    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 25, 1995]
    [Pages 597-605]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Iowa State Legislature in Des Moines
    April 25, 1995

        Thank you very much, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Governor Branstad,
    Mr. Chief Justice and members of the supreme court, distinguished Iowa
    State officials. And former Congressman Neal Smith, my good friend, and
    Mrs. Smith, thank you for being here. To all of you who are members of
    the Iowa Legislature, House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, it is a
    great honor for me to be here today.
        I feel that I'm back home again. When I met the legislative
    leadership on the way in and we shared a few words and then they left to
    come in here, and I was standing around with my crowd, I said, ``You
    know, I really miss State government.'' [Laughter] I'll say more about
    why in a moment.
        I'd like to, if I might, recognize one of your members to thank him
    for agreeing to join my team: Representative Richard Running will now be
    the Secretary of Labor's representative. Would you stand up, please?
    Thank you. [Applause] Representative Running is going to be the
    representative of the Secretary of Labor for region 7, Iowa, Nebraska,
    Missouri, and Kansas. And if you will finish your business here pretty
    soon, he can actually go to Kansas City and get to work--[laughter]--
    which I would appreciate.
        I'm delighted to be back in Iowa. I had a wonderful day here, and it
    was good to be here when it was dry--[laughter]--although a little rain
    doesn't do any harm.
        We had a wonderful meeting today at Iowa State University, with
    which I'm sure all of you are familiar, this National Rural Conference
    we had, designed to lay the groundwork for a strategy for rural America
    to include not only the farm bill but also a rural development strategy
    and a strategy generally to deal with the problems of rural America,
    with the income disparities with the rest of America, the age
    disparities with the rest of America, and the problems of getting
    services and maintaining the quality of life in rural America.
        I want to thank Governor Branstad for his outstanding presentation
    and the information he gave us about the efforts being made in Iowa in
    developing your fiber optic network and developing the health care
    reform initiatives for rural Iowans and many other areas. I want to
    thank Senator Harkin for his presentation, particularly involving the
    development of alternative agricultural products as a way to boost
    income in rural America. And I want to say a special word of thanks to
    the people at Iowa State. They did a magnificent job there, and I know
    you are all very proud of that institution. And you would have been
    very, very proud of them today for the way they performed.
        I'm also just glad to be back here in the setting of State
    government. You know, Gov-

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    ernor Branstad and I were once the youngest Governors in America, but
    time took care of it. [Laughter] And now that he's been reelected, he
    will actually serve more years than I did. I ran for a fifth term as
    Governor. We used to have 2-year terms, and then we switched to 4-year
    terms. And only one person in the history of our State had ever served
    more than 8 years, and only one person had ever served more than--two
    people had served more than two terms, but those were 2-year terms--in
    the whole history of the State. So I was--I had served 10 years. I'd
    served three 2-year terms and one 4-year term, and I was attempting to
    be reelected. And I had a high job approval rating, but people were
    reluctant to vote for me because in my State people are very suspicious
    of too much political power, you know. And I thought I was still pretty
    young and healthy, but half of them wanted to give me a gold watch, you
    know, and send me home. [Laughter]
        And I never will forget one day when I was running for my fifth
    term, I was out at the State fair doing Governor's day at the State
    fair, which I always did, and I would just sit there and anybody that
    wanted to talk to me could up and say whatever was on their mind, which
    was, for me, a hazardous undertaking from time to time--[laughter]--
    since they invariably would do exactly that. And I stayed there all day
    long, and I talked about everything under the Moon and Sun with the
    people who came up. And, long about the end of the day, this elderly
    fellow in overalls came up to me, and he said, ``Bill, you going to run
    for Governor again?'' And I hadn't announced yet. I said, ``I don't
    know. If I do, will you vote for me?'' He said, ``Yes, I always have. I
    guess I will again.'' And I said, ``Well, aren't you sick of me after
    all these years?'' He said, ``No, but everybody else I know is.''
