen, every one of you, can become an agent of change
    armed with the knowledge and experience that a college education brings,
    and ready to transform the world in which we live, city by city,
    community by community, block by block. I say to you, we need you.
        You know, there's a lot of talk in America today, and I spend hours
    every week worrying about the effect that automation and technology is
    having on employment. Indeed, as we see the productivity of American
    enterprises rise, their need for workers goes down because they can do
    more with computes that they used to do with people. So people ask me
    all the time, where will we find the jobs for this new generation of
    Americans? How can we drive this unemployment rate down? But if you look
    around this country at all the human problems, all the homeless people,
    all the environmental waste dumps in our cities and our rural areas, all
    the problems that we've got in every community in America, and see all
    the kids that are in trouble--15 million of them at risk and needing
    somebody to pay attention to--you know where the work needs to be.
        Late last night when I was preparing to come down here, I took a
    little time off at my desk and I read the letters that my staff had
    given me. And I got a letter from a woman who grew up with me. I've
    known here since we were in grade school. In this letter she said, ``You
    know, someone asked me a couple of days ago: How are we going to save
    all these kids in this country that are in trouble?'' And she said,
    ``Without even thinking, I blurted out, the same way we lost them, one
    at a time.'' And so today my fellow Americans, I issue a call to
    national service, to Americans young and old, Democrats and Republicans,
    white, black, Hispanic, Asian and you name it, all of us that make up
    this great Nation. I call you to national

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    service because it is only that together we can advance a tradition
    rooted in our people's history, helping our people to help themselves.
    And with national service we can rejoin the citizens in communities of
    this country, bonding each to the other with the glue of common purpose
    and real patriotism.
        We have many young people here today, students of this place of
    higher learning where we're gathered. In you I know I see the builders
    of tomorrow. And I say to you, as good as the education is here and at
    the other great institutions represented here today and all across
    America, the power of academic learning is incomplete unless every
    American can share in it. That is the only way we can lift our whole
    country up. I say to you further that our country needs you. We need
    your knowledge and your initiative and your energy. We need you because
    you are still stripped and free of the cynicism that has paralyzed too
    many of your parents and your grandparents, and led us to spend too much
    time talking about what we can't do instead of seizing what we can. You
    are not afflicted by that, and I pray you never will be.
        We need to make sure that we can use your energies and your talents.
    One way is by making sure that the low wages that public service often
    offers won't be a route to the poorhouse for someone with college loans.
    As I said, we're going to make it easier for you to pay off your college
    loan. But also, if you engage in national service, we'll make it easier
    for you to pay off a college debt or to earn credits toward it before
    you go to college, or while you're in college.
        For each term of service, 1 or 2 years, participants in national
    service programs will receive benefits that can be used toward past,
    present, or future obligations, whether for college or advanced job
    training. You can get a college education and, in addition, through
    service, perhaps the best experience of your life. That's a pretty good
    investment.
        I've talked a lot about the students here. And they do play a large
    part in this plan, but they're not alone. Here in New Orleans many of
    you already know what it means to make a difference in your community
    because you've just been doing that for a long time. And I'm very proud,
    as I said. I'm going to get another cheer about this, but one of the
    models that I had a little something to do with is the Delta Service
    Corps, and I appreciate what they're doing. [Applause]
        There are people here working to restore housing. There are people
    here working in other ways. I just want to mention three: Lawrence
    Williams, a team leader in the Corps who has helped to restore housing
    for low-income people with the local Habitat for Humanity Project; Jane
    Sullivan, a retired public schoolteacher and a former VISTA volunteer
    who helps rural communities gain better access to health care, housing,
    and other assistance; and a young person I met just a few moments ago,
    Parris Moore-Brown, who works with parents in housing programs for drug
    awareness outreach and now plans to work with the physically challenged.
