    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [September 25, 1996]
    [Pages 1663-1669]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at a Democratic National Committee Reception in Philadelphia,
    Pennsylvania
    September 25, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Don Fowler, for your remarks. I was
    standing outside and I heard them. I thank you for what you said, and I
    thank you for your extraordinary hard work, your devotion, and your
    incredible energy. He is probably traveling considerably more than I am.
    He's worked hard to bring our party back and I thank him.
        Thank you, Tom Leonard, for always, always being there for me, for
    our administration, and for our country. And thank you, Mayor Rendell.
    You know, when you started that, I didn't quite know where you were
    going. [Laughter] He said, ``If I had told you in the fall of 1991 that
    all this would happen,'' and he went through all these--I thought he
    said, ``And then I got elected mayor.'' [Laughter] And that's what
    brought it on. And Philadelphia sparked a firestorm of reform and
    investment--[laughter]--all over America, in every State.
        Well, I shook hands with one of your police officers today when we
    were down getting our cheesesteak at Pat's--[laughter]--and the police
    officer said, ``Mr. President, the first time I met you, you were
    Governor, and you and the mayor were shooting baskets not very far from
    here.'' You remember that? And so I looked at the police officer, and I
    said, ``Now, who won that?'' [Laughter] He knew what he was supposed to
    answer. And I assured him that in 1992 and again in 1996, I could take
    it; there was only one contest I was interested in winning. And Mayor
    Rendell won the other one. [Laughter]
        I am delighted to be back in Philadelphia. I've had a wonderful day
    already. I started the day in western Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh.
    I went to Robert Morris College and announced the issuance of our first
    inflation-free bonds to let people save first in denominations of $1,000
    and up, in bonds that will be adjusted in their principal as inflation
    grows so that you will get a real rate of return on investments in
    savings and Government securities from now on. I'm very excited about
    it. It's a way to give families a real protection.
        And I can tell you that if there is a good market--and I think there
    will be--next year we're going to have those bonds come out in
    denominations as low as $50, so that working people can take them in
    their paychecks if they want, and students can buy them in savings
    bonds. And I am very, very hopeful that this will make it easier for
    people of modest means to save more and to know that their savings

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    will actually count for them even if we hit another patch of inflation,
    and there's always some inflation in the economy. Now these savings are
    going to be guaranteed with the backing of the United States Treasury.
    So I had a good day there, and I was glad to be there.
        And it was interesting, you know, Robert Morris of Pennsylvania was
    really one of the major financial backers of the Revolutionary War, of
    our side. [Laughter] And he was also the first budget balancer. He
    resigned from the Continental Congress in 1778 because he thought they
    were printing too much money. My kind of Democrat. [Laughter] So,
    anyway, it was a great day.
        Then I came over to Philadelphia and the mayor and I and some other
    folks, we did go down and get a little cheesesteak at Pat's and I
    reminded myself--we had that wonderful rally there, you may remember--
    some of you may have been down there 4 years ago. We had a great rally.
    I was giving Pat's equal time; I went to Gino's 4 years ago. [Laughter]
    And I had a picture up there, and I just couldn't stand going to a place
    and not seeing the picture on the other store, so I--[laughter]--it was
    wonderful, we had a great time.
        And I saw a little piece of America there. I shook hands with a
    woman who had just come to live in the United States and her child and
    she said, ``This could only happen in your country.'' She said, ``I've
    only been here 3 months. I've just moved here from Hong Kong.'' I
    thought, what an amazing thing, you know. We sometimes forget what a
    remarkable place the United States is and how real the Statue of Liberty
    is in the lives of so many millions of our people and how the President
    is essentially the Nation's hired hand and is and should be accessible
    to all kinds of people from all walks of life and all stations. So we
    had a nice little visit, and she likes Philadelphia. [Laughter]
        Let me also say that I want to compliment the mayor on pushing so
    many reforms and the city of Philadelphia has really been on the cutting
    edge of change. Philadelphia received one of our empowerment zones.
    We've done a lot of work here in defense conversion. We've done a lot of
    work in other areas. But today the city of Philadelphia did something
    that I think was very important. The board of education today instituted
    a dress code for the schools and authorized schools to adopt school
    uniform policies.
        Let me say, I have been all over this country--the third largest
    school district in the State of California, in Long Beach, has a school
    uniform policy for elementary school students and maybe for junior high
    school students but not for high school. I know of no place that has one
    for high school students. But in a lot of these places, especially for
    the middle school students, it's made the children a lot safer if the
    schools were in dangerous neighborhoods, subject to gangs and battles.
