[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[May 22, 1993]
[Pages 720-724]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 720]]


Remarks at the New Hampshire Technical College Commencement Ceremony in 
Stratham, New Hampshire
May 22, 1993

    Thank you very much. Madam President, members of the faculty and 
staff, distinguished Members of Congress and other platform guests, and 
ladies and gentlemen, and most importantly, the members of this 
graduating class: To answer the president's question, I came here to 
address this class because you were the people that I ran for President 
to serve. It was your America that I hoped to make better.
    I'm proud to come back to the State that 15 months ago made me the 
``comeback kid'' in this country. [Laughter] On February 7, 1992, when I 
came to this college, the people I met here asked me about things that 
matter to mainstream Americans, about jobs and health care and getting 
the economy moving again and whether the future for our young people 
would be better than the present. After I finished speaking, one of your 
students, Greg Fuller, then asked me to come back and speak at this 
graduation. Stand up, Greg. And then he wrote me a letter to confirm his 
request. That itself was miracle enough. In 3 months and 2 weeks we had 
received more mail at the White House than had come in in all of 1992. 
There may be another letter from Greg somewhere we haven't found yet. 
[Laughter] But I'm delighted to be here.
    This is the first graduation ceremony I have addressed as President, 
and I am told, I don't know, but it may be the first time a President 
has ever addressed a graduation of a technical college. But I will say 
this: More colleges like yours should have visits from the President 
because people who work hard and study hard and who have to raise 
children and go to work while they go to school and who are really on 
the cutting edge, up and down, of this economy, you are the heart and 
soul of our present and our future.
    The world in which you--[applause]--your families are clapping for 
you. The world in which you live, to be sure, has been full of bad news 
here in New Hampshire for the last few years, but it's also a very 
exciting and challenging place. And it will be different from the world 
in which I grew up in two very important ways. First of all, more than 
ever before, America will be captured by the reality of the global 
economy. More and more of our jobs will depend on trade. And more and 
more of our future will depend on not only how well we are doing but how 
well our trading partners are doing. One of our problems today is that 
Europe and Japan's economies are down, so it's hard for ours to go up. 
More and more, our national security will depend not just on military 
power but on our renewal of economic strength. More and more, we'll have 
to find ways to cooperate as well as to compete with other countries. 
We'll have to find ways to preserve the global environment and still 
make it possible for the economies of our world to grow. That's the 
first thing.
    The second thing is something you already know, or you wouldn't be 
here. We are moving very rapidly in all forms of production and service 
to a knowledge-based economy in which what you earn depends on what you 
can learn, not only what you know today but what you're capable of 
learning tomorrow, and in which every graduate of high school needs at 
least to go on to 2 years of further education and training. You know 
that, or you wouldn't be here.
    All of you have invested your money, your time, your energy to take 
personal responsibility for your own lives, developing your own skills 
and in recognition of this new world reality. Your investment in a way 
is an act of faith. You know the world is knowledge-based; you know you 
have to do this. Now having done it, you have to have faith that there 
will be opportunities for you, that if you have worked hard and played 
by the rules, you will be rewarded.
    As President I share that faith. I believe we can make our system 
work. I believe we can see our country once again reflect the values 
with which all of us were raised. I don't think any of us can ever lose 
sight of that. It's appropriate that I'm at this graduation, because New 
Hampshire taught me all these things once again. In the fall and winter 
of 1991 and 1992, when I spent so much time here, I literally, as we say 
in my part of the country, went to school with you. Two winters ago I 
came face

[[Page 721]]

