    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [August 27, 1996]
    [Pages 1378-1382]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks in Wyandotte, Michigan
    August 27, 1996

        Thank you. Let's give them another hand. They were terrific, weren't
    they? [Applause] Wow! First, I think we ought to say to Justin and
    Elizabeth, there are a lot of people 3 or 4 or 5 times their age that
    couldn't get up in front of a crowd like this and do what they did.
    Let's give them another hand. [Applause]
        That book, of all the hundreds and hundreds of books that Hillary
    and I read to Chelsea when she was a little girl, is probably one of our
    favorites. And you see it today. This was a mountain that Justin and
    Elizabeth had never been on, but they thought they could. And sure
    enough, they did, and I'm proud of them.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I am very glad to be in Wyandotte today. And I
    didn't know I was the only President who had ever been here as
    President. I like Teddy Roosevelt; he's one of my favorite Republican
    Presidents, one of my favorite Presidents ever, but he didn't know what
    he missed when he didn't stop when he went through here on the train.
        I've got a lot of folks I'd like to thank. I'd like to thank the VFW
    Post 1136. Their color guard met me when I got off the train. It was a
    wonderful thing. Thank you. I want to thank the people here at the Bacon
    Memorial Library. It is a beautiful, beautiful building, and they gave
    me a few moments there to collect my thoughts. And I thank them for the
    work they do in this community.
        I want to thank Joey Palamara, who was the program emcee before I
    came out. Thank you, Mayor DeSana, for making me feel welcome in your
    home town. Thank you to the Wyandotte City Council. I want to thank Dee
    Okray, principal of the McKinley Elementary School who met me when I
    came in. I thank the public school band, the high school band. And I
    want to thank all the teachers, the principals, the people who work in
    our school buildings and help to maintain them and feed our school
    children--all the people who are here today. I thank you for helping to
    educate our children.
        I want to thank State Senator Chris Dingell for being here. Thank
    you, Dr. Patricia Cole, for the fine work that you do in this school
    system. I want to thank all the folks that made

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    signs. I've loved reading the signs. And one lady brought my mother's
    book. Thank you for doing that. Hers is better than the one I just
    wrote. It's a wonderful book. Thank you for all these signs.
        Let me say that Hillary and Chelsea would love to be here today, but
    they have already gone on to Chicago because Hillary has to speak there
    tonight. And Chelsea spent yesterday on the train with me, but she wants
    to be there with her mom when she speaks. So they're not here, but I
    know they would love seeing this.
        Let me also thank all the people in the community. That beautiful
    old house across the street with the bunting--I don't know who put the
    bunting up, but all the things that anyone in this community did to make
    us feel so welcome, we thank you very, very much.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to say a very, very special word of
    thanks to two of the best friends I have in the United States Congress,
    Senator Carl Levin and Congressman John Dingell. You should know that
    there are no people in Congress who work harder, who are more
    scrupulously honest, and who labor more diligently for the economic
    interests of the people of this district and this State and for the
    values that have made America strong.
        I don't know how many times one or the other of them has come to see
    me in the last 4 years to try to get me to do something to create jobs
    in Michigan, to advance the economy of Michigan, to make sure that our
    workers are being treated fairly in global trade. Day-in and day-out,
    month-in, month-out, they are up there working hard. And it made a
    profound impression on me because you don't see what I see, and I'm
    there, and I see it. Every day, in every way, it's not just speeches for
    them; it's hard work. They're there for you, and I appreciate them, and
    I know you do, too.
        Folks, I have loved taking this train trip through America. We have
    been in West Virginia and Kentucky and Ohio. This morning I was in
    Toledo, where I watched an American automobile plant where they make
    Jeeps roll off their 2-millionth Jeep in the oldest operating auto plant
    in America. It goes back to 1910. Last year, because of the partnership
    we have established when I was in Japan, I went into a dealership, and I
    sat in a Jeep in a Japanese dealership made in Toledo, Ohio, by American
    workers. That's the kind of thing I want to see more of.
        On this train trip, we're saying to the American people--number one,
    I wanted to go on a train trip to Chicago so I could stop in towns like
    Wyandotte and look into the faces of the people I've been trying to work
    for for the last 4 years. But I also wanted to say that this train is on
    the right track to Chicago and also on the right track to the 21st
    century for America.
        The people of Michigan, with all their diversity in the economy and
    the diversity of our citizens, coming from all walks of life, all
    faiths, all races, doing all different kinds of things for a living,
    know as well as anyone that we are going through a period of profound
    change in how we work, how we live, how we relate to each other, how we
    relate to the rest of the world.
        I sought the Presidency because I wanted to make sure we were
    prepared for the 21st century, because I wanted us to go roaring and
    united into the next century with the American dream alive for everyone,
    with every person in this country who's willing to work hard having the
    chance to live out their dreams and live up to their God-given
    potential. And we are moving in the right direction to meet that goal.
        I have followed a very simple strategy; I think it's the basic
    American bargain: opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and then
    telling every single person, if you will be responsible, if you will
    seize your opportunity, if you believe in the Constitution, the
    Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights, you don't have to
    tell us anything else. We don't care what your race is. We don't care
    what your religion is. We don't care where you started out in life. If
    you're willing to work hard and share our values, we'll join arm in arm
    with you and walk together into the future. You're a part of our
    America.
        Yesterday in Ohio I talked mostly about responsibility and
    especially about our responsibility to make our streets, our schools,
    our neighborhoods safe for our children, to bring down the crime rate.
    Today I've been talking about opportunity. In Toledo we talked about how
    we work together and how management and labor work together to create
    hundreds of new jobs and how America, after 20 years, is now number one
    again in the production and sales of automobiles because of what we have
    done.
        Here, I come to this library with all these schoolchildren because
    their future is our future and because we need to talk about another
    kind

