    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [August 9, 1995]
    [Pages 1219-1228]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Charlotte,
    North Carolina
    August 9, 1995

        Thank you. Mr. President Smith, I'm glad you explained that whole
    thing because here I was about to speak--I'd let enough time go by
    between Gardner Taylor and me that you could maybe forget some of my--
    [laughter]--and then you said, ``We're going to wait until after he
    speaks to sing `Oh Happy Day.' '' [Laughter] But I think I understand
    it.
        To all the vice presidents and your convention secretary and
    Reverend Booth and many of my friends who are here, Reverend Otis Moss,
    Reverend Charles Adams, Reverend Billy Kyles, and Reverend Shepard. To
    my wonderful friend Reverend Gardner Taylor, thank you for what you
    said. I intend to tell the story of the hound dog and the hare.
    [Laughter] Where appropriate, I will give you credit. [Laughter] To
    Governor Jim Hunt--ladies and gentlemen, Jim Hunt may be the most
    popular Governor in America. He's certainly one of the two or three
    finest Governors in America and a great friend of mine. We're glad to
    have him here. In 1979--that was a long time ago--when I had no gray
    hair and he had much less--[laughter]--he nominated me to be the vice
    chairman of the Democratic Governors Association. No one

    [[Page 1220]]

    knew who I was. I was 33 years old. And if it hadn't been for that, I
    might not be here today. Now, that may get him in a lot of trouble down
    here for all I know, but I will always be grateful to Jim Hunt for the
    role he had in my life and the role he's had in the life of this State
    and Nation.
        I have looked forward to coming here. I feel at home. Most people
    down here don't speak with an accent; I like that. [Laughter] And since
    I'm at home, I want to talk about something I have been trying to deal
    with all across America lately, and that is, how are we going to find
    the common ground we need to walk the road we have to walk together? How
    can we rise above our differences and march into the future together?
        You've set a good example here. I understand this is the first-ever
    joint meeting between the Progressive Baptist Convention and the
    Alliance of Baptists. This will have a lot of subsidiary good benefits.
    For example, it's doing those white folks up there a world of good to
    sing in a choir like that. [Laughter and applause] That may be a
    racially insensitive, politically incorrect remark, but having spent
    countless hours of my life in Baptist church choirs, I do know what I am
    talking about. [Laughter] I can't believe I said that. [Laughter] ``A
    happy heart doeth good like medicine.'' [Laughter]
        I do believe as strongly as I can say that we have to fight for
    common ground instead of fight to tear each other apart. And I say that
    not because I have suffered my share of slings and arrows as President
    in the absence of common ground--it's just an honor to show up for work
    every day. St. Paul said that God put a thorn in his flesh so he would
    not be exalted in his own eyes. If that is the test, I feel downright
    humble today. [Laughter]
        Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Whether we
    like it or not, we are an American family, and we behave like a good
    family or a bad family or a little bit of both, but we are a family. We
    have to get together. That's why I made the speech I did on affirmative
    action. Let's don't get away from something that's helping us until we
    don't need it anymore. I thought it was important to tell the American
    people that everything is not equal in terms of opportunity in our
    country today, even though the laws have changed, and also important to
    remind people about what affirmative action is and isn't. It's not about
    quotas. It's not about unqualified people getting anything. It's not
    about reverse discrimination. All of that is illegal and will not be
    tolerated wherever we can find it.
        We ought to shift more efforts to help people just because they're
    poor, without regard to their race or gender. But we need to recognize
    that we have to have ways to make sure we're going forward together. The
    future really should be America's best time. Here we are living in this
    global society where information goes around the world in a split
    second. We flip on CNN; we know what they're doing in some country we
    couldn't find on a map 6 months ago. It's great.
        But if we're going to be a global village, what country is in a
    better position to do well than the one that is the most racially,
    ethnically, religiously diverse, with the most powerful private sector
    in the world, the United States. If we can find a way to get along
    together and to work together and solve our problems together, our best
    days are before us. That is what is at issue here.
        And we know that affirmative action won't amount to anything if we
    don't deal with our big problems. We don't want to be part of a lot of
    Americans fighting over a shrinking pie. We don't want to be one of
    these families with a whole lot of heirs and the estate's going down. We
    want to be a family where everybody has a brighter future. So that means
    we have to deal with the economic problems of the American family, the
    social problems of the American family. And it means we have to be
    candid in saying that we can't make up for the shortcomings of our
    individual families or churches or communities unless they do their
    part.
        And that's what I want to talk to you about today. There's been a
    lot of talk for 15 or 20 years now about family values. What are the
    family values of the American family, and what do they compel us to do
    right now, today, this day, and tomorrow when we get up in the morning
    and God gives us another day of life? What do they say we ought to do?
    Are we going to use this discussion of family values this year and next
    to lift up or to tear down, to unite or to divide? Is it going to be a
    weapon of words to harden the hearts of some Americans against another,
    or is it going to be a way of asking ourselves what's this family all
    about?
        Some folks like this family values issue because they get to preach
    at other people. They

