    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [August 31, 1993]
    [Pages 1412-1424]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Summer of Service Forum in College Park, Maryland
    August 31, 1993

        The President. You know, I really love Senator Mikulski, if she just
    weren't so laid back and passive and soft-spoken, you might figure out
    what's on her mind. [Laughter] She was terrific.
        I'd like to begin by introducing some other people who are here, and
    I hate to do this always because I know I'm going to miss someone that I
    should introduce. But I want to begin anyway by introducing the
    distinguished Governor of Maryland, Governor Don Schaefer, one of my
    former colleagues when I was a Governor; one of the most important
    leaders in the House of Representatives, Congressman Steny Hoyer from
    Maryland. I want to introduce a man who came all the way from his State
    of Connecticut to be here with us today, the first Republican sponsor we
    had for the national service legislation, Representative Chris Shays
    from Connecti-

    [[Page 1413]]

    cut. Thank you very much.
        I see my good friend Senator Mike Miller there, the head of the
    Democratic majority in the Senate of Maryland. A former Congressman from
    Maryland and now the Cochair of the President's Council on Physical
    Fitness--when he stands up you'll see why--distinguished former
    professional basketball player, Mr. Tom McMillen, my friend in the back.
    I was really--Tom and I ran 4 miles together the other day, and he's
    almost 7 feet tall, and he ran at a pace I had difficulty maintaining.
    So I was very impressed. He convinced me he was qualified for the job I
    gave him.
        And finally, I'd like to acknowledge the president of the University
    of Maryland, President William Kirwan, who is here. And in some ways
    most important of all, the person who I put in charge of creating and
    carrying out the national service program, my friend of nearly 25 years,
    Mr. Eli Segal; I'd like to ask him to stand.
        I'll tell you, I just saw--there's one other person way in the back
    I've got to introduce because he and I started working on this concept
    of national service a few years ago through an organization I was
    involved in called the Democratic Leadership Council. And he's a
    professor here at the University of Maryland, but he's on leave. He's
    working in the White House for me now, Professor Bill Galston. Thank
    you, Bill, for your help.
        I came here mostly to listen to you today and to thank you, but I
    wanted to just say a few words. This campus has a special meaning in my
    life. The first time I ever came to the University of Maryland was 30
    years ago this summer when I was a delegate from my home State of
    Arkansas to the American Legion Boys Nation program. We stayed here and
    then went to Washington frequently to learn about the Government. I met
    President Kennedy then. I saw Members of Congress, members of the
    Cabinet, and really had my eyes opened to a whole world of possibility.
    But the thing that I remember I think most clearly after all these years
    is that President Kennedy said in his Inaugural that we should not ask
    what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country.
    And he also said that we must always remember that here on Earth, God's
    work must truly be our own. That's what all of you have done.
        I just finished a 2-week vacation, which I needed very badly because
    I've worked pretty hard the last several years. But you just finished 2
    months of very important work. The summer of service ends today, and I
    hope you feel refreshed by the time you gave to other people and the
    service you rendered. And we are about to begin, as Senator Mikulski
    said, when the Senate passes the national service bill next week, we'll
    start the first full year of national service at the community level. I
    always believe that you and tens of thousands, eventually hundreds of
    thousands of young people like you could change the future of America
    and, in the process, could change your lives.
        I ran for President for two big reasons. One is, I thought our
    country was not going in the right direction; and the second, I thought
    our country was coming apart when it ought to be coming together. I
    wanted to get the country moving again, and I wanted to bring the
    country together again. I wanted people to have a sense of the common
    good. I wanted us to draw strength from our diversity and to face our
    problems honestly and to seize our opportunities. I wanted people to
    recognize again that we don't have a person to waste and that too many
    of our young people are being lost.
        And I believed that we could do it. I never thought the Government
    could do all these things alone. I just don't believe that. And for too
    long our country has been in the middle of this great debate where some
    people say, well, the Government ought to solve these problems, and
    other people say the Government ought to walk away. And I don't believe
    either is right. The Government basically has to be a partner. In order
    for Government to work, it has to be a partner.
        And I have now, for the last several years, long before I started
    running for President, tried to capture this idea in three simple words.
    It's those of us in Government, it's our responsibility to try to help
    create opportunity. So our watchword should be opportunity. That's what
    the economic program's all about. That's what trying to reform the
    health care system's all about. That's what creating a national service
    bill is all about, trying to create opportunity. Then citizens have to
    recognize that all the opportunity in the world doesn't amount to a hill
    of beans unless there is someone there to seize responsibility, personal
    responsibility, for themselves, their families, their communities, and
    for their neighbors. And finally, out of that we can build

    [[Page 1414]]

    a new American community.
        There are so many people lost today because they don't think anybody
    really cares about them, because they can't imagine the future, because
    they have never been the most important person in the world to anybody
    else. We have got to create a sense of community in this country where
    we're prepared to take responsibility for each other, not just to point
    the finger at each other and tell each other what we ought to do but to
    offer a helping hand.
        So I say all these things to you because I think you represent that.
    You represent the best of the opportunity you were given to be in the
    summer of service, of the personal responsibility you displayed by doing
    your work, and of the sense of the community that you helped to create
    by what you have done.
        If every American did what you did for the last 2 months, if we all
    could do that for several years, we could revolutionize our country.
    There are no problems we could not solve. There is no future we cannot
    have. And I hope with all my heart that what you have done here will set
    the standard for the national service projects in community after
    community that young people will engage in when this bill becomes law.
        I told Eli on the way up here today I'm convinced now there are tens
    of thousands of young people who could do this every summer who may not
    need to, want to, or be able to do it during the year. And I'm not sure
    we shouldn't go back to the Congress, Senator Mikulski and
    Representative Hoyer and Representative Shays, and at least file a
    report on this summer of service and consider having a special summer
    program over and above the year-long program we do because so many young
    people could do it just during the summer.
        I just want you to remember that you are this country. You are
    America. You are this country. And so now I want to hear from you, but I
    want you to know that not just your President but your country is
    grateful to you for showing what America can be at its best. And I hope
    that we'll see it repeated hundreds of thousands of times over the
    course of my Presidency. And I hope it will become a permanent part of
    American life. If it does, the whole country will be stronger.
        Greg, shall we begin?

