    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 25, 1995]
    [Pages 593-597]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Students at Iowa State University in Ames
    April 25, 1995

        Thank you so much. Thank you, Mr. Vice President, for your stirring
    speech. He tells all those jokes, and then he goes about disproving them
    with his speech. [Laughter] Thank you for your service to America. When
    the history of our administration is written, there may be differing
    opinions about the quality of the decisions that I have made, but no one
    will doubt that the right thing was done in naming Albert Gore Vice
    President and then providing him the opportunity to be the most
    influential Vice President in American history.
        I also want to thank my friend Tom Harkin for being here with me and
    for what he said and for his heroic efforts in the United States Senate
    on behalf of the people of Iowa and the people of this country. Whether
    they are farmers or people in rural areas, students, or the disabled, he
    is always there. I'd also like to say that I know Tom lived here for a
    while with his wonderful wife, Ruth, who was once the county attorney
    here in this county. She is now the head of the Overseas Private
    Investment Corporation. And she has done more to create American jobs by
    financing international trade than any person who ever held her
    position. And you can be proud of her as well.
        I want to thank Mayor Curtis for welcoming me here to Ames. I was
    looking forward to meeting Mayor Curtis, but to be fair, I'm such a big
    basketball fan, I was hoping to meet the other ``Mayor'' here as well.
    If I could shoot like that, I'd still be in the NBA; I wouldn't be up
    here today. [Laughter] And thank you, President Jischke and all of you
    at Iowa State, for making us feel so welcome. I thank the band for
    playing. And I'm glad they provided seats for you to see the event. When
    I used to play at things like this, they never gave us a seat, so I'm
    glad to see your smiling faces. And thank you, singers, for singing and
    for looking so wonderful up there.
        Ladies and gentlemen, we had a wonderful rural meeting today, and I
    want to talk a little bit about that. But before I do, I want to thank
    all of you who have come up to me already today and expressed your
    sympathy with and support for the people in Oklahoma City. There was a
    sign over there--show me that sign you all waved. I want everyone to see
    that. It says, ``Oklahoma City, Iowa Cares.''
        You may know that this is national service week in the United
    States, and today is our first annual National Day of Service. That's
    why I'm so glad to see all the young AmeriCorps members here doing their
    work.
        I know that all of you are thinking about how we can serve and help
    the people of Oklahoma City as they work through the next stages of
    their tragedy. I can tell you that when Hillary and I were there on
    Sunday, we saw people who had not slept, who were working heroically,
    some at considerable risk to themselves, to try to clean out the last
    measure of the wreckage and to try to find those who are still
    unaccounted for, working in the hospitals, working on the streets. The
    police and firemen--many of them had not seen their families for days.
        The response of our country to this bombing shows what a strong
    country we are when we pull together. I saw it when you had the 500-year
    flood here and I thought all the topsoil was going to be somewhere in
    the Gulf of Mexico before it got through raining. But I really saw it
    down there in the face of this terrible madness that those fine people
    have endured.
        We must take away from this experience a lot of things. But we must
    never forget that it was a terrible thing. I will do all I can to make
    sure that we see the wheels of justice grind rapidly, certainly, fairly,
    but severely. But we must take away from this incident a renewed
    determination to stand up for the fundamental constitutional rights of
    Americans, including the right to freedom of speech. We have to remember
    that freedom of speech has endured in our country for over two
    centuries. The first amendment, with its freedom of speech and freedom

