    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [June 6, 1995]
    [Pages 818-824]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Governors' Association Summit on
    Young Children in Baltimore, Maryland
    June 6, 1995

        Thank you very much. To Governor Dean and Governor Leavitt and all
    of the Governors who are here, Governor Glendening and Mayor Schmoke and
    Congressman Cardin: I'm glad to be back in Baltimore. I'm going to have
    to register as a citizen and begin to pay taxes if I don't stay out of
    your State a little more, Governor.
        I am delighted to be here in Baltimore because Baltimore was one of
    the six cities which won a highly contested race for the empowerment
    zones in our country. And I congratulate Mayor Schmoke on that, and I
    look forward to his work, along with the Governor and others, in making
    Baltimore an even stronger and greater city as a result of that.
        Governor Dean, I want to thank you for your leadership of the
    Governors' Association. I don't think I ever enjoyed any job more than
    being chairman of the Governors' Association, although it was not always
    easy to please all the Governors. I think it's still not always easy to
    please all of the Governors. [Laughter]

    [[Page 819]]

        I'm delighted to see so many representatives of State government,
    county government, local government here. My good friend Representative
    Blue from North Carolina, it's nice to see you here; Representative
    Campbell; and Commissioner Franke, thank you for your work, sir.
        I thank all of you for coming here to meet about the fate of our
    children. This has been a concern of mine, as the Governor said, for a
    long time and, of course, a profound concern for my wife. When I met
    her, she was spending an extra year in law school to do 4 years instead
    of 3, so that she could devote a year to the study of the laws that
    affected our children. And I might say she then predicted a lot of the
    more disturbing trends which we've seen unfold in our country over the
    last 20 years.
        Hillary is working on a book now about children's issues and the
    responsibilities we owe to them, and she picked the title of the old
    African proverb, ``It takes a village to raise a child.'' I want to come
    back to that a little bit during my remarks because I think there is a
    great difference of opinion about that in the United States today. I
    began with the premise that the first responsibility for children lies
    with their parents, but that since all our futures are bound up in
    theirs, the rest of us share a responsibility in the United States and
    in our States and in our communities for their welfare. I do believe, in
    other words, that it takes a village to raise a child, especially when
    you consider the facts of life that children face today.
        I ran for this job because I wanted to ensure a better future for
    our children, to ensure that instead of losing so many of our children
    and seeing so many of them grow up with the American dream beyond their
    grasp, that they could be rewarded for their work and that the values
    that we all share of work and family and community would be stronger,
    not weaker, when they came of age.
        I realized that people my daughter's age were in danger of growing
    up to be the first generation of Americans to do worse economically than
    their parents but, perhaps even more important, to live in a country
    that was less supportive of the kind and quality of life that most
    people in my generation took for granted.
        The recent report of the Carnegie Corporation tends to corroborate a
    lot of those disturbing trends with statistics you all know well. In
    ``The Quiet Crisis,'' they say that still, after years of effort,
    compared to other industrialized countries, our infant mortality rates
    are higher, our low-birth-weight baby rates are higher, our teen
    pregnancy rates are much higher, our childhood immunization rates are
    lower, and of course, our children are subjected to far, far higher
    rates of violence in the United States than they would be in any other
    country in the world.
        If we are going to rescue our children's future, we have to do a
    number of things. We have to grow the middle class and shrink the under
    class. We have to support policies that reinforce work and families and
    communities. We have to change the way the Government operates so that
    it promotes independence, not dependence, opportunity and not
    bureaucracy. We have to give our youngest children things that they
    can't guarantee for themselves.
        If you believe it takes a whole village to raise a child, it means
    that the Government has a responsibility, working with people in the
    private sector, to guarantee children who can't get it for themselves
    health, safety, and education, and then when they get older, to empower
    them to make the most of their own lives. To do that, I believe we need
    not another ideological war but a passionate and practical commitment to
    what we know will work. The whole issue of welfare is at the core of
    that.
        But let me just say for a moment, for the last 2\1/2\ years a great
    deal of what I have sought to do has been centered in that conviction,
    that we have to have a passionate and practical effort to go beyond
    ideological wars right to the heart of what will make life better for
    our children. We've worked hard to strengthen families and to give
    children a better start.
        The earned-income credit will now provide a tax reduction for
    working families with children with incomes below $27,000 an average of
    $1,000 a year. That's a pro-family policy. We should continue that, not
    reverse it.
        The family and medical leave law, more than anything I've done as
    President, has caused ordinary citizens to come up to me and say,
    ``Thank you. I had a sick child. I had a sick spouse. My wife had a
    baby. We were able to continue to work and to provide for ourselves. We
    were able to be good parents and successful workers.'' That, it seem to
    me, is the kind of thing that we ought to do.
        Secretary Shalala, who is here, has worked very hard to expand
    immunization so that all our children under the age of 2 will be
    properly

