    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [October 29, 1996]
    [Pages 1964-1969]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio
    October 29, 1996

        The President. Thank you very much, Jennie Nelson. Your fellow
    student did a good job, didn't she, up here in front of this big crowd.
    Give her a hand. Thank you. [Applause] Thank you, Senator John Glenn.
    Thank you, Senator Ben Espy. Thank you, Ted Strickland, for having the
    courage to run for the Congress again. Your courage should be rewarded,
    and I hope it will be, by the people of Ohio.
        We have a number of other people here with me today, including our
    National Treasurer and your former State treasurer from Ohio, Mary Ellen
    Withrow. Thank you, Mary Ellen. And we have another candidate for
    Congress here today who is opposing the architect of the Gingrich-Dole
    budget that shut the Government down and would have divided the country.
    Thank you, Cynthia Ruccia, for having the courage to take on that race
    for Congress.
        I thank Representative Charlita Tavares for being here; our State
    Democratic chair, David Leland; State senate candidate Mary Jo Kilroy;
    Bill Burga, the president of the AFL-CIO; Mike Bilirakis, the president
    of the Ohio Education Association; Tom Mooney of the Ohio Federation of
    Teachers. Tony Celebreeze, thank you for being here.
        And thank you, Ohio State. Thank you, band and cheerleaders, for
    being here. Thank you all up there; thank you. On the way in today, your
    student leaders gave me an Ohio State pin, your fine basketball coach
    gave me a jogging suit for the winter that I can run in, and I needed no
    reminding that your football team is having another wonderful season.
    Congratulations.
        Ladies and gentlemen, it seems almost amazing to me that it was 4
    years ago that I came here to Ohio State, and we had a great rally
    outside, thousands of people, a lot of enthusiasm. I think I stood
    around for more than an hour to shake hands, talking to you about my
    hopes for the future.
        Now, 4 years later, you are about to go to the polls just a week
    from today to elect the last President of the 20th century and the first
    President of the 21st century. Four years ago when I came here, I came
    because I was worried about how you would go into the 21st century and
    because I had a vision for what America ought to be like at the dawn of
    that new era: a country with the American dream alive and well for
    everyone willing to work for it; a country still leading the world
    toward peace and freedom and prosperity; a country where we are coming
    together in the midst of all of our diversity, not being driven apart
    and divided as so many other countries in the world are.

    [[Page 1965]]

    I believe we are closer to that vision today than we were 4 years ago,
    and I ask you to stay on the right track to build our bridge to the 21st
    century.
        Our strategy of opportunity for all, responsibility from all, an
    American community in which everyone has a place at the table and a role
    to play, is paying off. You heard Senator Glenn say we have 10\1/2\
    million new jobs; unemployment in Ohio has dropped a third to 4.6
    percent. We've cut the deficit by 63 percent. We got the lowest combined
    rates of unemployment, inflation, and home mortgages in 28 years. We
    have the biggest drop in child poverty in 20 years. We have the highest
    rate of homeownership in 15 years. Household income is up $1,600. We
    have now dropping crime rates and dropping welfare rolls for 4 years in
    a row. We are moving in the right direction toward the 21st century, and
    I ask you to stay on that track.
        We are also breaking the barriers that will unleash a future that we
    can only imagine and sometimes not even imagine. Many of you students in
    this audience will soon be doing jobs that have not been invented yet.
    Some of you will soon be doing jobs that have not been imagined yet.
        Here at Ohio State and Ohio Tech and biotech centers and firms all
    across America, new discoveries are being made at breathtaking speed.
    The United States Government just signed a contract with IBM to produce
    a supercomputer----
        Audience members. Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!
        Audience members. Boo-o-o!
        The President. Wait. Hey, wait a minute. Just listen to it. Wait,
    wait. Wait a minute; wait a minute. Just listen to them. Wait a minute.