    [[Page 594]]

    of assembly and freedom of religion, is in many ways the most important
    part of what makes us Americans. But we have endured because we have
    exercised that freedom with responsibility and discipline.
        That is what we celebrate when people come to the rural heart of
    America and talk about what can be done to develop it. And every speaker
    says, what a shame it would be if we continue to allow economic decline
    in rural America, where the values of work and family and community and
    mutual responsibility are alive and well.
        I ask you on this National Day of Service to think of a personal
    service you can all render. Yes, stand up for freedom of speech. Yes,
    stand up for all of our freedoms, the freedom of assembly, the freedom
    to bear arms, all the freedoms we have. But remember this: With
    freedom--if the country is to survive and do well--comes responsibility.
    And that means even as others discharge their freedom of speech, if we
    think they are being irresponsible, then we have the duty to stand up
    and say so to protect our own freedom of speech. That is our
    responsibility.
        Words have consequences. To pretend that they do not is idle. Did
    Patrick Henry stand up and say, ``Give me liberty or give me death,''
    expecting it to fall on deaf ears and impact no one? Did Thomas
    Jefferson write, ``We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
    are created equal,  .  .  .  endowed by their Creator with certain
    unalienable rights,  .  .  .  among these are life, liberty, and the
    pursuit of happiness,'' did he say that thinking the words would vanish
    in thin air and have no consequences? Of course not. Are you here in
    this great university because you think the words you stay up late at
    night reading, studying, have no consequence? Of course not.
        We know that words have consequences. And so I say to you, even as
    we defend the right of people to speak freely and to say things with
    which we devoutly disagree, we must stand up and speak against reckless
    speech that can push fragile people over the edge, beyond the boundaries
    of civilized conduct, to take this country into a dark place.
        I say that, no matter where it comes from, people are encouraging
    violence and lawlessness and hatred. If people are encouraging conduct
    that will undermine the fabric of this country, it should be spoken
    against whether it comes from the left or the right, whether it comes on
    radio, television, or in the movies, whether it comes in the schoolyard
    or, yes, even on the college campus. The answer to hateful speech is to
    speak out against it in the American spirit, to speak up for freedom and
    responsibility.
        That is so important to me, especially for all of you young people.
    I was so pleased to see at the National Rural Conference today so many
    young people, people who want to make their lives in rural America,
    people who want to believe that we can make economic opportunity come
    alive in rural America, that people can actually work and raise their
    families and children there and make a living and be good, fulfilled
    citizens there.
        I was encouraged by that. After all, most of us in this country who
    make the speeches and make the decisions have lived most of our lives.
    We have already lived the American dream. We are here in positions--your
    university president, your Senator, the Vice President, and I--we're
    here because of what America has already given us. If they took it all
    away from us tomorrow, we would have had more than 99.999 percent of the
    people who ever lived in all of human history. It is for those of you
    who still have your lives before you that we must most urgently work to
    keep the American dream alive.
        When I assumed this office, I told the American people that I
    thought we had two great responsibilities standing on the verge of a new
    century. One was to keep the American dream alive for all of our people,
    that if you work hard and play by the rules you should have a chance to
    live up to the fullest of your God-given capacities. And the second was
    to make sure that our country remained the world's strongest force for
    peace and freedom and democracy, so that we could operate in a world
    where people competed based on what was in their minds and their spirit
    and what they did with their hands and not what they did with their
    weapons. And we have pursued those courses with a vengeance.
        If you look at where we are now after 2 years in terms of our
    objectives, to restore economic growth, to grow the middle class and
    shrink the under class, to help to rebuild the bonds of society by
    strengthening work and family and the sense of security the American
    people have, to give us a Government that costs less but works better,
    and to help people do more to help themselves, it is clear that much

    [[Page 595]]

