    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 8, 1995]
    [Pages 1327-1332]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1327]]

    Remarks at a Breakfast With Religious Leaders
    September 8, 1995

        Thank you very much, and welcome to the White House. I thank the
    Vice President for his wonderful introduction. I earnestly hope someday
    he won't have to close his eye when he reads the--[laughter]. Thank you.
    I cannot tell you all the wonderful contributions he's made to our
    country and to me and my family, but I can say that when my term in this
    job is over, one of the things that I will get credit for, even among
    people who disagree with nearly everything I do, is that I made a good
    decision when I picked a Vice President, and he then became clearly the
    most influential person ever to be in the Vice President's office in the
    history of this--[applause].
        I have come to very much look forward to this breakfast. As I think
    most of you know, this is the third such breakfast we have had with
    leaders of faith from all walks of life, from all over our country, at
    about this time when we come back from vacation, our children go back to
    school, and we here in Washington have to go back to work. That itself
    is an act of faith sometimes. [Laughter] And a lot of you know that I
    have been very interested in the role of faith in public life and in the
    life of public persons for many years, since long before I became
    President.
        Two years ago, I spoke about the profound impact on me of Stephen
    Carter's book, ``The Culture of Disbelief,'' and I don't know whether
    Mr. Carter's forgiven me or not, yet. It's changed his life a little bit
    anyway since we talked about that. But Carter made an important point,
    that we simply, in this, the most religious of all countries and a
    country that in our Constitution protects the right of everyone to
    believe or not as he or she sees fit, we have to make room for something
    that important in the public square. And we have to do it in a way that
    recognizes that most American of rights, the right to differ.
        After that experience I had reading the book and then having this
    breakfast and working on all this, we redoubled our efforts in this
    administration on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and on
    implementing and on its implications and on trying to live up to the
    spirit as well as the letter of the law in many ways that a lot of you
    are familiar with. And that is also what led me to give the speech I
    gave about the role of religion in education at James Madison High
    School in Virginia a few months ago, and then, following up on that, to
    have the Secretary of Education Dick Riley issue the guidelines that
    were just going out to all of our schools on the relationship of
    religion and public schools.
        That was a very important thing for a lot of our schoolchildren and
    educators around this country and for a lot of people in this room and
    those whom you represent. We made it clear that under our law, schools
    are not religion-free zones; we simply, under the Constitution, prohibit
    the power of Government through the schools to advance particular
    religious beliefs. But students can still pray individually or together,
    silently or aloud. Religious clubs have a right to meet, just like any
    other clubs, and to do what they wish to do. Flyers can be distributed.
    Homework and other assignments can even be used to express religious
    convictions by students. Religion can be a part of the curriculum of
    public education as long as particular views are not advocated.
        I think this is a very important thing. There are those who say that
    they think more should be done, and I think that part of it is they feel
    that, unless our young people, particularly those who may not be subject
    to religious influences, understand the basic values behind the great
    religions that our country permits to flourish and encourages to
    flourish, they might not grow up to be the kind of citizens they ought
    to be. So we've also done a lot of work on what has popularly been
    called character education in our country, trying to emphasize to our
    schools and to encourage them to teach the basic values of good
    citizenship, values that make a good life.
        Secretary Riley has been extremely supportive and a strong advocate
    of what he calls the moral code that holds us together. In teaching that
    in our schools, teaching our students to be honest and trustworthy,
    reliable, to have respect for themselves, for others, for property, and
    for our natural environment, to be good citizens, and also to do the
    things that I advocated a

    [[Page 1328]]