    [Laughter]
        But he went on to say--and that's the point I want to make about
    State government--he said, ``People get tired of it because all you do
    is nag us. You nag us to modernize the economy; you nag us to improve
    the schools; you just nag, nag, nag.'' But he said, ``I think it's
    beginning to work.'' And what I have seen in State after State after
    State over the last 15 years, as we have gone through these wrenching
    economic and social changes in America and as we face challenge after
    challenge after challenge, is people able consistently to come together
    to overcome their differences, to focus on what it will take to build a
    State and to move forward. And we need more of that in America.
        In Iowa, you do embody our best values. People are independent but
    committed to one another. They work hard and play by the rules, but they
    work together. Those of us who come from small towns understand that
    everybody counts. We don't have a person to waste. And the fact that
    Iowa has done such a good job in developing all of your people is one of
    the reasons that you are so strong in every single national indicator of
    success that I know of. And you should be very, very proud of what,
    together, you have done.
        I saw some of that American spirit in a very painful way in Oklahoma
    City this week, and all of you saw it as well. I know you share the
    grief of the people there. But you must also share the pride of all
    Americans in seeing the enormity of the effort which is being exerted
    there by firemen and police officers and nurses, by rescue workers, by
    people who have come from all over America and given up their lives to
    try to help Oklahoma City and the people there who have suffered so much
    loss, rebuild.
        I want to say again what I have tried to say for the last 3 days to
    the American people. On this National Day of Service, there is a service
    we can do to ensure that we build on and learn from this experience.
        We must always fight for the freedom of speech. The first amendment,
    with its freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of worship,
    is the essence of what it means to be an American. And I dare say every
    elected official in this room would give his or her life to preserve
    that right for our children and our grandchildren down to the end of
    time.
        But we have to remember that that freedom has endured in our Nation
    for over 200 years because we practiced it with such responsibility;
    because we had discipline; because we understood from the Founding
    Fathers forward that you could not have very, very wide latitude in
    personal freedom until you also had--or unless you also had great
    discipline in the exercise of that freedom.
        So while I would defend to the death anyone's right to the broadest
    freedom of speech, I think we should all remember that words have
    consequences. And freedom should be exercised with responsibility. And
    when we think that oth-

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    ers are exercising their freedom in an irresponsible way, it is our job
    to stand up and say that is wrong, we disagree. This is not a matter of
    partisan politics. It is not a matter of political philosophy. If we see
    the freedom of expression and speech abused in this country, whether it
    comes from the right or the left, from the media or from people just
    speaking on their own, we should stand up and say no, we don't believe
    in preaching violence; we don't believe in preaching hatred; we don't
    believe in preaching discord. Words have consequences.
        If words did not have consequences, we wouldn't be here today. We're
    here today because Patrick Henry's words had consequences, because
    Thomas Jefferson's words had consequences, because Abraham Lincoln's
    words had consequences. And these words we hear today have consequences,
    the good ones and the bad ones, the ones that bring us together and the
    ones that drive a wedge through our heart.
        We never know in this society today who is out there dealing with
    all kinds of inner turmoil, vulnerable to being pushed over the edge if
    all they hear is a relentless clamor of hatred and division. So let us
    preserve free speech, but let those of us who want to fight to preserve
    free speech forever in America say, we must be responsible, and we will
    be.
        My fellow Americans, I come here tonight, as I went recently to the
    State legislature in Florida, to discuss the condition of our country,
    where we're going in the future, and your role in that. We know we are
    in a new and different world--the end of the cold war, a new and less
    organized world we're living in but one still not free of threats. We
    know we have come to the end of an industrial age and we're in an
    information age which is less bureaucratic, more open, more dependent on
    technology, more full of opportunity, but still full of its own
    problems, than the age that most of us were raised in.
        We know that we no longer need the same sort of bureaucratic, top-
    down, service-delivering, rulemaking, centralized Government in
    Washington that served us so well during the industrial age, because
    times have changed. We know that with all the problems we have and all
    the opportunities we have, we have to think anew about what the
    responsibilities of our Government in Washington should be, what your
    responsibility should be here at the State level and through you to the
    local level, and what should be done more by private citizens on their
    own with no involvement from the Government.