    Why are they screaming like that? We heard you. Now, how about the first
    amendment? We heard your message; now you listen to ours. This is a
    university. This is a university, and we have respected their free
    speech. They won't respect ours because they hate the truth. We're
    better off, and we had to run over them to do it.
        Now--they must not have any student loans; Senator Dole voted
    against creating the student loan program. Ohio State adopted our direct
    loan program. They must not be in the direct loan program, which gives
    you the right to pay your loan back as a percentage of your income,
    because Senator Dole led the fight against the direct loan program. And
    they must believe we should start the 21st century as the only great
    nation in the world with no one in the President's Cabinet to represent
    education, because that is part of the Dole-Kemp program for the 21st
    century: Get rid of the Department of Education.
        I welcome anyone to these rallies, and I welcome you to theirs. I
    hope you will never go to theirs and stop them from speaking. I believe
    in free speech at every university in America.
        Now, where was I? We just signed a contract with IBM in which the
    United States and IBM will produce a supercomputer that will do more
    calculations in a second than you can do at home tonight on your hand-
    held calculator in 30,000 years. Recently, scientists were able to have
    movement in laboratory animals whose spines have been completely severed
    because of nerve transplants to the spine from other parts of the body.
        The human genome project has now mapped out 40 percent of the
    genetic structure of the body, including discovering in the last 4 years
    two genes which cause breast cancer. We have more than doubled the life
    expectancy of people with HIV and AIDS in only 4 years, which opens the
    prospects that it will become a chronic disease. Now all these things
    are happening----
        Audience members. Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp! Dole-Kemp!
        The President. ----and therefore what we ought to be focusing on
    today is how we can build a future together that will be worthy of all
    of our people.
        I tell you what I'll do, I'll bet you they won't be doing that a
    week from today. Everybody who believes in the first amendment, cheer.
        Audience members. Yea!
        The President. Thank you. Now, let's go on.
        You know, we heard a lot of talk from the other side about fiscal
    responsibility. And you heard Senator Glenn say that the deficit has
    gone down in all 4 years of this administration for the first time, he
    said, since President Truman. Actually, President Truman had to raise
    the deficit one year because of the war in Korea. This is the first time
    in the 20th century in all 4 years of a President's administration the
    deficit has gone down. And that's a good thing for America. It means
    lower interest rates, lower credit card rates, car payment rates, home
    mort-

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    gage payments. It's moving us in the right direction.
        We're moving from a welfare system based on dependence to one based
    on independence. The welfare rolls are nearly 2 million smaller than
    they were 4 years ago--inconvenient for those who would shout down
    speakers, but it is--2 million. Now, this welfare reform bill gives us a
    chance to move people forever from welfare to work. But we still have to
    create jobs. If you're going to tell people you've got to go to work if
    you're able-bodied, there has to be work there for them to go to. So we
    have a plan for that.
        We're making our families, our neighborhoods safer. We're putting
    100,000 police on the street, taking drugs and guns and gangs off the
    street. The Brady bill has kept 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers
    from getting handguns, but no Ohio hunter has lost his weapon, not a
    single one.
        We have helped to strengthen families by passing the family and
    medical leave law. I tell all of you students here who have not started
    your families yet, one of the biggest challenges facing parents--I hear
    it everywhere I go--is how to balance the demands of work and the
    demands of parenting. Everywhere I go people talk about it. The family
    and medical leave law has allowed 12 million families to take some time
    off from work without losing their jobs. Senator Dole led the fight
    against the family leave law. That's why they're screaming now, and
    they're wrong, and they won't be screaming.
        So you tell me, do you agree with the screamers who were against
    family and medical leave, or do you think America is better off that you
    can take a little time off when your baby is born or someone in your
    family has been sick? Do you agree? [Applause] And would you like to see
    the family leave law extended so that you can take some time off to see
    parents go to the teacher conferences at the school or to medical
    appointments with their family members? These are the things we have to
    do.