    She says that she has no tolerance for self-pity, and she lives what she
    preaches. She hasn't been slowed by what her birth dealt her, a brittle
    bone disorder that has left her as an adult, and by her own measure, 4
    feet, 2\1/4\ inches tall. Where are you? Stand up on here so we can see
    you. After my meeting with her and the other young people today, I'd say
    she stands about 10 feet tall in America today. There are tens of
    thousands of people like Parris and Jane and Lawrence and those of you
    who are here with these service programs who are dying to be called to a
    new season of service, and we want to do that.
        Another part of our plan is to build on the National and Community
    Service Act that was passed in 1990, and the already flourishing
    programs that are started and up and going in every State in this
    country. National service is not going to be a Federal bureaucracy; it's
    going to operate at the grassroots with the real problems of real people
    and with the programs that work today. It will be locally driven because
    I trust the communities in this country to make decisions for
    themselves.
        I also want to say that while we want very much to have young people
    in this program who are working toward earning credits for college or
    paying their college loans off through national service, we need so many
    other people in service projects. We need our older people who never
    will go back to college but have a lifetime of experience and energy to
    give to the young people of this country. We need young people who may
    not be old enough to drive a car or to qualify for this program but can
    have a dramatic impact on fellow students by helping them learn better
    study habits or just keeping them out of trouble. I've learned already
    that, as the parent of a teenager, that

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    the peers can have a big impact on the shape and quality of a child's
    life. Even a child can serve in programs that now begin as early as
    kindergarten. We have no upper age limit in America, or lower age limit
    for being a good public servant.
        To be successful, this national program will need the broad-based
    support of all the American people. Parents and children, churches and
    synagogues, colleges and universities and the potential providers and
    the beneficiaries of our services. In this vision of national service,
    everyone is a partner. And that includes, of course, the business
    community in this country. We need businesses to contribute to the
    effort, to match Federal money and local programs and to contribute at
    the national level, helping to make sure that the programs we choose are
    good ones indeed.
        What will set this legislation apart from other similar efforts in
    the past that rewarded service to our country is that it will totally
    eliminate the Federal Government bureaucracy. And believe me, no one
    will miss that. We're going to set up a national service corporation
    that will run like a big venture capital outfit not like a bureaucracy.
    And communities, as I said, will have the flexibility to make their own
    programs work. I think that I've seen enough today and I've heard enough
    of your applause to know that the American people are hungry for a
    chance to serve their country and to reap the rewards of civic pride and
    education in the process.
        In answering this call our people are following a proud history.
    More than a century ago President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead
    Act, and the frontier of this country was settled by countless families
    who took up the challenge in exchange for 100 acres to call their own.
    In the 1930's President Roosevelt enlisted millions of young people to
    restore the environment through the Civilian Conservation Corps. FDR
    gave others a chance to support themselves through the buildings made
    possible by the Works Project Administration. I was in the United States
    Justice Department just yesterday, a building built in 1934 by people
    who were giving service to their country, and it's still a beautiful
    monument to the legacy of that kind of service. The parents of the baby
    boom had the GI bill, which was one of the best investments our
    Government ever made. A generation ago, the young people of my
    generation saw suffering in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and many
    rushed to the challenge laid down by President Kennedy when he created
    the Peace Corps, which became our country's greatest ambassador,
    building bridges of understanding to far off cultures. And now, three
    decades later, a challenge has been presented to all of you, a new
    challenge and an old one, as old as America and as new as your future.
        A year ago when the Democratic Leadership Council met in New
    Orleans, I asked the following question: I said, I want you to think
    about what kind of citizens you're going to be--[inaudible]--
    administration that this was the day the American people were empowered
    to renew their Nation and their communities, to seize a better future
    for themselves, and to help all of us to be what the--[inaudible]--out
    of helping our fellow citizens and ourselves to become what we ought to
    be, this country will be all right.
        Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Health and Physical
    Education Center at the university. In his remarks, he referred to
    Gregory O'Brien, chancellor of the university.