    [[Page 1221]]

    get to preach against violence and premature sex and teen pregnancy, and
    they get to preach against the media promoting such things. They get to
    preach against drugs and crime. They get to tell people, ``Behave.''
    Now, that's not all bad. But is it enough?
        Some folks like this issue because, frankly, they are working hard
    to keep their own families together, to keep body and soul together, to
    pay their bills, raise their kids, take care of their parents, and
    they'd like a little help from their Government or their community or
    from their church.
        But raising a family--what's it about? Isn't it fundamentally--think
    about your own family. Isn't raising a family fundamentally about the
    obligations we owe to other people in the family? Isn't it fundamentally
    about the responsibility we have to fulfill those obligations and then
    to behave in such a way that we can make the most of our own lives? And
    if we're going to talk about the family values of America, shouldn't we
    talk about it like that? Isn't that what the American family ought to be
    about, the obligations we owe to other members of the family, the
    responsibilities we have to fulfill those obligations, and the
    responsibility we have to conduct our lives so that we can live up to
    the fullest of our God-given capacities?
        Now, that means that we can stand some good preaching, but we've got
    to be good Samaritans, too. It also means that when we look at our
    neighbor and we see that sty in his or her eye, we've got to make sure
    the beam's out of ours.
        But these problems--the point I'm trying to make is that all these
    problems we face as an American family or in our individual family, they
    have a moral aspect which needs some preaching and behaving, and they
    have a communal aspect which may need a little help from Samaritans.
        You look at the teen pregnancy problem. People obviously have to
    make a decision not to do that. We can't make that decision for them.
    They have to make that decision and people have to be--[applause]--
    that's a matter of personal ethics and discipline and values. And we're
    just kidding ourselves if we pretend that there's some picture-pretty
    social program that will solve this.
        On the other hand, when people do want to behave, they're entitled
    to a little help from their friends, from their Samaritans. If a young
    girl has a child and wants to get off welfare and wants to go to school
    or go to work, then there has to be some child care. So you need--if you
    want to fight the crime problem, you've got to punish those who do
    wrong, but you also have to take these kids who are in severe, severely
    difficult circumstances, at great risk of doing wrong, and give them
    something to say yes to, something to be hopeful about.
        You know, a couple of years ago when we passed the crime bill, which
    had the toughest punishments in history, we put more money into
    prevention programs than ever before. And the people who opposed us
    ridiculed us in the name of something called midnight basketball. As far
    as I know, nobody has ever been arrested playing midnight basketball for
    dealing dope on a basketball court with an adult supervisor there.
        So who are we trying to kid here? Let's take it the other way. Look
    at an economic problem. It can also become a moral problem. The fact is
    most families in the American family are working families. Most poor
    people in America are now living in working families. And most people
    are working longer hours today than they were 10 years ago for the same
    or lower wages. Now, that's a fact. Now, you say, that's an economic
    fact. Well, it can become a moral fact if people who are working harder
    for less have less time and energy, not to mention money, to invest in
    their children and their education, to keep their kids out of trouble,
    to do what they want to do.
        I never will forget a few years ago, every time I ran for office at
    home in Arkansas, I used to make it a point to go to the earliest
    factory gate in my State--Campbell Soup factory in northwest Arkansas.
    People started going to work there at 4:30, and I figured if I'd show up
    between 4:30 and a quarter to 5 and shake hands with everybody on that
    shift, somebody would say, ``Well, if that guy's fool enough to do this,
    we ought to give him a vote.'' [Laughter] And it worked. [Laughter] And
    so I did it. But I never will forget, one day I was there quarter to 5
    in the morning; pickup truck pulls up outside the factory; the door
    opens; a light comes on inside the pickup truck. There's this really
    attractive young couple there. The young wife is going to work; the
    husband is driving off. They have three little kids in that pickup
    truck, in the front seat. And I said, ``Now what are you going to do?''
    He said, ``Well, my wife has to be at work, she has to check in, by