    And it's made the schoolyards themselves much safer, because you can
    always tell who doesn't belong there because they're not dressed right.
    In every place, the uniforms have been simple. Most places, the kids get
    to choose the colors. A lot of times, the teachers dress like the
    students do. There's always a fund set up for the children whose parents
    can't afford them.
        But it's one thing that has served to lower crime, violence, and
    increase attendance and increase learning at a lot of schools. And I
    think a dress code is itself an important statement, because we want our
    young children, whether they're poor or rich or middle class, when
    they're in school to define themselves primarily in terms of what's
    going on on the inside, not what they're wearing on the outside. And I
    think it's a very, very good thing.
        So this reflects the sort of thing I think we should be doing in
    America, trying to figure out how to meet our challenges. And one of
    them is to increase learning levels among all of our people and at the
    same time preserve our basic values. And that is really what this
    election is all about.
        The city of Philadelphia had a lot to do with my becoming President.
    We won a bigger victory here in terms of votes than President Kennedy
    did in 1960, even though the population was smaller. And I was very
    grateful to all of you.
        The normally Republican suburban areas near here were unusually good
    to the Clinton/Gore ticket in 1992, and I hope they will be in 1996. The
    mayor told you that the platform we ran on in 1992, ``Putting People
    First,'' with a strategy of opportunity, responsibility, and a stronger
    American community, has brought good results, and I feel very good about
    them. But I can't say that we've done what we need to do to realize what
    my vision is for this country at the dawn of the 21st century. And I've
    been going all across this country, saying to people,

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    ``I want you to think about this election in a different way, not even
    if you're an ardent Democrat or Republican or independent. I think you
    should think primarily in terms of the Nation. What do you want America
    to be like when we toll the dawn of a new century and a new millennium?
    What do you want America to be like when our children are our age? What
    are our responsibilities to bring about that vision?''
        We are going through a period of enormous change, as all of you
    know, and most of you have experienced in your own lives, in the nature
    of work, the nature of work and family, how we relate to each other, and
    how we relate to people around the world in commercial, political, and
    other ways. A change of this magnitude only occurs rarely, certainly no
    more than a couple of times every 100 years.
        And very often, such disruptive and cataclysmic changes are
    accompanied by wars. Indeed, even though the cold war is over and we
    have succeeded in getting the nuclear threat to recede--I was so proud
    yesterday to sign the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. [Applause]
    Thank you. Even though that threat is receding, not gone but receding,
    we see new threats that we have lived with painfully in the World Trade
    Center bombing or the destruction of the Federal building and all of the
    loss of life in Oklahoma City or the capture and conviction of the
    terrorists who planned to blow up as many as 12 of our airplanes flying
    over the Pacific. And thank God we were able to truncate that plan. They
    saw it in Japan in the sarin gas attack, chemical weapons in the Tokyo
    subway that took the lives of innocent people. And of course, you see it
    all over the world.
        The new security threats we face are different. Terrorism has been
    around a long time, and it's been quite prominent from time to time in
    the last 20 years. But now we see it crossing national boundaries at a
    rapid rate, because the world we're living in has to be more open. We
    can share information and ideas, technology. We can move money around in
    no time at all, and we have more open borders. More people are getting
    on airplanes and moving around. All this is a good thing. But it makes
    us more vulnerable to the forces of destruction that cross national
    lines, the ethnic hatreds, the terrorism, the proliferation of dangerous
    weapons, organized crime, drug trafficking, all these things.
        So we're going through this period of change. What I want to do is I
    want us to be able to say when we start the new century that we are
    confident that the American dream is available for every person, without
    regard to their station in life, who is willing to work for it. I want
    us to be able to say with confidence that even though ethnic, religious,
    racial, tribal divisions are tearing the heart out of lives all over the
    world, in America we relish our diversity, we're proud of it, and we're
    going stronger because of that diversity, because of our shared values
    and our commitment to work together. That's what I want us to be able to
    say. And finally, I want us to be able to say, mean, and believe that
    our country is going to continue to be the strongest force in the world
    for peace and freedom and prosperity, not just for ourselves but for
    others. We have to understand that we are living in a highly
    interdependent world.
        I was in Seattle, Washington, the other day; 35,000 people showed up
    in the rain and waited 4 hours in the rain. I wasn't 4 hours late, but
    they just started gathering. [Laughter] Thirty-five thousand in the
    rain. But no place is probably so attuned to how tied we are to the rest
    of the world. In Washington State already, one in five jobs is directly
    dependent on the global economy, already--in one of our States in the
    United States.
