[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[February 28, 1994]
[Pages 337-345]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks and a Question-and-Answer Session at Hillcrest High School in 
Country Club Hills, Illinois
February 28, 1994

    The President. Thank you very much. It's wonderful to be here. I 
thank you for your warm reception, and I do mean warm reception. I'm 
sorry it's so warm, but they had to put the lights up so that the 
cameras will put you all on the news tonight. So see, it's not so bad 
now, is it; what do you think about that? [Laughter]
    I want to thank my good friend Congressman Mel Reynolds for 
arranging for me to come here and to be with you today and for the 
leadership that he is already displaying in his career in Congress. He 
is a great credit to all of you here, and I think you would be very 
proud of the work that he does in Washington. I want to thank your 
principal, Gwendolyn Lee, for inviting me here and for the comments she 
made. She told me that her mother made dinner for Martin Luther King, 
when she was 11 years old. And she said her mother sent me a plate that 
he had dinner off of, so she sent me into a little room out here to have 
a snack off the same plate. So you see, even when you grow up you've got 
to try to do what your mama wants. [Laughter] I've spent most of my life 
doing that myself.
    I want to thank Starr Nelson for being here with us. I thought she 
was very well-spoken. We knew exactly what she had to say, and she was 
brief. That makes you very popular if you're a speaker. [Laughter] Also 
I want to say I've heard good things about your music program here, so I 
hope before I leave I get to hear the band play. You guys have got to 
play a little for me. I also want to thank anybody in this whole student 
body who was responsible for putting together that statement up there, 
that letter for me. If every one of you believes that and lives by it, 
then I don't need to be here, I need to be somewhere else today. It's a 
very impressive statement and a real credit to your school.
    I came here today, as I think all of you know, to talk about the 
problem of crime and violence in our land and especially as it affects 
our young people. As the Congress comes back to work this week, it will 
be considering some very important education bills and some very 
important crime legislation. We know as a practical matter that we can 
never really be what we ought to be as a people until we are not only 
free of the scourge of violent crime but free of the fear of it. For the 
very fear of crime keeps 160,000 young people just like you home from 
school every day. Every day that's how many people we estimate don't go 
to school because they're afraid that if they do go, either at school or 
going to school or coming from school, they'll be shot or knifed or beat 
up or hurt in some way.
    I know that you understand that because last November two teens were 
shot and wounded within a week right outside your school. This kind of 
thing is happening all across the country,