    [[Page 1222]]

    5 o'clock every morning. And I have to be at work by 7. So I have to
    find somebody who will take my children at 6:30, which most child care
    people won't. So I've got to now go back home, make breakfast for these
    kids, get them there, and then drop them off at the child care center.
    Then I've got to show up at 7.''
        Now, that's maybe an extreme example but not an atypical example of
    the way most families live today. Isn't that right? Most people are
    working today. So I would argue to you that that's an economic issue
    that has become a moral issue. How can our society succeed unless people
    can be good parents and good workers? And if we have to choose one or
    the other, who's going to fall between the cracks? The kids. We live in
    a world where we must not make people choose. We have to succeed at
    both.
        Now, for 2\1/2\ years that's what I have been working at. That's why
    I want to bring this deficit down and balance the budget. That's why I
    tried to create jobs with investments and special incentives for people
    to put money into poor areas and expanding trade so we could sell more
    of our stuff around the world. That's why I tried to increase education
    from Head Start to kids, to more affordable college loans and
    scholarships and national service for kids to go to college. That's why
    we're putting money into the fight against crime and the war against
    drugs, for education and training and treatment and also to try to crack
    down on people who are importing these drugs into our country. That's
    why we're doing that. That's why we passed the family and medical leave
    law, the symbol of being a successful parent and a successful worker.
    Why should you lose your job if your kid gets sick? Why should you do
    that--and you've got to go home and take care of them? Why we want to
    immunize all the children in this country under the age of 2 and why we
    bailed out a very sick pension system in America and saved 8\1/2\
    million people's retirements and protected 40 million other people's
    retirement up the road--because those are all family values to me.
        And we have, as a result, 7 million jobs, 2\1/2\ million new
    homeowners, 1\1/2\ million new businesses, the largest number of new
    millionaires in a 2-year period in history. Unemployment's down.
    Inflation's down. African-American unemployment's below 10 percent for
    the first time since the Vietnam war. And people are not working at
    fighting. In almost every major area of this country, the crime rate is
    down. And divorce is down. The country is beginning to come back
    together.
        If that's true, why aren't we happy? Because many people are still,
    in fact, less secure. And many of our families are less secure, because
    underneath those statistics, the rising tide is not lifting all boats.
    And a huge number of people are being left out of this nice picture. And
    it's going to affect all the rest of us, just like any other family.
        You know, I'm really proud of my little brother, but he once had a
    terrible drug problem, and it affected all the rest of us. We didn't get
    off scot-free because we didn't find a way to solve this problem. It
    wasn't his problem; it was our problem. That's the way it is with
    America. It's our problem.
        When companies--their profits are up and they're still downsizing
    and laying people off, that's our problem. That's our problem. When we
    see people losing their health care even though they still got jobs--the
    only place--we're the only rich country in the world where that's
    happening--that's our problem. When people are faced with dealing with
    their parents or educating their children, that would be our problem,
    not just their problem. What's happening with crime and drugs is that
    the overall statistics are going down, but the rate of random, violent
    crime associated by very young teenagers is going way up. And people
    feel that, and it scares them. And it's our problem. The rate of random,
    careless, casual drug use is going up, even though a lot of the
    statistics are going down. Young, young teenagers are in big trouble in
    this country.
        Now, we've got to decide how to deal with it. If all we do is
    preach, we can play on our anxiety and our anger and we can divide one
    from another and we can fight over a shrinking economic pie. And it may
    be a wonderfully successful electoral strategy, but it won't solve
    anything. We go through another set of elections where nothing gets
    better. People vent their steam and express their fears and their anger,
    but nothing ever changes.
        So you see it today. People say, ``Well, the American family would
    be all right if it weren't for the immigrants or if it weren't for the
    people on welfare or if it weren't for the affirmative action program
    giving all the money to people