to face with middle class people who had lost their jobs and their homes 
and their health care. I met people whose business loans had been 
canceled, even though they had never missed a payment in their lives. I 
saw people who went down to the public assistance office and began to 
draw welfare checks just to make their home payments to keep from 
putting their kids in the street, middle class people who had had jobs 
and never thought they'd be unemployed.
    Every day when I get up in the White House and go to the Oval Office 
to work, I think about the people I met here and people like them all 
over America whose quiet courage and determination inspires me to keep 
fighting to restore the middle class and the fundamental strength and 
purpose of this country. I'll never forget people like Ron Macos, Jr., 
who couldn't get a job with health insurance because his little boy had 
open heart surgery. And when the First Lady's health care task force 
presents the national health care proposal in the next few weeks to the 
Congress, if that proposal passes, the Ron Macoses of this world will be 
able to keep working and raising their children in the future.
    I'll never forget a young woman I met named Emily Teabold, who was a 
senior in high school when I met her. Her father lost his job in New 
Hampshire, and he spent her entire senior year in North Carolina, 
because that's the closest place he could find a job.
    I met a man here named David Springs, who was a month away from 
having his pension vested when he was fired from his company because the 
people who owned his company sold it out in one of these leverage deals. 
And they bailed out with a golden parachute to a happy life and left 
their employees on the rocks.
    I remember some stories of courage, too. I went to Clairmont and met 
the people who were working in the American Brush Company, trying to 
help revive that community. And I tried to help them find some customers 
for their products. I remember going to Manchester and visiting a 
company called Envirotote that made bags that we wound up buying all 
during the campaign and giving out with our little Clinton-Gore stickers 
on, all across the country. I saw people who were trying to make this 
country work again and trying to make New Hampshire a beacon of 
opportunity again.
    Most of the people I saw, for all their hurts, never lost their 
hopes. And I'm here today to thank you for not losing yours, for going 
through this program and believing in it. Your president said something 
I want to reiterate. For most of the 20th century there's been a big 
division in our minds about what kind of learning counts and what kind 
of learning doesn't count as much, a big division between what is 
vocational and what is academic, between what is practical and what is 
intellectual. In the last few years really smart people realized that 
that's a bogus distinction and that we have seen all over the world, and 
especially here in America, the line drawn down between the vocational 
and the academic, between the practical and the intellectual. All work 
requires knowledge, and it's not so bad if it has a practical 
application. That is what you have proved here.
    So here we are with you. You have done your job. You have done 
anything that could be asked of you. Many of you have done this at great 
personal sacrifice. I wonder how many of you have gotten up in the 
morning wondering about what you were going to do for child care that 
day, wondering about whether you should keep doing this given the fact 
that it costs money and the unemployment rate in the State's above the 
national average, wondering about all kinds of uncertainties. You have 
done it. You have done your job. You have now a right to ask what is our 
job: What can you expect of your country? What can you expect of your 
Government? What is our job? If you have been responsible, what 
opportunity should you be able to claim?
    Our job is to try to put your values and your dreams into law and 
into facts. It means we have to have a new economic policy that 
recognizes that for 20 years, through the administrations of Democrats 
and Republicans alike, most working people have been working harder for 
lower hourly pay, one that recognizes that for a long time we have been 
the only advanced industrial country that didn't provide basic health 
care to all of our citizens, the only one that puts people in the trap 
of not being able to change jobs if anybody in their family has ever 
been sick, because they've got a preexisting condition that will cost 
them their health insurance if they change jobs. That's a huge handicap 
in a world where the average 18-year-old will change work eight times in 
a lifetime and where, because of global competition, most new jobs are 
created by small businesses that are coming into existence and going out 
of existence all the time.

[[Page 722]]