        We know now what the central challenge of this time is, and you can
    see it in Iowa. You could see it today with the testimony we heard at
    the rural conference. We are at a 25-year low in the combined rates of
    unemployment and inflation. Our economy has produced over 6 million new
    jobs. But paradoxically, even in Iowa where the unemployment rate has
    dropped under 3.5 percent, most Americans are working harder today for
    the same or lower incomes that they were making 10 years ago. And many
    Americans feel less job security even as the recovery continues. That is
    largely a function of the global economic competition; the fact that
    technology raises productivity at an almost unbelievable rate so fewer
    and fewer people can do more and more work, and that depresses wages;
    the fact that unless we raise it in Washington next year, the minimum
    wage will reach a 40-year low.
        There are a lot of these things that are related one to the other.
    But it is perfectly clear that the economics are changing the face of
    American society. You can see it in the difference in income in rural
    America and urban America. You can see it in the difference--the aging
    process in rural America as compared with urban America. And if we want
    to preserve the American dream, we have got to find a way to solve this
    riddle.
        I was born in the year after World War II at the dawn of the
    greatest explosion of opportunity in American history and in world
    history. For 30 years after that, the American people, without regard to
    their income or region, grew and grew together. That is, each income
    group over the next 30 years roughly doubled their income, except the
    poorest 20 percent of us that had an almost 2\1/2\ times increase in
    their income. So we were growing and growing together.
        For about the last 15 or 20 years, half of us have been stuck, so
    that our country is growing, but we are growing apart even within the
    middle class. When you put that beside the fact that we have more and
    more poor people who are not elderly, which was the case when I was
    little, but now are largely young women and their little children, often
    where there was either no marriage or the marriage is broken up so there
    is not a stable home and there is not

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    an adequate level of education to ensure an income, you have increasing
    poverty and increasing splits within the middle class. That is the
    fundamental cause, I believe, of a lot of the problems that we face in
    America and a lot of the anxiety and frustration we see in this country.
        Every rich country faces this problem. But in the United States it
    is a particular problem, both because the inequality is greater and
    because it violates the American dream. I mean, this is a country where
    if you work hard and you play by the rules, you obey the law, you raise
    your children, you do your best to do everything you're supposed to do,
    you ought to have an opportunity for the free enterprise system to work
    for you.
        And so we face this challenge. I have to tell you that I believe two
    things: One, the future is far more hopeful than worrisome. If you look
    at the resources of this country, the assets of this country, and you
    compare them with any other country in the world and you imagine what
    the world will be like 20 or 30 years from now, you'd have to be
    strongly bullish on America. You have to believe in our promise.
    Secondly, I am convinced we cannot get there unless we develop a new way
    of talking about these issues, a new political discourse, unless we move
    beyond the labeling that so often characterizes and, in fact,
    mischaracterizes the debate in Washington, DC.
        Now, we are having this debate in ways that affect you, so you have
    to be a part of it, because one of the biggest parts of the debate is,
    how are we going to keep the American dream alive? How are we going to
    keep America the world's strongest force for freedom and democracy into
    the next century and change the way the Government works?
        There is broad consensus that the Government in Washington should be
    less bureaucratic, less oriented toward rulemaking, smaller, more
    flexible, that more decisions should be devolved to the State and local
    government level and, where possible, more decisions should be given to
    private citizens themselves. There is a broad agreement on that.
        The question is, what are the details? What does that mean? What
    should we do? What should you do? That's what I want to talk to you
    about. There are clearly some national responsibilities, clearly some
    that would be better served here at your level.
        The main reason I ran for President is, it seemed to me that we were
    seeing a National Government in bipartisan gridlock, where we'd had 12
    years in which we exploded the deficit, reduced our investment in
    people, and undermined our ability to compete and win in the world. And
    I wanted very badly to end the kind of gridlock we'd had and to see some
    real concrete action taken to go forward, because of my experience doing
    what you're doing now.
        My basic belief is that the Government ought to do more to help
    people help themselves, to reward responsibility with more opportunity
    and not to give anybody opportunity without demanding responsibility.
    That's basically what I think our job is. I think we can be less
    bureaucratic. We have to enhance security at home and abroad. But the
    most important thing we have to do is to empower people to make the most
    of their own lives.
