    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [March 29, 1995]
    [Pages 411-415]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Students at Emory University in Atlanta
    March 29, 1995

        The President. Thank you very much. Thank you, Laura Sawyer, for
    your warm and generous introduction. Thank you, President Chace, for
    what you said in reminding me of our generation's obligations to the
    students here present by recalling that day, now almost 32 years ago,
    when I met President Kennedy.
        I have very much enjoyed this day at Emory. I thank the university
    and all responsible for making it possible for us to hold here the first
    of our conferences on the state of the American economy and where we go
    from here. I wish all of you could have been there today to hear the
    people who came to tell their stories, stories of struggle and triumph,
    stories, many of them against all the odds, what they had done to make
    their way in the economy of the 1990's and how they were looking forward
    to the next century.
        I just have one question about this before I get too serious. Where
    is Dooley? I was told if he showed up, you all would get up and leave.
    [Laughter] I hope he waits until the end if that's true.
        Let me say that I ran for the office of President because I was
    concerned about the direction of our country and the future of our
    children, basically because I believe the obligation of every generation
    of Americans is to preserve and nourish and deepen the American idea,
    the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules you can make the
    most of your God-given potential and live the life of your dreams and
    that you can do it without holding anyone else down, and indeed, the
    more people from all walks of life and all races and regions who are
    lifted up, the better off we'll all be. That is the American idea.
        When I met John Kennedy and when I went off to college--I was the
    first in my generation to go to college. I was the son of fairly poor
    people in the South when I was born in Arkansas right at the end of
    World War II. The per capita income of our entire State was only 56
    percent of the national average. And for young people who were growing
    up in the South when I was about your age, the great question was
    whether we could become part of the great American mainstream, whether
    we could overcome our legacy of abject poverty and our legacy of racial
    discrimination to come together and learn and grow.
        That is not at issue anymore. Now, two Southern States, Georgia and
    Virginia, have surpassed the national average in per capita income.
    Atlanta is the home to more international companies than any other city
    in the United States. You're doing a lot of things in the southern
    region that are the envy of the rest of the world. Thirty percent of
    America's people live in the South, but 40 percent of the new jobs
    created just since I've been President have been created in this region.
        So the issue is not what it was a generation ago. There is a
    different issue today, which is whether we can keep the American dream
    alive for all our people in a global economy in the information age,
    which splits people apart based on their level of education and their
    skills, and at a time when the differences in our country and the
    differences throughout the world in race, religion, and other areas both
    serve as ways to unite us and to divide us. That is the great question
    of this time.
        Now, when I became President, I wanted first to get the economy
    moving again, to give people some economic hope. And we had a distinct
    strategy: reduce the deficit, expand trade, increase investment in
    education and technology, reform Government, give lower income families
    a tax break so nobody would ever be punished for work instead of
    welfare, encourage small businesses and new businesses, reduce
    regulation and give the States more authority to exper-

