    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 6, 1995]
    [Pages 1057-1062]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Education Association
    July 6, 1995

        I want to thank you for your kind introduction and even more for
    your many years of distinguished leadership for our children, our
    schools, our parents, and of course, for our teachers. And to all of you
    delegates, I want to thank you for the support you have given to our
    administration to help us to get here and to help us honor our
    commitments to the children, the teachers, and the future of America.
        I also want to thank you for the high honor you paid my good friend
    Secretary Riley by naming him your 1995 Friend of Education. I don't
    have to tell you that education has no better friend than Secretary
    Riley. I'm proud to have him in my Cabinet, and I'm proud to have worked
    with him for nearly 20 years now. He's actually doing what others say we
    ought to be doing. He's supporting more parental involvement. He's
    supporting higher standards and results-oriented programs. He's
    supporting accountability, but he's also supporting grassroots
    empowerment for teachers, for parents, and for local schools throughout
    this country. He is really making a difference, and he deserves the
    support of all Americans and all Members of Congress, without regard for
    their party.
        You know, of course, that the Vice President very much wanted to be
    with you today. But of course, his mother fell ill and had to have
    surgery yesterday. I'm happy to report to you that as of this morning
    Mrs. Gore is doing much better. She is a remarkable woman. Many years
    ago she was the first woman lawyer in Texarkana, Arkansas, so I've
    always thought we've sort of had a claim on her, too. I know all of you
    join Hillary and me in praying for Mrs. Gore and her speedy recovery,
    and for her husband, Senator Gore, and for Al and Tipper and their
    entire family.
        I'd like to begin this morning by just taking a few minutes to talk
    about what I said when I spoke at Georgetown University a couple of
    hours ago. It's something I believe I should be talking about more as
    President.
        When I ran for this office, I said I wanted to do two things: first
    of all, to restore the American dream and, secondly, to bring the
    American people together again. What I've learned from the journey we've
    been on for the last 2\1/2\ years is that we cannot restore the American
    dream unless we do bring the American people together again.
        You and I and all Americans must talk about how we treat one
    another, how we reach the hard decisions we have to make during this
    time of profound change, how we bridge these great divides in our
    society. We have got to find a way to reach common ground, a new common
    ground that honors our diversity but recognizes our shared values and
    shared interests, drawing strength from both to make the very best of
    what we can do in America. We have to recognize that there are real
    reasons why Americans feel that our sense of unity and national purpose
    is coming apart, why they often feel frustration and anger and
    confusion.
        The challenges of this day are new and profound, as profound as any
    we have faced in many, many decades. For most people my age and a little
    younger, two great certainties organized our lives. They've organized
    the lives of Americans for most of the last half-century: first, the
    hope of middle class dreams and, second, the strength of middle class
    values.
        Today, more and more Americans are less certain of both. The middle
    class dream that work will be rewarded and that the future for our
    children will be better is fading for too many people. More than half of
    all of our people are working harder to earn less than they did 15 or 20
    years ago. And middle class values, the values of hard work, strong
    families, safe

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    streets, secure future, those things are under attack, too, as we face
    threats from violence, the breakdown of families, the fraying of our
    social fabric, the very pace and scope of changes in this technological
    information age, where ideas and money and information move across the
    globe in a fraction of a second.
        The question, of course, is what are we going to do about this.
    That's what I've been working on for 2 years, and that's the fundamental
    debate now going on in Washington. And we need to have that debate not
    just here in Washington but all over the country.
        We're really back to some pretty elemental principles. Some people
    argue that our real problems are all social and personal and cultural
    problems. So they say if everybody would just get up, go to work, behave
    themselves, obey the law, all of our problems would be solved. Now, on
    one level they're obviously right. Our problems can never be solved
    through purely political and community means. I've said all along, we've
    got to demand more responsibility from America, from all Americans.
    Unless people are willing to take responsibility for themselves, as
    every teacher knows, you can't cram information, learning, reasoning,
    compassion, or good citizenship into the head of someone who won't be
    open to it.
        But at the same time, let's be completely frank. It's also true that
    nobody in America, no one, especially me, got where he or she is today
    alone. To believe otherwise is foolish. We all have to play a role,
    individual citizens in their daily lives, people doing their part to
    help make their communities stronger, their neighbors safer, politicians
    in the way they deal with and address our problems. We've all got to do
    a better job. And I believe we have to recognize that one of the ways we
    all do more together is through the way our Government works and what it
    does to help our people meet the demands of change.
        This is not an either/or thing. This is not ``Are these problems
    personal and cultural, on the one hand, or social and political, on the
    other?'' That's not the way the world works. It's both. And there is a
    role, a partnership role, for the Government to help you do what you do
    and to help all Americans make the most of their own lives.