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and we have got to do what we can to stop it--you and I together.
    The number of teens murdered by guns has doubled just since 1985. 
You think of that. We've been a country for over 200 years, and the 
number of our teenagers murdered by guns has doubled in less than 10 
years. One in 20 high school students carries a gun to school each day 
somewhere in America. I hope not here. But it happens. Some do it for 
protection. Some do it for the wrong reasons.
    More and more of our young people find themselves caught up in a 
cycle of violence. I just left the Wright Community College here in 
Chicago where I met a woman whose 22-year-old son was murdered by his 
best friend in just a fight over nothing; over nothing they were 
fighting. And she said when the young man was arraigned in court he said 
he missed his friend every day. I had another medical professional tell 
me that she looked into the face of a woman who had just lost her 
husband because his younger brother went in another room and got a gun 
and shot him down because they were fighting over which channel they 
were going to watch on television. And the guy had two little children--
people dying over nothing.
    I was in California a few months ago, and I did a town meeting--I'm 
going to that in a minute here, get rid of this microphone and just let 
you ask me questions--and I was in Sacramento, California, but we were 
hooked into three or four other towns and people all over the State 
could ask me questions. And this young man stood up and told a story of 
how he and his brother didn't want to be in a gang, didn't want to have 
any guns, didn't want to cause any trouble. And their school was unsafe, 
so they went to another school they thought was safer. And while they 
were standing in line to register at this safer school, some half-crazy 
person came into school and shot his brother standing right there in 
front of him in the line.
    These things are happening all over the country. Today, the Brady 
bill becomes law. It's a bill that will save some lives. It's a bill 
that will require that no place in America can anybody buy a gun until 
they've been checked for criminal background or mental health history. 
And we know that it will keep thousands and thousands of people from 
getting guns who would otherwise get them, commit crimes, and maybe even 
kill with them.
    We have done our best to deal with the problems, the special 
problems of assault weapons. We have a lot of evidence now that more and 
more people are hurt more grievously by guns when semiautomatics or 
assault weapons are involved because they're likely to have more bullets 
in their body. Today we banned an assault weapon called the ``street 
sweeper'' that was developed for crowd control in South Africa. To 
enforce apartheid in South Africa, to repress blacks in South Africa, 
that's what this gun was developed for--now not used anywhere, but 
manufactured in America so that people can get it and repress each other 
with it--no sporting purpose, no hunting purpose in this country.
    But we have more to do. Congress is also considering, as I said, the 
crime bill. Let me tell you a little bit about what it does, and then 
I'll open the floor and you can tell me what else you think we can do. 
The crime bill now before Congress would permit us to train and hire, 
working with cities, another 100,000 police officers to work not just to 
catch criminals but to walk the streets, to know the neighborhoods, to 
go into the schools, to meet and become friends and neighbors with the 
young people in the schools. Last month, as Mayor Welch reminded me, 
Country Club Hills received a grant for three new police officers from 
our Justice Department to do this kind of thing. We have seen evidence 
all across America, even in tough neighborhoods and big cities, that if 
there are enough police that are really walking the streets, knowing the 
families, knowing the young people, working with them, that a crime rate 
can go down by just creating an environment in which people don't commit 
crimes and feel that there is somebody secure and supportive there.
    So that's the first thing that this bill does. The second thing the 
bill does is to ban about 28 kinds of assault weapons. The third thing 
it does is to have a safe-schools provision which provides money to help 
provide security measures in schools but also to try to help young 
people resolve their differences in different ways. We forget--at least 
I say, ``we,'' not you but me, those of us who are older, who grew up in 
a different time, and who stayed busy all day doing other things--we 
forget that there are a lot of people who see people resolve their 
differences hours and hours and hours a day on television programs where 
the differences are always resolved with a fight or a shooting, and

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where there may not be someone else saying there's another way to do 
this. And so we're doing our best through this crime bill to give the 
schools and the communities of our country the means to bring good 
gifted people in to work with young people about how to resolve their 
differences, how to deal with anger, how to deal with frustration.
    Let me tell you something: We all feel anger. We all feel 
frustration. We all feel like we're being thwarted. There are always 
things that happen to all of us that we wish wouldn't happen and where 
we want to double up our fist or pick up a stick or something. But we 
learn not to do that. You have to learn not to do that in a society 
where you're really going to be civilized and recognize one another's 
rights. That's what we're struggling for in Bosnia today. That's what we 
hope for the people of all those countries in Africa which are embroiled 
in civil wars. And that's what we have to hope for our own people, that 
we can decide that we can do that. And in the end, that's what the 
people of the troubled Middle East are going to have to decide: if they 
can resolve their differences without killing each other.
    So this is a big deal. And this is what is in the crime bill. The 
crime bill has tougher punishment. It recognizes that most of the really 
serious crimes are committed by a small number of people, so if you 
commit three serious violent crimes that hurt people, sequentially, you 
won't be eligible for parole anymore. But most people who are in prison 
are going to get out. And most people can be helped before they commit 
crimes. So we try to find ways to deal with all these other issues.
    I can't help saying one thing about drugs that I think is important, 
and that is that we see some evidence now that drug use, after going 
down among young people for several years, may now be on the rise again. 
And I just have to tell you that one of the things that I learn every 
day as President is to be a little humble about what I can do. That is, 
I get up every day and I try to do what I can to make the future better 
for you. My job really is about guaranteeing the future for America, 
preparing America for the 21st century, trying to keep the American 
dream alive for you. I've lived most of my life, and I hope more than I 
can say that none of you have lived most of your lives. I hope the vast 
majority of your life is still out there ahead of you. But I know that 
there is a limit to what even the President can do. The President can't 
keep anybody off drugs. The President can't keep anybody from getting in 
trouble with the law. The President can't keep anybody from resorting to 
violence. These are decisions you have to make.
    And so I came here to this school today on the first day the Brady 
bill is effective--a bill for which people fought for 7 years to give 
you a better chance to be free of violence--to tell you that we're going 
to keep on fighting against violence. We're going to fight for more 
police. We're going to fight to have them be friends of the community. 
We're going to fight for tougher penalties, but we're going to fight for 
better chances, for young people to have things to say ``yes'' to.
    But in the end, what matters more than all of that is whether you 
believe what's up there on that wall. And if I do my part and the 
Congressman does his, and the teachers and the administrators do theirs, 
and all these parents and others who are here today do theirs, in the 
end what still counts is whether you believe what's on that wall. But if 
we, your parents and your grandparents, will assume our responsibility 
to deal with these tough problems now, and you will believe what's on 
that wall, then I believe that you will grow up in the most exciting 
time this country has ever known. And if we don't, if we don't do our 
part and you don't do yours, then what you saw here when those people 
were shot outside this school a few months ago is the beginning of just 
how bad it can be. The choice is yours. The choice is ours. I'm going to 
make my choice for your future. And that's the choice I want you to 
make, too. Thank you very much.
    Now, where are the microphones out here? One, two, three. Okay wave 
them. Just make sure everybody can see. One, two, three. So if you have 
a question or a comment, get it to the microphone. Tell us your name and 
what class you're in.