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    who aren't qualified or if it weren't for the Government throwing all
    our money away.
        Now, what I want to say to you is the same thing I said about
    affirmative action. We have problems in immigration. We've got no
    business spending money on illegal immigrants. We should not--people who
    wait for years to get into this country lawfully should not be leaped
    over by people who just cross over because they can get in. That's not
    right. And our administration has put more effort into sealing our
    borders and sending illegal immigrants back and people that come into
    the criminal justice system who aren't here legally than anybody has in
    a long time.
        It is true that people shouldn't be on welfare if they can also be
    working. That's also true. And we have done more than any administration
    in history to move people from welfare to work. It's also true that, as
    I said before, we have to make some changes in the affirmative action
    program so we can keep it and make it work right. That's all true.
        And finally, it's true that there is waste in Government. But our
    administration has cut more out than anybody has in over 20 years. The
    point I want to make is, if you do all that, it still won't solve the
    problems unless you deal with these fundamental problems of the American
    family: What are the fundamental economic problems? What are the
    fundamental social problems? And how can we deal with them together?
    That's what our job is. We need to start acting like family members, do
    our part and ask what our obligations are.
        So let me say--the other day I tried to do this at the American
    Federation of Teachers convention. I'm going to try again. Here's what I
    think the family values of America in 1995 ought to be and what we can
    do about them in Government. And then you ask yourself, what can you do
    about them?
        Number one, if you were running a family right, you wouldn't saddle
    your kids with unnecessary debt. In other words, if you borrow money,
    you're borrowing it to buy a house, finance an education, build a new
    business, but you wouldn't borrow it to go out to eat on the weekend.
    That's what this country's been doing. We ought to balance the budget.
    It's the right thing to do.
        But if you're running a family right, you'd first and foremost try
    to take care of your children. Now, our children--[applause]--our
    children don't need to balance the budget on their backs. We don't have
    to cut Head Start or college loans and make it more expensive to educate
    the children to balance the budget. We can do them both.
        The third thing that you want your family to do is to take care of
    your parents. I mean, after all, they raised you, right? And in the
    American family, we decided a long time ago we would take care of our
    parents from middle class and lower middle class people and even through
    pretty well-to-do people, largely through Medicare and Medicaid.
    Medicare pays for hospital care, and then if you buy into the second
    part of it, it pays for doctor visits, a number of other things. And
    Medicaid pays for people who have to go into nursing homes. That's about
    two-thirds of the cost; that's how we pay for it.
        Now, we don't have to balance the budget by exploding the cost of
    Medicare to ordinary people. You know, 75 percent of the people on
    Medicare are living on incomes of under $25,000. We don't have to
    increase their premiums, their copays, their deductibles to make it so
    they don't have enough money to live on. We don't have to make their
    children pay even more than they're already paying in the payroll tax.
    All the children are paying for Medicare now; they're paying for it in
    the payroll tax. We don't have to make them pay more, which means that
    they will have--how are they going to educate their kids if they have to
    pay twice through Medicare?
        So I'm telling you, do we have to make some changes in Medicare?
    Yeah, we do. Why? Because we're living longer, and more of us are
    getting older. But do we have to absolutely bankrupt the elderly people
    in this country to balance the budget? No, we don't. And we shouldn't do
    it. It violates our family values.
        What's the fourth thing we've got to do? I already said it. In the
    world we're living in today, most people do not have an option, they
    have to work. We spent a lot of time and energy trying to get people
    from welfare to work. Most people are trying to find work. Most people
    on welfare want to go to work. Most people in jobs are trying to keep
    the one they've got or get a better one. Isn't that right? That's the
    normal thing in life. So the problem most people have is, how am I going
    to keep my job or get a better one and be a good parent? How