    [At this point, Greg Ricks, facilitator of the event, discussed the
    Summer of Service project and the group's overall accomplishments. A
    participant then discussed her experience working in an immunization
    program.]

        The President. Thank you so much. That was a terrific presentation.
    Let me just make one comment about the immunization issue because your
    presentation pointed it up more clearly than my words could, but you all
    should know that in spite of the fact that America is a very wealthy
    country we have the third worst record in the Western Hemisphere of
    immunizing our children. One problem is the cost of vaccines. We make
    vaccines in this country which cost more money here than they do in many
    foreign countries. That's a long story, and we don't have to go through
    it, but one of the things that Congress did, and I want to thank those
    here who supported it, was to pass the economic program which included
    several hundred million dollars for the Federal Government to buy
    vaccines in bulk to make them available to clinics like the ones with
    which you were working. Even if you have the vaccines there it won't
    increase the immunization rate if people don't know about the service,
    don't feel comfortable about it, don't want their kids to be immunized.
    And one of the things that we clearly need is more people going out
    doing door-to-door work, doing community work, and it's obvious that
    there's not enough money in any local government, particularly an area
    with a lot of poor people and a lot of diversity, to hire people to do
    that unless you have a service project like this. So the national
    service whole idea really carries within it the seeds of lifting the
    immunization rates of America to those of other advanced nations in the
    world and changing the whole health care future of thousands and
    thousands of young children. Thank you.

    [A participant from ICARE-Philadelphia asked if the health care reform
    plan would subsidize immunization programs.]

        The President. Yes, the health care plan that will be announced in
    the next few weeks will have a big component of preventive care in it
    and will also provide the resources necessary to support the community-
    based clinics.
        I think it's very important that--we have spent too little on
    preventive and primary care, causing us to have to spend too much on
    emergency care and care in later stages. So we're going to try to invest
    more in preventive and

    [[Page 1415]]

    primary care and in those neighborhood clinics both in urban and rural
    areas. I think it will make a huge difference. The Philadelphia program
    is very, very impressive.
        Yes. Nice hat. [Laughter]

    [A participant asked about the role of medical students and health care
    professionals in the health care reform plan.]

        The President. Yes, actually, of course, all the students in all the
    health care professions will be eligible to actually participate in some
    of these programs through the national service initiative, so there will
    be a continuing opportunity there both during the school year and during
    the summer to do that.
        Secondly, we have tried over the last several months, through the
    task force that the First Lady has headed, to engage in dialog medical
    students, nursing students, other people studying in the health care
    professions to try to make sure that the incentives we have in this
    program produce the kind of health care system we want and give young
    people who really want to serve in the problem areas a chance to do it.
    For example, as compared with all other advanced countries, the United
    States has far more specialists and far fewer family practitioners--
    dramatic difference, huge difference from any other country. That means
    it's much harder to get people out in the basic clinics doing the basic
    services. So what we tried to do was to construct a program which would
    provide more incentives for medical schools and for students themselves,
    financial incentives and others, to go out and practice family medicine
    but at the same time would not frighten the American people into
    thinking we're backing off of medical technology. So there's going to be
    more invested in medical research under this program. So I think that it
    will be good, and I hope you will be able to take advantage of that and
    continue to participate.

    [Participants described their experiences working on environmental
    service projects.]

        The President. Thank you very much. I thought they both did a
    terrific job. I'd just like to make one comment again to try to
    reinforce the importance of the whole service concept in the
    environmental area.
        When you talk to most people, maybe even a lot of you, and certainly
    in my mind when you mention environmental issues, often you think of
    policies that ought to be changed. So, for example, after I became
    President, I had promised to take some different policies. So we
    committed ourselves to signing the Biodiversity Treaty that other
    nations signed after the world conference in Rio de Janeiro last year,
    or we committed ourselves to reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in
    the environment to the 1990 levels by the year 2000, or last week we
    committed ourselves to no net loss of wetlands.
        But as you can see, when you pass a law, it's one thing to say these
    things and another to do it, just like you did the wetlands restoration
    project. An enormous number of the environmental things that need to be
    done in this country require the same amount of labor intensity that it
    does to go door-to-door and try to immunize children. The lead paint
    example in New York is just one, but it is a very good one. That's a
    serious problem in many of the major cities in America, exposing some of
    the most vulnerable children.
        That's another irony that you brought out here in your environmental
    presentation. A lot of people think of the environment as preserving
    distant areas that most people never see. But the truth is that the
    people in this country who need a better environment than most may be
    those who live in inner cities, who are most subject to pollution from
    dumps that are there, from lead in the paint, from any number of other
    threats.
        So I really appreciate this because I hope that we can come to see
    the environment not only in terms of the sweeping national policies that
    the Vice President and I have committed ourselves to but also in terms
    of things that preserve the culture of Native Americans and that
    literally may preserve the lives of people not only in rural areas but
    in the cities as well. So I thank you for that.
        Anybody got any questions on that subject?