Health Care Reform

    Q. I'm a sophomore here at Hillcrest High School. I was just 
wondering, if I were a graduating senior who planned to work full-time 
next year, what should I expect to pay in general medical expenses under 
your health care reform program?
    The President. Good question. Good question. You should expect to 
pay, again, depending on

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how much you make, you should expect to pay about 2 percent of your 
payroll out of your pocket if you work for someone else. And your 
employer would pay somewhere between just under 4 percent and just under 
8 percent of your payroll, depending on how big your workplace is and 
what the average payroll of the people working there is.
    Now, having said that, let me get in a little plug. I just had some 
statistics given to me that I'll give back to you that relate not so 
much to health care but to your decision to go to work after you get out 
of high school. In 1992, the unemployment rate among high school 
dropouts nationwide was over 11 percent, and that included people 40 and 
50 years old. For younger people it was much, much higher. Okay? The 
unemployment rate for high school graduates was 7.2 percent. The 
unemployment rate for people that had had at least 2 years of a 
community college or further training was 5.2 percent. And the 
unemployment rate for college graduates was 3.5 percent. In 1992, the 
average high school graduate made $4,000 a year more than the average 
high school dropout; and the average person who had a high school 
diploma and at least 2 years of further training made another $4,000 
more.
    So my answer is, if you go to work when you get out of high school, 
enroll in a community college at night or something else and get further 
education and training so you can get your income up. Then you won't 
mind paying for health care. [Laughter]
    And the good news is that right now, under the system we have now, 
you might or might not get health care, it just depends on the accident 
of whether your employer provides it. Under our plan, everybody will get 
it for the first time in the history of the country, and no one will 
lose it, even if somebody in their family has been sick. That's the 
biggest problem now: almost everybody in America is at risk of losing 
their health insurance if something happens to somebody in their family.

Law Enforcement Careers

    Q. I'm a junior. And I'd like to know if I was interested in 
becoming a CIA or FBI or national security agent, what would I have to 
do as far as education? What would I still have to do to get there?
    The President. That's a good question. I think one of my Secret 
Service agents should talk to you when this is over. You come down here 
when this is over. I'll introduce you to one of the Secret Service 
agents and they can tell you about it, okay? What do you think? 
[Applause]
    But wait, wait, I'm going to answer the question. The answer to your 
first question is, though, as an absolute minimum you have to go to 
college and finish a 4-year college degree. And a lot of the--
particularly in the FBI, depending on what they're doing, have further 
education over that. And a lot of people in Secret Service were once in 
other kinds of law enforcement. But it's not necessary for you to have a 
particular degree in law enforcement. A lot of them have done different 
things. But what I would suggest you do is to literally talk to one of 
my agents after it's over. But what I suggest you do: go to college, get 
the best education you can, do well, and keep up with what the 
requirements for joining these various Federal law enforcement agencies 
are, so that as you move toward the end of your college career, you can 
do what it takes to qualify. And if you have to do something else for a 
year or two before you get in, then that's all right as well.
    But it's important that you keep up because, for example, suppose 
you decide to go do some other kind of law enforcement work first--under 
our national service proposal, you might be able to start when you're a 
junior in college working with law enforcement in the summertime, so you 
get a little leg up on that.

