    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [June 7, 1995]
    [Pages 824-828]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Safe and Drug-Free Schools Recognition Program
    June 7, 1995

        Jaime, I think I can speak for every adult in this audience today
    and say that there's not a person here who wouldn't be proud to be your
    parent when you graduate from high school tomorrow. Thank you, and God
    bless you for everything you've done and said. Thank you, Marilyn, for
    being here. Thank you, Director Brown, and thank you, Secretary Riley.
        Ladies and gentlemen, the statement you just heard from this fine
    young woman, about to begin her life after high school, is as clear an
    example as I could ever think of of what I think we ought to be doing as
    a country. You

    [[Page 825]]

    hear all these debates up here in Washington about whether the
    Government should do this, that, or the other thing, whether our
    problems are fundamentally to be addressed by political action, or
    whether all of our problems are just cultural and if people would just
    simply take responsibility for themselves and do the right thing we
    wouldn't have any problems, and therefore we should just ignore any
    spending call--nothing is really worth investing in, let's just make
    everybody do the right thing.
        The truth is, in the real world we need to do both things. Parents
    have to set better examples; they have to teach their children. We need
    to tell young people at the earliest possible age, ``There comes a time
    in life when you cannot blame other people for your own problems, and
    whatever your difficulties are, you have to behave and you have to take
    control of your own lives.'' But it's also true that, in the meanwhile,
    somebody has to pay to protect these children if they need protection to
    be safe in school, and somebody has to make provision to bring people
    into the schools who can do the kinds of things that Jaime talked about,
    who can be the role models, who can talk about how to diffuse conflict,
    who can talk about how to avoid violence, who can talk about the
    imperative of staying off of drugs, which is still, I would remind you,
    at the root of more than half of the problems that we're dealing with in
    this country today.
        So this is one more time a phony, overly politicized debate here.
    It's not either/or; it is both. And we have responsibilities here, those
    of us who work here, to make sure that every single child in America has
    a chance to get out of school safe and educated and be the kind of
    person that was reflected in what Jaime said here today. We have a
    partnership obligation to do that for America.
        That is at the heart of a lot of arguments we're having here in
    Washington. Last night I received Congress's rescission bill. The
    rescission bill cuts spending from this year's budget. I believe we
    ought to do that and make another downpayment on balancing our budget.
    I've done everything I could to cut this deficit. In 1993, unfortunately
    with only Democrats voting for it, we voted for a deficit-reduction
    program and passed it and I signed it, which reduced the deficit over
    the 7-year period now popularly discussed by $1 trillion. I believe in
    cutting the deficit.
        We froze discretionary spending completely, which means every time
    we gave more money to education, we had to cut something else. And we
    did it gladly. We cut waste and duplication and bureaucracy and
    committed to reduce the size of the Federal Government by 270,000
    people. But we increased investment in Head Start. We made college loans
    more available, more affordable. We supported schools with the Goals
    2000 programs, which were not mandates from the Federal Government but
    were programs like the safe and drug-free school program, where we give
    money to local school districts and they decide how you can make the
    school safest, how you can make the schools the most drug-free, just the
    approach the leadership of this new Congress says they favor, let people
    at the local level make more of their decisions. But we thought we ought
    to be partners because not every local school district had the money to
    guarantee safety and the best possible efforts to make children safe, to
    make them learn how to avoid violence and to stay drug-free.
        Now, after all this, I can tell you that the budget today would be
    in balance, today, but for the interest we'll have to pay this year on
    the debt that was run up in the 12 years before I became President. That
    is the problem. We took leave of our collective financial senses about a
    dozen years ago and began to put this country in the ditch. And we've
    got to take it out. But we cannot do it overnight. And we must recognize
    that the only deficit in this country is not the budget deficit, there's
    a deficit in this country in the number of drug-free children. There's a
    deficit in this country in the number of safe schools. There's an
    education deficit in this country. And we dare not ignore those
    problems. We can do both. That's the right way to approach this problem.
        I worked in good faith with Members of the Congress to craft a
    rescission bill that would cut spending by a set amount and do it in the
    right way. I actually agreed with the spending cuts passed by the United
    States Senate with a bipartisan majority, an overwhelming bipartisan
    majority, because it protected programs like the drug-free school
    program, the national service program, the education programs that we're
    working so hard on. Unfortunately, what happened is after the Senate
    passed the bill, they went into a closed-door conference with Members of
    the House who had passed a bill that did cut all these things, and
    instead of cutting

