[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-


[[Page 598]]

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?

[[Page 602]]

    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

[[Page 604]]

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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