    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [July 24, 1995]
    [Pages 1132-1138]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the American Legion Boys Nation
    July 24, 1995

        Thank you very much. To all the delegates of Boys Nation, I'm
    delighted to be here, as you know, with many members of our
    administration who are involved in the setting of economic policy for
    our country; delighted to see Mr. William Detweiler, the national
    commander of the American Legion, here; along with your other leaders,
    Ray Smith; Ron Engel; Jack Mercier, who has been with Boys Nation for 31
    years and I believe was there--that would make 32 years--when I was
    there in 1963; George Blume and others.
        Let me say, as I'm sure you know, I am especially delighted to
    welcome all of you here to the White House. I don't have to tell you
    what an important event this is for me every year and how much I look
    forward to it. But this is an especially important time for all of you
    to be here. The world in which you will live, the world which I am sure
    many of you will help to lead, can be America's greatest time. But it is
    a world being transformed to a degree seldom seen in all American
    history. Much of this change is good. But it's not all good.

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        If you look at what is happening in America, we have more new
    businesses being formed, more Americans becoming millionaires, more
    people finding success than at any period in our history. But most
    Americans are still working harder for the same or lower pay they were
    making a few years ago, with greater levels of personal insecurity about
    their ability to take care of their parents if they get sick, their
    ability to educate their children, their ability to hold on to their own
    health care.
        If you look at what's going on, most of our social problems are
    being addressed very well in many places. In most major cities the crime
    rate is down, but the rate of random violence and crime among our
    youngest teenagers is going up, and there are still too many problems
    with crime and violence, with drugs and gangs.
        If you look around the world, the cold war is over and peace and
    freedom and democracy and world trade are all increasing. But still
    there are serious problems with what I call the organized forces of
    destruction: ethnic, religious, racial hatreds leading to awful wars,
    the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in tiny amounts, as you
    saw when the terrible bomb exploded in Oklahoma City or the gas was
    released in the Japanese subway. So we have both a great deal of good
    and a great deal of troubling change going on in the world today and in
    our country.
        In recent weeks I have addressed those challenges in the face here
    at home, first, to restore the American dream of opportunity and the
    American value of responsibility and, second, to bring our country
    together in a stronger community so that we can move forward together. I
    believe those two goals are inseparable. I believe the only way we can
    restore economic opportunity and solve our social problems is to unite
    our people more.
        I can tell you that it would have been unthinkable when I was here
    in 1963--we had a lot of problems in 1963; we had severe racial problems
    still; the country was still largely segregated--but it would have been
    unthinkable if someone had told us in 1963 that 30 years from now the
    country would be as deeply divided as it is today and that people would
    have lost faith in their institutions and would have the level of
    cynicism and skepticism that they have today.
        My vision for your future is a very positive one. I want this
    country to be a high-opportunity, smart-work country with good jobs and
    safe streets, with a clean environment and excellent education and
    health care, a country in which diverse people live and work together,
    in which communities and families can solve their own problems and in
    which people are given the chance as individuals to live up to the
    fullest of their God-given potential in a world that is steadily moving
    toward more peace and freedom.
        When I say we have to restore the American dream of opportunity and
    the American value of responsibility, when I say we have to rebuild
    America's sense of community, that is simply a strategy to reach that
    vision, a strategy rooted in an obligation Americans have always
    accepted, the obligation to give each successive generation a better
    life than the preceding one had. That is an obligation from which I
    benefited and one from which millions of others have benefited as well.
        Exactly 32 years ago, on July 24, 1963, I came here as a delegate to
    Boys Nation when John Kennedy was President. I would never have made it
    here and gone from that day to this one without the benefit of the
    shared beliefs and convictions and opportunities that made up the
    America of my youth. I lived in a family where everyone worked hard and
    where children were expected to study hard. I also had a lot of
    opportunity given to me by my community. I had good teachers, good
    schools, and when I needed them, scholarships and jobs to make my
    education possible.