    few months ago when I spoke at my alma mater, Georgetown University, to
    treat one another with civility and tolerance and to exercise personal
    responsibility. After all, if we all did what we were supposed to, we
    wouldn't have to spend so much time talking to other people--
    [laughter]--and neither would anybody else.
        And this character education movement, I predict to you, will do
    quite well in this country. There will be more and more and more
    deliberate efforts to teach these values in our public schools. There is
    evidence already that in the schools that have a thoroughgoing,
    comprehensive, disciplined commitment to this, the dropout rate is down,
    and the student performance is up. That's because you basically can't
    live without values. You've got some. It's just a question of what they
    are. And it's important to be explicit about them, and you can do that
    within the framework of the first amendment.
        So if any of you are more interested in that, we can get you the
    information on what the Department of Education is doing. I just
    announced in California a couple of days ago that we have actually put
    out modest grants to four States to help school districts in those
    States develop comprehensive character education programs.
        Let me say, the freshest evidence that this is important is a recent
    study, a very, very large study of young people and drug use that Joe
    Califano brought to my attention about 3 weeks ago that said that the
    three major determinants in whether young people use drugs or not was
    whether they had a strong relationship with their parents, whether they
    tended to believe in the future and be optimistic about it, and whether
    they had a connection to a church. Those three things were the three
    repeating constants in what is otherwise an incredible kaleidoscope of
    different life circumstances that lead young people either to use drugs
    or to refrain from using them. So I think that is important.
        The Vice President talked about the night we had--I might say, it
    made a special night for us because he and I went to Baltimore with his
    son and my daughter, and each of them brought a friend. So we got to see
    this great event through the eyes of children. And the thing that struck
    me about it was that everybody was so happy and nobody resented Mr.
    Ripken's success. Not a person. I don't think a person in the country.
    Why? Because it was about more than talent, success, and making several
    million dollars a year. It was about showing up for work every day--
    [laughter]--and sticking with your team. It wasn't about who got the
    best contract, who made the best deal. It was about keeping your end of
    the bargain.
        And I think one of the reasons that people were so ecstatic about it
    is that it was an exceptional example of what most people try to do in
    their own lives every day. When I got home from California the night the
    record was tied, it was about midnight. And before I went to bed--I
    don't know about you, but when I get off an airplane and come in the
    house, I can't just plop down and go to sleep. So I turned on the
    television, and I saw the late local news. And there was a feature on
    the local news in Virginia of a bus driver who had not missed a day's
    work in 18 years. And here was this bus driver, he never would have been
    on television before, and they were doing a feature on him.
        And the local reporter was riding a bus with him. And he was meeting
    the people that he picked up every day and let off every day and talking
    about how his daddy told him he was supposed to work, that he didn't
    think there was anything unusual. Why? Why wouldn't you go 18 years and
    never miss a day's work? And I thought, that man would have never been
    on television if it hadn't been for Cal Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig's
    record. There was a reaffirmation of the idea of responsibility,
    personal responsibility, the dignity of work, the devotion--that guy's
    team were the people that carry the folks around every day. Pretty
    important team. And I think it sort of reinforced to me this idea that
    in spite of all the differences in this country, there really are a lot
    of things that bind us together, that we believe very deeply.
        I appreciate what the Vice President said about the First Lady. I
    wish she could be here today. She's getting home sometime tonight. But I
    think that that speech she gave resonated so powerfully across the world
    because it was elemental, basic, true, profound in the simplicity of the
    things that we all know, things that we all know we should do, things we
    all know we shouldn't do and shouldn't permit if we can stop. And it was
    a very powerful thing because it brought people together.
        Now, I think that's very important today in America because of the
    kind of things that are going on. And I just want to talk very briefly

    [[Page 1329]]