    [[Page 820]]

    immunized by the turn of the century. We have expanded Head Start
    dramatically. The Goals 2000 program in which many of you have
    participated--most of you have--emphasizes grassroots reforms to achieve
    national, indeed, international standards of excellence.
        When children are more independent, we have given them access to
    lower cost, better repayment terms for college loans with tougher
    requirements to repay them. We've worked with you for more
    apprenticeship programs for the young people who don't go to 4-year
    colleges and universities, through the school-to-work program. And of
    course, many of you have been very active in the national service
    program, AmeriCorps, which gives our young people a chance to give
    something back to their communities and earn more funds to go on to
    school. And I want to say a special word of thanks to Senator Mikulski
    of Maryland for her work on national service.
        The crime bill was an important part of this because it emphasized
    not simply more punishment and more prisons but also protecting children
    through 100,000 more police officers on the street and through
    prevention programs that give our young people something to say yes to
    as well as something to say no to.
        We were able to do those things and still reduce the deficit. The
    new majority in Congress uses 7-year terms. We use--the deficit is going
    down by a trillion dollars over 7 years, thanks to the '93 and '94
    budgets. More than 6.3 million new jobs came into our economy. But we
    did it while saying that it takes a whole village to raise a child; that
    children deserve education, health, and safety; that families should be
    strengthened and supported; that work should be exalted; and that
    parents have to be able to succeed in the world we are living in, both
    as parents and as workers.
        One thing we did not do is to pass comprehensive welfare reform. And
    that is now what is before the Congress. And that, more than anything
    else in this debate, captures a lot of the philosophical arguments that
    are at the core of what is going on in our national discussion today.
        I don't think there's any question that I believe we ought to reform
    the welfare system. I was proud to represent the Governors when the
    Family Support Act was written under President Reagan's administration
    with strong bipartisan support. I realize what the shortcomings of it
    are, especially since it was never properly funded. And therefore, I
    have now given, the Secretary and I have, 29 of the 50 States exemptions
    from Federal rules and regulations to pursue your own path to welfare
    reform to move people to work. Nothing like that has ever been done
    before.
        In Missouri, Vermont, and Wisconsin, Governors Carnahan, Dean, and
    Thompson are using their waivers to impose time limits and to require
    work. In Ohio and Oregon, Governors Voinovich and Kitzhaber are moving
    people to work by using money now spent on welfare and food stamps to
    subsidize private sector jobs. Others are doing other things that are
    very important. Every Governor I've ever spoken with, without regard to
    party, understands that welfare reform is important and must, first and
    foremost, be about work.
        Unfortunately, to my mind, the welfare reform bill in Congress--or
    the debate--has not focused as much as it should have about work. And I
    believe that in important respects, the tenor of the debate not only in
    the House but also in the Senate puts both children and States at risk.
    The House bill, clearly, was too tough on children and too weak on work.
    Finally, after a lot of efforts, the House did agree to be tough on
    deadbeat parents, something that everyone among the Governors agreed it
    needed to be done. The Senate Finance Committee reported a bill out the
    other day that clearly is a step in the right direction in many areas
    but, I believe, still misses the point on work and on children.
        According to the Congressional Budget Office, the current Senate
    Finance Committee bill will not succeed in moving people from welfare to
    work. The Congressional Budget Office--and the person who wrote the
    report was generally acknowledged to be one of the preeminent Republican
    experts on welfare reform--concluded that only six of our States would
    be able to fulfill the bill's work requirements in the year 2000 with
    the bill's funding provisions. Forty-four States will fail. Six out of
    fifty in baseball is a .120 batting average. You can't play for the
    Orioles with that batting average; you can't stay in the minor leagues.
    And you sure won't elevate children or end welfare as we know it.
        The reason the Senate bill failed on the standard of work seems to
    me is clear. It takes away the tools that States now use to move people