        But there is no choice before you that is more profoundly
    significant than the choice involving education. Today I brought with me
    the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, who served with me as a Governor
    and I believe is the finest Secretary of Education ever to serve the
    United States. I'd like for him to stand up and be recognized.
    [Applause] We have worked--for 20 years we have worked, first as
    Governors then, now here in the National Government, to try to advance
    the cause of education. Now you have to decide whether you believe there
    are things we should do together or whether we should just say, ``You're
    on your own.''
        When Ted Strickland said his opponent had said to the school people
    in his district, ``You're entitled to only so much education as you can
    afford,'' I think we ought to compliment his opponent for his candor and
    his honesty because that is what they believe. But I don't believe that;
    I believe everybody should have a chance to have as much education as is
    necessary to develop their God-given capacity. And you have to decide.
    You have to decide. You have to decide.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. You know--remember what John Glenn said? I want a
    country in which every 8-year-old can read, in which every 12-year-old
    can log on to the Internet, in which every 18-year-old can go to
    college. I would be screaming, too, if I wanted a country that took Head
    Start and Big Bird away from 5-year-olds, school lunches away from 10-
    year-olds, summer jobs away from 15-year-olds, and college loans away
    from 20-year-olds. I might be screaming, too. We are not afraid of
    honest discussion and debate, so we don't have to shout our opponents
    down. But I might be screaming if I had that kind of record--either that
    or running and looking for a rock to hide behind.
        We're having a good time here today, but this is serious business.
    Our ability to give every young person in this country the capacity to
    live up to his or her God-given abilities, without regard to their race,
    their income, their region, where they start out in life, is central to
    their ability, all of your abilities to build strong families, strong
    careers, and strong communities and central to America's ability to
    maintain its world leadership, not only in economic but in military and
    political terms, in the 21st century.
        I'd like to talk to you just for a minute--you know what we have
    done--I want to talk about what we are going to do. First of all, we
    know that we have the best system of higher education in the world. We
    know that our schools are doing a great job with a lot of our students,
    but we also know that compared to many other countries, too many of our
    students are getting too far in schools without knowing what they need
    to know to compete and win

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    in the global economy of the 21st century. So here's what I think should
    be done in the future and what I will work for.
        Number one, as we have been trying to do for years, the States of
    this country must set high national standards based on international
    standards of excellence for students, for teachers, and for schools. The
    only way to get excellence in education for everyone is to define it, to
    expect it, to demand it, and then to measure it. I believe all children
    can learn. But we have to have high expectations, and people need to
    understand that 90 percent of what we need to know is not a function of
    IQ, it is a function of sustained effort, and we have to have it
    measured against high standards.
        That's why I believe that students should pass to move from one
    level in school to another, and a diploma ought to mean something, and
    we ought to know that, we ought to measure it. But these standardized
    tests shouldn't be just measuring your test-taking ability; everybody
    should know on the front end what it is you need to know to meet world-
    class standards, and that is what should be tested. So you can have a
    lot of tests that don't mean anything. If we're going to have the tests,
    they must be tied to what is defined as an excellent education. That is
    what I favor, and everybody in every State is entitled to it.
        Number two, we should continue to support grassroots reforms, as
    Secretary Riley has, to give parents and teachers and principals and
    students the capacity to achieve their highest level in every school in
    America. Every parent should have the freedom to choose their child's
    public school. Our balanced budget plan contains funds to create 3,000
    new schools, charter schools, schools that are free to innovate, to
    demand high standards, schools that survive only if they produce
    results. The States already have money to begin that, and I urge them to
    do it.
        But before parents can exercise the right sort of choice, they have
    to have enough information. So today again let me say, I challenge the
    States and the school districts of America to publish report cards on
    every school and to put them on the Internet. Parents should be able to
    compare class size, reading scores, safety records with all the schools
    in their district, all the schools in their State, and with schools
    across the country. We need to know how our schools are doing, and the
    schools should have a report card accessible to every parent in the
    United States, in every State and every community.
