    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [January 26, 1995]
    [Pages 90-93]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to University Presidents
    January 26, 1995

        Well, good morning. I'm delighted to see all of you, and most of
    you, I'm delighted to see you again. We're glad to have you at the White
    House. As all of you know, in the State of the Union, I did my best to
    restate my vision for our country and the role of education and
    educational institutions in that vision.
        The job of every American at the close of the 20th century is to do
    what we can to guarantee that, as we move to the next century, the
    American dream will be available to all of our people, and that our
    country will remain the world's strongest force for freedom and
    democracy. That means, to use my formulation, that we have to make some
    profound changes in our country which will require a New Covenant of
    commitment to opportunity and to responsibility, a commitment to the
    strength of our communities and the work of citizenship. We have to
    empower our people to make the most of their own abilities. We have to
    expand opportunity without expanding bureaucracy in the in-

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    formation age, and we have to enhance our security at home as well as
    abroad.
        The work of education does all that and helps us to strengthen our
    communities at the grassroots level. And as I said the other night, the
    middle class bill of rights I've proposed should be called the bill of
    rights and responsibilities, because as all of you know well, you can't
    give somebody an education, you can only give them the opportunity for
    an education. It's something that people have to seize for themselves.
        In the last 2 years, we've made remarkable progress on the education
    front, from expanding Head Start to passing the Goals 2000 program. It's
    promoting reforms within our public schools, like charter schools and
    the character education movement that the Secretary of Education has
    done so much to promote, to promoting the partnerships from school to
    work for the young people who don't go to universities, to dramatically
    changing the student loan program in ways that have lowered the cost of
    the loans, improved the repayment options for students, cut down on the
    paperwork for institutions of higher education, and miraculously lowered
    the cost of Federal Government as well.
        I'm very pleased with all this, but as all of you know, we still
    have a lot to do. I want to talk a little bit today about the middle
    class bill of rights and a couple of other issues that are very, very
    important. To emphasize the importance of the bill to me, I'd just ask
    us all to remember that, as exciting as this new world is for all of us,
    most Americans are still working a longer work week for the same or
    lower wages than they were making 15 years ago. There is an education
    premium in this new economy that is greater than has ever been the case
    in the entire history of the Republic, ever. And your work, your mission
    and your opportunities, therefore, are greater than ever before.
        It's also true, as I have seen recently with Dr. Wilson at Cal State
    Northridge or yesterday at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania or at the
    Carl Sandburg Community College in Illinois, that the institutions of
    higher education themselves are probably the most significant
    institutions in America today for rebuilding a sense of community and
    effective citizenship at the grassroots level, because I see it over and
    over again: People from all ages, all income groups, all walks of life,
    all political backgrounds, all races meet together, tear down the walls
    between them, and work to solve problems.
        I had a fascinating, fascinating session yesterday at Kutztown
    talking with the business leaders and immigrants and students about what
    they were doing to prepare their area to succeed in this new time.
        The middle class bill of rights does something we should have done a
    long time ago: It gives a deduction for the cost of education after high
    school. It provides for tax-free withdrawals from an IRA and gives a
    broader number of people access to an IRA for the cost of education. It
    collapses about 70 of our education and training programs into one block
    and lets people, not local governments but people, draw down a voucher
    worth $2,600 a year for up to 2 years for education and training
    programs of their choice. These programs, a lot of these training
    programs were organized and established at a time when there weren't as
    many grassroots community options as there are now.
        And so all these three things, it seems to me, have a major
    contribution to make to increasing the number of our people who are in
    educational programs, increasing the strength of our communities and the
    strength of our economy. And we need the help of every university and
    college administrator and executive, professor and student in this
    country to pass this program.
        There is a great push for a middle class tax cut in this Congress,
    and it is appropriate because of the stagnant incomes of most middle
    class Americans and because we have succeeded in getting control of the
    deficit and in getting the economy going again. The middle class bill of
    rights is paid for fully by spending cuts. In fact, we will offer in our
    budget more than twice as many spending cuts as the tax relief costs, so
    that we'll have further deficit reduction and pay for the middle class
    bill of rights. I would urge you to support that concept, too. We have
    our responsibilities here, and we ought to pay for whatever we do.
        I'd like to make two further points. One is, I know that all of you
    are working on this and worried about it, and I know the demographic
    changes in our country have put great pressures on you. But in the
    1980's, the cost of a college education was the only thing that went up
    more rapidly than the cost of health care in the market basket of
    families' essentials. So one of your responsibilities in this is going
    to be to try to hold down the costs. Cynics are saying that if we
    provide tax relief for the cost of a college