Funding for Education

    Q. I'm a junior here at Hillcrest High School. And I would like to 
know, Mr. President, why is the Government cutting the cost for a 
college education?
    The President. Wait a minute. Why are we--why aren't we cutting the 
cost, or why are we----
    Q. Why are you cutting the funding?
    The President. Well, we're not. You may be doing it in Illinois, and 
at the national level--I don't know that you are. I'm not accusing 
anybody or anything. [Laughter] But let me tell you this: For several 
years student aid levels were frozen at the national level, so that, in 
effect, they were being cut because inflation meant that the money 
didn't go as far anymore.
    This year I have asked the Congress to put more money into the Pell 
Grant program, which is the college scholarship program for low-in-


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come kids that comes out of the Federal Government and also--did you 
give up on your question? And also, also, we have reorganized the 
college loan program. This is very important. I want you all to listen 
to this. We have reorganized the college loan program so that now you 
can borrow money at lower interest rates, and you can pay it back, no 
matter how much you borrow, as a percentage of what you earn after you 
go to work. Now, a lot of people quit, drop out of school because they 
worry about the cost of it and they worry about the burden of paying the 
loans back. So now we are giving everybody who wants it an option. You 
can pay your loan back basically on a regular loan repayment schedule. 
But suppose you want to do something that doesn't pay a lot of money, at 
least when you begin. Suppose you want to become a schoolteacher in the 
beginning, and you know you're not going to be a millionaire. You could 
pay your loans back, but you can't pay a whole lot at once. Under our 
new proposal, you can borrow the money at lower interest rates and you 
can pay it back over a longer period of time, a smaller amount every 
year based on your income.
    So there will never be a reason not to go to college. In addition to 
that, this year 20,000 young Americans, and 3 years from now, 100,000 
young Americans will be able to earn several thousand dollars in 
scholarship money by participating in our community service program. So 
I am trying to make it easier for people to go to college, because it 
makes a huge difference, as I just quoted to you the numbers, in your 
employability and your income.
    Go ahead.

Public Housing

    Q. Hi, I'm a senior here at Hillcrest. My question is, besides 
giving money to the city of Country Club Hills, in the future do you 
foresee giving money to the less fortunate communities in the city of 
Chicago, such as Cabrini Green, so that they as well can fight against 
drugs and gang activities?
    The President. Yes----
    Q. And if so, how do you go about completing----
    The President. Yes----
    Q. ----so that we as people can work together instead of working 
against one another?
    The President. Give her a hand. [Applause] First of all, in this 
last round of grants for law enforcement, where this small community got 
$238,000, Chicago got $4 million to hire more police officers.
    But let me just tell you, there are two or three things that are 
quite important here. If our crime bill passes, then a lot more money 
will come to Chicago not only for police officers but also for drug 
treatment and for alternative activities for young people. And in 
addition to that, the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development Henry Cisneros, which has jurisdiction over the big public 
housing projects, has a major new initiative to try to work with the 
homeless, especially homeless young people, to try to deal with that on 
a more permanent basis and to try to improve security and reduce drugs 
in public housing projects.
    You know, you've had some remarkable success in Chicago, actually, 
cleaning out public housing projects and making them safe and providing 
jobs for people who live in the projects to work to help to keep them 
drug free and free of violence. And the truth is that we've not provided 
enough money nationwide to do in every housing project in the country 
what has been done in some housing projects here in Chicago.
    So in this new round of our budget, through those two areas, through 
the crime bill, and through the Housing and Urban Development 
Department, we're going to try to give the people of Chicago and in 
cities like that all across America the tools they need to do the job. 
And that was a good question, great question.