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    more spending, they took out a lot of education investment. They took
    out half the drug-free school money and substituted courthouses,
    highways, and city streets in selected States and congressional
    districts. In other words, they decided to cut school safety to increase
    pork.
        The bill cuts, as Secretary Riley says, half of the safe and drug-
    free schools money this year in anticipation of eliminating it
    altogether next year. Now, I'm sure that all the people that voted to do
    it will tell you, ``We favor these efforts; we just think people ought
    to do the right thing.'' Well, I think people ought to do the right
    thing, too. But if Jaime knows what she's talking about--and the chances
    are she knows a lot more about this than most people who live in
    Washington, DC, and work for the Federal Government in the Congress or
    the executive branch--in order to do that, we need a partnership. We
    need public action and personal responsibility.
        I cannot in good conscience sign a bill that cuts education to save
    pet congressional projects. That is old politics; it is wrong. It wasn't
    a good policy when we were increasing spending on everything. It is a
    terrible policy if you're going to cut education to put pork back in. If
    we're going to cut spending to balance the budget, we must be even more
    careful about how we spend the money we do have. And we have to put
    education and our children and their future first.
        So in just a few moments, I'm going to go over there and veto that
    bill. But I want to say this: I lived and worked here for 2 years with a
    crowd that had the ``just say no'' philosophy, and unfortunately it
    wasn't about drugs: Just say no, and then go out and tell the American
    people nothing is happening, even when it is. And a lot of people in our
    party think, ``Well, that policy benefited them so much at the polls
    last November, why don't we do it? Why don't we just say no now? That
    seems to be what's popular.'' It may be popular in the short run, but it
    is wrong for America.
        I do not want to just say no. I have not said no to this. I agreed
    to the spending cuts passed by the Senate by Republicans and Democrats.
    And so what I'm going to do, when I veto this, is to say yes. I'm going
    to send this bill right back. And this bill says, ``Take out the pork;
    put back the education; send it on over. Let's cut spending and protect
    education and protect safe and drug-free schools.''
        I want to say one other thing, too. In this so-called spending cut
    bill, at the last moment there was also, I think, a very bad
    environmental provision added, which says that no environmental laws
    will apply for the next 3 years to any cutting of so-called salvage
    timber in our forests, and we'll just have the taxpayers pay for
    whatever damage occurs to the environment. Well, ladies and gentlemen,
    we're here on education, but the most pro-environment people in America
    are the children of America. And they know they've got the biggest dog
    in that hunt, as we say back home, because they're going to be around
    here longer and their children will be around here longer. Nobody has
    worked any harder than I have to start logging again in our country's
    forests in an appropriate way. Suspending all the environmental laws of
    the country for 3 years is not the appropriate way.
        So what I want to do is to say to the Congress, ``Look, just put the
    education back in; take the pork out.'' I'm for actually slightly more
    spending cuts than they are--that's their wind blowing, not mine.
    [Laughter] The nice thing is--now you'll all look at the chart.
    [Laughter] You can see I'm actually for slightly bigger spending cuts
    than they are. I just don't think we ought to use this spending bill to
    do something bad to the environment, and I certainly don't think we
    ought to use it to cut out half the safe and drug-free schools money to
    build courthouses and city streets and pet highway projects. That is not
    good judgment. We need a partnership here. This is the right thing we
    should be doing.
        Let me just say one other thing about this cutting spending. I have
    now seen two separate news reports in which the majority in Congress,
    according to some of their members, say that they have decided not to
    pass the line-item veto after all, after campaigning on it for a dozen
    years now. This line-item veto is a tool that would permit the President
    to single out special pork projects, veto them, send them back to
    Congress, and Congress would be able to override the veto. But they
    would have to vote on these projects separately instead of burying them
    in big bills that a President cannot in good conscience veto.
        Now, that line-item veto was part of their Contract With America and
    a part that I embraced. President Reagan was for it. President Bush was
    for it. The House passed it on President Reagan's birthday. They talked
    about what