    And then, for 12 years we have seen our national debt go from $1 
trillion to $4 trillion and our national investment in many things that 
are critical to our future go down. So we're spending less on what we 
should be spending money on, and costs are exploding.
    You have a right to better than that. You have a right to an 
economic policy that puts our people first, our jobs, our technologies, 
our education. You have a right to an economic policy that brings this 
deficit down so that we are not crushed and paralyzed with it, into your 
children's children's lifetime, with high interest rates and a mortgaged 
future. You have a right to be treated fairly and to be given a chance 
to make it. You have a right to live in a country where everybody is 
given a chance to make it, which is not prejudiced against the wealthy--
we'd all like to be that way--but gives those who aren't a fair chance 
to earn their due.
    That is what you have a right to. And that is what you do not have 
today. We are doing our best in Washington to turn that around, to get 
control of the deficit, to bring it down, to invest in those things that 
will create more jobs, and to guarantee over the long run that we'll 
have jobs and incomes and health care that will justify the efforts you 
have made by going through this program. That is our responsibility.
    I've asked the United States Congress to adopt a program that begins 
with spending cuts, starting with a reduction in my own staff, a 
reduction in the size of the Federal Government by 150,000 over the next 
4 years, big cuts in the administrative budgets, and asking the Federal 
employees to accept a wage freeze and lower increases in later years so 
that we can bring the deficit down. I have asked also that more than 200 
other spending programs be cut, including the entitlements that have so 
much special-interest support.
    Second, it is clear to anyone who studies this problem that we need 
new revenues also to bring the deficit down. I've asked those who can 
best afford to pay, whose taxes went down in the 1980's, the wealthiest 
Americans, to pay most of what we need to raise. Over 74 percent of my 
tax program comes from the top 6 percent of income earners. [Applause] A 
slight clap.
    I also have proposed an energy tax which most Americans will pay. It 
is one called a Btu tax which will help promote conservation and the use 
of the most clean and fuel-efficient fuels. But listen to the way it 
works: Because we offer income tax cuts to working families with incomes 
under $30,000, those will offset the impact of the energy tax. And for 
larger families under $25,000, there will even be a relief in the tax 
burden. For people with incomes above $30,000, at $40,000 and $50,000 
and $60,000, here's what it costs. You're entitled to know in plain 
language. Next year it costs a dollar a month per family. The next year 
after that, $7 a month; and the next year after that, depending on the 
size of your family, between $14 and $17 a month. You have to decide if 
it's worth it to bring the deficit down.
    But let me tell you, all the tax increases and the spending cuts 
will be put in a trust fund so that they can't be used to do anything 
but bring the deficit down. And we can't have the taxes without the 
spending cut. That's what the budget resolution that was adopted a few 
weeks ago means. We must cut spending. So we are going to do that, both 
things.
    Now, is it worth it? You have to be the judge. But let me ask you 
just to consider this. Since November, since we made it clear that we 
were going to try to attack this deficit, and after the announcement had 
been made after the election that the deficit over the next 4 years 
would be over $160 billion bigger than we were told before the election, 
since November, long-term interest rates have dropped. Millions of 
Americans have already benefited by refinancing their home mortgages, 
refinancing business loans. Many others will benefit by lower interest 
rates on car loans or consumer loans or student loans. If just someone 
here has refinanced a home loan since November, in all probability, 
depending on the size of the mortgage, you will save more in 1 year than 
you will pay in 4 years in the energy tax. I think it is worth it to 
keep the interest rates down and to drive the deficit down. But you have 
to decide that.
    There's a third way that we're trying to make some fundamental 
changes. Just as we stop wasting money on things we don't need, I think 
we do have to invest some in what we do need. A lot of you, just in 
order to get through this program, had to cut back on some of the things 
that you would like to have spent money on. A lot of you made meaningful 
financial sacrifices in your own family life just to get here today so 
you could wear the cap and gown. I know that. But you've been wise to 
make that decision. Because of the investments you've made

[[Page 723]]