    [A participant asked about increased funding for energy conservation
    programs.]

        The President. Yes. You know, having been a Governor--and the States
    operate those programs, Congress provides the funds but the States
    specifically operate them--I have seen firsthand how many jobs they
    create and also how much good they can do. I mean, I didn't make that
    point before, but a lot of this weatherization work for poor people,
    especially for a lot of elderly people who are stuck in these

    [[Page 1416]]

    old houses that have holes in the walls literally, a lot of them, or in
    the floor not only make them warmer in the winter and cooler in the
    summer, they also save money on their utility bills. They literally do.
    They conserve energy, and they put more money in the pockets of people
    who have just barely enough to get by. So I strongly support them.
        I also think that, in general, we should move to more energy
    resources that are within our own control. We have vast amounts of
    natural gas, for example, in this country that are environmentally
    cleaner than a lot of the fuels we burn, and we ought to move to develop
    them.
        So the short answer to your question is yes. It's interesting, it's
    kind of a hard sell in the Congress now because the price of oil is so
    low and energy is so cheap. It's much cheaper in America than it is in
    any other major country. But if you just have enough to get by on,
    you're living on a Social Security check or you're living on a minimum
    wage, it's still very, very expensive and a big part of your budget.
        Thank you. Yes?

    [A participant commented on lead paint and other housing conditions and
    asked about extending the national service program to community members
    who are not in college.]

        The President. Good question. That's a good question not only on the
    housing issue but on a number of other issues. And I wish I had a very
    good, complete answer for you today. I can tell you that that question
    is one that we have seriously discussed, and I have asked Henry
    Cisneros, who is the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban
    Development, to try to come up with a proposal for me that would help to
    do that, where the Federal Government could basically help local
    communities trying to engage the energies of people who are prepared to
    volunteer, work part-time, do whatever it takes to solve some of these
    problems. They are also very labor-intensive.
        I'm hoping, beyond that, that some of the things that were in this
    economic program we passed, for example, extending the low-income
    housing tax credit and some other things that we put in there, will help
    State governments and local communities to work with developers to try
    to rehabilitate a lot of these houses and try to put people to work in
    doing it.
        If you look at the building structure of the United States, we still
    have a lot of commercial overbuilding. We haven't worked through that.
    And a lot of people are in a position now to finance or refinance their
    home mortgages or buy new homes because interest rates are low. But the
    population growth in America of people who can buy homes has kind of
    slowed down. So the real economic opportunity may be in rehabilitating
    existing housing structures. And we are looking at what can be done to
    try to deal with that terrible problem.
        We went for 12 years without any kind of serious housing program in
    America, and it led to a lot of these difficulties. And now I hope that,
    through Henry's work, working in partnership with people at the local
    level, we can come up with a better idea. So I don't have an answer for
    you today, but I can tell you we're working on the problem. And I see it
    as a real area of economic opportunity for people, the rehabilitation of
    existing housing structures. It's a better opportunity than building new
    commercial real estate buildings in many places and a better opportunity
    than building even new houses in some places where there's no population
    growth and no demand for it. So I hope we can come up with an answer to
    the problem you've posed.

    [A participant asked about homeownership programs.]

        The President. The most important thing we can do is get the
    mortgages down, which we've done. I mean, we have now the lowest
    mortgage rates in 25 years, so that people can buy housing at lower
    costs. The other thing that we did in this last economic program was to
    extend something called the low-income housing tax credit which
    basically gives people real incentives to build low-cost housing that is
    affordable. The final thing that we're doing is having Mr. Cisneros, the
    Secretary of the Housing and Urban Development Department, work with
    developers and people in local community groups all across the country
    to try to figure out how we can either build or rehabilitate more low-
    income housing so that those three things together I think should permit
    more people--particularly low-income working people who have virtually
    given up on the idea of owning their own home over the last 15 years as
    the price of housing outstripped inflation dramatically--I think you're
    going to see that kind of turn around now. And I believe that in the
    next 5 years the percentage of people owning their own homes, including
    lower income working

    [[Page 1417]]

    people, will go up rather dramatically, but only if we work on all three
    of those areas.

    [A participant discussed his experience as a teacher's assistant.]