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    iment in tough areas like welfare reform and health care reform. That
    was our agenda.
        After 2 years, we have a reduction in the deficit of $600 billion.
    This is the first time since the mid-1960's when your Government is
    running at least an operating surplus; that is, if it were not for
    interest on the debt accumulated before we came here, we would have a
    budget surplus today, so at least our operations do not exceed our
    revenues.
        We have expanded trade by more than at any time in a generation. We
    have dramatically reformed the Government, already 100,000 fewer people
    working for the Federal Government if no new changes are made by the new
    Congress, which is unlikely. But if there were no changes made, the
    Government would be reduced in size over a 5\1/2\-year period by 270,000
    people, to its smallest size since I went to Washington when John
    Kennedy was President.
        And we have given vast new authority to the States to experiment in
    important areas. We have reduced regulation. We are trying to move
    forward. And perhaps most important of all, we have cut spending while
    increasing our investment in education, from expanding Head Start to
    apprenticeships for young people who don't go to college, to the Goals
    2000 program to help our schools meet tough national standards with
    grassroots reforms, to expansion of the student loan program in ways
    that make our student loans now less costly with better repayment terms.
        Now, these are important changes. The results are pretty clear. In
    the last 2 years, we've had 6.1 million new jobs. We have the lowest
    combined rate of unemployment and inflation this country has had in 25
    years. We had, in 1993, the largest number of new business
    incorporations in the history of the United States. In 1994, the
    unemployment rate in America for African-Americans dropped below 10
    percent for the first time in 20 years. The results speak for
    themselves.
        I must say, since I'm trying to spark an honest and civil bipartisan
    discussion of this, I was honored to see on the front page of your
    newspaper today one of your most distinguished alumnuses, the Speaker of
    the House, acknowledges that the economic program has brought some good
    results to the United States of America, because it has. It was the
    right thing to do, and it is moving the country forward.
        Now, so I ask you, if that's true and all that has happened, well,
    why isn't everybody happy? And why do they keep voting to change the way
    the Government's going if the policies are working? Well, I think there
    are a number of reasons, but let me offer a few, because they will
    affect your lives as Americans.
        In the first place, the global economy and all the pressures of the
    global economy and the information revolution and all the dramatic
    changes it brings means that for the first time, even though we are
    having more jobs coming into this economy, wages are stagnant for most
    Americans. Half of the American people are working longer work weeks for
    the same or lower wages than they were making 15 years ago. And that is
    unheard of in our history.
        In addition to that, there's more inequality among the middle class.
    That's why I say over and over again, my mission is to expand the middle
    class and to shrink the under class, to give poor people a chance to
    work their way into a good life. But today, the American middle class is
    splitting apart based on whether people have the education and training
    and skills necessary to compete in the global economy for a good job
    that pays a good wage with a good future.
        The third thing that's happened is that--and a lot of your parents
    have probably been affected by this or at least work in companies that
    are affected by it--there is more instability in the work force today
    even when there is more prosperity: downsizing in government, downsizing
    in big companies, reorganizations that are constant, so that people are
    worried about whether they're going to have their job even when we have
    more jobs. And when people do lose their jobs, they tend to be
    unemployed for longer periods of times, and they tend to get a new job,
    not their old job back. All this is new in your lifetime.
        This will be the pattern you will face, but if you described all
    this to somebody 10 years ago, they'd say it couldn't happen; there's no
    way, you cannot create 6 million jobs, drive down the unemployment rate,
    explode the economy, and not have wages go up. You can't do it. It's
    impossible. Well, it happened.
        So what is our job economically? Our job is to lift the incomes and
    the sights and the aspirations of the American people. How are we going
    to do it? You have to get more high-wage jobs into this country, more
    trade, more