    [[Page 821]]

    from welfare to work: child care, job training, greater incentives for
    job placement.
        I very much want to work across party lines to solve this problem.
    But if we're going to end welfare as we know it, Congress must pass a
    bill that meets some basic principles. First, we have to require people
    who can work to go to work and make sure that they have the child care
    to do it so that they don't have to hurt their children to do the right
    thing as citizens. It defies common sense to insist that people go to
    work when they have very young children if doing so will actually cost
    them money.
        Second, the legislation should have real work requirements, but it
    ought to be backed up with the resources necessary to get people into
    jobs and keep them there. According to the CBO, the Congressional Budget
    Office, it would cost you, the States, $10 billion a year by the year
    2000 to meet these requirements just in the Senate bill. And yet, this
    bill asks you to meet these requirements with less money than you have
    now.
        Now, I was a Governor long enough to remember what an unfunded
    mandate is. A lot of you--Governor Voinovich was in the Rose Garden
    celebrating when we signed the unfunded mandates bill; I strongly
    supported it. Just because this doesn't say it's one doesn't mean it
    isn't by another term. So I think we have to look at this forthrightly.
        The third thing that I think is important is that welfare reform
    should have real incentives to reward the States who do succeed in
    putting people to work, not for cutting them off. The current bill gives
    States an incentive instead to save money simply by throwing people off
    the welfare roles. The House bill even gives States what the Catholic
    Church has called an illegitimacy bonus, an incentive for more people to
    have abortions. That is not welfare reform. If we're going to change the
    culture of welfare, we have got to reward success, we've got to depart
    from the status quo. I want a performance bonus but one that will force
    the welfare bureaucracy and the welfare recipients to focus on work.
        The fourth thing I believe is that the legislation should protect
    States so they can continue to move people from welfare to work even
    when there is an economic downturn, extraordinary population growth, or
    unpredictable emergencies. In their current forms, these bills could
    really hurt the high-population States, the growth States, like Florida
    and Utah and others, and could put every State at risk in the next
    recession or profound natural disaster.
        Finally, let me say we ought to protect our children. If you believe
    it takes a whole village to raise a child, we should avoid mean-spirited
    restrictions on benefits to children. We should avoid cuts in child
    nutrition and adoption and child protective services. We should give
    States more flexibility, but we should also make sure States continue to
    fulfill their responsibilities. The proposed legislation contains no
    incentives or requirements for States to maintain their own funding for
    cash assistance or for child care or work supports.
        Now, I know that if you believe in the pure theory of State
    experimentation--and you know that I believe a lot of that, because if
    you just look at what's in these 29 waivers, I have pretty much gone
    along with anything the States wanted to do to move people from welfare
    to work. So you might argue that, in theory, if we believe that States
    ought to have great flexibility, why don't we just give them a block
    grant without any requirement for local maintenance or anything of that
    kind? But the serious danger there is that this will become a race to
    the bottom. It's always cheaper to cut people off welfare than to move
    them to work. It will always be cheaper to lower benefits than to figure
    out how to reduce the caseload by moving them to work.
        We already do less for young children than most of our major
    competitors--perhaps all of our major competitors--throughout the world.
    And I just believe that we cannot allow welfare reform to be a race to
    the bottom.
        Let me say again, I know in theory it's right, but let me remind all
    of you, I served for 12 years as a Governor. I served in good times and
    bad times. I know that the last 2 years, this is the second year in a
    row when in all probability all 50 States will have economic growth.
    That is a highly unusual circumstance over the last two decades.
        And I'm just telling you, I've been in enough State legislatures in
    my life, not just in my State but all around this country, to know
    what's going to happen. If you put this welfare reform block grant with
    less money and no local maintenance requirement up against the Medicaid
    cuts and the education cuts and the other things that are in this
    budget, you tell me how the poor children of your State are going to
    fare when