    about that and the work we're about to undertake here.
        In many ways, the big trends in America look good. Economically we
    have 7 million more jobs, 2\1/2\ million more homeowners. We're creating
    new businesses at a rate of 750,000 a year, by far the highest rate in
    American history. We have low inflation, high growth. By any standard,
    this is about the best combined economic picture in 20 years. African-
    American unemployment rate below 10 percent for the first time since the
    Vietnam war. A lot of the social indicators are encouraging. In almost
    every major city in America, the crime rate is down, the welfare rolls
    are down, the food stamp rolls are down.
        A lot of the cultural things are encouraging. The divorce rate is
    down. The abortion rate is down. There are signs that people are
    beginning to get together even in troubled places. The United States has
    been honored to be a force for peace in the last 3 years in Northern
    Ireland and South Africa and the Middle East, in Haiti. We even see
    signs of hope in Bosnia. Today representatives of Bosnia, Croatia, and
    Serbia are meeting as a part of the peace initiative the United States
    has pushed so hard in Europe, and we pray for their success. They need
    to quit killing each other; it's not that much land involved. And there
    is nothing in their different religious faiths that dictates that kind
    of bloodletting.
        So there is a lot to be hopeful about, a lot of common ground to
    celebrate. But if you look at it, you'd never know that to listen to
    what we do here. And I think there is a reason for that--there are two
    reasons for that. One is the culture around here and the way we do
    business or the way it's been done for years--I haven't been here too
    long, but I'm still learning about it--and the larger reasons of what's
    going on in the world today.
        But let me deal with the basic, fundamental issues here. What worked
    for the bus driver and for Cal Ripken? Showing up for work, having the
    right attitude, working on the team, working for tomorrow, that's what
    works. What works in a church? Working together, working for the future
    around shared values. What works in a family? What works at a business?
    Not surprisingly, people don't like what they see in Washington if they
    don't see people working together and working for the future, if all
    they ever see is what are they fighting about today? What is the new
    partisan difference that is all of a sudden all the rage?
        I think we all have a common interest in balancing the budget, and
    I'm glad to see both parties' leadership now committed to doing that.
    For 2 years, we had a lonely battle here. We took the deficit from $290
    billion down to $160 billion. It was a one-party operation. And when
    that happens, you have to make decisions that in the details are so
    controversial, it's unsettling to people. When both parties work
    together, they can do it better. So I think it's great; we're going to
    balance the budget.
        Then the question is how should we do it, because it's not just a
    matter of debits and credits, it's also a matter of values and
    responsibilities. How you do this defines who you are. And I would argue
    to you that this is a much more important process today than it would
    have been a generation ago for reasons I will explain in just a moment.
        But if you believe that, then we have to ask: What are the values?
    How are we going to provide for our children's future, especially for
    their education? What do we owe the elderly in this country in terms of
    health care? Seventy-five percent of the people who are eligible for
    Medicare live on $24,000 a year or less. What do we owe to them? What do
    we owe to people like those veterans of World War II that we honored in
    Hawaii just a few days ago, who literally made the world that we are all
    living off of now, who set in motion the circumstances that permitted
    all of us in the age groups represented here to flourish? What do we owe
    to the poor and to the homeless?
        What do we owe? How do our obligations here--can they be fulfilled,
    anyway? What kind of Government do we have to have to make this stuff
    work? Yesterday, the Vice President announced his 2-year report on our
    reinventing Government project. There are 160,000 fewer people working
    for the Government now than were when I became President. About 400
    programs have been eliminated, many thousands of pages of regulations
    have been scrapped. But we've also worked very hard on improving the
    quality of Government.
        Business Week magazine evaluated all the business units in America
    that depend heavily on being successful on the phone, great companies
    like L.L. Bean and Federal Express. And they said that the Federal
    Government Social Security Administration had the most effective,

    [[Page 1330]]

    information-laden, courteous phone service of any major organization in
    America, which I thought was a remarkable thing, because we're in pretty
    high cotton there with those other companies. [Laughter]
        But what do we owe to the country in terms of the kind of Government
    we have and the way it performs? What are our obligations and
    responsibilities? How do all these compare with tax cuts that have been
    proposed? What do those tax cuts reflect in terms of our values? There
    are many different proposals, and they're all different. What do we get
    out of a balanced budget? I'll tell you. We get the opportunity to lift
    the burden of debt off of our children and grandchildren. We get lower
    interest rates. We free up the money that's available to be borrowed by
    people in the private sector to create new jobs. We get more growth if
    we do it right.
        But if we're penny-wise and pound-foolish, if we don't think about
    our larger values, if we don't also take care of educating our people
    and lifting up our children, even the poorest of them, then we could
    wind up with a budget that doesn't do all of those things. Prosperity
    really has to grow out of having good, shared values. We're lucky; we're
    big; we're diverse; we've got a lot of resources. But we still have to
    do the right things.
        If you look at the gentleman who was a bus driver, God gave him a
    good constitution. But a lot of healthy people don't show up for work
    every day for 18 years. Mr. Ripken is 6'4" and weighs 220 pounds, and
    not many people have a body like that. But there are a lot of people
    with bodies like that, that miss a lot of baseball games because they
    don't take care of it. They don't always do the right things.
        So we have to do the right things. And that's very important. And it
    can't just be a mechanical thing. It can't just be a political thing. It
    can't be just who's got the political power and who's got the influence
    to get this or that deal done. This is an historic obligation we have.
    And we have to do it in a way that reflects common sense and that
    reaches common ground that's higher ground. That's what I've tried to
    say when I talked about the New Covenant in the last 3 years. It's not
    just a matter of contracts and deals. This is a--we're going through a
    period of great change. And we have to reach deep down inside for the
    right things to do that will bring us together.
        Let me say that I--if ever there was a case of preaching to the
    saved, that's what I'm doing today. [Laughter] In more ways than one. A
    lot of you are involved in ministries that do this. You not only build
    the edifice of your churches, you serve the needs of your people. And
    that's what we have to do in America. And we cannot allow the usual
    partisan, divisive atmosphere which characterizes our national politics
    and which does make, frankly--to defend all the players here, many of
    whom have been here a lot longer than I have in Washington--they think
    that having these kind of differences and articulate them in a way
    that's most favorable to their constituents is the only way to
    communicate them across the vast distance that exists from Washington,
    DC, into the homes of the nearly 260 million Americans who live here,
    because it's not like being the pastor of a church or the Governor of a
    small State or the mayor of a city. They are so far from where their
    folks are, the way of doing things here tends to put a greater premium
    on words than deeds, a greater premium on positioning and division than
    production and teamwork and accomplishment. But that doesn't make it
    right. And it doesn't make it acceptable for this time.
        So I'm trying to bring a new spirit here. I'm trying to deal with a
    lot of hot-button issues that need to be dealt with in the right spirit.
        The welfare system needs to be reformed because the people that are
    on welfare hate it. Nobody wants to be dependent. So we should end
    welfare as we know it, but we ought to be mindful of the fact that we're
    doing it because our country will be better off if people are successful
    workers and successful parents. We don't need a permanently dependent
    system.
        I'm trying to deal with the issue of crime in a responsible way that
    punishes criminals more but also seeks to prevent crime by giving our
    young people some things that they can say yes to as well as say no to.
        We're trying to deal with the issue of immigration in a way that
    says that it's wrong for people to immigrate here illegally. They may
    need to do it. It may be a good thing for their family, but from our
    point of view, since we've got folks lined up willing to wait for years,
    we have to try to enforce the immigration laws and control our borders
    and be disciplined about this. And when we look at the volume of legal
    immigration, we have to look at it in terms

