    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [January 10, 1995]
    [Pages 23-29]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Carl Sandburg Community College in Galesburg, Illinois
    January 10, 1995

        Thank you for that wonderful and warm welcome. It is wonderful to be
    here. Thank you, Dr. Crist, for making me feel so much at home. Thank
    you, Congressman Evans, for coming down, and Congressman Poshard,
    delighted to see you. And Mayor Kimble, thank you for making me feel
    welcome here. The representatives of Knox College and Blackhawk
    Community College as well as Carl Sandburg Community College, I'm glad
    to see all of you here.
        I'm glad that Secretaries Reich and Riley came with me, and I
    understand they have already spoken, which makes anything I say perhaps
    redundant. [Laughter]
        I met a college president the other day. He looked at me and said,
    ``I've got a lot of sympathy with you. Being President is just like
    running a cemetery. You've got a lot of people under you, and nobody is
    listening.'' [Laughter]
        I want to begin by saying how very, very happy and proud I am to be
    here today. I believe as strongly as I can state that community colleges
    represent the very best of America in 1995 and where we need to go as a
    country with all of our institutions, community based, flexible,
    committed to quality, opportunity for everyone, with a real sense of
    community. I'm honored to be here, and I'm honored to have all of you
    here.
        I'd also like to recognize the people who were with me just a few
    moments ago who participated in our little roundtable, who have had some
    experience with this institution. I'd like to ask all of them to stand
    up that were in my private conversation because I want to thank them.
    [Applause] Thank you. They're employers of people who came out of this
    community college. They're students. They're former students. They're
    people who have taught here. They are a picture of America.
        I came here to talk about America, about where we are and where
    we're going. And I don't think we could have picked a better place. This
    place is so steeped in our national history, just as this community
    college is so representative of the best of our present and our future.
    The Underground Railroad came through Galesburg, and as all of you know
    and as you saw just a few moments ago, over 135 years ago, Abraham
    Lincoln and Stephen Douglas met here for one of their famous debates.
    How'd they do just a few minutes ago? [Applause] Thank you. I met them
    outside, and they were still arguing about who really won. [Laughter]
        I identified with what President Lincoln said. He performed so
    brilliantly in those debates, but he lost the Senate race anyway. And he
    said that it hurt too much to laugh, and he

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    was too old to cry. And then he said something I have always kept with
    me. In fact, I've got a copy of the exact quote on the wall in my
    private office in the White House. He said after Douglas defeated him
    for the Senate, he was walking home, and it had been raining that day
    and the path was muddy, and one of his feet slipped and hit his other
    foot and knocked his footing out from under him. But just before he
    fell, he righted himself and he smiled, and he said, ``This is a slip
    and not a fall.'' Well, I think we all ought to try to keep that in our
    own minds as we deal with life's challenges and adversity.
        The Lincoln-Douglas debates, as you just heard for a few moments,
    were about the course of our country and the proper role of government
    in a time of great change. In 1858, of course, the issue was slavery.
    Lincoln believed that it was a national issue. Long before he believed
    the Government could abolish slavery, he at least believed the
    Government could stop it from expanding. Douglas believed it was not a
    national issue, that it should be just up to the States or to the
    territories; if they wanted to keep slavery, they could vote for it and
    then come on into the Union.
        The Republican Party was born out of a conviction that even though
    we are a country deeply devoted to limited government, there are some
    things that the times demand national action on and that at that moment
    the times demanded, first, national action to stop the spread of slavery
    and, then, national action to stop slavery.
        About a half a century earlier, the Democratic Party was born in the
    Presidency of Thomas Jefferson, who passionately believed in limited
    government. I was driving across the beautiful Illinois farmland today,
    feeling very much at home, thinking about how Jefferson loved being on
    his farm more than he liked being at the White House and how he wanted
    to limit government. But when he became President, he knew there were
    certain things that he had to use the power of the National Government
    to do because the times demanded it.
        He bought the Louisiana Purchase, $15 million--peanuts, really, to
    us for all that land. I like it because it included Arkansas. So if he
    hadn't done it, I could never have been an American, much less
    President. [Laughter] But at the time it was a stunning, sweeping thing.
    The price of Louisiana was the entire budget of the National Government
    for a year. Can you imagine what you'd think of me if I wanted to spend
    that much on any piece of real estate? [Laughter] But he did.