        Number three, we should do, as Ted Strickland says--in our balanced
    budget plan we have a plan that will lower the interest rates on
    borrowing for school districts that are desperate to build cafeterias,
    new facilities, remodel facilities. There are almost 52 million children
    in school this year. This is the first year when there have been more
    children in our school systems across America than were there during the
    baby boom years--the first year. I have been to school after school
    after school where people are running out of the classrooms, where the
    conditions are broken down and the schools don't have the money to fix
    them, where beautiful old buildings are surrounded by trailers taking up
    the extra students. We have to do this together now.
        Number four, we ought to work hard to make our schools, all our
    schools, places of values and learning, not violence. We have supported
    zero tolerance for guns in schools. We have encouraged schools to adopt
    school uniform policies. We have helped communities to enforce truancy
    laws and curfews. We fought hard to protect the safe and drug-free
    schools program from slashing cuts, because all of our children, early
    in life, need to see one of those D.A.R.E. officers or other role models
    up in their classrooms saying, ``These drugs can kill you. They're not
    just illegal. They're wrong. They can kill you.'' We need to do that,
    and we should support it.
        I have also challenged all of our schools to a broad national goal:
    Every child in America should be able to read independently by the third
    grade. Forty percent of our children still cannot do that. I want to
    send 30,000 reading specialists and national service corps, AmeriCorps
    volunteers around the country to form an army of one million people to
    make sure that by the year 2000 all of our third graders can read
    independently.
        In the budget I signed last month, we increased the number of work-
    study jobs for college students by a third, by 200,000--that many more
    work-study slots. Now, I want to ask you something. I have recommended
    that at least 100,000 of those new work-study slots be allocated to
    young people who are willing to work to teach children to read. Would
    you help do that? Will you support that goal? Will you help us?
    [Applause] Think what it would mean for

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    America if every 8-year-old in this country could hold up a book and
    say, ``I can read this all by myself.'' We can do that.
        The next thing we have to do is to hook up every classroom and
    library in America to the Internet by the year 2000. You know, 4 years
    ago nobody but nuclear physicists had ever heard of the Internet. Today
    even my cat, Socks, has his own web page. [Laughter] I'm amazed at that.
    I meet kids all the time, been talking to my cat on the Internet.
    [Laughter] It's an amazing thing. By the time a child born today is old
    enough to read, there will be 100 million people on the Internet. We
    must connect all of our classrooms and libraries to that information
    superhighway by the year 2000. Here in Ohio and 18 other States this
    past weekend, a NetDay was held in which business people, computer
    technicians, students, parents, teachers all worked to hook up their
    schools.
        Now, let me tell you what this means. I have asked the Federal
    Communications Commission to authorize an E-rate, a rate that would say,
    all the schools and libraries in America will be able to hook up to the
    Internet for free. We've committed--actually, the Internet is even
    getting overload now, so we've committed another $100 million to
    creating a new, expanded, upgraded, next-generation Internet to handle
    all of you who want to get on it.
        Now, if you're not a computer wizard, like me, let me explain in
    plain language what it means. If we can hook up all of our classrooms to
    the information superhighway, to the Internet, to the World Wide Web,
    what it means is, in those school districts Ted Strickland was talking
    about in southern Ohio, in the poorest inner-city school districts in
    America, in the most remote school districts in the far reaches of the
    high plains in America, for the first time ever they and the schools in
    all the richest districts and the middle class districts, for the first
    time ever, will have access to the same information in the same way at
    the same time. It will revolutionize educational opportunity in America,
    and we owe it to our children to do just that. And I hope you will
    support it.
        And finally, I want you to help me in this election and afterward to
    open the doors of college education to all Americans. Everybody who
    wants to go who is willing to work should be able to go.