in education and training, in the years ahead you'll be able to do more 
of the things that you gave up doing in the last 2 years. You'll be able 
to provide more opportunities for your children. You'll be able to build 
a stronger family unit with a stronger family future.
    That's what we're also trying to do. This program offers dramatic 
increases in incentives for small businesses to invest money to become 
more productive and hire new people, to invest in research and 
development to find new products. It offers dramatic incentives to 
people to try to end the real estate depression that has gripped New 
England and southern Florida and California and many other places. It 
offers real incentives for people to invest in new businesses, the 
biggest in the history of America, for people to try their hand in 
starting new businesses. It offers an investment in new technologies, in 
defense conversion for all these people around America who have lost 
their jobs because of defense cutbacks. And it attempts to establish a 
transition from school to work so that everybody, by the time we finish 
this program, who graduates from high school who doesn't go to a 4-year 
college would at least have the clear opportunity to move right into a 
2-year program like this one, so they don't lose time becoming 
productive and able to earn the best wages they can earn. I think that 
is a good investment in our future.
    In other words, what I think our Government owes you is to move 
beyond the two dichotomies that have argued so long in Washington, in 
what I think is a very stale way. One says, ``Well, you're out there on 
your own, and all we've got to do is make sure we don't spend a nickel 
to see the cow jump over the moon.'' The other says, ``We'll take care 
of you. We can do things for you. Don't you worry about it.'' Neither 
one of those approaches is right. We can't entitle people to something 
that they won't work for. But neither can we turn our back on the plain 
responsibility of the United States to provide opportunity for people 
who will work for it. We have to empower people to seize what they are 
willing to seize. You have done your part; now we have to do ours.
    I want to emphasize again, for the majority of people who do not go 
on to a 4-year college, it is imperative that we join the ranks of the 
other high-wage countries and provide a system by which 100 percent of 
them at least know they have the opportunity to move into a program like 
the one that you have been a part of. It is imperative. Why? Because 
just as what you earn depends on what you can learn, what America does 
in terms of growing jobs depends on how functional all the people in 
this country are. We don't have a person to waste. There ought to be 
twice as many people here today as there are at this graduation 
ceremony. And if there were, the economy of New Hampshire and the United 
States would be stronger as a result.
    I also believe very strongly that the United States ought to make 
available, on terms everybody can afford, the funds that people need to 
borrow to finance their education to 2- or 4-year schools. And we have 
proposed to change the whole basis of the way the student loan program 
works: to lower interest rates, number one; and number two, to make 
available loans and then let people pay them back after they go to work 
and as a percentage of their income, so that people will not be 
discouraged from borrowing money today with the fear that they won't be 
able to pay it back if they get a job, especially if they get a job with 
a modest wage. You ought to be able to pay it back as a limited 
percentage of your income. It will make a huge difference.
    Now, I believe these policies together will restore the sense of 
optimism to middle class America that we need: the idea that we can 
create jobs, that people who work at jobs can raise their incomes over 
time if they continue to improve their education and their productivity. 
And if we can do that and deal with the health care issue, we can 
restore a sense of possibility to America.
    I don't pretend that this will be easy, that the progress will be 
uninterrupted, that nothing bad will happen. As I said at the beginning, 
some of what happens to us economically here in this country depends on 
what is happening to all these other countries around the world. A big 
percentage of the new jobs we've gotten in the last 5 years have come 
from trade. We won't get many if Europe and Japan are flat on their 
back.
    But a lot of what happens to us depends upon what we do here. And 
you're entitled, having done your part, to know that your Government has 
done its part. It may not happen overnight. A lot of these economic 
trends have been developing for 20 years. The political policies that we 
seek to change have been develop-


[[Page 724]]

ing for a dozen years. And I must say, it is much easier to tell people 
that I'm going to cut your taxes and spend more money on everything than 
to say we're going to have to raise some money and spend less money on 
most things.
    A lot of the easy things have been done, but I want you to believe 
that we can do it. We have made a good beginning. Here's something that 
can affect you. After years of arguing, we finally passed the family 
leave bill that says you can get some time off when a baby is born or 
somebody's sick without losing your job. I signed last week the motor 
voter bill, which opens up the political process to easier registration, 
because another young student from New Hampshire got me to sign a card 
when I was here saying that I'd do my best to pass it if I got elected 
President.
    But changing this economy is a hard job. It requires a lot of 
discipline, and it requires our patience and concentrated effort, yours 
and mine, over a long period of time. But we can do it. We can do it.
    The work of change is never easy. But you have proved you weren't 
afraid to change. The average student here is 30 years old. I can 
remember when I was your age, a lot of people would have been 
embarrassed to go back to school when they're 30. Now we've got people 
going back to school when they're 70. And let me tell you something: You 
must remain unafraid to change. You must remain unafraid to change. Many 
of you will have to go through retraining programs when you're in your 
mid- to late fifties. You should look at that as a great opportunity to 
live a rich and diverse and interesting life. If we can do what we 
should do at the national level to reward the efforts you are making, 
then change can be your friend and not your enemy.
    The heartbreaking thing I saw in New Hampshire all during the 
primary season last year and in 1991 was how many people had been 
victimized by change. I cannot repeal the laws of change. No person can. 
Our common challenge is to preserve the values of work and family and 
community and reward for effort in the midst of all this change.
    You have done your part. You should be proud of yourselves today, 
and you should commit yourselves to continue to work to make sure that 
change is your friend and that you are rewarded for the extraordinary 
and courageous efforts you have made.
    God bless you, and good luck.

Note: The President spoke at 11:05 a.m. In his remarks, he referred to 
college president Jane Power Kilcoyne.