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    of our ability to maintain a decent standard of living for our own
    people and to imagine what it's going to be like over a 10-year period.
    But I think to try to blame immigrants for our problems is a mistake.
    We're all a nation of immigrants. Nearly everybody came from somewhere
    else.
        And of course, you all pretty well know what I think about the
    affirmative action issue. There are some problems in the way these
    programs have been implemented. They ought to be fixed. There are some
    of them that don't work right, and they ought to be fixed. And nobody
    has a stake in America in promoting reverse discrimination or quotas or
    giving somebody something they're not qualified to receive.
        But we should make a conscious effort to include all Americans in
    the bounty of America. Conscious effort is not the same thing as giving
    preference to unqualified people. A conscious effort is animated by the
    belief that God put within everybody the capacity to rise to higher
    levels, and we need everybody to become what we ought to be. So let's
    fix what doesn't work. But let's don't pretend that it's a bad thing to
    try to get the most out of everybody and to make effort. That's what I
    believe.
        Let me tell you why I think this is all more important now than it
    is normally. Two years ago, I recommended a book by a nonreligious
    leader, Stephen Carter. Today I'll recommend another one. I've been
    reading this. This is a fascinating book by a man named Benjamin Barber,
    whom I had the privilege to know, called ``Jihad Versus McWorld.''
        Now, let me tell you what the essential argument here is. Let me
    tell you why I believe it's important. Mr. Barber is arguing that
    democracy and the ability to hold people together and have reliable,
    predictable, good lives for people who work hard and do the right thing
    is being threatened today, first of all, by the globalization of the
    economy, which has a lot of benefits for those of us who have good
    educations and can benefit from it, with the movement of money and
    technology all across the world. But it's elevating consumerism to even
    higher and higher levels and promoting short-term gains. You watch this
    money--we watch it every day, billions and trillions of dollars moving
    across the globe in the split of an eye just because of an event here,
    an event there, an event the other place. It's very hard in those
    conditions to preserve even in the wealthy, powerful countries the
    conditions of stable, ordinary life.
        Therefore, you see what happens in America. We have 7 million new
    jobs; we have all these things that are happening that are good, but
    most hourly wage earners are working harder for the same or less money
    than they were making 10 years ago. And a lot of people feel insecure in
    their jobs because the economy is changing so much and they have no
    confidence that if they lose the job they have they can get another one
    that is just as good or better.
        So we're living in this global economy where there are a whole lot
    of winners. But a lot of people who think they do just what Cal Ripken
    and the Virginia bus driver do think they may still lose, and that's a
    big problem for America. If people think they're willing to show up
    every day, they're working hard, they're doing right by their kids, they
    wouldn't break the law, they wouldn't cheat the Government out of a
    nickel on their taxes, they wouldn't begin to do anything wrong, and
    they still may not make it, that's a problem for America.
        The other word, ``jihad,'' as you know, refers to holy war, the
    Arabic concept--Muslim concept of the holy war. It's not an anti-Muslim
    book, by the way. Islam is a beautiful religion with great values. What
    it refers to is, as people face a world that they cannot control, when
    they think that democracy is not going to work for them, that they can't
    keep the family of the United States or the family of France or Germany
    or Russia or Estonia or you name it, together, they are vulnerable--
    because their nerves are raw and they have no sense of certainty--to
    extreme manifestations of people who claim to have revealed truth, so
    that the likelihood of having more conflicts rooted in ethnic, racial,
    or religious differences increases perversely as the world becomes more
    economically integrated. And he argues, I believe correctly, that it is
    even more important today for the United States of America to succeed,
    even more important today for democracy to work, even more important
    today for the basic values that we just talked about to be able to be
    made real in the lives of ordinary citizens.
        And that's why what we're doing with this budget debate is so
    important and why we have to do it right. If we don't balance the
    budget, we're going to hurt America's future. If we do it in the wrong
    way, we're going to hurt America's future.