        I saw what happened, too, when good people had no opportunity. There
    were a lot of good people I grew up with who had no opportunity because
    they were of a different race or because they happened to be poor and
    white and isolated in poor communities in the hills and hollows of my
    State. I have lived my public life believing that everybody ought to
    have the chances that I had and that if everybody did and we all worked
    together, this country would be able to go on indefinitely as the
    world's best hope for freedom and opportunity. My philosophy is rooted
    in these beliefs, and the experience of the United States bears out that
    they are the right ones.
        I imagine the same is true in your lives. I'm sure a lot of you have
    been amazed at how very different your backgrounds are and yet how much
    you seem to have in common. Our Nation's work must reflect what you have
    in com-

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    mon. And our Nation's budget, which we're debating here with such
    intensity now, must also reflect those common values and our shared
    vision for the future.
        The priorities of American families and their household budgets
    aren't all that much different than the priorities of our larger
    American family and our Nation's budget. The way we spend our money as
    individuals, as a family, and as a nation says an awful lot about who we
    are, what our values are, and what our vision for the future really is.
    We are at an historic moment, as I have said. For the first time in a
    long time, the leaders of both major parties agree on one thing we have
    to do consistent with our values, and that is to balance the Federal
    budget and relieve our children and our grandchildren from the burden of
    a permanently increasing Federal debt.
        You know, we never had a structural or permanent deficit in our
    country until about 1981. But from 1981 until the day I took office, the
    national debt was quadrupled. When I came here I was committed to
    getting that deficit off our backs. In the first 2 years of our
    administration, we cut the deficit by a third, and we are now reducing
    it for 3 years in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was
    President of the United States just after World War II.
        But it is still such a problem, what happened in the previous 12
    years, that the budget would be balanced today, today, except for the
    interest payments we make on the debt run up between 1981 and the day I
    became President. And this debt is so great that next year interest on
    the debt could be larger than the defense budget. This is a very
    significant problem, and there is more to do.
        Therefore, it is good news that both the Congress and I have offered
    plans to balance the budget. Both plans involve significant spending
    cuts which will not be easy to meet. Both plans protect our ability to
    maintain a strong defense and the world's finest military. Beyond those
    similarities, however, there are profound differences, differences that
    go to the heart of our ability to find common ground, to rebuild the
    American community around the old-fashioned values that I talked about
    just a moment ago. The commitment to our future I believe that we all
    have must be defined in large measure today in how this budget contest
    is played out.
        The congressional budget balances a budget in 7 years. My budget
    does it in 10. The congressional budget cuts taxes by about $250 billion
    over 7 years. Our budget cuts taxes but by slightly less than half that
    amount. Why? Because our budget, by making those changes, enables us to
    increase investment in education and training by about $40 billion over
    the next 7 years, to help make sure all Americans have a chance to
    develop the fullest of their abilities and to compete and win in the
    global economy.
        This is very important. About half of all the students in college
    today everywhere in America have some form of financial assistance. It
    is critically important to maintain it. It is critically important that
    everybody who wants to go to school has a chance to go and has a chance
    to finish. And it's a big part of what our national security will mean
    in the global economy.
        Our budget strengthens health care coverage, especially for seniors
    through Medicare, and provides families some help in caring for their
    elderly parents who don't go into nursing homes. Our budget protects the
    food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink. It rewards work,
    concentrating tax policies on helping working families to raise their
    children and to educate both their children and themselves, because we
    know more and more adults will have to go back for job training over the
    course of their work lives. And it preserves our investments in science
    and technology, so that our workers and our businesses can compete the
    world over in a rapidly changing technological era.
        Our budget achieves all the economic benefits of balancing the
    budget. It gives you lower interest rates, higher investment in private
    dollars. It reduces the amount we'll have to pay on the debt for
    interest in the years ahead. But it maintains these other priorities,
    which I believe are essential to rebuilding the American community and
    finding common ground.
        These priorities are not Democratic or Republican priorities. They
    are commonsense, national decisions that have served us very, very well
    over the last generation. They have stood the test of time. They have
    marked our character as a nation, and they mark the road to the future
    we should take.