        Now, we have made a good beginning at that. As I said, we've been
    able to get the deficit down. You know here in Iowa, because you're a
    farming State, that we've had the biggest expansion of trade in the last
    2 years we've seen in a generation. We now have a $20 billion surplus in
    agricultural products for the first time ever. This means more to me
    than you, but we're selling rice to the Japanese, something that my
    farmers never thought that we'd ever do. We're selling apples in Asia.
    We are doing our best in Washington, some of us are, to get the ethanol
    program up and going. This administration is for it, and I hope you will
    help us with that.
        And we're making modest efforts which ought to be increased to work
    with the private sector to develop alternative agricultural products.
    Today I saw corn-based windshield wiper fluid and, something that I
    think is important, biodegradable, agriculturally rooted golf tees--
    [laughter]--and a lot of other things that I think will be the hallmark
    of our future. We have only scratched the surface of what we can do to
    produce products from the land, from our food and fiber, and we must do
    more.
        In education we are beginning to see the outlines of what I hope
    will be a genuine bipartisan national partnership in education. In the
    last 2 years, we increased Head Start. We reduced the rules and
    regulations the Federal Government imposes on local school systems but
    gave them more funds and flexibility to meet national standards of
    education. We helped States all

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    over the country to develop comprehensive systems of apprenticeships for
    young people who get out of high school and don't want to go to college
    but don't want to be in dead-end jobs. We are doing more to try to make
    our job training programs relevant.
        And we have made literally millions of Americans eligible for lower
    cost, better repayment college loans under our direct loan program,
    including over 350,000 students and former students in Iowa, including
    all those who are at Iowa State University. Now, if you borrow money
    under that program, you get it quicker with less paperwork at lower
    cost, and you can pay it back in one of four different ways based on the
    income you're going to earn when you get out of college. Believe it or
    not, it lowers costs to the taxpayers.
        And we have demanded responsibility. We've taken the loan default
    costs to the taxpayers from $2.8 billion a year down to $1 billion a
    year. That is the direction we ought to be going in.
        We've worked hard to increase our security at home and abroad. The
    crime bill, which was passed last year by the Congress after 6 years of
    endless debate, provides for 100,000 more police officers on our street.
    We have already--over the next 5 years--we've already awarded over
    17,000 police officers to over half the police departments in America,
    including 158 communities here in Iowa. It strengthens punishment under
    Federal law.
        The ``three strikes and you're out'' law in the crime bill is now
    the law of the land. The first person to be prosecuted under this law
    was a convicted murderer accused of an armed robbery in Waterloo last
    November. If he's convicted, he will go to jail for the rest of his
    life.
        The capital punishment provisions of the crime bill will cover the
    incident in Oklahoma City, something that is terribly important, in my
    view, not only to bring justice in this case but to send a clear signal
    that the United States does not intend to be dominated and paralyzed by
    terrorists from at home or abroad, not now, not ever. We cannot ever
    tolerate that.
        We are also more secure from beyond our borders. For the first time
    since the dawn of the nuclear age, there are no Russian missiles pointed
    at America's children. And those nuclear weapons are being destroyed
    every day.
        We have reduced the size of the Federal Government by more than
    100,000. We are taking it down by more than a quarter of a million. We
    have eliminated or reduced 300 programs, and I have asked Congress to
    eliminate or consolidate 400 more. We have tried to give more
    flexibility to States; several States have gotten broad freedom from
    Federal rules to implement health care reform. And we have now freed 27
    States from cumbersome Federal rules to try to help them end welfare as
    we know it.
        In the almost 2 years since Iowa received only the second welfare
    waiver our administration issued, the number of welfare recipients in
    Iowa who hold jobs has almost doubled from 18 to 33 percent. You are
    doing it without punishing children for the mistakes of their parents,
    and I want to say more on that later, but you are doing it. And that is
    clear evidence that we should give the States the right to pursue
    welfare reform. They know how to get the job done better than the
    Federal Government has done in the past. We should give you all more
    responsibility for moving people from welfare to work.