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    can I do the right thing by our children? So what should we do?
        We should keep the family and medical leave law, for one thing. It's
    a good law. We should make it possible for everybody who works 40 hours
    a week and has a child in the home not to be in poverty. If people leave
    welfare and they show up for work every day and they've got kids in the
    house, what kind of message does it send to them if they're in poverty?
    It's not the right message. So in 1993, we changed the tax law, and we
    said, we're going to give a tax credit, a working family tax credit.
    Today, for every family of four in America with an income of $28,000 a
    year or less, the tax bill is $1,000 lower than it was before I took
    office because we don't believe people who work 40 hours a week and have
    kids should be in poverty. We should increase that program. The last
    thing we should do is do what some people want to do and cut back on
    that program. We should reward people who are doing their best at
    working and parenting.
        We ought to change the health care system. We're the only country in
    the world where working families are losing health care every year. We
    ought to change the rules so that if you change jobs, you don't lose
    your health care. If you have somebody in your family get sick, you
    cannot be cut off. And people ought to get a little help to keep their
    parents out of nursing homes as well as help pay for them when they get
    in them. We can do that and still balance the budget.
        And the last thing we ought to do, I believe strongly, is raise the
    minimum wage. It's too low. If we don't raise the minimum wage next
    year, in terms of its ability to buy things, it will be at a 40-year
    low, a 40-year low. I don't know about you, but my idea of the 21st
    century is an exciting, high-tech deal where there are all these gadgets
    that I don't even know how to work, but my daughter and all my
    grandchildren, they'll be working them like crazy and doing well. My
    idea of the 21st century is not a hard-work, low-wage dead-end society.
    Let's raise the minimum wage. We can go forward together. That's what
    family members do. That's our obligation to people who are out there
    doing that kind of work the rest of us don't want to do. That's part of
    our family obligations.
        The next thing we ought to do is when we cut taxes we ought to make
    it support families. My tax cut program gives people a tax cut for
    raising kids and for educating their children and themselves, families,
    pro-family. And we ought to say we know some people are going to lose
    their jobs in all this downsizing. It's always happened, and now it
    seems to be happening a little more. But when people lose their jobs, if
    they're working people, the least we can do is guarantee them a right to
    immediately--not to wait until their unemployment runs out--immediately,
    immediately get more education. And I have proposed a ``GI bill'' for
    America's workers that would allow any unemployed person in the country
    that loses a job to get a voucher worth $2,500 or so a year and take it
    to the local community college for up to 2 years to get education and
    training. That's a family value. That's a family value.
        Just a couple of other things. I believe--you know, in our family,
    we were raised--I was raised in the South. You can tell by the way I
    talk, especially after I'm around you for a while and get in a good
    humor. [Laughter] We were raised to love the land, to love the water, to
    believe that we had to live in harmony with it, to cut the trees in a
    way that there'd still be trees a generation from now, to till the land
    in a way that there would still be topsoil for our grandchildren. That's
    what we were raised to do. And I believe part of our family values
    should be teaching our people to preserve our environment. And I don't
    understand this new obsession in Washington with ripping out all the
    protections for the environment and for the public health and safety,
    for clean food, clean water, clean air. I don't understand that. I don't
    understand that.
        And the last thing I want to say is, it seems to me that the
    American family has got to be focusing on social problems we have that
    affect our children especially, especially. What are our obligations
    there? And on these I need your help because there's only so much the
    Government can do, although there are things the Government can do.
        We were, most of us, raised to know what the seven deadly sins were.
    Remember that? Pride, lust, gluttony, sloth, avarice, anger, envy. Anger
    and gluttony, those are the two I have to work on all the time.
    [Laughter] We've all got our little list, don't we? But I would like to
    point out that there are four things that are threatening our children
    that could be deadly sins to them: violence; the problem of teen
    pregnancy, for the young fathers as well as the