Somalia

    Q. Mr. President, before I begin with the question, I'd like to 
thank you for sending my brother, who was in Somalia, home. I'd like to 
thank you from my family.
    The President. Well, I'd like to thank him, and through him, through 
your family, for the work they did over there. We can't stay forever and 
solve all the problems of Somalia. We can't run the country. But what we 
did do was to save hundreds of thousands of people from starvation, to 
organize life again, and to give them at least a chance to work out 
their own problems. If they don't do it, they'll have to take 
responsibility for it. But at least we've given that country a chance to 
survive. And your brother can be proud of the service he rendered, and I 
appreciate that.

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Education

    Q. Welcome, President Clinton. I would like to know--I'm a senior--I 
would like to know how do you plan to improve the public educational 
system so that it's equal throughout Illinois and throughout the States?
    The President. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do and then 
I'm going to be honest with you on the front-end and tell you it's not 
enough, okay? Because let me say, most public education in America, over 
90 percent of it, is funded from State taxes and local taxes, so that 
the President and the Congress provide a very small percentage of the 
money that comes to this school district. That's the way it's always 
been.
    I don't know what the numbers are for Illinois, but if I were 
guessing, I would guess that probably 55 percent of the total cost of 
public education probably is paid for at the local level. Is that about 
right? Most of it comes from the State? No, most of it--well anyway, 
take my word for it--over 90 percent comes from the State and the local 
level in some relationship.
    Some States pay a big percentage of it. Hawaii, for example, pays 
almost all; there's almost no local taxes in Hawaii. Some States pay 
almost nothing, and it's all local property taxes. New Hampshire is the 
most extreme. All the other States--Illinois, New York, everybody else 
is somewhere in between.
    Whenever you use local property taxes to fund schools there will be 
unequal funding. Why? Because some school districts have more valuable 
property than others, right? So at any given tax rate--I mean, if you've 
got--you're going to have that. That is the fundamental problem with 
inequality in America.
    Now, at the national level, we have certain programs designed to 
help low-income districts and low-income kids or kids from disadvantaged 
backgrounds, like special education programs or Chapter I programs. What 
we are doing with our money this year is to put some more money into 
programs directed toward low-income children, like the Head Start 
program, and to change--I'm asking the Congress to change the way we 
give the money out to give more money to the poorer school districts so 
that we can equalize the funding.
    But the reason I tell you it's not enough is, if you put up 90 cents 
and I put up a dime, I can redistribute my dime, but it still may not 
overcome your 90 cents. You see what I mean? So what that means is that, 
in Illinois, if you think it's a real problem and you think a lot of 
your schools are not being properly funded and it's unequal, you have to 
solve a lot of this problem at the State level with the State 
legislature in Springfield. We'll do as much as we can, and I have asked 
the Congress to do more, but there's a limit to how much we can do.

Spending Priorities

    Q. Hello. I'm a sophomore, and I was wondering, how do you justify 
millions of dollars being spent on space exploration when there are 
millions of homeless people in our country?
    The President. Well for me, it's not a hard justification, but it's 
a very good question. The way I justify it is this: I think it's 
important for us to continue our lead in space because I think it helps 
our national security to be out there first and to always be in a 
position to shape developments in space, because space has given us a 
way to cooperate after the cold war with the Russians, the Japanese, the 
Europeans, and the Canadians. We're all working on the space station 
together because it creates new high-tech jobs for scientists and for 
engineers, and they create a lot of wealth for the rest of us, and 
because in space technology, a lot of things are found out that may have 
a lot of benefits for us right here on Earth.
    I'll just give you just one example. I was down at the headquarters 
for the American space program in Houston, Texas, the other day, and I 
saw a motor that was used to pump water in space where it's gravity-
free, so the motor obviously has to be very powerful to pump water and 
make it move where there's no gravity. And they discovered that the 
exact same technology could be used as a heart pump here on Earth to 
keep people alive, and it's lighter and better and cheaper to produce 
than what had been the case here. I also saw cancer cultures growing in 
space in gravity-free environments where the cells will grow 
differently, in ways that will enable all kinds of medical research to 
be done that may keep a lot of us alive when they get cancer here on 
Earth.
    So I think a nation like ours has to take some of its money and 
invest it in the future, even though you know it may not work out, even 
though you can't justify every penny based on immediate benefit. It's 
like investing in edu-