        Education is perhaps the best example of this. It's the work of your
    lives, but it's also the work of America's future. All of these concerns
    come together in education because school is where young people can
    learn the skills they need to pursue middle class dreams, especially now
    when knowledge is more important than ever to our future. School is also
    the place where middle class values taught by parents are reinforced by
    teachers, values like responsibility, honesty, trustworthiness, hard
    work, caring for one another and our natural environment, and good
    citizenship.
        Government plays an indispensable role in helping to make sure that
    the schools that you work in are as strong as possible, have the highest
    standards possible, provide as much opportunity as possible. The dynamic
    is pretty simple. A good education clearly is key to unlocking the
    promise of today's economy in the 21st century. Without it, people are
    at an ever-increasing risk of falling behind.
        Today, a male college graduate earns 80 percent more than a male
    who's just graduated from high school. That gap is double what it was
    just in 1979. That's why I have been fighting furiously since the day I
    took office to expand educational opportunity, to give all Americans a
    chance to grab the key to a prosperous future. As you know well, we have
    dramatically expanded Head Start. We passed Goals 2000 to set world-
    class standards for our schools and then to give grassroots reform power
    to empower, really empower teachers and principals and parents, to give
    them the flexibility to decide how to meet those standards and how to
    improve education.
        Our national service program, AmeriCorps, gives a helping hand with
    college for 20,000 people who are helping their country in grassroots
    programs all across America. The safe and drug-free schools initiative
    is helping to make schools safe, places where kids can learn again and
    be free from fear, places where parents can trust their children to be
    free from crime and drugs. Our direct student loan program makes college
    more affordable for millions of Americans while actually cutting the
    cost for taxpayers.
        Now, there is one piece of this that is especially important for us
    to talk about today. As I noted before, you've just honored Dick Riley.
    I want to commend him for so many things, but in particular for the work
    the Education Department is doing to teach our children good citizenship
    and the values we need to stay strong. There is something that we need
    to re-

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    member about that Department of Education that Dick Riley is now heading
    and heading in the right direction.
        Just 18 years ago yesterday, on July 5, 1977, two sons of Minnesota,
    Vice President Mondale and former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, shared
    the same stage at another NEA convention. Now, back in 1977, you all
    know that education policy in America fell under the giant umbrella of
    the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a huge bureaucratic
    agency responsible for health care policy and welfare responsibility and
    all the educational responsibilities, whether it was keeping our
    classrooms up to date, ensuring our public schools had the tools they
    need to teach our children, maintaining high curriculum standards,
    giving special-needs schools and special-needs students the support they
    need. All those things were all lumped into this massive bureaucracy
    that was Health, Education, and Welfare.
        That wasn't in the best interest of public education then. It's
    certainly not in the best interest of the country today when education
    is literally the key to our economic future, to restoring middle class
    dreams, and it's certainly critical to reestablishing the dominance of
    middle class values.
        At that historic meeting, Vice President Humphrey made a passionate
    plea, and he was a very passionate man, for something the NEA had been
    fighting for for over 100 years, a Cabinet-level Department of
    Education. America's children would have only 2 more years to wait. The
    bill creating the Cabinet-level Department of Education was signed by
    President Carter in October 1979.
        In the last 2\1/2\ years, Secretary Riley, a former Governor who
    labored for 8 years to dramatically improve schools in his native South
    Carolina, has worked hard to make the Department of Education work
    better than ever. We need the Department of Education today more than
    ever before. And we need it even more because Dick Riley has literally
    reinvented it. It is less bureaucratic. It is smaller. Programs have
    been consolidated. But he is focusing on the big issues, whether it is
    the preschool needs of our kids, the standards and the grassroots reform
    we need in public schools, the need we have for school-to-work
    transition programs in every State in the country, the need we have for
    expanded and lower cost and better repayment college loans, or the need
    he has to cooperate with the Department of Education to give our working
    people the right to get the training they need the minute they become
    unemployed because now so many of them will have to find new jobs with
    higher skills. That is the record of Dick Riley; that is the record of
    the Department of Education; and that is why we need it.
        As all of you know, during this time when we have increased our
    investments in education, we have also cut the deficit 3 years in a row
    for the first time since Harry Truman was President. We're cutting it by
    more than a trillion dollars over 7 years. We're also cutting the
    bureaucracy of the National Government over a 6-year period by more than
    272,000 positions to make the Federal Government the smallest it's been
    since President Kennedy was President.
        Let me tell you just how dramatic the changes have already been in
    2\1/2\ years. The Government is already 150,000 people smaller. We have
    eliminated thousands and thousands of regulations, including regulations
    in the Department of Education. We have eliminated hundreds of
    Government programs. And the budget would be balanced today but for the
    interest we have to pay on just the debt run up the 12 years before I
    became President.