    [[Page 822]]

    they have to deal with the nursing home lobby. And I'm not complaining
    about the nursing home lobby; you just tell me how they're going to
    fare.
        You know, everybody wants to cut Medicaid to shreds, because they
    say that's just a poor person's health care. You know as well as I do
    almost 70 percent of that money goes to the elderly and the disabled.
    And they're all coming to see you and your State legislators.
        Now, how are they going to do? How are these poor children going to
    do? How are they going to do against some of my favorite lobbies--the
    education lobbies? How are they going to do? Not very well. How are they
    going to do against a lobby that no one can say no to, the prison lobby?
    The crime rate goes up, and your legislature stiffens sentences, and
    people don't want you paroling folks that have no business on the
    street. And the only way you can get this Federal money for prisons is
    if you promise to leave people in longer and ignore your own parole
    laws. When you have to match that money or build prisons on your own,
    how are you going to stand up and say, ``Well, somehow we're going to
    keep doing what we used to do for poor children?''
        And you can walk away and say, ``Well, what we used to do doesn't
    work, so maybe we shouldn't do anything.'' But the truth is we do less--
    I will say it again--we do less for children than the countries with
    which we compete.
        And this is not a partisan issue, at least it never has been before.
    Everything that happened in the last 2 years on Head Start, on every
    education initiative we did, on the family and medical leave, every
    single thing was a bipartisan issue, everything.
        Now, I think there are two big debates that are undergirding this
    welfare debate, and I'd like to just put it out on the table today. One
    is the debate about what causes people to be on welfare. Is it economic
    and politics, or is it culture? That's really what's behind all this
    debate about what's in the movies and in the rap lyrics and all.
        And by the way, I think it's a positive thing. You know, Mrs. Gore
    was talking 18 years ago about the dangers of destructive entertainment
    forces on children. I've been challenging Hollywood and the television
    networks to reduce violence for years. I don't mind this debate. I think
    this is a good debate.
        But the truth is, it's not either/or. You see, there was one young
    girl interviewed in a movie line last week--asked her, what do you think
    about this debate in Washington about whether movies were causing the
    breakdown of families. And she said, ``Well, my father's working three
    jobs. I'll tell you, that's not good for our family. I wish he'd just
    come home and spend some time with me.''
        On the other hand, people who deny that culture is a force are
    wrong. The States in this country with the lowest incarceration rates
    also have the highest high school graduation rates, and they often don't
    spend the most money. There are almost no poor children in families with
    two parents in the home. So if I could just wave a magic wand and make
    this problem go away, I would never have another kid in a home where
    there weren't two parents until the child reached a certain age so that
    then the child could take care of himself or herself. That would be a
    wonderful thing if that could be done. And in that sense, there is a
    cultural component to all this.
        So the people that are out there exhorting parents to be more
    responsible, and especially male parents to be more responsible, people
    like this Promise Keepers group, they deserve our support. They deserve
    our support. There is a cultural element in all this. But to say that
    there is no national responsibility on the economic and political side,
    I think is just plain wrong and defies the experience of every, single,
    solitary country in the world. And I might add that all the people that
    are out there working in the private charities, go interview them and
    ask them if they think that we can just walk away from this.
        So I would say, this cultural debate is a very good thing, and we
    ought to have it. But there is plainly a political and economic root to
    this. If you look at rising poverty and stagnating middle class incomes
    in this country, it is clearly the result of international economic
    trends sweeping all advanced countries and national economic policies.
    And all those things are reinforced, one with another.
        We are on the verge of having a 40-year low in the minimum wage. Why
    would somebody who was on welfare who had two kids, who at least had
    health care from Medicaid and they've got food stamps, go to work if we
    won't even raise the minimum wage to keep it up

    [[Page 823]]