    has been done but much, much more is still there to do.
        The deficit is down. Trade has been expanded. We have the lowest
    unemployment and inflation rates combined in 25 years. We are moving
    ahead in so many ways to make our people more secure, more police on our
    street in rural areas and in cities and no Russian missiles pointed at
    the people of the United States for the first time since the dawn of the
    nuclear age.
        But make no mistake about it, my fellow Americans, this is an
    unusual time, different from past times. The global economy, the
    revolution in technology, the changing patterns of work, all of these
    things, all of these things have created a situation in which we are
    able to create large numbers of jobs in the United States--in Iowa the
    unemployment rate the last time I checked was 3.3 percent--large numbers
    of jobs where people do not have an increase in their income or increase
    in their sense of job security.
        So you have this unusual circumstance today with the economy
    growing, the deficit going down, all the indicators seeming to point us
    in the right direction, and more than half of the adults in America are
    working harder for the same or lower wages they were making 10 years
    ago.
        That is the challenge to America today. It is a challenge faced by
    every advanced country faced with foreign competition, faced with
    technology, faced with all the changes you know well about. But it is a
    special challenge in America because there is more inequality here than
    in most other wealthy countries, and yet, we are the country that values
    the American dream. Whoever you are, wherever you're from, if you work
    hard and do your best to develop your ability, you will be rewarded. And
    so I say to you: That is our challenge, to reward people who make the
    effort you are making by being here today in this great university and
    all others in America who are willing to work.
        So I ask you to think of just this point--there are so many issues
    to discuss and we talked about a lot of them today--but here I ask you
    to think of only this: What is the role of education? The middle class
    in America, my fellow Americans, is splitting apart today, something we
    have not known since the end of the Second World War, where inequality
    is increasing among Americans with jobs. It is splitting apart, and the
    fault line is education. Why? Because in a global economy, where new
    technologies are always changing the nature of work, what we can earn
    depends on what we can learn. More than ever before, the prospects of
    people all across our country are determined by whether they have enough
    education to learn and learn and learn and whether there is available to
    them a system to keep learning for a lifetime.
        Therefore, I say to you, as you hear the debates that are about to
    resume in the Congress about the Government deficit--yes, we have a
    deficit; it's a lot smaller than it was when we showed up 2 years ago,
    and it's going down some more, but it's still there. But the budget
    deficit is not the only deficit we have. We also have an education
    deficit, and you have millions and millions and millions of Americans
    who go home every night and sit down across the table and look at their
    wives or their husbands and their children and wonder whether they have
    failed, because as hard as they work, they cannot make it in the modern
    economy. And I tell you, the only way to turn that around is to
    revolutionize the availability and the quality of education to all of
    our people, without regard to their race, their income, their region, or
    their age. This should lead us to a clear conclusion: With a budget
    deficit and an education deficit, we cannot solve one at the expense of
    the other without hurting our country for a long time to come. We cannot
    back off of our commitment to education.
        There are proposals in the Congress today to require students to
    begin paying interest on their student loans while they're still in
    school. That will increase the cost of education, reduce the number of
    people who would take student loans. Over the long run, it would reduce
    the number of people successfully completing their education. We ought
    to be cutting the cost of education to our young people, not increasing
    it, to get more people in and through college.
        There are proposals to limit, and some even want to outright
    eliminate, the national service program. They say, ``Oh, well, it's not
    necessary.'' Look at what is going on in rural Iowa. Look at what these
    young people are doing. Yes, they're earning money for a college
    education, but they're also doing things all across America to immunize
    children, to build housing for the elderly, to walk streets and keep
    them safer for all of our people, hundreds and hun-

    [[Page 596]]