        The President. Thank you very much. I think you could see we were
    all very moved by the presentation.
        Before I ran for President, I was Governor for 12 years, and I spent
    during that time more time in schools and with children and with
    teachers and watching people learn and watching people struggle, not
    just in my State but around the country, I guess than anything else I
    did. What I saw there emphasizes some very basic things that, again, I
    would say, the whole country could learn from and mobilize young people.
        Number one, the one-room schoolhouses in New York proved that
    children can help other children learn dramatically. There's a lot of
    evidence of that, by the way. If we had time I could give you lots of
    other examples. But at phenomenal levels, phenomenal levels, there's
    evidence of--there's a school in Boston where, in order to get in the
    school, the seniors and juniors had to agree to tutor the seventh and
    eighth graders. And these kids were all basically from average or low-
    income families and most of them had average IQ's, and they all did very
    well, and there was almost no dropout--nearly everybody went to college,
    nearly everybody finished. And one of the key things was--and they had a
    very, very hard curriculum, very hard. But the older kids all did the
    tutoring for the younger kids--made a big difference.
        Second point that your slide show pointed out and your presentation,
    was that learning should be fun for children, especially if they come
    from disadvantaged backgrounds. Instead of making it a pain, it should
    be fun, and they should be taught to believe that they can learn things.
    That New Orleans project I'm familiar with--it is astonishing that kids
    that once would be given up as--you know, you'd be lucky if they could
    read at the 7th-grade level when they got out of high school--are now
    being exposed to physics and computer technology and all that.
        The third point I want to make--and this is something that all of
    you should remember, too--and that is, there's a lot of research in
    America which shows that kids that grow up in educationally
    disadvantaged homes or poor homes may work like crazy in school, but
    they're always afraid that they're not going to do as well as other
    kids, so they're always afraid to say what they don't know. But most of
    the best learning occurs in groups.
        There was a huge study done a couple of years ago--and a lot of you
    going to college, you'll remember this--a huge study done in California
    a couple of years ago which showed that different groups of kids going
    into the University of California at Berkeley were studied based on how
    well they did academically and the connection to how hard they studied.
    The kids that actually spent the most time studying did the least well
    because they were afraid to study with each other because they were
    ashamed to say what they didn't know. The kids that studied in groups
    and talked with each other about what they didn't know and didn't
    understand, who worked together in a family, learned like crazy.
        All of these things could be affected nationwide, these learning
    patterns could be affected nationwide by programs like this. You could
    literally revolutionize the educational system of the country if there
    were enough service volunteers like you to reach these kids.
        The last thing I want to say is a lot of this stuff was done one on
    one. Every serious study of kids that grew up in difficult circumstances
    and succeeded against all the odds show that every one of them has got a
    different story, and there's only one constant that's almost always
    there: Nearly every child had some sort of a relationship with a caring
    adult, which you qualify for, for these little bitty kids. Keep in mind
    if you're 18 years old and you're helping some kid that's 5, you are the
    caring adult. Right?
        So those are the points I want to make. Again, I would say, I hope
    this work will somehow register on people throughout the country that
    may not be within our program, because these four simple things that you
    have shown here could change the face of American education.
        Yes, sir? I've been wanting you to talk because I wanted to get a
    good look at that hat. [Laughter]

    [A participant from Harlem Freedom Schools asked about plans to focus on
    diversity in schools.]

        The President. Under our system of government, basically, public
    education from kinder-

    [[Page 1418]]

    garten through 12th grade is the province of the State government and
    the local school districts. The Federal Government provides extra help,
    by and large, to help poor kids through nutritional programs or extra
    educational resources. So the New York City School Board would have to
    decide to change that.
        It's an issue, by the way, that you might want to see what you could
    do to get it made an issue in the coming mayor's race. There's going to
    be a mayor's race in New York. That's what politics is for, to debate
    these things. That's what elections are for, to discuss these.
        But I want to try to support what you're saying in this way: When
    cultures lived separately from one another, you didn't have to worry
    about any of this being done at school because it was always
    communicated at home, and besides, everybody was just like everybody
    else. Now that we're crashing in on each other--Los Angeles County, for
    example, has 150 different racial and ethnic groups living in one
    county--this has become a very important thing. And I was very moved by
    what you said about the kids that wouldn't get on the bus with other
    kids, that wouldn't go in the classroom with other kids. You know, it
    seems when you think about it, it's perfectly logical that people coming
    to another country would be terribly frightened by people very different
    from them, and maybe the only image they had of them was something they
    saw in some cheap thrills gangster movie or one of those. So I think
    it's important.
        But I think the only thing that we can do at the national level
    besides talk about it--the President can talk about it--is to try to
    make sure that we run the national service program all year round like
    you said, not just in the summertime, all year round to make sure that
    we have volunteers available for programs like this and that if a
    program, for example, in your community is set up to do this year round,
    that we would give that a priority through national service so we could
    direct our people and say, you can earn your college grade, you can do
    it if you'll become a part of this program. We can support that, and we
    will.
        So you can say, look, to New York, you won't have to pay for all of
    it; the national service people will get you the volunteers if you will
    let the program go forward. And that's what I think we should do.

    [A participant asked about the long-range future of the national service
    program.]

        The President. Ten years from now I believe this will be a major
    fixture of our national life. I don't believe it will be 10,000 kids a
    year or 50,000 or 100,000; I think that the program will become so
    popular and will so capture the imagination of the country that, in
    effect, anybody who wants to be a part of it, to help defray their
    college costs or just because they want to serve, will be able to do it.
    I think it will become a very, very big part of American life.
        Just look at what we've seen already, and look at what your
    experience is. This country simply has--first of all, we've got all
    these young people full of energy and passion and belief and without any
    cynicism and all this talent out there dying to serve, at a point in
    your life when you don't have to support a lot of other people so you
    can work for a fairly modest wage, particularly if you get some
    educational credit out of it. And secondly, we've just got an
    unbelievable number of problems out there that have to be solved in a
    personal, highly labor-intensive way that neither the Government nor the
    private sector could otherwise afford. So I believe 10 years from now,
    you will look back 10 years from now and say, I was a pioneer in
    something that changed America for the better.

    [A participant asked about the role of the national service program in
    educational reform and innovation.]

