[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.