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    focus on technology. You have to make sure our people can fill high-wage
    jobs. We have to educate everyone better, everyone, not just the college
    students, everyone. And thirdly, we have to have the right kind of
    Government. The great debate going on in Washington today is about what
    the proper role of our National Government is.
        The old view was that there was a big-Government solution to every
    big problem and that people who were in need should be helped. The new
    rage in Washington is that the Government is the source of all the
    problems and we would have no social problems, no economic problems, no
    problems at all if we had no Government. If the Government went away,
    except for national defense, everything would be peachy keen. [Laughter]
    Now, the whole theory is that every problem--all the social problems
    we've got, from teen pregnancy to welfare dependency to the breakdown of
    life in our cities, was all because we had too much Government trying to
    help people.
        Now, I have a different view from both those views. I don't think
    either one of those views is right. My experience as a Governor, my
    observation of other countries that are doing well, plain common sense,
    and the stories we heard today indicate that we need a limited but
    effective Government that costs less but does what it's supposed to do.
    And here's what I think it's supposed to do.
        I believe the National Government is still essential in creating
    opportunity even while we're shrinking bureaucracy, creating opportunity
    by making sure we've got a level playing field, and creating opportunity
    by making sure that people can make the most of their own lives. We've
    got to empower people. You can't really help people past a certain point
    except to put food on their table and to get them through the tough
    times. But you can empower people, through education and technology, to
    make more of their own lives. That's what we have to do.
        And the third thing we can do is, even in a very dynamic economy, in
    a dynamic society, we can enhance security in a legitimate way, without
    in any way undermining opportunity. We enhance security abroad when we
    make an agreement with the Russians so that, for the first time since
    nuclear weapons were invented, there are no nuclear weapons pointed at
    the people of the United States. That enhances our security. But if we
    make progress toward peace in the Middle East, we are enhancing our own
    security because of the volatile impact of that area on the whole rest
    of the world.
        But there are things we can do here at home that enhance our
    security as well. The family and medical leave law, which allows people
    to take a little time off when a baby is born or a parent is sick
    without losing their job, that enhances our security because it makes
    our families stronger while we keep our jobs. The crime bill, which puts
    more police officers on our street and gives our local communities the
    flexibility in choosing prevention programs that keep young people out
    of crime and off drugs, those things enhance our security. If we didn't
    have 2 million highly dysfunctional drug abusers in this country, the
    crime rate for violent crime would be about half what it is today. So it
    enhances our security when we have a safer society with lower crime
    rates. And that's--part of that role is a national responsibility.
    That's what I have tried to do.
        Now, that leads us--and I want you to watch this debate unfold in
    Washington, and you've got to decide where you fit. And your old party
    label may not give you an answer to the present problems that we face,
    because Government can't fix it all, and Government cannot walk away
    from it all. And there are a lot of hard questions that have to be
    resolved.
        But for example, my view is, there's a right and a wrong way to cut
    spending. I do think that the Agriculture Department had to be cut, but
    my view was not to reduce the School Lunch Program but close 1,200
    offices, because we didn't need that many when we had fewer farmers and
    fewer problems.
        I agree that we should have reduced expenditures in the Housing and
    Urban Development Department, but what we did was to get rid of a whole
    layer of regional offices and to consolidate a lot of those various
    programs that had been kind of encrusted with bureaucracy over the
    years. We didn't want to cut a program for homeless veterans or make it
    more difficult for poor elderly people to have a roof over their head.
    There is a difference in how you cut spending. And these are
    distinctions that have to be made.
        Or in the area of education, we offered a way to cut the deficit and
    increase educational opportunities. I had student loans when I went to
    school, and I'm not ashamed of it. I'm proud

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    of it. I'm grateful that I was able to get it from the previous
    generation. And when I got out of college, I paid them off. And I think
    when you get out of college, if you've got one, you ought to pay it
    off--[laughter]--because that's the way we're going to preserve it for
    the next generation.
        So we have reduced student loan defaults. They no longer cost the
    taxpayers $2.8 billion a year. The cost is down to $1 billion a year.
    We've reduced defaults by nearly two-thirds. We're doing a better job of
    collecting. Now that's a lot better than getting rid of the interest
    subsidy and raising the cost of student loans. That is better. That is a
    better way to do that.
        We found there were so many incentives in the old student loan
    program toward bureaucracy and paperwork and wasting money because
    basically you'd go to a bank and get the student loan. It was a 90-
    percent guarantee. So if you default on the loan, does the bank have an
    incentive to sue? No, because the Government will give you 90 percent
    and 10 percent will be at least what the lawyers would cost.
        So we went into this direct loan program and we said, ``You can have
    these loans at a lower interest rate with better repayment terms when
    you get out of college. If you've got a big loan burden, you can pay it
    off as a percentage of your income.'' And now about, oh, 40 percent of
    our universities have already enrolled. We just had people there from
    the University of Florida today, a man and his wife in medical school
    saying they would owe $140,000 between them. And when they go into
    residency, if they had to start paying off their student loan under the
    old system, it would take one-half of their disposable incomes. But
    because of the new program, we cut the cost, improved the repayment
    terms, and guess what? It saves the taxpayers $10 billion over 6 years.
    So if we can give people more loans at less hassle and save $10 billion,
    why would we instead say, no, let's keep the old system and save the $10
    billion by adding to the cost of going to college? Our way is better,
    because it's pro-education, and it makes sense, and it will take us into
    the future.
        I wish I had longer to listen to you and we could ask questions. I'd
    like to stay here 3 or 4 hours, but I've got to go to Florida. But I
    want you to think about this. Think about this debate. Every time you
    see an issue being debated in Washington, ask yourselves two questions:
    How can I cut through all the political rhetoric to figure out how this
    is going to affect me and my friends and my generation and the future of
    this country and the children I hope to have? Don't think about it in
    political terms. Think about it in terms of how it's going to affect
    your life and the future you want for yourselves and your children.
        And the second thing you ought to say is, now, what do I believe my
    country should be doing about this? Because we are going through this
    huge period of----