        So we have to fashion a strategy to meet that vision. We're on the
    right track. We're better off than we were 4 years ago. There is more
    opportunity, there is a greater sense of citizen responsibility. And we
    certainly are seeing more community-based efforts to move our country
    forward and make the most of our own lives. That's why, when something
    happens like the decision that the board of education here made, I want
    to highlight it; I want the rest of America to see it. There are still
    too many kids out there raising themselves. They need help. They need
    support. They need to be part of something bigger than themselves. And
    we need to support them, we need to help them.
        So if you look ahead to the future and you ask yourself, look where
    we've come from, the strategy is working, but what else do we need to
    do, that's what I want this election to be about. And I want to ask all
    of you--there are now 5 weeks and 6 days left--[laughter]--and what I
    would ask you to do is to take the time that is left, some time every
    day, and engage someone in a conversation about our national destiny and
    about what kinds of decisions we

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    have to make and what will be reflected by the judgments we make on
    election day this November and what impact it will have. Talk to your
    friends and family members, your co-workers, people you run into here
    throughout the State of Pennsylvania and beyond the borders of this
    State; many of you have friends around the country. And every one of you
    has the capacity to influence others. For me, the idea of building a
    bridge to the 21st century is a powerful idea because it implies it's a
    work that we have to do together, that will span the difference between
    here and there in a way that is strong and good and enduring, and when
    we do it, then others will be able to walk across the bridge behind us.
    That's why I talk about it all the time. It captures the image of public
    work at its best. And not just something the President does, not just
    something the mayor does, not just something that Congress does, but
    something that we all do together, where everyone has a role to play,
    and everyone has a right to walk on the bridge.
        I also say that, to me, the idea of what we're trying to do and how
    we're trying to do it is best captured by the title of the First Lady's
    book. I believe it does take a village to raise a child, to build a
    community, and to build a country.
        So if you believe that we're at this unique moment in history as I
    do, and all of these things are changing, we don't have an option to
    recapture a past that's not there. We don't have an option to deny the
    changes. If you believe we can build a bridge and if you believe we have
    do to it together, then we are at truly a unique moment when all of our
    hopes and dreams have a better chance to be realized.
        I believe the best days of this country are still ahead of us. I
    don't just believe, I know that the children of Philadelphia today,
    within 10 years when they're grown, will be doing jobs that have not
    been invented yet. Many of them will be doing work that has not even
    been imagined yet. When I am in my dotage, I expect my grandchildren to
    be making fun of me because I can't even understand half of the ways
    that people are communicating with each other by then. [Laughter] And
    what we have to do is to make sure that we do what still needs to be
    done.
        We know that not every person in this country or every person in
    this city has still had an opportunity to participate in this economic
    revival. We know that. We know that there are neighborhoods and rural
    areas that have not been caught up in this remarkable recovery, even
    though there have been 10\1/2\ million new jobs. We know that even
    though wages are beginning to rise again for the first time in a decade,
    we still haven't had enough growth to overcome two decades of stagnant
    wages and increasing inequality. We know that not everyone has the
    education and skills that they need.
        We know that even though we've fought strongly for environmental
    protection and we have advanced the cause of the environment in many
    ways--the air is cleaner; we have a safe drinking water law; we've
    upgraded the meat inspection laws of the country for the first time in
    70 years, and we've revolutionized, through the pesticide protection
    act, the protection of all kinds of foods from chemicals that might be
    cancer-causing; we've cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than
    have been cleaned up in the 12 previous years--we know there is still
    work to be done there because 10 million kids still live within 4 miles
    of a toxic waste site, and that's pretty frightening when you think of
    it. So we know we've got work to do right across the board.
        And that's what I'd like this campaign to be about. That's why, in
    my speech to the convention, I went through so many specific things that
    I'd like to do in the next 4 years. That's why I wrote that book that
    gentleman's holding there, because I wanted people to know exactly what
    I thought ought to be done, not just vague rhetoric but some clear ideas
    about what we ought to do.
        So I want you to participate in that discussion. I want you to make
    a commitment as citizens that for the next 6 weeks you're going to make
    your investment here good by asking people to think about every election
    they vote in in terms of these issues, not in terms of yesterday's
    categories but in terms of tomorrow's dreams.
