[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
[January 25, 1995]
[Pages 86-90]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at Kutztown University in Kutztown, Pennsylvania
January 25, 1995

    The President.  Thank you very much. You all sit down and relax. 
Cold outside, warm in here. I want to thank Dr. David McFarland for that 
introduction and for making me feel so very welcome here at Kutztown. 
I've had a great time already.
    I know that before I came out, your mayor, Mayor Schwoyer, and 
Congressman Holden, who came up from Washington with me today, Secretary 
Reich, and Secretary Riley talked, and I thank them for what they said. 
And I thank, especially, my colleagues Congressman Holden and Secretary 
Reich and Secretary Riley for what they have done for the cause of 
education.
    I am so happy to be here with all of you today. There are a lot of 
reasons I came here. One is, I'm beginning to feel old, and I heard that 
you've got a guy my age on your football team, and I wanted to--where is 
he? Where is Chuck Roseberry? Where is he? Stand up. Where are you? 
[Applause] I know he's here somewhere. Where are you? Yes. That's good. 
You know, it's all I can do every morning to get up and go jog, and I 
resent you. I can't believe it. But I'm impressed.
    I'm also glad to be joined here by your former Congressman, Gus 
Yatron, and your former Senator, Harris Wofford. I thank them both for 
being here along with Catherine Baker Knoll, our State treasurer. Thank 
you, Catherine Baker Knoll, for coming--our State treasurer. I'm glad to 
see you, too. And our neighboring Congressman, Paul McHale, wanted to 
come but he could not. There's a very important vote this

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afternoon in the Congress, and Congressman Holden has already gone back; 
besides, he's heard this speech before. [Laughter]
    I want to say how very proud I am to be here, because this is a time 
of great challenge for our Nation, and I believe that this institution 
represents a big part of the answer to that challenge.
    You know, just a few months ago, I had a brief roundtable with a lot 
of your community leaders, business people, teachers, and students, who 
are associated with the efforts of this fine institution to help solve 
the problems of this area, to get an education to people, to help the 
businesses grow, to help start new businesses.
    I wanted to come here because I was very, very impressed with your 
entrepreneurial development and global education center, the work you've 
done for small businesses, the work you've done for minority businesses, 
the work you've done to try to bring together people of all ages and all 
backgrounds who want to get an education and who want to serve and who 
want to help. And I'd like to ask all these folks who just met with me 
to stand up, because I learned a lot from them, and I'm grateful for 
what they did. Would you all stand up, please? Thank you very much. 
[Applause]
    There's one other group of people I'd like to acknowledge who are 
here who represent a lot of what I talked about last night, who are 
young people trying to serve our country at the grassroots level by 
helping people solve their problems. They are the members of the 
Pennsylvania Service Corps, part of AmeriCorps. [Applause] They're 
working to help people build housing, to reduce neighborhood violence, 
to clean up the local environment, to help people with AIDS. Busloads of 
them are here, and you just heard from them. [Laughter] I thank them for 
their enthusiasm, their devotion to their country, and for symbolizing 
what I think all of us have to do more of: learn and gain by serving and 
giving.
    You know, this is a beautiful rural area. I understand I am the 
first President since 1948 to come to this county, and the first person 
ever to visit this community as President. And I am delighted to be 
here.
    Pennsylvania as a whole and this area have been through dramatic and 
sweeping economic changes in the last several years. The economic 
opportunity that made Pennsylvania one of the great manufacturing States 
of America and one of the great economic powers of the entire post-cold-
war world have changed; those forces have changed dramatically. And as 
those of you who are younger enter your adult years and look forward to 
the future, you know that we have moved from an industrial age to an 
information age; you will hear it everywhere.
    What you may not hear is that it does not mean that manufacturing 
will be less important. Quite the contrary, if we do it right, it means 
that America will continue to be the leading manufacturing country in 
the world. But more and more and more, manufacturing will require more 
knowledge, higher skills, a better education, fewer people producing 
more things, which means that education will be important, and it will 
also be important for us to continually be able to start more and more 
new businesses.
    Big enterprises are like the Federal Government: We're downsizing. 
We're making the Federal bureaucracy smaller so we can give the money 
back to you to educate people, to provide tax relief, to bring the 
deficit down, to fight crime. That's what we're doing. That is very, 
very important. It matters to your future that Federal debt is now 
$10,000 a family less than it would have been if our deficit reduction 
plan had not passed. It matters that the economic programs have helped 
to contribute to this enormous rise in productivity in America. And we 
have over 6 million new jobs in our country now in the last 2 years, 
with low inflation and with every prospect of continuing our growth.
    But what's going to enable us to solve our problems over the long 
run is the ability and strength of the American people to solve their 
problems at the local level, to make the most of their own lives, and to 
work together in communities. I said last night in my speech, and I will 
say again today, that I believe what our country needs is a New Covenant 
based on an old idea, the idea that, with opportunity must come 
responsibility. They have to go hand in hand. If you don't have both, 
you can't solve the problems of America.
    If you tell people to be responsible all the time and they never get 
any benefit out of it, pretty soon they get tired and quit. But if 
people just always say, I want my rights, and we don't think about what 
responsible conduct is for ourselves and our friends and neighbors, then 
pretty soon our society comes apart. We have to have both. And we have 
to base our efforts in com-