        The President. First, let me tell you what I think the innovation
    should be in general. We have a bill now that we're trying to pass
    through the Congress which would write into law the national education
    goals that the Governors and President Bush's administration agreed on
    back in 1989. And I care a lot about them, because at that time I was
    the Democratic Governor representing the Governors to write the goals,
    so I believe in them.
        One of the things that we learned, after years and years in studying
    schools, is that all the magic of education and the learning occurs not
    in the White House, not in the Statehouse, but in the schoolhouse and in
    the school room between the teacher and the students and then among the
    students and then at home, if the student is lucky. We have to find more
    individual ways of reaching kids, and we've got to make our education
    system far less bureaucratic, and

    [[Page 1419]]

    we've got to give school by school much more flexibility to principals
    and teachers and students to design their learning programs and to be
    flexible and to be creative.
        So I believe that the role that the national service program will
    have in the revolution of American education will be very large if, but
    only if, we can persuade the schools of our country, in effect, to
    restructure themselves to give more flexibility and authority to the
    principals, the teachers, and the students on a school-by-school basis.

    [A participant asked about school system accountability for education.]

        The President. Well, I think community service should help, but I
    think the school system should be held accountable for it. The answer to
    your question is, we will start doing that when we start evaluating our
    schools based on the results they get rather than the input.
        For example, let me just give you one simple example. We evaluate
    teachers for whether they can get hired in most school districts in this
    country based on whether they've got an education degree from a
    certified college of education, right? So there are all kinds of
    Americans who are retired from the military. Right now, we will take,
    from 1987 to 1998, the United States military will go from having 3.5
    million people to 1.5 million people, 2 million folks out there walking
    around among the best educated, best trained, most highly motivated
    people in the world, with the best values, that know how to get things
    done, right? You can have one of these people, a graduate of the United
    States Military Academy and a massive amount of knowledge in chemistry,
    and they can't teach in most of the schools of the country. Most States
    now have some sort of exception, but it's a real problem. Why? Because
    we evaluate people not on whether they're good teachers but on whether
    they've got good--the qualifications. We evaluate schools based on how
    many kids are in the classroom, what the schoolbook certifications are,
    or what does the building look like. All these things may be important,
    but we don't have any way of evaluating our teachers, our schools, and
    our school systems in most States based on the results they get. What do
    the kids know when they started; what do they know when they finished?
    What happened to them? What kind of problems did they have, and did they
    get services--that goes back to your question--did the school actually
    serve the problems they had instead of the problems that some kids had a
    generation ago? And we're still doing it the way we used to do.
        So that's what I'm trying--I'm trying to be a part of a movement, at
    least, that will decentralize authority, let the principals, the
    teachers, the kids, and the parents, in effect, design more and have
    more flexibility over their own school year and then measure them by the
    results they achieve. So that if you don't get results, you stop doing
    what you're doing and you do something else. But we don't measure--
    anything funded by tax dollars is normally measured by rules and
    regulations on the front end, instead of results on the back end. We
    need less rules and regulations and more results, and we need it in
    schools.

    [A participant spoke about her work to increase literacy.]

        The President. Greg said you had been a VISTA volunteer for 20
    years, is that right? 20 years ago you did it?
        Q. Twenty years ago this summer.
        The President. Good for you. That's another answer I'll give you.
    Ten years from now I hope you'll be wanting to do this just like she did
    after 20 years. That's great.

    [A participant spoke about her work to improve housing and encourage
    safe neighborhoods.]

        The President. I just would make one point about that. When we had a
    commission to study the needs of the Lower Mississippi River area,
    starting in southern Illinois and going all the way to New Orleans--that
    is still the poorest part of America. And one of the things that you
    forget--we always think of public safety as an urban issue, but one of
    the things that's easy to forget is it becomes a big rural issue. And at
    periodic times in this country you will see crime waves will sweep
    across rural America. And one of the reasons is that a lot of people are
    just out there, and nobody can even find them.
        The story she told you about the county in our State where people
    are literally unidentified, where they don't have an address, where they
    called for help--you know, it would take you 5 minutes to explain where
    they were--this is a serious problem in all of rural America. And I
    appreciate the work you did on it.

    [A participant asked if the President could give

    [[Page 1420]]

    concrete examples of welfare reform.]

