    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [September 5, 1995]
    [Pages 1305-1308]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma
    September 5, 1995

        Thank you very much. It is wonderful to be here today. I want to
    thank Cal Dooley for his kind remarks and for his remarkable leadership
    in the Congress. He does a terrific job for all of you. I thank Delaine
    Eastin for her commitment to education and for being here with me today.
    I want to thank your school principal, Lucile King, who on next-to-no
    notice allowed me to come in here and share some time with some of your
    students. I thank Eleanor Brown who did a fine job speaking here. I
    said, ``Eleanor''--before she came up, I said, ``Eleanor, are you having
    a good time, or are you nervous?'' She said, ``I'm a little nervous.''

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    So I said, ``Well, just pretend you're talking to a few people.'' And
    she did a fine job, didn't she? Let's give her another hand. [Applause]
    I thought she did a great job. I also want thank the Selma High Marine
    Corps ROTC, who posted the colors, the high school choir, and the Black
    Bear Brigade Band, who played very well when I came up here today, I
    thought.
        I'd also like to thank the mayor and the members of the City Council
    and the school board who met me. One of the school board members gave me
    this Save the Children tie to wear in the speech. And the mayor told me,
    as the sign said, that this is the raisin capital of the world. And I
    said, ``Well, the only thing I can say is, I don't know about raising
    them, but I have probably consumed more raisins than any President who
    ever held this office. And I've enjoyed every one of them.
        Ladies and gentlemen, and to all the young people who are here, I
    want to talk about education today. This is back-to-school day. But
    before I do, I have to say just a few words about the situation in
    Bosnia. You may know that this morning our pilots and crews and their
    NATO allies resumed the bombing of Bosnian Serb military positions. I
    support that; it's appropriate; its necessary, because the Bosnian Serbs
    failed to comply with the conditions set over the weekend to withdraw
    their heavy weapons from Sarajevo. We have to follow through on our
    commitment to protect Sarajevo and those other safe areas. We cannot
    allow more innocent civilians and children to die there. This war has to
    end by negotiation, not on the battlefield.
        I'm glad to be here in the number one agricultural region in our
    Nation. The Central Valley's orange groves and pistachio trees and the
    acres of vineyards and cotton and corn and the people who grow the
    raisins are critical not only to your State's economy but to our
    Nation's economy.
        I wanted to come here to this community today because I think that
    all of you symbolize, in what you're doing here, what we have to do as a
    country. We've got to take responsibility for ourselves and our
    children. We've got to work together, and we've got to work for the
    future.
        All of you know that education for individual Americans has always
    been the key to the American dream. I have a simple message today: At
    the end of the cold war, at the beginning of this period of global
    economy, of the information age, the technology age, education is more
    important today to individual Americans, to families, to communities,
    and to our future than it has ever been in the entire history of the
    United States, and we have to act on that fundamental truth as a people.
        Thirty months ago, I set out to change the economic direction of our
    country, to bring the economy of America back and to help the economy of
    California recover. Thirty months later, we have over 7 million more
    jobs, 2\1/2\ million more homeowners, over 1\1/2\ million more small
    businesses. The jobs you lost in the difficult 4 years before I took
    office have been replaced, and you're beginning to come back in
    California.
        But there is one fundamental problem left in America economically,
    and that is for the last 15 years more than half of the hourly wage
    earners in America are working a longer work week for the same or lower
    wages. And there is a simple, clear reason for that. In the global
    economy, no matter how hard people work, if you don't have the skills
    that will command high incomes, it is difficult to earn those incomes.
    We have simply got to make a commitment as a nation to revolutionizing
    the availability and quality of education, starting with the youngest
    preschoolers and going through adults who need it to get better jobs or
    when they're unemployed. And we have to do it together. It is the
    fundamental fact of our time.
        When Congress comes back from its recession--excuse me, recession--
    whatever that--recess--[laughter]--school--it's a school day--the
    recess. When Congress comes back from their recess tomorrow, we will
    have 90 days of decisions about the budget, 90 days to choose what
    direction we're going to take. There's some good news for these children
    in the audience about decisions that have already been made. For the
    first time in over a dozen years, we now have a bipartisan commitment to
    balance the Federal budget and remove the burden of debt from our
    children and our grandchildren. That is a very good thing to do.
        The question is, how are we going to balance the budget? I have
    given Congress a plan which recognizes both these fundamental truths:
    that we have to balance the budget and that we have to provide for
    education and invest in our young people's future. They are working on a
    plan that balances the budget, but by their own estimate only produces
    weak economic growth, in part because it cuts education. In California