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munity after community after community where people can sit down, the 
way these people did with me today, and talk to each other and work with 
each other to develop the God-given potential of all of our people.
    In the world we are moving into, the success of the United States as 
a whole will be more dependent than ever before on the success of every 
community to educate and develop the capacities of every person who 
lives in the community, everywhere and everyplace. We don't have a 
person or a community we can walk away from and turn our backs on.
    That's why, even though we've been cutting Government spending--and 
last year for the first time in 25 years, we cut both defense and 
domestic spending, except for Medicare and the health programs of the 
Government and Social Security, of course--we cut domestic and defense 
spending for the first time in 25 years to deal with the deficit.
    But we did not cut education. We expanded Head Start. We expanded 
our efforts to help our public schools achieve educational excellence. 
We set up a program to try to support networks like the ones I saw 
today, for businesses to work with schools to help young people who 
don't go to 4-year colleges at least get some education and training 
after high school, so they can get better jobs and have higher incomes. 
We reformed the college loan program so that student loans now are less 
costly to middle class students, have better repayment terms, and they 
actually cost the Government less in terms of tax dollars. It is a good 
program.
    And with all of that, let me remind you of what the fundamental 
facts are in this economy and why these efforts are so important. Even 
though we had 6 million new jobs in the economy in the last 2 years, 
even though we had more high-wage jobs coming back into our economy in 
1994 than in the last 5 years combined, most Americans are working a 
longer work week than they were working 15 years ago for about the same 
income once you make adjustments for inflation.
    Most of our people have found that this new exciting global economy, 
which moves with lightning speed and opens up vast opportunities for 
people who can take advantage of it, has left them working harder for 
less, with less security. All these changes are great if you can always 
get a new job, but if you're the one losing the job, the change doesn't 
look very good.
    So what our job is, is to make more success stories, like the 
programs I see here. It is to empower more schools to do what this one 
did, to drop their categories and open their walls and reach out to all 
kinds of people, and make education a community enterprise and a 
lifetime enterprise. That is what we must do.
    And that is why I say to the American people and to the Congress, we 
have gotten the deficit down, and we have gotten the economy going, and 
there are more cuts we can make in Government spending, and we can 
afford to provide some more tax relief to hard-working Americans, but we 
should do it with a focus on education so that we can raise people's 
incomes who have worked harder for less in the short run with the tax 
relief, but in the long run with better education, which is the only way 
to raise people's incomes over the long run.
    You think about the things that this country's done in our past that 
really did something for the economy. I think you can make a compelling 
case that, at the end of World War II, the passage of the GI bill did 
more to explode the American economy than any other single action, 
because it made it possible for our returning servicemen to go back to 
school and to get an education. And that money has repaid itself many 
times over.
    So I have said that that's the kind of thing we ought to focus on 
now. The middle class bill of rights that I proposed last night to the 
American people and to Congress--and as I said, it might better be 
called a middle class bill of rights and responsibilities because you, 
by definition, have to be responsible to take the benefits of it--
focuses heavily on education in three ways, and I want to emphasize 
them.
    First of all, I think you ought to be able to deduct the cost of 
education after high school from your taxes. You think about it: If you 
own a home, you can deduct interest from your taxes. And in the early 
years of a home mortgage, it's almost all interest. Why do we do that? 
Because we want people to be able to own their homes. If you run a 
business and you invest in new equipment, you can deduct the cost from 
your taxes. Why do we do that? Because we want our businesses to 
modernize. You know, the stories I heard over here before I came out 
were, the cost of equipment is going up dramatically, but now we can 
produce more with fewer people. We've got to support that.