        But we can't stop there. We must continue to cut the deficit until
    we eliminate it completely and balance the budget. That is why I have
    proposed a plan to balance the budget in 10 years. While cutting
    spending to balance the budget, however, under my plan we would continue
    to invest in our people, especially in education.
        We must not sacrifice the future of our children in our zeal to save
    it. But let me also say to you that I know a lot of people who want to
    invest more money in our country question whether we actually need a
    balanced budget. They questioned my wisdom when I proposed a balanced
    budget. But let me ask you to look at the history of America.
        We ran deficits all during the 1970's, but we did it for good
    economic reasons. That was a period of stagflation, of low growth, a
    period when it was legitimate to stimulate the economy in a modest way
    by modest deficits. We never, I reemphasize, never in the history of our
    Republic had a permanent structural deficit until 1981. After that, a
    lot of the people who got the tax cuts spent them and there was no way
    to reach a bipartisan consensus to lower the

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    gap in the deficit. So we quadrupled the debt of this country in 12
    years. We're 219 years old, and we've quadrupled the debt in 12 years.
    Now, we have to change that.
        Look what's happened to you. Every year in the 1980's, you had to
    fight to hold on to the educational advances. Every year when you knew
    that we needed to be investing more because many parents were able to
    invest less in terms of money and time in their children's education,
    you were often disappointed because we were spending more and more and
    more in interest on the debt.
        Next year, interest on the debt will exceed the defense budget.
    That's how big a problem it is. It makes us poorer. It takes our
    savings. It makes us more dependent on other economies. And it leaves us
    less money to invest in education, in infrastructure, in technology, in
    the things that will grow jobs, raise incomes, increase the middle
    class, and shrink the under class.
        So what we have to do is to balance the budget and increase
    investment in education. That's why I made the decision to veto the
    rescission bill that Congress sent me earlier last month. But it's also
    why I gave them an alternative. I am determined to work with the new
    Congress to cut the deficit and ultimately to balance the budget. But
    that rescission bill cut investments in our future, in education, in job
    training, in the environment, just to fund things that have a far lower
    value, even though they may be popular in the short term with specific
    constituencies.
        Now that Congress has agreed to restore funding for those
    investments, I'll be happy to sign a bill. It will cut the deficit, and
    that's good. But we'll also have $733 million in this year alone in
    critical investments, including $220 million for safe and drug-free
    schools, $60 million to help train teachers and pay for education
    reforms at the grassroots level, $105 million for AmeriCorps.
        As we work in the coming months to balance the budget, we have to do
    it in the same way. You and I know it would be self-defeating to cut our
    investments in education. Cutting education today would be like cutting
    defense budgets at the height of the cold war. Our national security
    depends upon our ability to educate better, not just to spend more money
    but to reach more people, to perform at a higher level, to get real
    results. That's what our security depends upon.
        But don't kid yourselves, we've got a real fight on our hands. The
    congressional budget, which balances the budget in 7 years, cuts
    education severely, as Keith Geiger just said. My budget, which balances
    the budget in 10 years, increases education while cutting other
    spending.
        We're also able to go easier on Medicare and Medicaid, to take some
    real time and promote real health care reform, and to continue to invest
    in new technologies and research. All we have to do is take 3 more years
    and cut the size of that big tax cut roughly in half, maybe a little
    more.
        Now, I think 3 years is a pretty small price to pay to save millions
    and millions of dreams. Let me just give you a few examples of the
    difference 3 years will make. I want to increase Goals 2000 to about
    $900 million so that you will be able to work to improve 85,000 schools
    serving 44 million students. The congressional budget would eliminate
    Goals 2000, one of the principal engines of grassroots reform, something
    they say they support.
        I want to increase Title I by over $200 million in 1996 to serve
    200,000 more children that year. Let me just say something about Title I
    and your efforts. All the time up here I hear the politicians saying we
    just throw money at education, and it doesn't get any results, and we
    spend more money and we don't show more results. Well, as the Secretary
    of Labor has pointed out, there are public investments in children and
    private investments in children. We pretty well kept up with our public
    investments, but our private investments aren't keeping up. More and
    more of these children are being born in poverty, a higher percentage of
    them into difficult family circumstances and difficult neighborhood
    circumstances. And even those who have working parents have parents most
    of whom are working longer hours for less money. That means that parents
    have less money and less time to invest in our kids. That's a much
    bigger burden for you to bear.
        Now, the Congress wants to freeze funding and deprive over one
    million children of the help that you can provide by 2002. I believe the
    money will make a difference because I know that you can make a
    difference. You can't make all the difference for what doesn't happen in
    the family, but you ought to get a lot of

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    credit for trying and for the difference that you do make.