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cation, in a way. If I invest in your education, I think you're going to 
come out better. It may be 7 or 8 years down the road, and yet every 
dollar I spend on education is a dollar we don't spend on the homeless 
or feeding the hungry or some other problem.
    So, I don't believe we're spending enough on the homeless, by the 
way. And under my budget we're going to spend more. So I can't defend 
that. But I think that if you were in my position, every one of you, one 
of the hardest decisions you would have to make is how much money am I 
going to spend taking care of problems today, and how much money am I 
going to spend investing in the future so we'll have fewer problems, 
more jobs, higher incomes, better opportunities? It's one of the hardest 
decisions I have to make. And like I said, I--by the way, a lot of 
people in Congress don't agree with me, a lot of people in Congress 
every year vote to cut the space program and put more money into 
problems just like you said. And if you were there, you might make the 
same decision. But as President, I always have to keep one eye on the 
future and one eye on the present and try to balance the needs in a 
proper way.
    That was a great question. Give him a hand. It was a good question. 
[Applause]
    Q. Hello. I'm a junior at Hillcrest High School. Mr. President, I 
would like to know why is it that the U.S. gives and helps other 
countries while we have our own people starving, nowhere to live, crime, 
no jobs, people on welfare, and gangs? Why don't we start helping our 
own country and not others? And how is it that you're going to change 
this around, where we'll become a more industrial country and not where 
Taiwan and Korea and Japan are beating us in industrial ways?
    The President. Good question. Good question. First of all--that's a 
real good question, don't you think? Good question. First of all, that's 
exactly what I ran for President to do, to get us to take care of our 
problems at home first, because my belief is, if you're not strong at 
home you can't be strong abroad. So I believe that, okay?
    Now, I believe that. And as a result of that, in the last year, we 
have changed the economic course of the country, we're bringing our 
deficit down; we're seeing more investment and more jobs coming into 
this economy; we're opening up opportunities to sell American products 
around the world so we can compete with these other countries.
    But you need to know that last year, our economy grew more rapidly 
than the economy of Europe and the economy of Japan, and that we are 
starting to come back. We are creating more jobs than they are, and we 
are beginning to really compete again. And that is my first and most 
important job and the overwhelming priority that we have.
    Now, let me say also, though, we spend a smaller percentage of our 
income on foreign aid than the Europeans or the Japanese do, the 
Japanese give more money in foreign aid than we do now. The foreign aid 
is not a big problem; indeed, even though we're the strongest country in 
the world, we haven't even--I haven't been able to persuade Congress yet 
to appropriate the money we owe just to pay our past-due bills to the 
United Nations.
    And we have to spend--it's like the question this young man asked me 
about the space program. It's hard to--there is no easy dividing line 
here between at home and abroad in the sense that now a big percentage 
of our income depends on our ability to sell products and services 
overseas because we live in a global economy.
    The next time you go in a store, just pay attention to everything 
you buy. The next time you buy some clothes, for example, just see where 
all it's made, and you just see what a global economy we live in.
    So if the United States wants to be able to lead the world and 
preserve the peace and avoid a war and not have a lot of people like the 
lady with the microphone's brother going all over the world getting--to 
fight major wars, we have to maintain some leadership in the world. And 
that requires us to invest some money. And I think we should invest some 
money. But the overwhelming priority should be on the problems here at 
home, and that's what I'm trying to do. But we can't run away from our 
responsibilities abroad. We just have to put the folks at home first.
    And I totally agree with you that we have not invested enough in 
education and jobs and curing the problems of the homeless, especially 
in the distressed inner city areas. If we had the same policy on getting 
foreign investment into inner city America that we have in getting 
American investment overseas, we could cure