        We have to keep this economic recovery going, and we have to find a
    way to increase our growth and productivity until everyone has a chance
    to be rewarded for their work. That means we have to balance the budget,
    but we have to do it in the right way. We have to continue to invest in
    education and research and technology and environmental protection. We
    have to reform and secure the life of the Trust Fund on Medicare. But we
    don't want to make it into a two-tiered system where we basically

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    discriminate against elderly people in this country if they happen to be
    older, poorer, and sicker than most others.
        We want to make sure that we can fund the Medicaid program and that
    we can afford it in the context of a balanced budget. But we shouldn't
    remove our national commitment to poor children and pregnant women and
    the elderly in nursing homes and families with members with
    disabilities. We shouldn't do that. And we can balance the budget and
    keep our common commitments, keep our village responsibilities, if you
    will, and keep on building that bridge. That's what we have to do.
        We ought to give people a tax cut, but it ought to be a tax cut that
    can be afforded, and it ought to be focused on the biggest challenges
    people face, childrearing, education, heath care, homebuying. And when
    people sell their homes they shouldn't have to pay taxes on the gain,
    because often it's the only savings they have in their whole lives. So
    those are the things that we ought to do, and we can afford that. But we
    ought not to have a tax cut we cannot afford and claim we're going to be
    able to pay for it. That's wrong.
        Think how hard we have worked. Do you know when the last time an
    administration reduced the deficit in all 4 years was? John Tyler, in
    the 1840's. [Laughter] Of course, thank goodness most of my predecessors
    didn't have to do it because we didn't have this problem. We would have
    a surplus today in the budget, and we could invest more in education,
    more in technology, more in the future, more in high-speed rail, more in
    all kinds of things that we need to be doing in this country, more in
    helping the cities to rebuild their infrastructure, their water systems,
    their sewer systems, their roads, their streets, their bridges. We could
    do all that if it weren't for the interest we're paying today just on
    the debt run up in the 12 years before I took office. We do not need to
    go back down that road. We need to keep going down the road we're on and
    building this economy and growing it.
        And this must be seen as a mainstream, middle-class, working
    American's issue. It should be seen as a poor person's issue as well as
    an issue for investors. Bringing the deficit down keeps interest rates
    down. Most of us in this room are in an income group where we can make a
    lot of money if interest rates go up. We can figure out how to do it.
    But if interest rates go up, it means higher credit card rates, higher
    car payments, higher house payments. And for small-business people it
    means higher loan rates, which means a lower rate of job creation, less
    productivity, less income, and less ability to raise the wages of
    ordinary Americans. We are better off with low interest rates and high
    growth so that everyone can participate at every income level in the
    growth of the country. And we have to keep fighting for it.
        We have to continue to do a lot of other things. And you've heard me
    outline it all, but I want to hammer home one thing in some detail: We
    have got to continue to work to give every single child a world-class
    education. And we now have the means to do it that we didn't have
    before.
        The first computer was built right here 50 years ago. Now it's
    typical; you find computers in classrooms all over the country. But what
    I want for this country is to have every classroom and every library and
    every school in America, including the poorest inner-city schools, have
    not only computers and good educational software and trained teachers--
    we had 100,000 teachers training a half a million more just this past
    summer to make sure that the teachers could keep up with the kids on the
    computers, so I want that. But in addition to that, we've got to hook
    all these computers up to the information superhighway, to the Internet,
    to the World Wide Web.
        Now, what does that mean? That means that we have a chance for the
    first time in the entire history of the United States--this has never
    been true before--in the history of the United States to see that the
    children in the most remote rural schools, in the poorest urban
    classrooms have access to the same information at the same level of
    quality in the same time and the same way as the kids in the wealthiest,
    best schools, public or private, in America do. That will revolutionize
    education if we can do that. That's why it is so important to connect
    our classrooms to the information superhighway to the year 2000. It is
    truly a democratic educational opportunity.
        And it's very important that we make college available to everybody
    that wants to go. Now, we've done a lot on that. We've increased loans
    to needy students. We passed the direct loan program, which cut the cost
    of college loans and improved the repayment terms and said nobody could
    be asked to pay more than a certain

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    percentage of their income when they borrow money. So no young person
    should ever be discouraged from going. We've got 50,000 young people who
    served in AmeriCorps and earned money for college. But we can do more.
        And I propose three things: Number one, let families with incomes up
    to $100,000 take out more in IRA's and then take it out tax-free to pay
    for a college education or a first-time home or a medical emergency.
        Number two, let families--try to make community college education,
    at least 2 years of education after high school as universal as high
    school is in the next 4 years by simply saying that you can take off
    your tax bill, dollar for dollar, the average, the typical tuition cost
    at a community college in the United States, just a strict tax credit
    for the cost of tuition for 2 years.