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    you have had enough of cutting education. We need to invest more in
    education, and we can do that.
        I hope as strongly as I can say that you're going to see the most
    productive 90 days we've seen in a long time in Congress. We can balance
    the budget. We can end welfare as we know it. And we can invest in
    education and protect the medical care of our elderly and protect our
    ability to have a safe and clean food supply and environment. We can do
    all this in a balanced way if we'll work for common ground with common
    sense. That's what we have to do.
        There are some who say that there should be no compromise this
    autumn, but I say that good people of good will want us to find common
    ground, want us to find honorable compromise, want us to balance the
    budget and keep faith with the children of America and their educational
    needs.
        You know, I believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans of
    both parties are committed to an agenda of balancing the budget and
    investing in education. When I became President and we increased our
    investment in Head Start and added 50,000 more poor children to the Head
    Start rolls, it had bipartisan support. When we passed the Goals 2000
    program to give schools the chance to reform themselves and to get more
    computers and other technology in the classroom and to have smaller
    class sizes and higher standards, it had overwhelming bipartisan
    support. When we began to help the States of this country to set up
    programs for young people who graduate from high school but don't go to
    4-year colleges and still need further education to get good jobs and
    good wages, a school-to-work program, it had bipartisan support. When we
    established the safe and drug-free schools program to support the
    message to our young people that if you want to learn, you have a right
    to learn in safety and you have to learn without drugs, it had
    bipartisan support. When we expanded the availability of college loans
    and scholarships for lower income students and college loans for all
    students, we lowered the cost and improved the repayment terms, it had
    bipartisan support. There are young people here with AmeriCorps who are
    working in the communities of the valley and earning money to go to
    college. That program was created with bipartisan support.
        Education is not supposed to be a partisan political football, and
    it should not be when the Congress returns tomorrow. We ought to all
    stay on the side of education.
        I will be urging the Congress to adopt two new education ideas which
    will help the working families in this valley to provide for their
    future. Number one, there's going to be a tax cut; the question is,
    who's going to get it and what's it going to be for? I believe we ought
    to give a tax cut for working families to have the cost of their
    education tax deductible after high school: college education, training
    for technicians, unemployed people. That's the kind of tax cut I think
    we ought to have.
        The other thing I hope they will do is to recognize that adults need
    education, too. I have urged the Congress to create a fund which would
    give to every person who loses a job in the United States the right to
    get a $2,600 voucher for a year for 2 years to take to the nearest
    community college, junior college, or other educational institution to
    get retrained if they lose their jobs and they need a brighter future.
        One other thing I'd like to say: I want to thank the young people
    who were in that class with me today practicing citizenship, asking me
    tough questions, some of which I had never been asked before by anyone.
    I want to thank them for being an example of what I want for all of our
    young people.
        One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that our
    schools have to teach good citizenship and good basic character and
    values: fairness and honesty, respect for self and others,
    responsibility. Those things are too often absent in our schools today.
        And I'm proud to announce that through our Department of Education
    we have been supporting the spread of character education, basic
    principles of citizenship and personal character all across America. And
    today we are releasing four grants to four States, including the State
    of California, to make sure that we do everything we can to help our
    principals, our teachers, and our parents inculcate the values and
    character of good citizenship into our young people throughout this
    country.
        So I ask you, my fellow Americans, without regard to your political
    party or your philosophy, to stand firm on this central principle. Tell
    the Congress and the President you want the budget balanced but you want
    us to invest in education

    [[Page 1308]]

    and the future. We don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. We
    don't want to weaken our economy by balancing the budget. We want to
    strengthen our children's future by getting the burden of debt off of
    them. There is a plan that balances the budget and increases investment
    in education, and that's what we should do.
        We don't need--we don't need--to take 45,000 children out of the
    Head Start program. We don't need to deny every State in the country the
    right to benefit from smaller classes and more technology and
    educational excellence in the Goals 2000 program. We sure don't need to
    stop helping the schools who need it with the safe and drug-free schools
    program. We don't need to stop helping people who want to go on to good
    jobs with higher skills but aren't going to higher education and 4-year
    schools. We need the school-to-work program. And we sure don't need to
    make college loans and college scholarships less available.
        Look what's happened in California. We need more college
    scholarships. We need more college loans. We need more affordable
    education and higher education.
        I have promised the Congress that I would never disagree with them
    without offering an alternative. I have given a balanced budget plan
    which increases investment in education. And on Thursday, I will talk
    more about how we can save even more money in this budget to put into
    reducing the deficit, balancing the budget, and investing in education.
        But before you leave here today, I want to ask every adult American
    in this audience--you look at these children. You know they're our
    future. You know we're living in a global economy. You know that what
    you earn depends on what you can learn. You know it's more important to
    our whole country than every before. What do you want this country to
    look like in the 21st century? If you want a high-wage, high-growth,
    high-opportunity society, if you want every American, no matter how
    humble their background, to have a chance to live the American dream, if
    you don't like the fact that too many of our people are trapped in a
    hard-work, low-wage future, then we can change it only if we decide to
    both balance the budget and invest in the education of our people. That
    is our commitment. I ask all of you to make it.
        God bless you, and thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:10 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    student body president Eleanor Brown and Mayor Ralph P. Garcia of Selma,
    CA.