    [At this point, there was a disturbance in the audience.]

        What did they say? Prisons are not shelters? I agree with that. Why
    are you shouting at me? Sit down. I heard you. We heard you. We heard
    you. We heard you. Sit down. We heard you. [Laughter]
        I like those guys. They believed in their free speech and mine as
    well. I appreciate that. Thank you very much.
        Audience member. Why 100,000 more cops instead of more shelters?
        The President. I'll tell you why we need 100,000 more police.
        Now, wait a minute, let's don't start a flood here. Free speech--
    we'll listen. [Laughter] I'll tell you why; I'll tell you why we need
    100,000 more police. Because the violent crime rate in America has
    tripled. And this is a big fight I'm in with the Congress. They just
    want a block grant. They want to cut the amount of money to the crime
    bill, block-grant it to the cities and States, and say, basically, spend
    it however you please. I say no, we've got to have 100,000 more police.
    Here's why. You're entitled to an answer to that.
        The violent crime rate has tripled in the last 30 years. The number
    of police officers has increased by 10 percent. In every major city
    where more police officers have been trained not simply to catch
    criminals but to prevent crime, to work with friends and neighbors and
    help kids on the street, the crime rate has gone down. One of the
    little-known good things that is happening in America today is that in
    many, many, many places, the crime rate is going down because of
    community policing.
        So I say we ought to have a 20 percent increase in the number of
    police forces, not only to catch criminals but to prevent crime from
    occurring. And a 30 percent overall increase in police is still not as
    much as a 300 percent

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    increase in violent crime. I think we made the right decision on that.
    That's exactly the kind of debate that we ought to be having.
        But I also believe--I also believe we have to do more for shelter. I
    also believe we have to do more for shelter. Our administration--you
    look at the record of Secretary Cisneros and HUD. We have tried our best
    to increase that. But none of this is answering the big questions. And
    you have to answer that. I want you, every one of you, without regard to
    where you're from, what your family's income is, what your race is, I
    want every one of you to believe that your tomorrows will be whatever
    you want them to be and whatever you're willing to work hard to make
    them to be.
        I want you to be positively ecstatic at the prospect of bringing
    your own children into the world and this country and thinking about the
    21st century being the most peaceful and prosperous and exciting time
    the world has ever known. That's what I want. And that is all that
    matters, in the end, is whether we do our part.
        When I was your age, I had a professor of Western civilization who
    told me that the United States represented the finest expression of our
    civilization because it had embodied the two most important ideas:
    first, that the future can be better than the present, and second, that
    every single one of us has a personal, moral obligation to make it so.
    That is what I am trying to do in Washington. We're having a big debate
    about what the role of the National Government is. I want you to answer
    the debate by determining what is best for you and your future and the
    other people in this country.
        This country's in better shape than it was 2 years ago. It's going
    to be in better shape 2 years from now if I have anything to say about
    it, but you will have more to say about it than anybody else. Stand up
    for education, and stand up for the future.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:34 p.m. in the Woodruff Physical
    Education Center. In his remarks, he referred to Laura Sawyer, student
    council president.