        The President. Yes, I can. That's a good question. I will give you
    three concrete examples, but let's talk about what's wrong with the
    system now, very briefly. Again, it goes back to the question the young
    man from Harlem asked me about education, where a lot of the schools are
    being run for a time that no longer exists instead of a time that does
    exist. The original welfare system was set up to deal with an American
    society that existed about 50 years ago, where nearly everybody who
    wanted to work could find some kind of job at some low level, but they
    could find some kind of job. There were very few women in the work
    force, if they were in the home and they had children. And the typical
    welfare recipient in the beginning was, let's say, a West Virginia
    miner's widow, 60 years ago. The husband gets killed in the mines. They
    live up in the hills and hollows of West Virginia. The woman has a
    fourth-grade education. She's got three or four kids, no way to go to
    work, no job to find, and the welfare supports the kids.
        Then there was another typical welfare recipient that represents
    about half the people on welfare today, for whom welfare should exist,
    the people who hit on hard times. Suddenly a spouse dies, and there's
    two little children in the home, and you can't work. Or you lose a job,
    and you can't get another one, and you run out of unemployment benefits.
    In other words, about half the people on welfare only stay for 4, 5, 6
    months, and then they get off. Those are the people we would all want a
    welfare system for, because they fall through the unemployment system
    cracks or they need support or they have little children. They can't be
    working because they have a whole slew of them or whatever.
        Increasingly, however, there are people on welfare whose parents
    were on welfare, whose grandparents were on welfare, who never have
    worked, and who basically can stay on forever as long as they have
    children under a certain age, because welfare's proper name is Aid to
    Families with Dependent Children, AFDC, that's what it means.
        So, why do people stay on welfare? To know how to fix it, you have
    to know why they stay. The benefits aren't all that great in most
    States. In fact, over the last 20 years, benefits have not kept up with
    inflation. Why do people stay? They stay for one reason: because they,
    by and large, have very little education, may not know how to get into
    the system; if they did get a job, their job would pay low wages and
    they would lose two things they have on welfare, medical coverage for
    their kids under the Medicaid program and they would then have to pay
    for child care that they themselves are providing.
        Now, I see the Governor paying close attention. Maryland's done a
    lot of work on this whole issue in this State. He can maybe give a
    better answer than I can. But if you look at the system--and by the way,
    I have spent hours and hours in my life talking to people who are on
    welfare, and nearly all of them want to get off quick as they can. So
    what would you do to fix it?
        First thing you've got to do is make sure work pays. Eighteen
    percent of the American work force, almost one in five, work for a wage
    that will not lift a family of four out of poverty. In the last economic
    program that we passed just before the Congress went on recess, one of
    the most important parts of it was to increase something called the
    earned-income tax credit, which is a refund you can get from the
    Government on your tax system to say to the working people of this
    country, if you work 40 hours a week and you have a child in your house,
    you will be lifted above poverty by the tax system. We will not tax you
    into poverty. If you're willing to work hard, play by the rules, and
    raise your kids, we'll lift you out of poverty. That's the first thing.
    That's one specific thing, very important to do.
        The second thing you have to do is to provide medical coverage for
    all Americans without regard to whether they're working or not. Seventy
    percent of all the people in this country who don't have health
    insurance are working for a living. So if you're on welfare, let me just
    give you an example. This is something that actually happens now. I
    helped work on a welfare reform program which Congress passed and
    President Reagan signed in late 1988 right before he left office. And to
    try to deal with this medical coverage program, we said, if you get a
    job that doesn't have health insurance we will provide you health
    insurance for 6 or 9 months, to get you off welfare. That's great, but
    guess what happens? You've got two people working side by side, one of
    them that used to be on welfare has got health insurance for her kids
    for 9 months, working next to somebody who has

    [[Page 1421]]

    never been on welfare that doesn't have any health insurance. So the
    second thing you have to do if you want to end welfare as we know it is
    to provide a system, like every other advanced country has, that has
    affordable health care for all Americans. If you don't do it, you're
    going to continue to have these problems.
        The third thing you have to do is to make sure that all the States
    that run the welfare programs have the resources they need and the
    incentives they need to actually train people for jobs that it will
    exist.
        And then there's one final thing, there's a fourth thing you have to
    do. If you want to end the welfare system as you know it, you have to
    say, if you have health care for your kids and yourself, and you have
    the education and training, after a certain amount of time, if you don't
    go to work there will be some sort of community service job provided for
    you by the local government, and that's what you have to do if you want
    to get an income. In other words, there has to be an end of it. Finally,
    you have to move people to independence and away from dependence.
        If we did those four things, we could end the welfare system as we
    know it, and we could leave welfare for the people that really need it.
    And all of you would feel good about the program instead of bad about
    it.

    [A participant from Habitat for Humanity asked about easing restrictions
    in Federal housing programs in favor of homeownership.]

        The President. Yes, I do support that. I don't know if I can
    prevail, but I do support that. There's a reason why there's been a
    longstanding debate in the Congress about this. And a lot of the Members
    of Congress who really believe in providing affordable housing to people
    are afraid if you move away from--if you have a really strong bias in
    favor of homeownership, that the good things that would be done by
    Habitat for Humanity, for example, would be offset by people being, in
    effect, cut loose in these public housing units that then they won't
    have the resources to maintain. So we have to do it in a delicate way,
    but I think you're absolutely right. And I think it has to be done.
        By the way, for those of you who don't know about--we talked about
    it a couple of times, but Habitat for Humanity is arguably the most
    successful continuous community service project in the history of the
    United States, started by two wonderful people, Millard and Linda
    Fuller, who I was lucky enough to meet in another life before I ever
    thought about doing this job. It is organized on a community service
    basis, community by community. They never take any Government money. And
    it has revolutionized the lives of--how many houses has Habitat built
    now?
        Q. ----are we building now?
        The President. No, I mean where are they now in the cumulative
    total? Does anybody know? How many?
        Q. Twenty-one thousand around the world.
        The President. Yes, that's how many they're building right now.
    They've built more, though. But anyway, it's an amazing thing. And I
    think--I wish I knew. I did know a couple of months ago, but I've
    forgotten.
        You're absolutely right. What we need to do--that's one way we can
    have a partnership with Habitat, if we use the HOME program to favor
    more homeownership. And I think we can do it in a way that will satisfy
    the legitimate concern of Members of Congress that we not be in a
    position of handing over big housing units to people who don't have the
    capacity, the resources to maintain them. That's the real problem there.

    [A participant asked if former participants in the national service
    program could advise in the development of new projects.]

        The President. I'll let Mr. Segal answer that. Eli.
        Mr. Segal. We've learned so much in the course of the last 8 weeks,
    I think. Had we not thought of it, we would have said yes to you right
    now. It's a great idea, and we certainly need to make certain we're
    enjoying all the benefit of all the wisdom you've learned, and it
    certainly should be part of the program going forward.
        The President. Let me make a suggestion. If you have a specific idea
    about how we can do that and how we should do that, if you would write
    it up and send it to Mr. Segal, I'd really appreciate it. I hadn't
    thought of it before, and it is self-evidently the right thing to do. So
    why don't you think about it a little bit and write him a proposal on
    it.