        Now, here's where you come in, because I want to talk in very short
    order, one right after the other, about the decisions we still have to
    make in Washington. Do we still have to cut the Federal deficit more?
    Yes, we do. We've taken it down by $600 billion. The budget, in fact,
    would be balanced today if it weren't for the interest we have to pay on
    the debt run up between 1981 and 1992.
        But it's still a problem, and you need to understand why it's a
    problem. It's a problem because a lot of people who used to give us
    money to finance our Government deficit and our trade deficit need their
    money at home now. That's really what's happening in Japan. They need
    their money at home now.
        We must continue--we must say to the world, to the financial
    markets: We will not cut taxes except in the context of reducing the
    deficit. America is committed. Both parties are committed. Americans are
    committed to getting rid of this terrible burden on our future. We must
    continue to do it.
        Now, the question is, how are we going to do that? Should we cut
    unnecessary spending? Of course we should. How do you define it? Should
    there be more power to State and local governments and to the private
    sector? You bet. But what are the details?

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        In other words, what we've got to do in Washington now is what you
    do all the time. We've got to move beyond our rhetoric to reality. And I
    think it would be helpful for you because we need your voice to be
    heard. And at least my experience in the Governors' Association was, or
    working in my own legislature, was that on these issues we could get
    Republicans and Democrats together. So let me go through what we've done
    and what's still to be done.
        First of all, I agree with this new Congress on three issues that
    were in the Republican contract, and two of them are already law. Number
    one, Congress should apply to itself all the laws it puts on the private
    sector. We should know when we make laws in Washington what we're doing
    to other people by experiencing it ourselves. That was a good thing.
        Number two, I signed the unfunded mandates legislation to make it
    harder, but not impossible when it's important, but much harder, for
    Congress to put on you and your taxpayers unfunded mandates from the
    Federal Government where we make you pay for something that we in
    Washington want to do. I strongly support that, and I think all of you
    do, as well.
        The third thing we are doing that we have not finished yet, although
    both Houses have approved a version of it, is the line-item veto. Almost
    every Governor has it. I don't want to embarrass anybody here, but I
    don't know how many times I had a legislature say, ``Now, Governor, I'm
    going to slip this in this bill because I've got to do it, and then you
    can scratch it out for me.'' [Laughter] And it was fine. We did it. Now
    if they slip it in a bill, I have to decide what to do or not. I have to
    decide. When the farmers in Iowa desperately needed the restoration of
    the tax deduction for health insurance, the 25 percent tax deduction
    that self-employed farmers and others get for health insurance, there
    was a provision of that bill I didn't like very much. I had to decide,
    am I going to give this back to 3.3 million self-employed Americans and
    their families, to lower the cost of health care by tax day, or not? But
    when we have the line-item veto, it won't be that way. And we need it.
        Here are the hard ones: number one, the farm bill. Should we reduce
    farm supports? Yes, we should, as required by GATT. I worked hard to get
    the Europeans to the table in agriculture in this trade agreement. A lot
    of you understand that. The deal was, they would reduce their subsidies
    more than we would reduce ours, so we would at least move toward some
    parity, so that our farmers would get a fair break for a change. Now
    some say, let's just get rid of all these farm support programs.
        Well, if we do it now, we give our competitors the advantage we
    worked for 8 years to take away. We put family farms more at risk. Now,
    if anybody's got better ideas about what should be in the farm bill,
    that's fine. If anybody's got a better idea about how to save the family
    farmers, let's do it. If anybody has new ideas about what should be put
    in for rural development, fine. But let us do no harm. Let us not labor
    under the illusion that having fought so hard to have a competitive
    agricultural playing field throughout the world, having achieved a $20
    billion surplus in agriculture, we can turn and walk away from the
    farmers of the country in the name of cutting spending. That is not the
    way to cut the Federal deficit.