    [[Page 1225]]

    young mothers; smoking, something people don't often think about, I want
    to talk about that a little bit; and drugs.
        And I want to say we have to think about the children. Families are
    fundamentally the device through which we perpetuate ourselves. They're
    really about children. They're organized to raise children. And nobody
    in all of human history has ever come up with an appropriate, adequate
    substitute. Jesus said, ``Let the little children come to me and do not
    hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.''
        When they come, what do you do? Luke 11, ``If a child asks for
    bread, would you give him a stone? If he asks for a fish, would you give
    him a serpent? If he asks for an egg, would you give him a scorpion?''
    That's what the kids of this country are being given, a whole lot of
    them.
        Look at violence. Every 2 hours in this country a child dies of a
    gunshot wound. Last year in Washington we had a 13-year-old honor
    student just standing at the bus stop shot down because he just happened
    to be in the middle of two gangs that were fighting. Homicide is the
    leading cause of death among African-American males between the ages of
    15 and 24. The number of people arrested for murder is going down among
    those older than 25 but going up for juveniles and young adults. The
    number of juveniles--juveniles--arrested for murder increased 168
    percent between 1984 and 1993.
        In one of our newspapers the other day there was this incredible
    story about a 16-year-old boy who shot a 12-year-old boy dead because he
    thought he was showing him disrespect. All this boy's friends, the 12-
    year-old boy's friends, said that's the way he treated everybody, he was
    a jokester. The 16-year-old felt insecure. They had one incident;
    nothing happened. They had another incident; he pulled out the gun and
    shot him when he was running away and then stood over his body and
    emptied the gun into his body.
        Now, this happened just a couple of days after there was this great
    national survey, a very fascinating survey of young gang members in
    which two-thirds of these young men honestly said, quite openly, they
    thought it was all right to shoot somebody who disrespected you. If
    that's all right, I'd be plumb out of bullets; the whole country would
    be. [Laughter] We're laughing, but this is deadly serious. How many of
    us--how many times were we raised with, ``When you get mad, count to 10
    before you open your mouth.'' Don't you say that? Don't you do that?
    That's how we were raised up. Who's telling these kids to count to 10?
        What's happening out there? How can two-thirds of the kids who
    belong to these gangs think it's okay to shoot somebody for some word
    they say? Whatever happened to,``Sticks and stones can break my bones,
    but words will never hurt me''? Whatever happened to people being told
    to define themselves from the inside out, not from the outside in?
    Whatever happened to all that?
        I'm doing what I can. Look, when we passed that crime bill last year
    a lot of Members of Congress literally gave up their seats in Congress
    and gave up their careers to vote for that crime bill, because it banned
    assault weapons. And they were taken out. I'm telling you, the NRA took
    them out in the last election. And they did it for your children. Most
    of these people came from rural districts where their voters didn't
    understand and they could be stampeded because they didn't know anybody
    with an assault weapon. And they figured if somebody bought one and
    wanted to take it to a shooting contest they ought to have a right to.
    And they were spooked, and a lot of them voted against these good
    Members of Congress. But they did it for our kids who are living in
    these cities where these kids are being gunned down. They said, ``If it
    costs me my career to get the Uzis out of the high school, I'll give it
    up.''
        Now, that was a great thing. That was an important thing. And that
    bill gave some money to community groups for crime prevention programs
    and for job programs and for things to give these kids something to say
    yes to. We're doing what we can, but you know and I know we can put
    100,000 more police on the street, we can ban assault weapons, we can
    have the Brady bill, we can have these funds for community programs--and
    I hope we can save them, by the way, in this Congress--but the parents
    still have to be there, or if they're not there, the churches, somebody
    has got to be there to teach these kids right from wrong. Somebody has
    got to say, ``I don't care what they call you, it is better to live to
    be 70 years old and have children and grandchildren and have a useful
    full life. What difference does it make what they call you?'' Somebody
    has to be there to do that. And we've all got to do that together.

    [[Page 1226]]