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    education, that a lot of college executives will simply raise the cost
    of education to deal with problems at home. We cannot let that happen.
    We've got to send a signal to America that if you do this, we will use
    this opportunity to put more people in our institutions and give more
    people opportunity.
        The last point I want to make before introducing the Vice President
    is--and he will talk about this at greater length--is that we do not
    want to lose the ground we have gained. We do not want to see overall
    cuts in education programs. Our budget will reduce the deficit,
    dramatically cut the budget, and not cut education programs.
        We do not need to see a cap in the direct loan program. The direct
    loan program is saving the Government money, saving the student money,
    and saving the institutions time and money. We do not want it--if you
    don't want to join it, that's your business, but you ought to have the
    opportunity to do it. The Government should not tell you, you cannot
    become part of this.
        The Secretary of Education has done a superb job in administering
    this program and we don't want to back off of it. There are other
    programs, as you know, which are profoundly important to you, the work
    study program, the Pell grants, and others. We are committed to keeping
    them intact. So I ask you for your support for the middle class bill of
    rights. I ask you to make it clear to the Congress that you will not
    take advantage of this by using it basically to increase costs for the
    same services; this is going to be used to expand educational
    opportunity, and I ask you to fight to keep the reforms that we've put
    in place and the programs that you've relied on over the years. We can
    do these things, and if we do, we will truly be moving forward in a
    dramatic way for all of our people.

    [At this point, the Vice President and Secretary of Education Richard
    Riley made remarks.]

        The President. Thank you very much, Secretary Riley. Before I turn
    the microphone over to President Kelly of Tulane, I wanted to just
    emphasize two other points, if I might.
        First, one of the things our administration has tried to do is to
    make sure that we all work together to do what was necessary here in
    Washington make sense of our common efforts. And Tom Glynn is here from
    the Labor Department, and I want to say a special word of appreciation
    to the cooperation of the partnership that the Education and the Labor
    Departments have had on all these issues; Secretary Shalala, from the
    Department of Health and Human Services, who used to be in your line of
    work and some days wishes she still were--[laughter]--Joe Duffey, who
    used to be in your line of work and who probably almost never wishes he
    still were--[laughter]--because he had such a good job at the USIA;
    Sheldon Hackney, who used to be in your line of work and I think it just
    depends on what day it is--[laughter]--done a great job at the National
    Endowment for the Humanities; and of course, our wonderful adviser and
    leader on science and technology, Jack Gibbons, is here; Carol Rasco,
    the Domestic Policy Council Chief in the White House; and others. We're
    all honored to be here with you.
        There is one other point I wanted to make that none of us mentioned.
    And that is, I want to begin by thanking you for responding so well to
    the call I issued in a letter to all of you last September on national
    service. And I asked you to support the AmeriCorps program and the whole
    concept of service for students and do what you could to enhance that. I
    got hundreds of letters back, literally hundreds of letters back. It was
    a very rewarding exchange. And there are even three colleges, Hampshire
    in Massachusetts, Loyola of Chicago, and Earlham in Indiana, that have
    agreed to match the $4,725 educational grant that every AmeriCorps
    student earns in a year with a grant from the college to double the
    impact of it. And so, doubtless, they'll be getting more AmeriCorps
    students than some places. But that's a very good thing to do.
        There are those who believe that we ought to eliminate the
    AmeriCorps program. I think that would be a terrible mistake because
    it--it again, it does all the things that I think we should be doing. It
    promotes education, it promotes citizenship, it strengthens community
    bonds, and it is totally nonbureaucratic. It involves people helping
    others, one on one, in established grassroots organizations.
        So we understand that the new Congress--many of the Members came in
    with a commitment to slash spending, and we've been slashing spending.
    We'd like to have some help. And we understand that they came in with a
    commitment to reduce the size of the Federal bureaucracy. We've been
    doing that. There are 100,000

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    fewer people here today than there were on the day I became President.
    We'd like to have some help doing that.
        We just don't believe that raising the cost of going to college,
    reducing access, undermining national service, is the way to do it. And
    we want to work with them in good faith, but we think we have to have
    your help in supporting the right kind of tax cuts that raise incomes in
    the short run and in the long run, through education, and the right kind
    of budget cutting. Those are the two requests we ask of you. Help us get
    the right kind of tax cuts, the right kind of budget cuttings; let's do
    it in a way that will increase the incomes and the opportunities of the
    American people so that we really do expand access to the American
    dream.
        Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:16 a.m. in the Indian Treaty Room at the
    Old Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Blenda
    Wilson, president, California State University, Northridge, and Eamon
    Kelly, president, Tulane University.