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a lot of these problems. And that's what I'm trying to do as President.
    I'll take--we've got to quit. They're trying to get me to quit. Two 
more.
    Q. I'm a junior here at Hillcrest. I was informed that the money 
that was granted to us was to use for gun control. Now, if we could use 
that money for education, to educate the people to give them a choice, 
not to go into gun control, why can't we do that? Not to go to gangs or 
to drugs.
    The President. You mean the money that you got--that the city got to 
hire the police officers?
    Q. Yes, the money that was granted to the city----
    The President. You used that to hire police officers, didn't you? 
That money was used just to hire police officers. But the money in the 
crime bill--you know, I talked about the bill that's now pending in the 
Congress--there will be money in that bill that can be used in this 
community and in this school to do just what you said. In other words, I 
don't want to mix apples and oranges. I think it's important to hire 
more law enforcement officers, too, because I know if they're in the 
community and tied to the folks in the community, they can reduce crime. 
But I agree that there also has to be money spent to do the things you 
said.
    If this crime bill passes in anything like the form we're talking 
about, there will be money for that purpose. And I perfectly agree with 
you.
    That was a good question. Give her a hand. [Applause]

Homelessness

    Q. I'm a junior here at Hillcrest. I was wondering, as we see, in 
the United States there's an increasing amount of homelessness. And I 
was wondering why have there been cuts in welfare?
    The President. Well, to the best of my knowledge, unless you've done 
something here in Illinois I don't know about, I don't know that there 
have been cuts in welfare unless there was a State program that got cut. 
At the national level, there's been no cut in welfare, but the welfare 
check has not kept up with inflation. However, that's not the primary 
problem with homelessness. One of the things that we find is, 
increasingly, you've got families that are out of work that are homeless 
as well as people who have some terrible problem in their lives. And 
what I think we've got to do is not only improve the welfare system, 
which I want to do--that is, I want to spend--people on welfare I 
believe should be required to work but only after they've had education 
and training and until their children are supported with health care. 
Then I think you can require them to work.
    So I think that is very important. But the homeless problem is a 
different one. One of the things that I'm most proud of about my 
Government now is that the person in charge of this, Henry Cisneros, who 
used to be the mayor of San Antonio, has really spent an enormous amount 
of time trying to figure out all the different reasons people are 
homeless and why getting homeless people off the street involves a lot 
more than just building shelters where people come in and spend a night 
or two, and then they're homeless again.
    And what we're trying to do this year is take an approach to the 
homeless problem which will really give us a chance to go in and, family 
by family, person by person, examine why are these people homeless, what 
would it take to put them in control of their own lives again, and what 
do we have to do to do it. And I believe that within a year or so, you 
will be able to see some real results from our efforts with the 
homeless.
    I keep telling our Cabinet, if we could just do one thing, just one 
thing that would make America feel better about itself, it would be to 
get these folks off the street and into a constructive life. People in 
our country want that, I think. I think all kinds of Americans want 
that. I think it breaks America's heart to see all these folks trapped 
in a life that they can't really seriously want to live forever. And 
we're going to do our best to do better. I'm glad all of you care so 
much about that. Thank you.
    They say we've got to go. I'm on my way to Pittsburgh. It's an 
interesting story. You talked about the rest of the world--I'm supposed 
to meet with the Prime Minister of Britain tonight, Great Britain. His 
grandfather worked in a steel mill in Pittsburgh, and his father was a 
circus performer in the United States; just shows you what a small world 
it is.
    I really have loved being here. I wish I could stay all day and 
answer your questions. You asked great questions, those of you who asked 
questions, and I wish we could have taken some more.

[[Page 345]]

    Please remember what I said. If you have other questions like this, 
you ought to bring these concerns to your Congressman. That's what he's 
here for, to bring them to me in Washington. I feel a lot better about 
the young people of the country just being here with you and listening 
to you ask these questions and knowing how much you care. And I will say 
again, I'll try to do the best I can on the issues we've talked about 
today. And you do the best you can to stick with what's on the wall. And 
we're going to do fine.
    Thank you. Good luck. God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 1:15 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his remarks, 
he referred to Starr Nelson, senior class vice president, and Mayor 
Dwight Welch of Country Club Hills. He also referred to a sign addressed 
to him expressing the students' commitment to make the world a better 
place.