        Yes, there are some other things we can do. The other day--we're in
    a big argument in Washington now--I think we're going to win this one
    because it's not partisan--about the influence that our culture has, you
    know, are kids exposed to too much violence in the movies and
    principally on television, because that's how most people watch it? And
    I think the answer is, yes, they are. Of course they are.
        But the answer to this is not simply to condemn but to ask the
    people who are making these movies to help us and to ask the people who
    are showing them to us to help us. And now, with all the wonders of
    technology, we know that everybody who has cable TV can get something
    called the V-chip which would allow every family to determine which
    channels or even programs within channels they don't want their little
    children to watch. Kids get numb to violence. If by the time you're 6 or
    7 years old, you've seen thousands and thousands and thousands of people
    shot down on the street, it numbs you. So we ought to pass this law and
    require the V-chip and give families the right to program for their
    children. It's a family right.
        But in the end, we have to do this together. And if we don't deal
    with this, all the rest of this stuff is just like whistling ``Dixie''
    because you can't bring one of these kids back. In this life, you cannot
    see them again once they're dead. So we must--this is something we must
    commit to do together. And this ought not to be a partisan issue. It
    ought not to be a racial issue. It ought not to be a regional issue. We
    have to do something about the rapid growth in violence among our very
    young people.
        The second thing I want to talk about a minute is teen pregnancy.
    Every year a million young girls between the ages of 15 and 19 become
    pregnant. Some of them are married, but most of them aren't. Eighty
    percent of the children born to unwed teenagers who dropped out of
    school, 80 percent of them live in poverty. It is literally true that if
    teenagers who are unmarried didn't have babies and all babies were born
    into families where at least one person both had a job and a high-school
    education, you would cut the poverty rate by more than 50 percent in
    America. The new poor in America are young mothers and their little
    children.
        In the last 2\1/2\ years, we're worked hard on this. And our welfare
    reform program sends a clear signal to young people. I believe if people
    are going to draw welfare when they are young and unmarried, we should
    say, this is not so you can go out and set up your own household and
    perpetuate this. Unless you have a bad situation at home, you ought to
    have to live at home and stay in school or stay at work to take the
    check.
        And I think we should hold fathers more accountable. There's a lot
    of child abuse in teen pregnancy. At least half the babies born to
    teenage girls are fathered by men who are 20 or older. That's child
    abuse. That's not right. It's not right. And even young men--even young
    men--there was a young man in our hometown in Arkansas before I moved
    here who made a mistake and fathered a child. He was a young man in
    school. But you know, that kid got up every day before school and went
    to work and every day after school went back to work and gave all that
    money to the child. We need more people doing that. That's the kind of
    thing that we have got to have happen. We need to be, all of us, for
    very, very tough child support enforcement. We cannot tolerate people
    who won't take care of their own children. Eight-hundred thousand people
    could move off welfare if we just enforced the child support laws of the
    United States of America. And we need to be for that.
        But I will say again, I can't solve this problem with a Government
    fix. This is about how people behave and whether they get personal,
    personal, one-on-one kinds of reassurance. I am working to get all the
    leaders of all sectors of our society involved in this fight. But what I
    want to say is we know there are things that work. The Teen Health
    Connection here working with low-income teenagers right here in
    Charlotte has made a real difference. Dr. Henry Foster's ``I Have A
    Future'' program has made a real difference.
        And I want to say, by the way, I thank you for standing behind Henry
    Foster. He is a good man, and I'm glad you've got him coming here. And
    I'm going to do my best to keep him involved in this struggle because he
    has proved--I saw those young people. I saw those kids from the housing
    projects in Nashville, Tennessee. A lot of them didn't have a nickel to
    their names, and they got on a bus and they left their lives, they left
    what they were doing, and they rode to Washington to tell the United
    States Senate they ought not to let politics keep Henry Foster from
    becoming Surgeon General, because he

    [[Page 1227]]