        Both believed in limited government. Both approved of action by the
    National Government to meet the demands of the time, to do what the
    people needed. Our Founders established this great country under a
    Constitution that limits government. Mostly it limits what government
    can do to private citizens and gives us a lot of elbow room to think
    what we please and say what we please and go where we please and worship
    God as we please. It also limits government in other ways, dividing it
    at the State and local as well as the national level, the President, the
    Congress, the courts. But it was set up to allow all of us to pursue
    life, liberty, and happiness. And it was set up with enough flexibility
    so that over time we could have the kind of government that we needed as
    a people, not the kind of people that the Government needs but the kind
    of government that we need as a people.
        Now we're at another great sea-change period of American history.
    Everyone knows we are moving from an information age--I mean, to an
    information age from an industrialized age in which all organizations
    were bigger, more hierarchical, more bureaucratic, to a time which is
    more flexible, more rapidly changing, more full of opportunity and
    uncertainty. And so we will have to have some changes in what we expect
    our Government to do, but we have to be clear about our purpose.
        I think our purpose has to be to keep the American dream alive for
    all the people in this country into the 21st century and to make sure we
    cross the threshold of the next century still the strongest country in
    the world, still a force for freedom and peace and democracy at home and
    around the world.
        Every American who works hard and obeys the law should be able to
    get ahead in this new world. It should not be a province of opportunity
    for a few. To get that done we face enormous challenges. Most of the
    people who are at a community college know better than I that for the
    last 10 or 15 years the majority of our people have worked longer and
    longer work weeks for the same or lower wages, that in the last year
    alone over a million Americans in working families lost their health
    insurance.

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        This is quite a new phenomenon for us. From World War II until 1978,
    the American economy grew, and all income groups grew at about the same
    rate that the American economy did. So we were rising together. For the
    last 15 years, the top 20 percent of Americans had a dramatic increase
    in their income; the next 20 percent, a modest increase; the next 20
    percent were stagnant; the bottom 40 percent had declines in their
    incomes. We're talking now about working people, not people who are on
    welfare.
        So if a lot of Americans, about half of us, are working harder for
    lower wages--and actually, we also know now, sleeping a little less at
    night--it's no wonder that there's a lot of stress in this country. We
    also know that this is a time of great change. It's not just the
    workplace that's changing; the nature of our communities are changing.
    Our families are under great stress. Life seems to be too random and too
    insecure for too many people. And yet, we have to admit there is no
    country in the world that has remotely an economy as strong as ours, as
    full of opportunity, as full of hope.
        So what's the trick to bridge the gap, to make sure that everybody
    who wants to do the right thing has a chance to make that leap into the
    economy of the future and succeed? That must be the mission of the
    United States in these last 5 years of this century.
        I told these folks that were good enough to spend about 45 minutes
    visiting with me that I probably enjoyed it more than they did because
    before I became President, when I was a Governor, I did this sort of
    thing all the time. I knew that my mission was to generate more jobs and
    increase the education and skills of our people. And I lived in a place
    that was small enough where it was more possible for people to talk
    about political life in nice, calm terms, instead of what normally tends
    to dominate the debate today. But I couldn't help being just overcome
    almost in my admiration for their individual stories, which wouldn't be
    all that much different from your individual stories.
        I ran for President because I wanted to do just what you clapped
    for. I do not believe that we have to go into the future taking
    advantage of all these opportunities for some and letting others fall
    behind and becoming more divided. But I think, as I have said now for
    more than 3 years, we must do three things. We've got to have a new
    economic policy designed to help the American people compete and win in
    a global economy in which the Government is a partner with people in
    their private lives and in private business in expanding opportunity.
        In the first 2 years, that meant that we had to cut the deficit
    because we spent the 1980's dealing with our economic problems, trying
    to spend our way out of them, and exploding the deficit. Now, I know
    that's not very popular. It's kind of like going to the dentist.
    Everybody's for going to the dentist, in general. Did you ever see
    anybody who wanted to do it in particular when it came their time to go
    to the dentist? That's the way the deficit is. Everybody says--you take
    a poll; people will say, ``Yes, cut the deficit.'' But then we have to
    do the things to do it. It's not very popular. It's like going to the
    dentist. So I had a drill in your tooth the last 2 years. But we cut the
    deficit by $700 billion, thanks to the help of those two gentlemen. And
    that's $11,000 a family. That's not a small piece of change.