        I'll give you another example. Some believe that we should flat-fund
    the School Lunch Program. And then there's a big argument in Washington;
    is it a cut or not? Let me tell you something, all these block grants
    are designed not only to give you more flexibility but to save the
    Federal Government money. Now, it may be a good deal, or it may not. You
    have to decide. But when we wanted to cut the Agriculture Department
    budget--we're closing nearly 1,200 offices, we're reducing employment by
    13,000, we eliminated 14 divisions in the Department of Agriculture--my
    own view is, that is better than putting an arbitrary cap on the School
    Lunch Program, which will be terribly unfair to the number--to the
    numerous school districts in this country that have increasing burdens
    from low income children. There are a lot of kids in this country, a lot
    of kids, the only decent meal they get every day is the meal they get at
    school. This program works. If it's not broke, we shouldn't fix it. So I
    don't agree with that. But you have to decide.
        Welfare reform. I've already said, we have now given more welfare
    reform waivers to States to get out from under the Federal Government
    than were given in the last 12 years put together. In 2 years, we've
    given more than 12 years. I am for you figuring out how you want to run
    your welfare system and move people from welfare to work. I am for that.
        But here are the questions. Number one, should we have cumbersome
    Federal rules that

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    say you have to penalize teenage girls who give birth to children and
    cut them off? I don't think so. We should never punish children for the
    mistakes of their parents. And these children who become parents
    prematurely, we should say, ``You made a mistake, you shouldn't do that;
    no child should do that. But what we're going to do is to impose
    responsibilities on you for the future to make you a responsible parent,
    a responsible student, a responsible worker.'' That's what your program
    does. Why should the Federal Government tell you that you have to punish
    children, when what you really want to do is move people from welfare to
    work so that more people are good parents and good workers? You should
    decide that. We do not need to be giving you lectures about how you have
    to punish the kids of this country. We need a welfare bill that is tough
    on work and compassionate toward children, not a welfare bill that is
    weak on work and tough on children. I feel that that should be a
    bipartisan principle that all of us should be able to embrace.
        Now, the second issue in welfare reform is whether we should give
    you a block grant. Instead of having the welfare being an individual
    entitlement to every poor person on welfare, should we just give you
    whatever money we gave you last year or over the last 3 years and let
    you spend it however you want? There are two issues here that I ask you
    to think about, not only from your perspective but from the perspective
    of every other State.
        In Florida, the Republicans in the legislature I spoke with were not
    for this, and here's why. The whole purpose of the block grant is
    twofold. One is, we give you more flexibility. The second is, we say in
    return for more flexibility, you ought to be able to do the job for less
    money, so we won't increase the money you're getting over the next 5
    years, which means we'll get to save money and lower the deficit. If it
    works for everybody concerned, it's a good deal.
        But what are the States--there are two problems with a block grant
    in this area, and I want you to help me work through it, because I am
    for more flexibility for the States. I would give every State every
    waiver that I have given to any State. I want you to decide what to do
    with this; I want you to be out there creating innovative ways to break
    the cycle of welfare dependency. But there are two problems with this.
    Number one, if you have a State with a very large number of children
    eligible for public assistance and they're growing rapidly, it's very
    hard to devise any formula that keeps you from getting hurt in the block
    grants over a 5-year period. And some States have rapidly growing
    populations, Florida, Texas, probably California.
        Number two, a total block grant relieves the State of any
    responsibility to put up the match that is now required for you to
    participate in the program. Now, you may say, ``Well, we would do that
    anyway. We have a tradition in Iowa of taking care of our own.'' But
    what if you lived in a State with a booming population growth, with
    wildly competing demands for dollars? And what about when the next
    recession comes? Keep in mind, we're making all these decisions today in
    the second year in which every State economy is growing. That has not
    happened in a very long time.
        Will that really be fair? How do you know that there won't be
    insurmountable pressure in some States just to say, ``Well, we can't
    take care of these children anymore; we've got to give the money to our
    schoolteachers; we've got to give the money to our road program; we've
    got to give the money to economic development; we've got environmental
    problems.'' So I ask you to think about those things. We can find a way
    to let you control the welfare system and move people from welfare to
    work, but there are two substantive problems with the block grant
    program that I want to see overcome before I sign off on it, because
    there is a national responsibility to care for the children of the
    country, to make sure a minimal standard of care is given. [Applause]
    Thank you.