    [At this point, a participant presented the President with a T-shirt.]

        The President. I'll get it. He'll bring it to

    [[Page 1422]]

    me. Go ahead. Thanks, Chris. Nice color.

    [A participant asked if national service would be mandatory and part of
    the school curriculum.]

        The President. A different question--those are two different
    questions. I don't believe that participation in this program, the
    national service program, which we are proposing is, by definition,
    voluntary, but you get something for it. You get credit toward college.
        I believe that it is a very good thing for States or local school
    districts to mandate community service for kids at certain levels in the
    public schools. A few years ago I had the opportunity to serve on a
    commission on middle schools, and we recommended two things that didn't
    get done but I thought should be. One is that there ought to be a set of
    basic civic values that are taught in the schools, and the second was
    that community service ought to be a part of the curriculum. So yes, I
    think that every State should include community service as a part of the
    curriculum at some appropriate point, where students, young people, as a
    part of their education, get the experience of doing what you've done,
    the thrill of it and learn from it and see--don't you find that you see
    the world in a different way once you do this? I mean, you know what the
    problems are, but you also have a sense that you can solve them and make
    a difference. Yes, that's what I think should be done.
        Yes, over in the corner.

    [A participant asked what could be done about the high number of young
    people in jail.]

        The President. Yes, there are a huge number of young people in jail.
    We have now the unfortunate distinction of having the highest percentage
    of our people in prison of any country in the world. Did you know that?
    America has the highest percentage of its population behind bars of any
    country in the world, and most of them are young. Most of them are under
    25 years of age.
        I think, in a way, all of you are doing something about it. I think
    that if you go to the prisons and talk to these people and get the story
    of their lives and figure out how they got there. And most of them never
    met anybody like you on a consistent basis, that is, had a chance to be
    part of what you are doing. And so, I think there are a lot of things we
    can do about it, but in the end, what we have to do about it is to
    continue to touch more of them at the earliest possible point in their
    lives so they don't wind up doing what they're doing later, and keep
    something in their mind about tomorrow. Let them always believe there is
    a tomorrow, that there is a future, that there is something they can do
    that makes them feel good, that makes them important, that makes their
    lives meaningful, that doesn't require them to do what they do to get in
    prison.
        I also think that a lot of kids who wind up getting in trouble
    because they're in gangs do it because--it goes back to what I said
    about studying--everybody wants to be in a gang. You just hope it's a
    good gang and not a bad gang, right? You're in a gang. That's what all
    these T-shirts mean. Right? See what I mean?
        So I think the whole point of what you do is to try to gather them
    up before it happens. Also, there's a whole lot of law enforcement
    strategies that work and antidrug strategies, and we could talk about
    that. But from your point of view, giving people something to say yes to
    as well as something to say no to and to be part of a group that
    matters, I think that would do more over the long run. If you gave every
    kid in America that chance, every one of them that chance, you would see
    the prison population go down dramatically over 10 or 15 years, not
    overnight but over a 10- or 15-year period.

    [A participant asked about initiatives to help African-American and
    Latino males.]

        The President. What I think I can do--again, I will say--I gave this
    answer to another question, but one of the things that I like about this
    national service concept is that we can go out and recruit African-
    American and Latino males, and then we can give priority to projects,
    community-by-community, that we know have a good chance of succeeding
    and put people in there and help to pay for it. That's what we can do.
    And that will be a major, major thing. That's what you did, I mean,
    without maybe thinking about it in that way. But that's what we can do.
        But what you've also got to do is to make sure that those things
    which are in the control of the State or those things which are in the
    control of the local government or those things which the private sector
    ought to be doing in your community, that they're doing that, too. For
    example, I still think you could rescue a bunch of kids that are in
    trouble if you have

    [[Page 1423]]

    the right kind of court programs, if you have alternatives to
    incarceration for first offenders.
        We've got another program that is separate from this now. I'm really
    proud of it. I signed a bill in June, another one of my passions, where
    we're using empty military bases and National Guard volunteers to work
    with high school dropouts to give them a chance to do what they once
    might have done in the military but can't now because we've phased the
    military down so much, to recover their future and get a GED.
        So we're going to continue to do programs like that that are highly
    targeted toward people that otherwise might get in trouble. But I will
    say what we want to do at the national level is to provide a vehicle for
    people like you to serve. But you still got to get people at the local
    level to say, ``Hey, this is a problem in our community; will you give
    us the folks to do it?'' And then we can say yes.

    [At this point, the facilitator introduced a participant from south
    central Los Angeles.]

        Q. How are you doing?
        The President. I'm doing better since I spent the last couple of
    hours with you.

    [The participant discussed his experience working with children in the
    neighborhood he grew up in.]

