[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[June 15, 1996]
[Pages 919-920]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 919]]


The President's Radio Address
June 15, 1996

    Good morning. Tomorrow millions of Americans will reach out to their 
fathers in thanks. I believe being a father is the most important job a 
man can do. Today I want to talk with you about what our Nation can do 
to help fathers as they try to raise good children.
    A good, strong father can make the difference between a lifetime of 
disappointment and anger and a lifetime of fulfillment and good 
parenting in turn. Children from single-parent families are twice as 
likely to drop out of high school, to have a child before they're 20, to 
live in poverty. Children who don't have a dad at home are more likely 
to do worse in school than those who do, regardless of their household 
income.
    Yet in so many ways, being a father today is harder than it was when 
our own dads were young. Most fathers are working longer hours to help 
support their families. At the same time, as many women move into the 
workplace, many, many American fathers find themselves taking on even 
greater responsibilities at home.
    So if we want to keep the American family strong in the 21st 
century, we have to support America's fathers in doing their best by 
their children. That's why we worked hard to pass the family and medical 
leave law, to cut taxes for our hardest pressed working families, why 
we're fighting to raise the minimum wage and to make it easier for 
parents to pay for their children's college education, why we're 
fighting to protect the Medicaid that helps working parents with 
children with disabilities to keep working and support their children.
    In addition to supporting fathers, we should expect basic 
responsibilities from them. That's why we worked so hard to strengthen 
child support enforcement. And I'm proud that child support collections 
are up by 40 percent in the last 3 years.
    We are also urging fathers to get more involved, along with mothers, 
in their children's education. In fact, this summer Education Secretary 
Dick Riley is enlisting fathers and mothers to keep reading to their 
children and reading with their children through vacation. While math 
and science scores have gone up in recent years, our reading scores have 
remained just about flat. And reading ability drops off when children 
are out of school. Secretary Riley's Read-Write-Now initiative will 
encourage one million children to keep reading, even after the school 
doors close. Fathers can help to build a lifetime of memories for 
themselves and their children by reading with them every day. I know. On 
this Father's Day, all those books that I read with Chelsea together are 
among my most precious memories.
    We also have to help parents protect their children from bad 
influences that come from outside the home. American parents are working 
overtime to keep their homes safe, to set good examples, only to have 
popular culture make their hard work even harder. That's why we worked 
hard to give parents the V-chip, so they can keep excessive violence and 
other inappropriate material out of their young children's TV viewing, 
and why we have encouraged the entertainment industry to rate their TV 
programs. It's why we're supporting antidrug strategies to help parents 
keep their children drug free.
    Parents also know that, aside from television and drugs, alcohol and 
tobacco are two of the biggest dangers to our children. Our 
administration is working hard, along with tens of thousands of 
citizens, including so many young people in antismoking groups, to keep 
our children away from tobacco. Every day 3,000 kids start to smoke in 
this country illegally, and 1,000 of them will have their lives 
shortened as a result. Our administration has proposed strong rules to 
prevent the advertising, marketing, and sales of tobacco to children.
    Now, some political leaders who oppose our efforts to restrict 
advertising and sales to children are saying that cigarettes are not 
necessarily addictive, even going so far as to compare the dangers of 
kids smoking to the dangers of some children drinking milk. Well, that's 
certainly the tobacco company line. But it was the Surgeon General, Dr. 
C. Everett Koop, under President Reagan who concluded nearly a decade 
ago that cigarettes are addictive, highly addictive. In fact, next week 
130 of the Nation's top doctors and scientists are meeting to discuss 
how people can break free from tobacco addiction, not whether it's 
addictive.
    So when political leaders parrot the tobacco company line, say 
cigarettes are not necessarily

[[Page 920]]

addictive, and oppose our efforts to keep tobacco away from our 
children, they continue to cater to powerful interests, but they're not 
standing up for parents and children. In fact, they're making the job of 
being a parent even harder. So on the eve of this Father's Day, I say to 
the tobacco industry, support our efforts to keep tobacco away from our 
kids. And I say to others in public life, stop fighting those efforts; 
you should be supporting them too.
    One thing parents haven't had to worry about is their kids being 
exposed on television and radio to liquor advertisements. For half a 
century liquor companies have voluntarily kept their ads off the air for 
the simple reason that it was the right thing to do. So I was 
disappointed this week when a major company announced it would break the 
ban and put liquor ads on TV, exposing our children to liquor before 
they know how to handle it or can legally do so. After voluntarily 
staying away from this for 50 years, being good corporate citizens, 
companies are now considering changing plans. I ask the companies to get 
back to the ban. Pull those ads. We appreciate your good corporate 
citizenship, and our parents need it to continue. Let's all resolve to 
make the job of being a father easier.
    Tomorrow we celebrate our fathers, who every day, without fanfare or 
recognition, are doing the hard work it takes to be good fathers, good 
husbands, good citizens of our country. To all of you I say thank you, 
God bless you, Happy Father's Day, and thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 5:25 p.m. on June 14 in the Roosevelt 
Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on June 15.