        And we expanded trade, and that was controversial. A lot of my best
    supporters said, ``Why are you trying to do all these trade deals? The
    more we trade, the more we have low-cost products from low-wage
    countries coming into America, putting pressure on American wages.''
    That's true, but it's only half true. Now, if we don't do anything,
    that's happening. That's been happening for years. And it is true that
    some of our people have either lost their jobs or can't get wage
    increases because they're competing with products from overseas,
    produced by people who work for wages we can't live on. That's true.
    It's also true that when we sell things to other countries, on balance
    the people who make the things and the services we sell to other
    countries make wages above the national average. So if we don't do the
    trade deals, we'll get the downside of the trade war. The reason I
    fought for the trade agreements was so we could create more high-wage
    jobs in America by selling more world-class American products around the
    world. And it's working. So we need a new economic policy. We've got to
    sell. We've got to produce. We've got to be productive, and it has to be
    a partnership.
        The second thing we need is what I called during my Presidential
    campaign a New Covenant, a new approach to our society. It was then, it
    has been for 2 years, and it will always remain my contract with you.
    But it's about more than a tax cut, although cutting taxes are part of
    it. I believe what this country needs

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    on a national basis is what I see at the community college here. What
    those of us in the position to do so ought to be doing is expanding
    opportunity but only for those who will exercise the personal
    responsibility to make the most of those opportunities.
        You build a community with opportunity and with responsibility, with
    rights and responsibilities. You can't have one without the other and
    last for a long time. You can't have people being responsible all the
    time and never getting anything for it. Pretty soon they get tired. But
    neither can you have people getting things all the time and never giving
    anything back. Pretty soon the well runs dry.
        So that's what we've been trying to do. That's what the crime bill
    was all about. We cut the Government bureaucracy over 5 years by 270,000
    people and gave all the money back to local communities to hire police,
    to build prisons, to drug treatment programs, to do things that would
    lower the crime rate at the grassroots level for people who use the
    money right and were responsible.
        That's what I hope this welfare reform debate that we're ginning up
    again after a year will be all about in Washington. I do not believe
    that most Americans really want simply to reduce welfare so that we can
    punish poor people. I think what most Americans want is a welfare system
    that puts an end to welfare, that puts people to work and lets them be
    responsible parents instead of just having kids. I think that's what we
    want.
        And that's why we have invested so much in education, because
    education by definition is part of a covenant. You cannot educate
    somebody who will not be educated. All you can do is throw the lifeline
    of opportunity out there, and someone either does it or not. They either
    exercise their own responsibility or not.
        So we worked to expand Head Start and to set standards that are
    great for our Nation's schools and to have new partnerships for young
    people that don't go to college to get further education. And we
    reformed drastically the college loan program so we could cut the costs
    and string out the repayments and make it something that could really be
    used by people instead of just another headache. And that's all made a
    difference I think. So a new economic policy, a New Covenant, a new
    social policy.
        The third thing we've tried to do is to give you a different kind of
    Government, to have the Government in Washington change, the way the
    economy is changing, to have it be smaller, yes, but also more
    effective; to literally reinvent Government, to use the Vice President's
    phrase, by cutting the bureaucracy to its smallest size in 30 years but
    increasing our ability to solve problems that the Federal Government
    needs to solve. There are 100,000 fewer people working in Washington,
    DC, or for the Federal Government today than there were on the day I was
    inaugurated President, but we have solved a lot of problems that were
    left too long. And I would just give you one or two examples.
        Small business people used to have to fill out a multipage form that
    took them hours to fill out to get an SBA loan. We've taken that down to
    one page, and you can get an answer in 3 days now. So that's an example
    of what we're trying to do to reinvent the Government.
        I don't know if the Secretary of Labor mentioned this, but at the
    end of last year, we reformed the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation--
    that's a mouthful. That's the group in Washington that's supposed to
    keep your pension well. And it's going to help save the pensions of 8\1/
    2\ million Americans whose retirement was at risk after years and years
    and years of hard work.
        There are problems the Federal Government still should be solving.