        I want to increase the school-to-work program by 60 percent next
    year so 43 States can help thousands of students learn the skills they
    need to get and keep high-paying jobs, even when they don't go on to 4-
    year universities. We're the only major industrialized country that does
    not have a system for dealing with all of the high school graduates who
    don't go on to 4-year schools. Now, the Congress wants to cut it to half
    that amount. I think that's being penny-wise and pound-foolish.
        I want to expand AmeriCorps to 50,000 people next year. Congress has
    proposed to eliminate it completely. I know that's a big mistake. Those
    20,000 young people that are out there now, working with each other
    across the lines of race and region and religion and income are
    revolutionizing America at the grassroots level, solving problems,
    serving their communities, being good citizens, doing things that other
    people just give talks about, and earning money to pay for their
    education. We ought to keep national service, and we ought to expand it.
        We've reformed the college loan system to make college more
    affordable for up to 20 million Americans. Secretary Riley has done a
    masterful job, along with his staff, in administering the direct loan
    program, which actually increases the availability of loans, lowers the
    cost to students, lowers the paperwork burden to colleges and
    universities, and cuts the cost to the taxpayers.
        Now, the congressional majority wants to cut $10 billion from the
    student loan program by removing the interest subsidy during the time of
    the student's education, which will raise costs significantly for up to
    7 million students. In the 1980's, the cost of a college education was
    the only thing that went up more rapidly than the cost of health care
    among the essential things that families need for the future. I don't
    think it's a very good idea to cut the college loan program. There are
    other ways to save the money.
        Here's the bottom line. Under my plan, we balance the budget and
    increase educational investment by $40 billion in proven programs that
    work. The plan of the Republican majority in Congress balances the
    budget, but it cuts education by $36 billion, not counting the cuts in
    student loans.
        Now, I'm not for a minute suggesting that balancing the budget is
    easy. Even under my plan, there will be plenty of pain to go around.
    We'll have to cut spending in other domestic programs about 20 percent
    across the board. But the difference between my plan and the
    congressional plan is the difference between necessary cutbacks and
    unnecessary, ultimately self-defeating pain. One distinguished business
    analysis has said that the Republican budget cuts so much so fast that
    it will actually increase unemployment and bring on a recession and,
    therefore, delay the time when they can balance the budget.
        Now, we do have a responsibility to balance the budget. And I give
    them a lot of credit for proposing a balanced budget. But we've also got
    a responsibility to invest in our children and our future. We cannot
    restore the economy, we cannot rebuild the middle class, we can't
    recapture middle class dreams or reinforce middle class values if we
    walk away from our common responsibilities, the education of our people.
        If we'll just take 10 years instead of 7, if we cut taxes for the
    middle class and focus on childrearing and education, and don't have big
    tax cuts for people who don't really need it because they're well-off
    and doing very well in this economy, then we can balance the budget and
    improve education. We can do both, and that's what I want you to fight
    for.
        Our mission, your mission and mine, has got to be to build a bridge
    to the future that every American can cross. We have to give people the
    power they need to make the most of their own lives. That is what's
    behind this, balancing the budget and investing in education means
    building up America. And it's behind what I called for earlier today at
    Georgetown, a new common ground in which we come together to solve our
    problems.
        I want our children's generation to inherit an America with as much
    opportunity as the one I was brought into. The best days of America
    should be, can be, will be before us if we work together. If people take
    the kind of responsibility you have taken to make our country better, we
    will do better. But it's going to take a good attitude. It's going to
    take good citizenship. It's going to take a willingness to listen to one
    another to find that common ground.
        I have made a commitment that when I differ with the Republican
    Congress, I will offer an

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    alternative. I have made a commitment that I will have more conversation
    and less combat, like I did with my conversation with the Speaker up in
    New Hampshire. I have made a commitment to try to work for the long-term
    interests of our country, not just for the short-term gain. These are
    profoundly important things. And I have made a commitment not just to
    berate the worst in our country but to try to extol, extol the best--
    people like you that are doing things that work.
        What you have to do is to be active and good citizens. Tell these
    Members of Congress that you will support cutting the deficit, you will
    support balancing the budget, but investing in our country and having
    the Federal Government play a role, which in the larger scheme of things
    is still a modest role but a critical one, is absolutely essential for
    our future.
        You've been working hard out there, and a lot of you work under very
    difficult circumstances. But there is no more noble, no more important
    task, especially at this moment when we stand on the threshold of a new
    century.
        I thank you for your service to your country. I thank you for your
    service to the children and to the future of America. I wish you well. I
    ask for your good wishes and your strength and your willingness to stand
    for what you know is right for America.
        God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke by satellite at 2:20 p.m. from Room 459 in the
    Old Executive Office Building to the National Education Association
    (NEA) convention meeting in Minneapolis, MN. In his remarks, he referred
    to Keith Geiger, NEA president.