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    But if our people today can't get an education--not everybody needs 
a 4-year college degree--but if they can't get an education, if the 
systems aren't there for that education, they may not get to the 
homeowning. They may not have the American dream that we want. So I say, 
if education is the most important thing for personal success in the 
21st century, we ought to permit people to deduct the cost of it from 
their taxes: Raise your income in the short run; raise your income in 
the long run.
    Audience member. That's right, Bill!
    The President. That's right. You know, we flew that person up here 
from Washington, and I was beginning to think they weren't going to say 
anything. [Laughter]
    The second thing I want to say is, we want to broaden the number of 
Americans who can invest tax-free in an IRA, an individual retirement 
account, but we want to let people withdraw from the IRA, tax-free, to 
pay for education expenses, so that you can take better care of 
yourself.
    The last education component is, we want to take about 70 different 
programs the Federal Government runs in training, which require enormous 
administrative costs, collapse them and give the money to the American 
people who are eligible for them. So if a person loses a job and is on 
unemployment, or if a person is in a lower wage job so they're eligible 
for Federal training help, instead of having to figure out which of 70 
programs you qualify for, you just get a voucher of $2,600 a year--up to 
that--for 2 years, and you take it to this school or take it to a local 
community college or take it wherever you choose if you're eligible to 
get it. It's a kind of a ``GI bill'' for American workers. It will make 
a huge difference. And it's the kind of thing Government ought to be 
doing: less bureaucracy, more direct help to people to get the education 
and training they need to grow and to learn.
    I want all of you to help me do this for you. We are trying to 
change the focus of the National Government to the grassroots of 
America. There are a lot of other things that I will be talking about 
over the next few weeks that are part of this New Covenant, welfare 
reform, what we're going to do in crime to lower the crime rate and 
implement the crime bill, what we're going to do to try to grow the 
economy, and other ways. But nothing, nothing can make a bigger 
difference than trying to get more education to more people in more 
ways. So I hope that you will do two things: first, I hope you will say, 
with your voices, without regard to your party, ``Cut the deficit. Cut 
spending. Reduce the size of the Federal bureaucracy. Keep on doing what 
you're doing, but do not cut education. Increase investment and 
education so we can grow this economy and grow America.'' And I hope you 
will support the middle class bill of rights, and I hope you will 
support the AmeriCorps program in Pennsylvania, and I hope you will 
support the programs at this school to develop entrepreneurs because 
they're all grassroots community-building programs that develop the 
ability of people to fulfill their own dreams and bring us together 
across the lines that divide us.
    You know, I don't have an--literally, I don't have a clue about 
which of the people I was sitting and talking with this morning were 
Democrats, which were Republicans, who was an independent. I don't have 
any idea who they voted for in the last election. I probably should have 
checked. [Laughter] I mean, I don't. Why? Why? Because they are 
organized around developing the potential of the people here. They have 
built a community of interest where everybody wins by helping everybody 
else. Now, that's what makes America go. That's what makes America grow. 
I see it when I visited these community services programs.
    I see it, as I said last night in my speech, when I go out after a 
disaster. I mean, it's a terrible thing to say, but if you go to one of 
these places where they're putting sandbags on a levee against a flood 
or where they're trying to help people deal with the aftermath of the 
fires, as I saw in California, the earthquakes, people have their 
shoulders back and their heads held high, and their eyes are clear, and 
their voices are strong. Why? Because they know they matter. And when 
Americans get in trouble, you know, we would take the shirt off our back 
for people. And we fight, and we work in these things, because we know 
we matter, because we're doing something that makes us feel better and 
stronger and we're helping other people as well. We have to return that 
spirit to our country every day, in every way, in all of our activities. 
That is what this is all about, and we can do that.
    So what I want to say to you is, we've got a lot of economic 
challenges, and we've got some profound social problems. But we can deal

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with them, we can solve them, we can move on them. I see it--I have seen 
all over this country. I am telling you, there is not a problem this 
country has that is not being addressed in a way that all of you will be 
proud of by somebody, somewhere. What we have to do is to figure out a 
way to galvanize and organize and energize all of that work so that it 
spreads across our whole country.
    The New Covenant is a way of thinking about that. Responsibility in 
return for opportunity, building this country at the community level, 
that's what I'm committed to doing. My role in that will be in this 
coming Congress to try to pass the middle class bill of rights, to try 
to emphasize education, to try to keep downsizing the Federal Government 
and controlling the deficit and cutting unnecessary spending, but 
building up those things which will enable people to make the most of 
their own lives. That is my job.
    Your job is to support institutions like this to get all the 
education you can to break down the walls between business and 
government and education at the grassroots level and to try to help me 
pass this. Would you do that? I need you. I hope you will, and I want 
your support for it. [Applause]
    Folks, the best days of this country are still before us. This is 
the most exciting era we have ever known. You are going to see 
opportunities in the next 20 years for people to make a living in 
exciting and interesting ways that we could not have imagined 20 years 
ago. But our job is to make sure that, as President Kennedy said, ``the 
rising tide lifts all boats.'' We can't have an America where 20 or even 
40 percent of us are the only ones that really do well in this global 
economy, and it need not be that way.
    But if we want our best days to lie ahead, we have got to--we have 
got to say we are going to get an education for all of our people. It's 
going to be a lifetime project. Our educational institutions are going 
to become the center of our communities. We're going to tear down the 
walls that divide us. We're going to make education available to 
everybody, and we're going to use the power of Government not to expand 
or create a new bureaucracy but to empower people at the grassroots 
level to chart their own future and to make their own lives in this new 
and exciting age.
    That is our mission. If we do it, our best days are ahead. I want 
that more than anything for you, for our children, and our grandchildren 
and our country. And I can tell you, the world still needs that. There 
are a lot of things out there in the rest of the world that are still a 
threat to decency and humanity and progress. You saw this terrible 
terrorist attack in the Middle East the last couple of days. The world 
needs a strong America, and Americans deserve it. And we're going to get 
it with your help.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:36 p.m. in the fieldhouse. In his 
remarks, he referred to David McFarland, president of the university, 
and Mayor James Schwoyer of Kutztown.