    dreds and hundreds of things to build community in America. We should
    not eliminate it; we should have more young people getting their
    education through the national service program.
        So our program is very different. We say, yes, reduce the deficit,
    but increase Head Start. Give our public schools more funds to meet
    national standards of excellence, to have computers in every rural
    school, to do the things that are necessary to open up educational
    opportunities to all of our children. We say, invest the small amount of
    money it would take to enable every State in the country to have
    apprenticeship programs to help the young people who don't go to college
    but do want to get some education and training after high school so they
    could be in good jobs, not dead-end jobs. We say, make available to
    every university and college in America the direct student loan program
    which is now available here at Iowa State, which cuts the cost of
    lending to the students, which cuts the bureaucratic hassle to the
    colleges and to the students, and which saves the taxpayers money.
        If the Congress wants to know how to reduce the deficit and increase
    education, the answer is, don't give in to the special interest lobby
    seeking to limit the availability of direct loans. Let every school in
    the country have the option to do what we've done here. Let these young
    people get lower cost loans with better repayment terms direct from the
    Government. Cut out the middleman. You will reduce the deficit, increase
    the number of college loans, increase the number of students, and move
    this country into the future. That is the right answer for this problem.
        And finally, let me say, with all this talk of tax cuts, remember we
    have two deficits. There should be no tax cut if it's going to increase
    the deficit. No tax cut should be adopted except in the context of
    reducing the deficit. It should be modest. It should be targeted to
    middle class people who need it. And I believe it should be targeted to
    education--a deduction for the cost of education after high school to
    Americans all across this country. That is the right kind of tax cut.
        One of your distinguished alumni, George Washington Carver, said it
    best when he said, ``Education is the key to unlock the golden door of
    freedom.'' Well, when he said it, he was thinking of personal freedom,
    personal opportunity, individual opportunity. But those of us who are
    here, your president, your Senator, the Vice President, and I, we
    benefited from a new insight about education because we were raised in
    the aftermath of World War II. We were raised by a generation of people
    who in return for their service in the war were given the benefits of
    the GI bill. And guess what? It didn't just give individual opportunity
    and personal freedom to all those people, it exploded the possibilities
    of America. And we grew up in the most prosperous country the world had
    ever known because of millions and millions and millions of people
    getting individual opportunity.
        Now, I can tell you with absolute certainty, even in the face of all
    the difficulties and complexities of the modern world, that education is
    more important to the future of all of us as Americans today than it was
    to America at the end of the Second World War when the GI bill was
    adopted.
        So yes, let us continue to fight to tame the beast of the Government
    deficit. You should know the budget would be balanced today were it not
    for the interest we have to pay on the debt run up between 1981 and
    1992. But we have to do better. We have to do better.
        But as we do it, let us do it in a way that increases our commitment
    to and our investment in education, because that is the selfish thing to
    do as well as the selfless thing to do. Believe me, folks, if I could
    wave a magic wand and do two things to ensure the future of America so
    that I would know it wouldn't matter who was elected to any office, it
    would be these things: I would give every child a childhood in a stable
    family and guarantee every American a good education. That should be our
    mission. There would be no poverty, great hope, and an unlimited future
    if that could be done.
        Lastly, let me say this: In Washington, the rhetoric often becomes
    too political and extremely partisan. What we heard today at this rural
    conference, we heard from Republicans and Democrats and independents. We
    heard people talking about the real problems of real people: How can a
    family make a living on the farm? What should be in the new farm bill to
    allow people to have other kinds of economic development in rural areas?
    How can we relieve the stress on families where, between the mother and
    father together, they may have three or four jobs and not enough time to
    be with the children? How can we guarantee the benefits of technology,
    access to health care, trans-

    [[Page 597]]

    portation for the elderly, decent middle class housing in rural areas?
        And these things were discussed in practical, commonsense, old-
    fashioned American language so that at the end of the day, no one knew,
    having heard it all, what they heard from a Republican, what they heard
    from a Democrat, who these people voted for in the last election. Why?
    Because they were talking about the real stuff of life, not words used
    to divide people.
        So I ask you to remember this: We'll always have our fair share of
    politics in the Nation's Capital, and the further away you get from the
    real lives of real people, the more partisan the rhetoric tends to
    become. But you, you in this great university and in this community, can
    have a huge influence in saying, ``Put one thing beyond politics. Do not
    sacrifice the future of our education on the altar of indiscriminate
    budget cutting. Reduce the deficit in the budget. Reduce the deficit in
    education. Give the next generation of Americans the American dream.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 4:10 p.m. at the Hilton Coliseum. In his
    remarks, he referred to Mayor Larry R. Curtis of Ames, IA, and Fred (The
    Mayor) Hoiberg, Iowa State University basketball player.