        Now, some in Congress say we need to retreat from the common ground
    we have so carefully built on education, on Medicare, on the
    environment, on science and technology to balance the budget in 7 years
    with these big tax cuts. They say we need to slash Federal aid to the
    schools

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    and to increase the cost of student loans. They say it is all right to
    make the elderly pay up to thousands more for their Medicare benefits
    and to dramatically reduce our ability to protect the environment to
    meet the 7-year time period with the big tax cuts. They say all this is
    necessary to balance the budget. But many would use the balanced budget
    as an excuse to do these things which they wish to do anyway.
        I have shown we can balance the budget without retreating from our
    common ground on education, on health care, on the environment. So I
    invite Senators and Members of Congress from both parties to join me in
    balancing the budget while protecting our common ground. I will work
    hard to get their support. But if they refuse, I must continue to act,
    alone if necessary, to protect the common ground that brought every
    single one of you into this White House today. I will do that.
    [Applause] Thank you very much.
        Let me say again, there is no question that we have to balance the
    budget. And the majority in Congress deserve credit for proposing a plan
    to do that. But we do not have to do it in 7 years. We do not have to do
    it with massive tax cuts to people who don't really need it.
        The haste of their schedule and the scope of their tax cuts are
    luxuries, and this is not a time for luxuries. Think again about your
    family's budget. If you can't afford luxuries right now, you don't
    sacrifice necessities to have them. Take education. I think it's a
    necessity. From the birth of the land-grant colleges during the Civil
    War to the creation of the GI bill 51 years ago this summer, we have
    understood that when we invest in the education of our people, it makes
    the whole country stronger.
        We have understood that, regardless of party, right through the
    first 2 years of our administration. In 1993 and in 1994, we had
    bipartisan support for the most remarkable education agenda in the last
    30 years. We had higher standards for our schools. We had more
    affordable college loans with better repayment terms. We had a national
    service initiative, AmeriCorps, that now gives 20,000 young people a
    chance to serve in their communities and earn money for their college
    educations.
        We had a dramatic expansion of Head Start, a program that has
    enjoyed bipartisan support for decades now. We expanded the age at which
    children were eligible, improved the quality of the program, and
    increased the numbers of kids in Head Start to make it more likely that
    more Americans will have a chance to be sitting where you're sitting
    today. But now, as a part of this balanced budget program, many in
    Congress are willing to cut 50,000 people out of the Head Start program
    and block its expansion.
        Another example is the commitment to educate and train all
    Americans. We know the global economy demands more skills and
    information than ever before. We know--we know that the middle class in
    America today, including many of your parents, are either going up or
    going down economically, are either increasing their security or feeling
    more insecure, based directly on the level of skills they have. We know
    that. We know that is a reality for the lives of Americans all across
    this country.
        So what did we propose? We proposed to do everything we could to
    increase the access of people to college and to increase the training
    available to adults. But again, many in Congress would cut the Pell
    grant program by 300,000 slots a year. That's 300,000 poor people who
    won't get college degrees to become middle class people, maybe even rich
    people, and pay back far more to the Treasury in taxes than they ever
    took out in the Pell grants.
        And the job training in some ways is the most troubling of all. I
    have proposed that we consolidate all the Government's training programs
    into one big scholarship program for adult workers who are unemployed or
    are underemployed, giving them a voucher worth up to $2,600 a year to go
    back for 2 years to get further training so they can increase their
    abilities to earn a good living. We should not reduce this. We should
    increase this. We shouldn't reduce it. People are in trouble out there
    today in this country because they don't have the education and skills
    they need to maintain family-wage jobs in a global economy. These are
    very important. We don't have to get rid of this to balance the budget.
        The same is true about health care. Thirty years ago, we decided as
    a people that we would at least protect the elderly of this country from
    the fortunes of not having adequate health care. We did it with
    Medicare. We did this as an extension of the compassion we feel in our
    own families, for the elderly in our individual families.