    had changed their lives. He had ended the epidemic of teen pregnancy and
    violence and had given them a chance to start a better future. That's
    what we need more of.
        The same thing is true of drugs. Let me just give you this. In the
    latest survey of drug use among 8th, 10th, and 12th graders, 43 percent
    of high school seniors had used an illegal drug by the time they reached
    their senior year. Marijuana, LSD, inhalants like glue and aerosol--that
    stuff people did when I was barely out of high school--all these things
    are coming back. And the feeling that these drugs are dangerous is going
    down in these surveys. Same people, two-thirds of them who say we can go
    out and shoot somebody that disrespects us say, ``Oh, this stuff's not
    dangerous.''
        Now, we are now doing more than a National Government's ever done to
    fight drugs, based on cutting off the source in foreign governments. You
    probably saw in the press this week another drug kingpin busted in
    Colombia. We work hard on that, and we are making real progress on that.
    But you also have to do things here at home. You've got to punish the
    real serious offenders here at home. But you have to have some sort of
    treatment, education, and prevention programs as well. Therefore, I am
    opposed to these efforts in the Congress to balance the budget by
    cutting 23 million students out of the safe schools and drug-free
    schools program.
        You know, I bet a lot of you had your children come home and tell
    you how much they liked their D.A.R.E. officer in the school talking
    about staying off drugs. A lot of these police officers that are going
    into these schools are the best role models a lot of these young kids
    have. And we need to support this sort of thing. We don't need to walk
    away from it. And you have to help. You have got to make sure that every
    single solitary school in this country has a good safe and drug-free
    schools program. You have got to do that. Whatever we do in Washington,
    you have got to do that.
        The last thing I want to talk about is smoking. And I want to tell
    you why I want to talk about it. I know that tobacco is very important
    to the economy of this fine State. And I've worked hard to help the
    economy of this and every other State. And there are a lot of wonderful
    people in this country who make a living as tobacco farmers, and their
    families have for a couple of hundred years. That's important to
    understand.
        But we cannot pretend that we're ignoring the evidence. One of the
    greatest threats to the health of our children is teenage smoking, and
    it's rising. Listen to this, every single day 3,000 young people become
    regular smokers and nearly 1,000 of them will die prematurely as a
    result. For more than a decade, even as adult smoking was dropping, the
    smoking rate among high school seniors did not go down. That was bad
    enough. But since 1991, the percentage of teenage smokers has risen
    steadily and rapidly. There's been a 30 percent increase in the 8th
    graders who smoke, a 22 percent increase in the number of 10th graders
    who smoke, and by the age of 16, the average teenage smoker is smoking
    every day and will not stop. If you wanted to do something to reduce the
    cost of health care, help over the long run to balance the budget, and
    increase the health care of America, having no teenagers smoke would be
    the cheapest, easiest, quickest thing you could ever do to change the
    whole dynamic of health care in America.
        Now, again I will tell you, it's just like the drugs and the gangs;
    the number of teenagers who believe smoking is dangerous is dropping
    dramatically. There's a lot more peer approval. This also is a recipe
    for disaster. There are some things we can do at the governmental level,
    and we'll be talking about that in the near future. But what I want to
    say to you is this is just another example of where, no matter what you
    do with the law, people have to change inside, and somebody has to help
    them change inside. And we have to do it in an organized, disciplined
    way.
        James Baldwin once said, ``Children have never been very good at
    listening to their elders.'' As a parent, that's comforting to know.
    [Laughter] ``But,'' he said, ``they have never failed to imitate them.''
        So, I say to you what I said at the beginning. We are on the verge
    of the 21st century. It should be America's century. The best days of
    this country should be before us. If we recognize that we're a family
    and we're going forward, up, or down together, we will go up and forward
    together.
        But we have to ask ourselves, what are our family values and what do
    we in the American family value and what are we going to do about it?
    Today, I've tried to tell you what I intend

    [[Page 1228]]

    to do about it. And I ask you to say, what are you going to do about it,
    and how are you going to continue to work?
        I want to say a special word of thanks to our host pastor, Reverend
    Diggs, because I know that he has worked in this community to try to
    make a difference on these issues. And so many of you have.
        You've got this alliance of these two groups here meeting today. We
    need this kind of alliance on these problems, the kind of problems that
    our children are facing at the grassroots level. They know no racial
    barrier; they know no income barrier even; they certainly know no
    regional barrier. We have got to get over this using family values to
    drive a stake between us as American people and let it lift us up. We
    have got to do that.
        And I ask you to leave here determined to do what you can to be good
    preachers and good Samaritans and good examples, to make the family of
    America a place where family values lifts us up, pulls us together, and
    takes us into the future. We can walk and not faint. We can run and not
    grow weary. And if we do not lose heart, we shall reap.
        God bless you all, and thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:48 p.m. at the Charlotte Convention
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to Rev. Bennett W. Smith, Sr.,
    president, and Rev. Gardner C. Taylor, former president, Progressive
    National Baptist Convention, Inc.; and Gov. James A. Hunt, Jr., of North
    Carolina.