        In the crime bill, there is a proposal to take what we did last
    time, which was to divide the money between police, prisons, and
    prevention and basically give you a block grant in prevention, and
    instead create two separate block grants, one for prisons and one for
    police and prevention, in which you would reduce the amount of money for
    police and prevention and increase the amount of money for prisons, but
    you could only get it if you decided--a mandate, but a funded one--if
    you decided to make all people who committed serious crimes serve 85
    percent of their sentences.
        So Washington is telling you how you have to sentence people but
    offering you money to build prisons. The practical impact means that a
    lot of that money won't be taken care of, and we will reduce the amount
    of money we're

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    spending for police and for prevention programs. I think that's a
    mistake.
        I'm more than happy for you to have block grants for prevention
    programs. You know more about what keeps kids out of jail and off the
    streets and from committing crime in Des Moines or Cedar Rapids or Ames
    or anyplace else than I would ever know. But we do know that the violent
    crime rate has tripled in the last 30 years and the number of police on
    our street has only gone up by 10 percent. And we know there is city
    after city after city in America where the crime rate has gone down a
    lot, a lot, when police have been put on the street in community
    policing roles.
        So I say, let's keep the 100,000 police program. It is totally
    nonbureaucratic. Small towns in Iowa can get it by filling out a one-
    page, 8-question form. There is no hassle. And we should do this because
    we know it works. There is a national interest in safer streets, and
    it's all paid for by reducing the Federal bureaucracy. So my view is,
    keep the 100,000 police. Give the States flexibility on prevention. And
    I hope that you will agree with that. That, at any rate, is my strong
    feeling.
        Lastly, let me say on education, I simply don't believe that we
    should be cutting education to reduce the deficit or to pay for tax
    cuts. I don't believe that. I just don't believe that.
        So my view, my view on this is that the way to save money is to give
    every university in the country and every college in the country the
    right to do what Iowa State has done: go to the direct loan program, cut
    out the middleman, lower the cost of loans, save the taxpayer money. I
    am strongly opposed to charging the students interest on their student
    loans while they're in college. That will add 18 to 20 percent to the
    cost of education for a lot of our young people. We'll have fewer people
    going to school. We want more people going to school. I think that is a
    mistake.
        I believe if we're going to have a tax cut, it should be targeted to
    middle class people and to educational needs. I believe strongly we
    should do two things more than anything else: Number one, give more
    people the advantage of an IRA, which they can put money into and save
    and then withdraw to pay for education or health care costs, purchase of
    a first-time home, or care of an elderly parent tax-free; number two,
    allow the deduction of the cost of education after high school to all
    American middle class families. Now, that, I think, will make a
    difference.
        This is very important for you because, remember, if we have a
    smaller total tax cut, if we target it to the middle class, we can have
    deficit reduction without cutting education, we can have deficit
    reduction without having severe cuts in Medicare. Governor Branstad said
    today, one of our biggest problems is the unfairness of the distribution
    of Medicare funds. You are right. It's not fair to rural America. But
    there's a lot more coming and more than you need to have if we have an
    excessive tax cut that is not targeted to education and to the middle
    class.
        So that, in brief, is the laundry list of the new federalism, the
    things you need to decide on. I do not believe these issues I have
    spoken with you about have a partisan tinge in Des Moines. They need not
    have one in Washington.
        But I invite you, go back home--this is being televised tonight--go
    back home and talk to the people you represent and ask them what they
    want you to say to your Members of Congress about what we do in
    Washington, what you do in Des Moines, what we do in our private lives,
    what should be spent to reduce the deficit, what should be spent on a
    tax cut, what should be in a block grant, and where should we stand up
    and say we've got to protect the children of the country. These are
    great and exciting issues.
        Believe me, if we make the right decisions, if we make the right
    decisions, the 21st century will still be the American century.
        Thank you all, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:32 p.m. in the Senate Chamber at the
    State Capital. In his remarks, he referred to Leonard Boswell,
    president, Iowa State Senate; Ron Corbett, speaker, Iowa State House;
    Gov. Terry E. Branstad of Iowa; Arthur McGiverin, chief justice, Iowa
    Supreme Court; and former Representative Neal Smith and his wife, Bea.

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