        Medicare has worked well. It has low administrative costs. It has
    covered all people over 65. I might add that we are the only advanced
    coun-

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    try in the world that doesn't have some form of universal health
    coverage for everybody. But at least we do it for senior citizens. It's
    a basic American value. We help take care of people who raised us up and
    took care of us.
        Before Medicare, half of the elderly people in this country had no
    health insurance whatever. Now, 97 percent of the senior citizens in
    America have access to health care. Of course, we have to reduce the
    rate of inflation in the Medicare program. I have said that from the
    first speech I gave to the Congress as President. But we can do this by
    reforming Medicare, not by ruining it. We can still maintain protections
    for every senior citizen in America, instead of deciding that some will
    do fine and others will get the shaft.
        Some in Congress want to cut $270 billion from the Medicare program,
    about the same amount they want to cut taxes. Their proposal would
    require our seniors--maybe some of your grandparents--to pay as much as
    $5,600 more a couple in out-of-pocket costs. So we cut spending in one
    way and offload the burden to others. That does not reflect the values
    of most American families. Maybe some people can afford to pay some more
    because they're upper income, but most seniors in this country hardly
    have enough to live on as it is.
        If you look at the attack on the environment, you see another
    example. The environment has been a bipartisan issue in America. The
    Environmental Protection Agency was established under the Presidency of
    Richard Nixon, a Republican President. We have shared a common
    commitment to the environment. Perhaps our country's most outstanding
    environmental President was our first environmental President, Theodore
    Roosevelt, again, a Republican. This has never been a partisan issue.
        We have agreed for a long time as a people that the stewardship of
    our natural environment is a big part of maintaining the American dream.
    With the first Earth Day, 25 years ago, Americans came together to say
    no to dirty air, toxic food, polluted water and say yes to leaving our
    children a nation as unspoiled as their dreams. We recognize together
    that our business in creating jobs was not undermined, and in fact could
    be enhanced, by protecting the environment.
        We all know that in the last two decades there have been some rigid
    regulations and some unreasonable enforcement that have limited the
    effect of our laws and alienated people from the whole cause of
    environmental protection. So we should change the way our regulators do
    their work. We have worked very hard to do that. Right now, we have in
    motion an initiative that will reduce by 25 percent the amount of time
    people in the business community spend complying with the environmental
    laws.
        Right now we are putting in place a small business program that says
    to every small business person in America, if you're worried about
    violating an environmental law, if you will call us and ask for help,
    you cannot be fined for 6 months. We will work with you because you
    asked for help. We're not interested in fining people; we're interested
    in protecting the environment. But that is very different from just
    walking away from our commitment to protect the environment.
        Some in Congress want to slash funding for enforcement by almost 50
    percent. It could put at risk the safety of the water we drink. It would
    increase the chances of raw sewage washing up on our beaches. It would
    excuse some polluters from having to clean up their mess. That is not
    our vision.
        Believe it or not, some of these restrictions would actually
    undermine the ability of the United States to enforce the Clean Air Act.
    The Clean Air Act was last signed by President Bush, my Republican
    predecessor, who said it was his proudest legislative achievement. This
    has always been a bipartisan thing. It is now being put at risk in this
    budget debate. And I believe it undermines our ability to find common
    ground.
        Others say we should cut science and technology, the most powerful
    engine we have to boost our economy.
        Finally, there are even proposals that would undermine our ability
    to make work more attractive than welfare. I have worked now for 15
    years, long before I became President, to move people from welfare to
    work. I have learned that most people on welfare want to go to work and
    that one of the things that we permitted to happen over the years was to
    build in too many disincentives to work. So that's why I've supported
    welfare reform proposals that would move people from welfare to work. We
    have given 30 States permission to get out from under Federal rules and
    regulations, to come up with new and innovative ways to move people from
    welfare to work, including letting States

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    take welfare checks and give them to employers as income supplements so
    they would actually hire people to go to work.