    And when the floods were raging here, the 500-year flood, up and down in
    Illinois and Iowa, after years in which the Federal Emergency Management
    Agency was the goat of the Federal Government and everybody complained
    about it, I think you saw by the way they showed up and the way they
    performed that it is working now. It is effective. It is doing its job.
        So we're moving in these directions. But it is not enough. What are
    the results of the first 2 years, not from our point of view in what we
    did but from your lives. Well, we have 5.6 million more jobs, and that's
    a good thing. And the unemployment rate has dropped very low by historic
    standards, although not low enough to suit me. It's still dropped quite
    a bit, by more than 2 percent. And 5.6 million new jobs is nothing to
    sneeze at.
        And manufacturing jobs went up in every month in 1994 for the first
    time since 1978, which means that manufacturing is not inconsistent with
    the information age. It helps our manufacturing come back when we
    increase productivity and use computers and educate our work-

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    ers. So that's good; that's all good. But most folks still haven't
    gotten a pay raise out of this recovery. Many people are still worried
    about losing their jobs. Another million Americans lost their health
    insurance. Why is that? That is because the wages are still set in an
    environment that is highly competitive because of technological changes
    and foreign competition.
        So if we want to raise incomes, the only way you can do it is to get
    more high-wage jobs in this country, take less out of working people's
    pockets, or increase their education and training. There is no other way
    to do it. And that's what we have to do. So what I want to do now is--we
    worked hard to get the fundamentals fixed for 2 years--I want to spend 2
    years working on lifting incomes and prospects and optimism and real
    hope for the future among people who are carrying the load in this
    country. That's what we can do. And that's what the middle class bill of
    rights is all about.
        I might as well have called it the bill of rights and
    responsibilities, because it doesn't do anything for anybody who's not
    already doing something for himself or herself. Anybody can give a tax
    cut, but what I want to do is cut taxes in a way that strengthens
    families and raise incomes. That's what we need to be doing in this
    country: We need to strengthen families; we need to raise incomes.
        Fifty years ago, the GI bill of rights helped transform a wartime
    economy into the most successful peacetime economy in history. It
    literally built the great American middle class, helping them get houses
    and education and to raise their kids. And now what I want to do is to
    implement this middle class bill of rights, these ideas that will help
    us move into the 21st century with the American dream alive for
    everyone.
        Now, if you agree with the analysis I just gave you, I hope you will
    agree with the particulars. First of all, I think people ought to be
    able to deduct the cost of education after high school from their taxes.
    If you think about it, you can deduct the interest on your home. Why?
    Because we want people to buy homes; we want people to be homeowners. We
    think it's a good thing. It's important to being an American and having
    a solid life. Well, in the 21st century, and in 1995, and with all the
    people I just finished talking to, having a decent education is also
    important to being in the middle class. And you may not get to the
    homeownership stage if you don't have an education in the first place.
    So we ought to let people deduct the cost of an education.
        Secondly, we ought to try to support working families more, and so I
    recommended a tax credit, or a tax reduction, of $500 a child for every
    child under 13 in families with incomes of $75,000 a year or less. In
    1993, we cut taxes an average of $1,000 a year for working families who
    were on really modest incomes and having a hard time making ends meet.
    It's now $26,000 a year or less will get an average of $1,000 tax cut
    below what the taxes were when I took office. But this will help people
    raise their children.
        Third, I believe we ought to bring back the IRA, the individual
    retirement account, let people put $2,000 in it. But under our proposal,
    you could take the money out in any year, tax-free, as long as you spent
    it on education, health insurance, buying a home for the first time, or
    the care of an elderly parent. This would empower people to solve their
    own problems. It's something that government can let you do for
    yourself. It requires no bureaucracy. It requires no program. It
    requires nothing, just letting you withdraw money you save, tax-free, to
    solve a problem for yourselves and for the United States.
        Finally, finally, we propose to take the literally billions of
    dollars the Government now spends on dozens, literally dozens, of
    different training programs and consolidate those programs and make that
    money directly available to people who are now eligible for it. That is,
    today, people who are unemployed can get help from a Government training
    program. And people who are on quite modest incomes who are eligible,
    for example, to participate in the Job Training and Partnership Act
    training programs can get help through a training program. But there are
    literally dozens of these programs. You've got to figure out what you're
    eligible for, what the criteria are, where the program is, are you going
    to be in it. I mean, by the time you get through fooling with it, it may
    seem like it's not worth the trouble. We discovered that we could
    collapse 50 of these programs and just give you the money if you're
    eligible for it, and it would make people who are eligible able to get a
    chit, a voucher for education only, worth up to $2,600 a year for 2
    years.