        The President. If I might just respond to you. You know, I've spend
    a lot of time in your community over the last--and I started going there
    before I ran for President and before the riots. I first went to south
    central L.A., over 3 years ago now, just to sit and talk with people. My
    wife and I went and talked with a bunch of sixth graders, and we met
    with the people from Uno and SCOC, the community organizations out
    there, and others. And one of the things I think Americans who don't
    live in these really troubled communities often forget is that most
    people who live in places like that do not break the law, get up and go
    to work every day, want their children to do well, are doing the best
    they can. And a lot of the kids who wind up in gangs do it almost out of
    self-defense because they don't think they have any alternatives.
        I was out there the other day--you probably don't remember this, but
    I visited that sporting goods store in south central L.A. run by the two
    guys who used to be in gangs. We played basketball in the backyard
    there--the parking lot of the sporting goods store. But I think that is
    so important.
        Now again, we have a job to do. We, the government and the private
    sector, have got to put more opportunity into places like that.
        One of the things that the Congress did in this economic program I
    really hope will work--at least we've got a chance to see now--is to
    pass a bill which will enable us to identify six really troubled, big,
    urban areas and say to people in the private sector, ``Look, we'll give
    you a whole lot of extra incentives if you'll put you money there,
    create jobs there, and put people to work.'' I mean, it is nuts if you
    go into some of these areas and you think about all these people just
    walking around without jobs. That's an enormous resource going to waste.
    If those people were working, they'd have money to buy things from other
    people. They would create jobs. We've allowed this economy to shrink.
        But over and above that, we have to put in a lot of volunteers,
    people like you who can do that. I mean, I'm convinced that the economy
    is one thing we have to address, but all these social problems have to
    be addressed one-on-one.
        And let me just close with this sentence. I was talking to somebody
    I've known since I was 6 years old the other day, and we were talking
    about all the kids in trouble. And she said, ``You know, a guy asked me
    the other day what are we going to do about all these kids? How are we
    going to save all these kids?'' And she said, ``We've got to save them
    the same way we lost them, one at a time.'' And so you can have an
    enormous impact on the future of your community. And it's up to me to
    try to make sure that we can keep programs like this going so that you
    and people like you will have a chance to do that.
        It's also important that you be an advocate for all those people and
    not let us forget about them. I mean, it's crazy just to pay attention
    to a city when all the buildings burn down. Then it's often too late. We
    need to pay attention to them when the kids are growing up and they're
    trying to do the right thing. And I hope that in south central L.A. and
    in a lot of the other places that are represented here today, we're
    going to be able to do that. Not that we'll solve the problems
    overnight, but if everybody knows we're trying, everybody knows we're
    working together, everybody knows we're going in the right direction,
    that is the feeling

    [[Page 1424]]

    I think people want. That's what gets people going.
        What breaks people is not the problems they face; what breaks people
    is that they think tomorrow is not going to be any better than today.
    And what this national service is about is making people believe that it
    will be different. And you have proved that. Thank you.
        Q. And finally, Mr. President, nowhere have we seen service so
    urgently needed----
        Q. Excuse me, Mr. President. I've got a really important question to
    ask and a really important observation. I'm from Ohio Wesleyan
    University, and I'm under the direction of John Powers. And I'd like to
    take time to ask you to recognize the program directors and the
    community leaders who are here and who have come so far to--[applause]--
    --
        The President. Would they stand up? Will you have them stand up?
        Q. ----to make sure that your vision has gone through.
        The President. Stand up. Stand up. Good for you. Good for you. Thank
    you.

    [A participant asked how the national service program would address
    rural problems.]

        The President. It is true that this summer, because we were
    basically doing a test program this summer and we wanted to plug into
    programs that were established and that had a real chance of working--
    the program you mentioned in Philadelphia, the City Year Program that
    Greg's involved with--that we knew were working. So we did that, and we
    did it deliberately, and I still think it was the right thing to do.
        On the other hand, there were some non-urban projects, the Red Lake
    project, the one in south Texas that was done. And as I said earlier, I
    come from a rural background, a State full of small towns and rural
    areas, and I know that all the problems that are in the big cities are
    also there. So we are going to appoint this board to run the national
    service program that is fully representative of the rest of the country,
    and one of their missions will be to allocate the resources in a way
    that are fair to the whole country so that we don't forget about the
    small towns and the rural areas. They're not much different, except in
    size, in the scope of the problems that they face today. And I thank you
    for saying that. Give them a hand. [Applause]

    [At this point, the facilitator introduced participants who discussed
    their experiences in restoration of disaster areas.]

        The President. First, let me just say a simple thank you to all of
    you.
        I was in the Midwest during the floods on four occasions, and I saw
    a lot of young people there working hard and really giving it all they
    had. But one of the things I think being a Governor is a good
    preparation for President is dealing with natural disasters, because
    when you see them occur--first of all, it's just breathtaking to see a
    flood take away a town or a tornado or a hurricane blow away a place.
    But the other thing, you know, is just what you got through saying, that
    everybody pours out their heart when it's happening, and they come and
    help. But a year from now there are still people who don't have their
    lives together. And the stresses on the families and the communities are
    staggering.
        One interesting thing we have done is to--as soon as I got in
    office, I named Henry Cisneros as the administration's coordinator for
    dealing with the long-term relief of Hurricane Andrew. Then I named Mike
    Espy, the Agriculture Secretary, as the administration's coordinator for
    dealing with the long-term relief of the flood in the Midwest. These are
    the kinds of things that we have to do. We've got to stay with it for
    the long run. And I hope that the national service project can provide
    volunteers next year in the Midwest if they are needed and next year in
    south Florida if they are needed, so that we don't forget about those
    people. It takes a long time to recover from a disaster of the magnitude
    of Andrew or a 500-year flood, which is what we just had in the Midwest.
    And I really thank you for it.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11 a.m. in the Adele H. Stamp Student Union
    at the University of Maryland.