        We have improved the student loan program. This direct loan program
    that Ohio State participates in has saved the average college student
    $200 and lots of time. But most important of all, it says you can pay
    your college loan back as a percentage of your income. So no student
    ever now needs to fear borrowing money to go to college for fear they'll
    go broke paying the loans off, because you can pay it back as a
    percentage of your income. It is a very important thing. Secondly, we've
    signed the biggest increase in Pell grants last month in 20 years. We
    did add 200,000 people to work-study. We've got almost 70,000 young
    people who have now earned money for college through AmeriCorps. But I
    want to do three more things and ask you to help me.
        Number one, not everybody in America is or can go to a place like
    Ohio State, but almost every American of any age who needs further
    education is within driving distance of a good community college. I want
    to make 2 years of education after high school as universal as a high
    school diploma is today, and we can do it. We can do it. We can do it by
    simply saying you can deduct the cost of your tuition, dollar for
    dollar, from your tax bill, a HOPE scholarship in the form of a $1,500
    tax credit. That will revolutionize education.
        Number two, we should give every family a deduction of up to $10,000
    a year for the cost of college tuition at any place of higher education,
    undergraduate or graduate, in the United States of America.
        And number three, we should expand IRA's so that families can save
    in these individual retirement accounts and then withdraw from them
    without any tax penalty if the money is used to pay for college or
    buying a first-time home or dealing with a family medical cost. These
    things will allow us to say that middle income families will never,
    never be taxed on the money they save and spend for college. It will
    revolutionize the capacity of people to finance a college education in
    America.
        Now, again I say I want you to think about what our country should
    look like in the 21st century. What is your vision for America then?
    What is your vision for America when your children are your age? That is
    what this whole thing is about. So as you go to the polls and as you
    debate this with your friends and neighbors over the next week and as
    you encourage a vigorous exchange, think about this, and think about
    this last point.

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        Look around this hall today. Look around this hall today. We have
    people of all kinds of different political views--[laughter]--and
    genders and ethnic backgrounds and religions and races. There is no
    place in America anymore where you can't find some measure of diversity.
        I was in Detroit the other day, and I was told that in Wayne County
    there are people from 141 different racial and ethnic groups--141 in one
    county in America. There are only 192 different national groups
    represented at the Olympics. Amazing. But you look at the rest of the
    world. Pick up the paper on any day, and you read about the Middle East
    or Bosnia or Northern Ireland or Rwanda or Burundi--all over the world,
    people literally torn apart by their differences. Why? Because there is
    something in human nature that makes people have to believe that they
    can only be important if they're looking down on someone else--``Well,
    whatever is wrong with me, at least I'm not them.''
        Now, we're trying to beat that rap. And that's why we cannot
    tolerate hatred or intolerance in this country. That's why America
    reacted so strongly against the horror of Oklahoma City. That's why
    America reacted so strongly against the church burnings and the
    desecration of synagogues and Islamic centers in America. That's why--we
    know that. We know that.
        And let me tell you, for all of the other issues I've talked about
    today, it is just as important for you to be able to say in your heart
    that you want to build a bridge to the 21st century big enough, wide
    enough, strong enough for everybody to walk across, and if someone
    stands up and says, ``I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights,
    and the Declaration of Independence, and I'm willing to show up and do
    my job at work or as a student or in some other way tomorrow. I'm going
    to obey the law and be a responsible citizen,'' you need to be able to
    say back, ``I need to know nothing else about you. You're part of my
    America. I will join hands with you, and we will walk into the 21st
    century together.''
        Thank you, Ohio. Thank you. God bless you. Be there with us next
    Tuesday.

    Note: The President spoke at 9:55 a.m. at St. John's Arena. In his
    remarks, he referred to State Senator Ben Espy; Cynthia Ruccia,
    candidate for Ohio's 12th Congressional District; State Representative
    Charlita Tavares; and Franklin County recorder candidate Anthony
    Celebreeze, Jr.