    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [March 11, 1995]
    [Pages 330-332]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    The President's Radio Address
    March 11, 1995

        Good morning. I ran for President to keep the American dream alive
    for the forgotten middle class and for all of those struggling to make
    it in our country, to make sure all Americans have the chance to live up
    to their God-given potential. Today in Washington, there's a great
    debate about how best to do that, and the choices we make will say a lot
    about who we are as a nation as we enter the new century.
        On one side, there's the old one-size-fits-all Washington view that
    big Government can fix every problem. On the other, there's the
    Republican contract view that the Federal Government is the cause of
    every problem. Well, I have a different view. I believe the purpose of
    Government is to expand opportunity, not bureaucracy, to empower people
    through education to make the most of their own lives, and to en-

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    hance our security on our streets and around the world. I believe in a
    Government that is limited but effective, lean but not mean, not a
    savior but not on the sidelines, a partner in the fight for the future.
    I believe in a Government that promotes opportunity but demands
    responsibility and that understands that we need all Americans in strong
    grassroots communities. That's what the New Covenant is all about,
    opportunity and responsibility.
        Let me give you two examples. First, with regard to welfare reform,
    I believe we should offer more opportunity in terms of education and
    work to people on welfare, but we must demand more responsibility,
    tougher child support enforcement, responsible parenting, and the
    requirement that to receive benefits, young people should be in school
    or working toward going to work.
        Or take the college loan program. Our administration believes more
    people should go to college, so we've offered more opportunity to
    millions of young people, more affordable college loans with much better
    repayment terms. But we've insisted on more responsibility. The cost to
    you, the taxpayers, of delinquent college loans has gone down from $2.8
    billion a year to $1 billion a year since I took office, opportunity and
    responsibility.
        Look at the economy. When I took office, we had no economic strategy
    for putting people first. Instead, we'd had 12 years in which trickle-
    down economics had quadrupled the deficit and investments in our people
    had been ignored. There was less opportunity and less responsibility.
    Today, we're reducing the deficit by over $600 billion. The Federal work
    force is down by over 150,000 and will soon be the smallest since John
    Kennedy was President. We cut 300 programs in our first two budgets, and
    this year, we want to eliminate or combine 400 more. But while we've
    cut, we're also helping people to invest in their future: more for Head
    Start, to apprenticeships, to college loans, to training for adults. The
    results are clear: This strategy is working.
        We have the lowest combined rate of unemployment and inflation in 25
    years. Since I became President, we have 6.1 million more jobs. Now,
    there's more to do. More people want work, and too many people haven't
    gotten a raise and are living with economic uncertainty. We've got to
    keep cutting unnecessary spending and investing in growing our economy.
        The old view resisted change, but the Republican contract view often
    goes too far. Let me give you another example. We want to save money and
    to change the Agriculture Department, and so do the Republicans. The old
    view just left the Agriculture Department alone, though agriculture has
    changed greatly. My approach was to close 1,200 offices and to shrink
    the bureaucracy. But the Republicans want to cut the School Lunch
    Program that's helped our children thrive for 50 years.
        You'll see this debate played out in many areas. One involves
    AmeriCorps, our national service program. AmeriCorps is about
    opportunity and responsibility. You get a helping hand for your own
    education if you give one to your country. Our young AmeriCorps
    volunteers are partners with our communities, with nurses, pastors,
    police officers, doing work that won't get done any other way. They're
    walking police beats in Brooklyn, building homes in Georgia, fighting
    fires in Idaho.
        Jamie Kendrick is one of these young people. He's here with me,
    along with some other AmeriCorps volunteers today. He works with
    disadvantaged children in Baltimore. And as he does, he's helping them
    to help others. Every week, he leads more than 90 troubled kids into a
    nursing home to visit older people. The seniors get companionship and a
    chance to share their wisdom. The children, many of whom come from
    broken homes, now know older people who care about them. And Jamie knows
    he's serving others as he earns tuition for college. This is a good deal
    for Jamie, for the seniors, for the young people, and for us, too. We
    get better citizens, stronger communities, and more education.
        I want to keep AmeriCorps growing. Right now, Republicans in the
    House of Representatives are proposing to cut off opportunities in
    AmeriCorps for 15,000 people like Jamie. Then they want to end
    AmeriCorps altogether. But AmeriCorps isn't a bureaucracy, it's a
    grassroots partnership to build strong communities through opportunity
    and responsibility.
        The House Republicans want to cut all this and more, including the
    safe and drug-free schools program, the summer jobs program, to pay for
    huge tax cuts costing $700 billion over 10 years and benefiting mostly
    upper income Americans. AmeriCorps, the School Lunch Program, the safe
    and drug-free schools programs, all together, they cost a tiny fraction
    of that.

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        Now, I believe we must keep cutting spending, and we should give
    middle class Americans tax relief to help pay for their education, their
    childrearing, their health care costs. But this proposal goes too far.
    The path to the future is through opportunity and responsibility.
        Before I close, I want to emphasize that in spite of these
    differences, I think we can make real progress now. We don't have to
    give in to gridlock. I've already signed a bill to apply to Congress the
    laws it applies to private business, and we're about to complete a bill
    to limit the ability of Congress to pass mandates on the State and local
    government without paying for them.
        There's more we can do to cut pork, not people, in the Federal
    budget. We're about to begin debate in the Senate on the line-item veto,
    an issue on which the Republican leaders and I strongly agree. We need
    to pass it and keep cutting unnecessary spending.
        This can be a very good time for our country if we all remember our
    mission: to make life easier, not harder for middle income families; to
    grow the middle class and shrink the under class; to make the future
    brighter, not darker, for our young people; to promote opportunity and
    responsibility.
        We must keep faith with the American dream. The Jamie Kendricks of
    our country will do right by all of us if we will do right by them.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:06 a.m. from the Oval Office at the
    White House.