        One of the things we have to do is to make sure we don't tax people
    back into poverty. And when people are out there working on low wages,
    what we did in 1993 was to say, if you're out there working 40 hours a
    week and you have children in your house, you should not be in poverty.
    The tax system shouldn't put you in poverty. We will lower your taxes.
    If necessary, we will give you a tax refund so that if you'll work 40
    hours a week, you can raise your kids outside of poverty. There are even
    some people who want to erode that tax cut so that we can cut taxes for
    people who don't really need it in this budget program.
        There are a lot of things being done here which will violate and
    undermine our chances to achieve common ground. And they do not fall
    into the traditional partisan differences. Most of these things have
    been supported by Republicans and Democrats. The tax provision for
    working families was called by President Ronald Reagan the most
    important pro-family, antipoverty initiative in the last 30 years. Now
    there are people in Congress who are trying to erode it. And it is
    wrong. And it undermines our ability to make common ground.
        The 7-year timetable and the huge tax cut, these are luxuries. To
    make room for them, some in Congress would slash necessities. I say,
    let's take 10 years instead of 7; let's have a modest tax cut targeted
    toward what people really need, which is help in raising and educating
    their children and knowing they can always get new education and
    training themselves; and let's keep on investing in the things that are
    our necessities. These things will create millions more American dreams
    if we continue them.
        We can cut taxes. We can balance the budget. But we have to do it in
    a way that maintains what has been for decades and what clearly is now
    the common ground on which we can go forward together.
        Your parents recognized that it was unacceptable to destroy the
    environment and created the environmental movement. My parents saw the
    pain of their parents and insisted that we create Medicare. Every
    generation has done something to build up and create the fabric that is
    what we know as the American dream. We now have to create a system of
    lifetime education and training that all can have access to, and we now
    have to deal with these social problems that have been too long ignored.
    We can do it in a way that permits us still to balance the budget and
    lift that burden from your future. So I say to the Congress, come back
    to common ground. We can do this.
        The Congress has recently passed the so-called rescission bill. You
    may not know what that means, but basically it's a downpayment on our
    balanced budget. It cuts from the budget that we are presently spending
    in this year.
        This rescission bill, when they first sent it to me, caused me to
    veto it because it had unacceptable cuts in education, training, and the
    environment. When we went back to the table to work together, Congress
    came up with a revised bill that reflects our shared values. It permits
    us to cut $16 billion from this year's budget; to maintain our
    commitment to education, health care, and the environment; to invest in
    helping those people in California who still are suffering from the
    earthquake; to deal with the terrible tragedy in Oklahoma City; to keep
    our commitment to the Middle East peace process and a number of other
    things and still cut even more spending to continue our work toward
    balancing the budget.
        Now we share, I hope and believe, a basic commitment that each
    generation must take account of the accumulated wisdom of generations
    that have gone before as well as our new ideas. When we ignore the
    evidence of what has plainly worked, in the attempt to fix what is
    plainly wrong, we pay a terrible price. We mustn't throw over, in a
    moment of partisan zeal, the common sense and bipartisan conclusions of
    our fathers and mothers, derived from lifetimes of experience with
    problems that we will only have to suffer through again if we ignore
    that experience.
        So I ask you as you come together in this wonderful Boys Nation
    experience, and you debate these issues. Imagine what you want your
    country to look like. Ask yourself what your vision of the future is
    like. Write it down on a piece of paper. What do you want America to
    look like in 20 years? What is your vision, and how will we achieve it?
    And what things do we have to do together? What things ought we to be
    for, whether we're Republicans or Democrats, whether we live in the
    Northeast or the far West, whether we're men or women, and without
    regard to our racial or religious background? What are those things that
    we can

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    say, ``This is what we want America to look like.''?
        That, my friends, is where we must find our common ground. And that
    is what I am determined to protect in this great debate to balance the
    budget.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:11 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Ray Smith, chairman, American
    Legion National Americanism Commission, and Ron Engel, director; Jack
    Mercier, director of activities; and George Blume, legislative director,
    Boys Nation.