        Now, that's better than having a Federal bureaucracy. It's better
    than giving the money to a State bureaucracy. Everybody in America, just

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    about, is within driving distance of a community college now. We do not
    need all these separate Government programs telling people what to do.
    We ought to just give you the money if you're eligible for it and let
    you bring it here and get a good education. That's the fourth element of
    our program.
        I like this middle class bill of rights a lot because it furthers
    all three objectives that I had when I ran for President. It helps us
    build a new economy. The more people we educate, the more powerful our
    Nation will be, the stronger our economy will be. It helps us build a
    New Covenant. We offer more opportunity to people if they exercise the
    responsibility to take it, they have the power to improve their own
    lives. All of you do. You know that, or you wouldn't be here today.
        And it changes the way Government works. Government is still being
    used to help expand opportunity but in a less bureaucratic, less
    mandatory, more empowering way. I like it, and I hope the Congress will
    like it as well. And I hope you will help them like it by telling them
    that you like it.
        Under this last proposal--let me just give you one example. If we
    want to set up centers where what the Government does is make sure you
    have information on the jobs that are available in an area and the
    educational opportunities that are available in one place, you could
    show up at the local one-stop center and find out, for example, here
    about jobs opening up at Maytag because of the new $164 million
    retooling project they've got underway. Then you could figure out
    whether you could get the skills needed to be a part of that project in
    this place. And if you could, if you qualified, you could simply take
    your certificate, show up here, and start to school. Much better than
    having to enroll in some sort of program.
        Here at this community college--and this is true all over the
    country, maybe not quite this good, but this is typical--there is an
    extraordinary job placement rate of over 94 percent at an average wage
    of nearly $12 an hour. And believe me, that's a lot better than a lot of
    people are facing who have no education and training and who have been
    left behind by the changes that are going on in our economy.
        This is the kind of opportunity that I believe the middle class bill
    of rights can help create. This will enable us to finish the job. Yes,
    we have laid the foundations of a disciplined, responsible economic
    policy. Yes, we have taken a strong stand against crime. Yes, we know--
    and I hope we'll have a bipartisan consensus on what to do about
    problems like welfare. But until we know that we have done everything we
    can to use the power of this country to give every American the
    opportunity to win in this global economy, the job will not be finished.
    That, more than anything else, can keep the American dream alive in the
    21st century.
        So, as I go back to Washington, I ask all of you, Republicans and
    Democrats, to tell the people who represent you in Washington to adopt
    the same attitude about these challenges that you have. If you think
    about it, in every new time our country faces, there are new problems
    that have no necessary partisan solution. And the problems fall over
    everybody and the opportunities come to people without regard to their
    party, their philosophy, their race, or their region today. We should be
    united in tackling these problems. They are America's problems and
    America's opportunities.
        You have seen over and over and over again, probably enough to make
    you scream, that people in Washington know how to stop things for
    partisan gain. It's now time for us to join together and do things for
    the people's gain. That's what you expect us to do. That's what we need
    to do. That's what will take us into the next century with the American
    dream alive and well, stronger than ever, and America stronger than
    ever.
        I am convinced--I am convinced--having traveled the world now on
    your behalf, having seen what is going on in Europe, having seen what is
    going on in Asia, having met with the leaders of all the Latin American
    countries, having a feel for what is happening in this world, I am
    convinced more than ever in my life that the best days of this country
    are still ahead of us if we remember that there are no guarantees.
        The Founders gave us the right to pursue life, liberty, happiness.
    That's what they gave us the right to do. Over 70 years ago, your
    namesake here, Carl Sandburg, wrote a poem inspired by the Washington
    Monument. And I want to close with the line from that poem that meant
    the most to me: ``Nothing happens unless, first, a dream.'' More than
    anything, more even than our Constitution and laws, this country is a
    dream. And it is our job to renew it.

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        Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:44 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his
    remarks, he referred to Don Crist, president of the college, and Mayor
    Fred Kimble of Galesburg.