    [[Page 1332]]

        About once in 100 years this sort of thing happens. We are going
    through a level of change in the way we work and live that is comparable
    to the change we went through when we moved from being an agrarian
    society to an industrial, more urbanized society. And it took our
    country from roughly the end of the 1890's until about 1916 to sort
    through all that. I mean, it's a continuing process. But we basically
    had to decide what is the responsibility that we have as a country? What
    does the Government have to do? How will we deal with this?
        Now we're moving out of that age to a more information-based,
    technology-based age. We're moving from the cold war to the global
    economy. We're moving from the possibility of nuclear war between
    superpowers to the possibility that terrorists can carry around
    biological weapons that kill people in Japanese subways or make homemade
    bombs that blow up the World Trade Center or the Federal building in
    Oklahoma.
        Believe me, it's better that we don't have to worry as much about
    everybody being wiped out. Let's not kid ourselves. But it's important
    to realize that our great country, this family of America, has forces
    beyond it economically that are pulling at our ability to hold everybody
    together, and in reaction to the insecurity that is caused and the
    uncertainty that is caused, there are forces internally in every great
    democracy forcing people to be divided among themselves. That's why I
    said the other day, do we have to fix welfare? Yes. Affirmative action?
    Yes. Immigration problems? Yes. Is that the cause of the anxiety of the
    middle class in America? No, not really. That's not the real cause.
    That's not an excuse not to fix them; we do. But we need to know what
    the real cause is.
        And when you're living in a time like this when people are torn from
    pillar to post, having those basic values to fall back on, knowing that
    there is a church with a larger ministry is important. But also be
    humbled enough to know that in a time like this, when you're moving into
    a future you can't fully predict, nobody has all the answers, that's
    important, too.
        I don't want to embarrass him, but not very long ago, I was home in
    Arkansas, and my pastor, Rex Horne, who's here, gave a fascinating
    sermon in which he was talking about how Jesus treated different kinds
    of people. And he pointed out how humble Christ was in dealing with the
    leper, the hated Zaccheus, the woman caught in adultery. He reminded us
    of the stories of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan in the Bible.
    And then he said, you know, the only people Jesus was really hard on and
    acted like He was arrogant to--[laughter]--were the Pharisees and the
    Sadducees and the religious hypocrites who appeared to have all the
    revealed truth, and the people he ran out of the temple because they got
    church and state mixed up, too. They tried to take over the temple.
    [Laughter] Right?
        Now, this is an important lesson, and it had a huge impact on me, on
    my level of humility. We all need a good dose of humility. This is--it
    is not given to any of us to fully understand the future, but we do know
    we're moving into a different time with no precedent. And Mr. Barber, he
    may not be right about everything, but he's got a fix on it, and it's
    worth thinking about. And I ask all of you to think about that and to
    think of your work--when you see the people in your churches and your
    synagogues, in your mosques, who have problems in their lives, ask
    yourselves, are these problems the kind of problems that would happen at
    any age in time, or are they aggravated by this different period of
    change through which we're going, and how can we move together to
    respond to it?
        So I say to you, I hope you will pray for all of us here in these
    next 90 days, without regard to our party or our religion, because we
    have a hard and difficult job to do. We have to act. We have to succeed,
    but we have to do it in the right way for America to move into the next
    century with the American dream alive and well and with the ability to
    keep the kind of character and strength that we celebrated this week not
    only in the achievement of Cal Ripken but in the achievement of the bus
    driver and all the people that were cheering because they shared
    something that we desperately need to elevate and preserve as long as
    this country exists.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:33 a.m. in the State Dining Room at the
    White House. In his remarks, he referred to Joseph A. Califano, Jr.,
    director, Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, Columbia University.