    to where it was 10 years ago--in fact, we're going to let it go to a 40-
    year low?
        So I implore you, Governors are supposed to be the places where
    people look at the real world and they get away from all this theory and
    look at the practice. There's a political and an economic element to
    this problem, and there is a cultural element to the problem. That is
    one big deal. I think there is a public responsibility and there is a
    private responsibility, both, not either/or.
        There's another debate going on here which is, what is the most
    important thing we can do to help grow the economy and stabilize the
    society? And on one side of that debate there are those who say the most
    important thing we can do is to reduce the deficit and shrink the
    Government, and nothing else really matters because the Federal
    Government would mess up a one-car parade.
        And on the other side of that debate are not people who say we need
    a big Government, we need an expanded bureaucracy; that debate is not
    existent in Washington. You look at the record. We have reduced already,
    with the two budgets already adopted, the size of the Federal Government
    by 270,000. Congressman Cardin's already voted to do that, to bring the
    Federal Government to its smallest size since President Kennedy was
    President. We've had dramatic changes in regulation. The 29 States with
    the waivers from Federal rules on welfare is just one example. The
    deficit has been brought down three times in a row for the first time
    since Mr. Truman was here. Nobody is for a higher deficit. That is not
    the issue.
        The issue is, are there any other responsibilities of the National
    Government? I believe there are some. I think we have to help people who
    cannot help themselves through no fault of their own, not because
    they're irresponsible but through no fault of their own, like little
    children who are poor. And I think we have to empower people to make the
    most of their own lives, because that way we'll all be better off.
    That's what I believe. Therefore, I don't think that you can sacrifice
    our responsibility to educate people and our responsibility for basic
    health and safety, security issues, on the altar of deficit reduction.
        You know, sometimes I think my big problem is that I was for some of
    these things before they were popular, like deficit reduction.
    Everybody's for it now. That doesn't mean we didn't do a lot of it in
    the last 2 years.
        So we have to decide that. Now, don't kid yourself--from the point
    of view of the Congress, welfare reform has stopped being welfare reform
    primarily. Primarily welfare reform is a way to cut spending on the
    poor, so that we don't have to worry about it and we can balance the
    budget in 7 years and give a big tax cut, largely benefiting upper
    income people who have done pretty well in the 1980's. That's what this
    is about.
        It is true that a lot of people genuinely believe the States ought
    to have more say over this. So do I. It is true that a lot of people
    believe the prior system didn't do much good for people who were
    permanently dependent on welfare. So do I, and I have for 15 years. But
    we should not confuse--if we really say it's more important to cut
    spending so that we can balance the budget in 7 years and still give a
    tax increase to upper income people, even if we're going to hurt poor
    children, people ought to just say that flat out because that's what's
    really underneath this.
        So I ask you to think about it. What's it going to be like the next
    time the coasts are growing and the Middle West is in a depression, when
    the farmland goes to pieces? What's it going to be like the next time
    there's a high-tech collapse and the coasts are in trouble and only the
    heartland is doing well? What's it going to be like the next time we
    have a serious national recession if there is not even a maintenance-of-
    effort requirement, if there is no real effort to have work? You know
    what it's going to be like. You'll have less people moving from welfare
    to work, more people getting less money, and the most important thing is
    our children, our future, will be in more difficult circumstances.
        You could not design a program that would be too tough on work for
    me. You could not design a program that would give the States any more
    flexibility than I want to give them as long as we recognize that we,
    our American village, have a responsibility to our children and that in
    the end, our political and economic policies must reinforce the culture
    we're trying to create. They ought to be pro-family and pro-work. But if
    we get in the fix in this country where people cannot succeed as parents
    without being derelict at work or they cannot succeed at work without
    being derelict to their children, which is exactly what exists for too
    many people

    [[Page 824]]

    in America today or that is their deep worry, then we are going to
    suffer. We are going to suffer economically, and we are going to suffer
    culturally.
        Now, I think this is a huge opportunity. We can save some money and
    reduce the deficit in this welfare area. I have proposed that. I think
    we can. I don't believe every penny we're spending is sacrosanct, but I
    just would say to you we must not walk away, and you should not walk
    away, and you shouldn't want us to put you in a position to walk away
    from our fundamental responsibilities. Just imagine all the debates that
    are going to occur here. Children are not very well organized. Poor
    children are very poorly organized. They will not do well on balance in
    all the State legislatures of the country the next time things are
    really bad and, especially, after all the other budget cuts come down to
    all the other people who will also be on your doorstep.
        We can have welfare reform. We can balance the budget. We can shrink
    the Government and still be faithful to our fundamental responsibilities
    to our children and our future. Let's don't make it either/or. Let's do
    it all, do it right, and take this country to the next century in good
    shape.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:38 p.m. at the Stouffer Renaissance
    Harbor Place. In his remarks, he referred to Governors Howard Dean of
    Vermont, Mike Leavitt of Utah, Parris N. Glendening of Maryland, Mel
    Carnahan of Missouri, Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin, George V.
    Voinovich of Ohio, and John A. Kitzhaber of Oregon; Mayor Kurt Schmoke
    of Baltimore; State legislators Daniel T. Blue of North Carolina and
    Jane L. Campbell of Ohio; and Randall Franke, president, National
    Association of Counties.