        And number three, give everybody a deduction of up to $10,000 for
    the cost of any college tuition--any kind, undergraduate, postgraduate,
    anything else. Now, we can pay for that. You think, in the 1980's and
    early nineties, college tuition was the only thing in the market basket
    of a family's essential costs that went up more rapidly than health
    care, the only thing. And if you've had more than one kid in college,
    you know that. Maybe if you just had one you know it. [Laughter] So this
    is very important.
        The last one I want to make that's especially relevant to the cities
    is this: This city and this State has new--and all of you as private
    sector people, those of you in the private sector--have new and profound
    responsibilities under the welfare reform law. And let me just state
    again, because there's been a lot of talk about this and a lot of
    confusion: We have reduced the welfare rolls by almost 2 million, 1.8
    million. We did it by basically giving States who often gave cities the
    flexibility to devise new systems to move people from welfare to work.
    We also did it by increasing child support collections by $3 billion, by
    40 percent. So the new bill gives us more authority to collect more
    child support. Eight hundred thousand people could be moved off the
    rolls tomorrow if people just paid the child support they legally owed.
    That's staggering, isn't it? Eight hundred thousand women and children.
        But the new bill says, here's the new deal, the National Government
    will continue to guarantee to poor people and their children health
    care, nutrition, and if they go to work, even more in child care than
    ever before. What used to be the federally guaranteed check for income,
    which was a combination of Federal and State money, will now go to the
    States, and the States have 2 years to convert the income check into a
    paycheck if the welfare recipient is able-bodied. Now, they can do a lot
    of things, but it's going to be a real challenge.
        I was just in Kansas City where I gave them permission 2 years ago
    to try something I've been begging everybody else to try. In Kansas City
    they established a full employment council, the whole business
    community, all the churches, all the social groups, work groups, all the
    adult educators, everybody gets together, they're all represented. And
    let's say you've got 10 employees; if you will hire an 11th one, they'll
    give you the welfare check for 4 years. Therefore, it costs you less to
    hire the employee. But they understand in return for that, you're taking
    responsibility to train, to make sure that the employee is able to
    succeed at home and take care of the kids as well as come to work, and
    to try to end the almost physical isolation of half the welfare
    caseload.
        Half the welfare folks, the system now works fine; they just get off
    as quick as they can and go back to work. But half of these folks have
    been physically isolated in dependence for too long. This will only
    work--I will say it again--this will only work if you believe it takes a
    village, if you think you have got a responsibility.
        Because now, anybody that ever cussed out the present welfare system
    has nothing left to kick around. This is now everybody's problem, and
    everybody's opportunity, and everybody can play a role in it. So every
    community of any size that has any substantial group of children and
    parents on the welfare rolls now has the opportunity, literally, to
    explode the myth of poverty, break the culture of poverty, and bring
    huge numbers of people back into the mainstream. It will only work if
    people say, ``You know, I could do that. I could hire one other person,
    especially if they can give me that, and I can train those folks. And if
    you subsidize the training in that way--well, if there's a few problems
    getting people adjusted to the work force, well, so what, I'm getting a
    little help to do that, so it's not the end of the world.''
        Every one of you needs to think about that. That's a big challenge
    for Philadelphia and a big challenge for America. But if we meet it, if
    we meet it, if we can prove that we've got

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    a community-based, caring, work-oriented, child-oriented system for poor
    families, we can take care of our children, liberate their parents from
    their difficulties, and prove that all of the myths that a lot of people
    have used to kick poor people around for years are wrong, by taking
    responsibility for developing a system that is oriented toward success
    at home and success at work. That's what we want for all the rest of us.
    That's what we should want for those folks, too. And I hope you will
    help us build that bridge to the 21st century.
        This is a good time to be an American because we know things are
    going better than they were. We know things are going in the right
    direction. But this is no time for complacency, no time for complacency
    in the political campaign. Believe me, it is not over; in some ways it
    may be just about to begin. It is not over. But most importantly, this
    is no time for complacency for us as Americans. We have work to do. We
    have work to do to get to the 21st century with the American dream alive
    for all, with an America that's coming together, with an America that's
    still able to lead the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity.
    But if we do, our best days are still to come.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:21 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the
    Warwick Hotel. In his remarks, he referred to Donald L. Fowler, national
    chairman, Democratic National Committee; Thomas A. Leonard, fundraiser
    for the Democratic National Committee; and Mayor Edward Rendell of
    Philadelphia.