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    an urgent thing it was. Now they say they don't think they ought to give
    it to me this year because I might use it. [Laughter]
        Well, today I am sending a letter to the Speaker of the House and
    the Senate Majority Leader, asking them once again to send me the line-
    item veto. They have said they were for it for a dozen years. They have
    portrayed it as the salvation of all of our problems. It's not the
    salvation, but it's an important part of it. And they say they're
    worried that I might line-item veto special tax breaks instead of
    special spending increases. It's six of one and half dozen of the other.
    But I'll make them a deal: If they'll send me the line-item veto this
    year, I will not line-item any tax cuts they sign. If they pass all
    these big tax cuts and wreck education and Medicare to cut taxes, I'll
    veto the whole thing. But I've already said that. But I will not--if
    they'll send it to me this year, I won't use it on any tax legislation.
    I will only use it on spending.
        So I ask them again: Send me the bill. Send me the bill. Send me the
    line-item veto, and I will see whether America agrees that what we ought
    to do is to protect education, to protect things designed to enhance our
    security like safe and drug-free schools, to protect the welfare and the
    future of our children, and I will show you once again that there is
    nobody who wants to reduce the deficit and to balance the budget more
    than I do. I just want our incomes to go up and our future to be
    stronger and our kids to be healthier and better educated when we do it.
    Send it back here, let me sign it, and let's get to work and prove we're
    serious.
        I want to say again that the primary purpose of this event is to
    honor all of you who have worked to make the safe and drug-free schools
    program work. I don't think I have had any more moving experiences than
    going into schools in this country over the last several years--and I
    began to do it not only when I was Governor in my own State but in other
    schools--see people succeeding against all the odds because their
    schools are safe and drug-free. I have been into schools in very high
    crime areas, where the children come to school every day and there are
    no weapons in the lockers and there are no drugs in use and children do
    not fight in the schools. I know this can be done.
        I also know that this requires good management, good discipline, but
    also special skills and sometimes extra resources in the poorer school
    districts of our country. And I know that we can't afford to be
    satisfied even with the stories that are here, the wonderful, good
    stories that we honor today. What we want is, next year, to have every
    school do as well as you have done. That's what you want, too, isn't it?
    And that's why we have to support programs like this.
        As I said, we let the school districts decide how to spend the
    money, whether it's on metal detectors and increased security or drug
    education and gang prevention and violence prevention techniques.
        Our children do need a constant drum beat to remind them that drugs
    are wrong, illegal, not safe, will put you in jail, and can cost you
    your life. I know that. I have had this scourge in my own family, and I
    know that no amount of help from anybody else will ever replace people
    taking responsibility for themselves and saying, ``I will not be
    destroyed by my own behavior.'' But I also know that very few people
    make that decision once they're in trouble without a little help and
    support and discipline from people who understand how to deal with this
    problem. And I think you know that, as well.
        I do not believe that our children are inherently violent, although
    violence is going up dramatically among young people even as the crime
    rate drops. And I do believe that there are some cultural reasons for
    it. I think we do get deadened to violence if we're over-exposed to it
    as children, collectively in show after show on television and movie
    after movie. I believe all that. But that's not an excuse to leave
    assault weapons on the street or keep police officers out of the school
    or not do what we can and we must to change that. So it's not either/or;
    it is both.
        I am very pleased with the work that Secretary Riley, that Director
    Brown, that Attorney General Reno have done. We're working hard now to
    try to find a way to comply with the Supreme Court's decision saying
    that the present law making it illegal for anyone to have a gun within a
    thousand feet of a school is not constitutional and to try to find a way
    to make it constitutional so that all of our States will have this
    protection and not just some.
        I also am proud of the fact that we fought last year for a law
    requiring States to expel students for a year if they bring guns to
    school, no excuses, zero tolerance. That's something the Government
    ought to stand for. If we're not

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    for zero tolerance for guns in the schools, what are we for? There
    should be zero tolerance for guns and for drugs in our schools.
        So let me say in closing, perhaps the most meaningful things said
    here today were said by Jaime. I want you all to think about her
    tomorrow when she graduates from high school. Then I want you to think
    about all the kids in this country that are in the grip of drugs and
    gangs and guns and violence. I want you to think about all the teachers
    who wonder every year whether they should continue to teach because they
    are having to deal with these problems and they don't feel that their
    schools are either organized to deal with it, supporting them in dealing
    with it, or bringing in the other people and resources who can deal with
    it. And I want you to ask yourself, is there a courthouse in America, is
    there a city street in America, is there a single solitary special
    highway project in America worth the price, worth the risk that we will
    not have more children like her? The answer is clearly no, no, no, no.
        Now, I would like to ask Jaime Chambron to come up and receive her
    award; Marilyn Green, a wonderful teacher, to come up and receive her
    award; and John Torres, a D.A.R.E. officer who represents people who are
    literally beloved by schoolchildren all over America who changed their
    lives because of their role models, to come up here and receive his
    award.
        Let me again say to all of you, I am profoundly grateful to you. I
    am asking for an end to the word wars and the artificial divisions here.
    You are being honored because you are making a difference in people's
    lives. That's what we got hired to do. And if we could get every
    American on the solution side of the problems, we'd be a lot better off.
    I hope this veto, plus this substitute, will be a good start in bringing
    all of us back to the solution side of the problems, beginning with
    education and safe and drug-free schools.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    [At this point, the President presented the awards.]

        The President. Thank you for being here. Thank you, students, for
    being here. We're adjourned. Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:49 p.m. in the Rose Garden at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Jaime Chambron, Largo High School
    student, Largo, FL.