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    of opportunity, educational opportunity, without which America cannot
    triumph in the global economy, in the information age of the 21st
    century.
        We've been making some progress on opportunity in Washington. Just
    last week, as Mr. Dingell said, I signed a bill to raise the minimum
    wage for 10 million Americans, including 325,000 here in Michigan. But
    you know, even in Michigan, the manufacturing capital of the world,
    there are most people working for small businesses. So that minimum wage
    bill also contained a tax cut for small businesses that invest more in
    their business to create more jobs and income, and it contained
    provisions making it easier for small-business people and their
    employees to take out pensions and to keep those pensions when they
    change jobs, and that's very important.
        And there's a third thing that that bill contained that I believe
    every single American, without regard to party or conviction, can agree
    on; that bill did some dramatic things to encourage the adoption of
    children who do not have permanent homes. It gave a $5,000 tax credit to
    families who adopt a child, a bigger one if the child has a disability.
    And it removed the historic barriers to cross-racial adoption. There are
    hundreds of thousands of kids out there who need loving, strong parents
    in good homes. This bill did it. This bill was good for workers, good
    for business, good for families. It was a great American bill, and I'm
    proud of it.
        I also signed the Kassebaum-Kennedy health care bill to make 25
    million Americans more eligible for health insurance by simply saying
    you can't be denied health insurance anymore if somebody in your family
    gets sick and you can't lose it if you move from job to job. That is a
    dramatic step for guaranteeing health access to all. And I thank you,
    John Dingell, for your lifelong commitment to health care for all
    Americans. And I thank you, Senator Levin, for your support of that
    bill.
        Now let's talk about education a minute. I have worked hard to
    increase the quality and the availability of education, to expand Head
    Start, to expand the chapter 1 program so that it helps more poor
    children reach their full potential, to help school districts and local
    schools set high standards with grassroots reforms, to give more
    authority to principals and teachers and parents to basically chart
    their own course. I will say again, I am grateful for the people who
    give their lives to education, and I don't think it serves the cause of
    education to attack the people who are educating our children and
    carrying our future.
        We have increased college scholarships for deserving students. We
    have made dramatic strides in making the college student loan program
    more affordable and giving better repayment options so that young people
    can now choose to pay those loans back as a percentage of their future
    income, and they need never drop out of school or refuse to go just
    because they're worried about the burden of repaying the loans. That's a
    terribly important thing that has been done.
        Let me say that even though we know we have got a good ways to go,
    there is a lot to be encouraged about in our country. National math and
    science scores are up. SAT scores are up. The SAT scores in math are now
    at a 24-year high. ACT scores have gone up 3 out of the last 4 years.
    And as Dr. Cole said, that's an America that is more diverse,
    culturally, racially, religiously, and economically, than ever before,
    and we're still moving forward into a bright new future with improving
    education.
        But we have to do more. Not every child has access to the same
    information and learning every other child does. By the year 2000, I
    want to see every classroom in this country not simply have computers
    and teachers well-trained to teach them how to use them but connected to
    the information superhighway so that every child in the poorest inner-
    city school, the most remote rural district, the standard middle class
    community, and the wealthiest school districts--they all have access to
    the same unlimited store of information that is the key to our future.
        I want to see our Nation become involved for the very first time in
    helping our schools rebuild their dilapidated facilities and build new
    ones, because we will have the largest number of young people starting
    school this fall of any class in the history of the United States of
    America, and they need to have good schools to attend.
        We want to help States work to set high standards and systems of
    accountability, so that when people get a diploma it will mean
    something. We want to open the doors of college even wider. Perhaps this
    is the most critical thing for those of you who are already out of
    school or about to be out. We need, in the next 4 years, to make at
    least 2 years of college

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    as universal as a high school education is today. And that's exactly
    what I propose to do. I want a $1,500 tax credit refundable to every
    family who needs it to go to a community college, to pay for 2 years of
    education after high school. I want every college student, including the
    parents as well as the kids that are going back to college, to be able
    to deduct the cost of college tuition up to $10,000 a year. That will
    revolutionize the cause of education in America.
        But before that, we must make sure that basic learning is taking
    place. I told you the good news. Now let me tell you some of the
    challenging news. Over the last decade, our country has worked hard to
    raise math and science scores, but reading scores have stayed flat. And
    it may be because a higher and higher percentage of our young people
    come from countries and families where English is not their first
    language. It may be because a lot of our young people live in homes
    where the parents are having to work two jobs, sometimes three jobs, and
    don't have enough time to spend with them reading. But for whatever
    reason, we know that our reading scores have not increased as much as
    our math and science scores, and we know that unless we can read, we
    will not be able to take advantage of the future or understand the past.
    That's why Justin and Elizabeth were up here, ``The Little Engine That
    Could'' pointing us the way to the future. That is what we have to have:
    a Justin and an Elizabeth in every single home in the United States of
    America.
        I have come here to this wonderful community to ask all of you to
    join me, without regard to your political party or your views on other
    issues, in a simple, straightforward, critical national goal: All
    America's children should be able to read on their own by the third
    grade, every single one of them.
        Look at what we know. We know that students who can't read as well
    as they should by the third grade are much less likely even to graduate
    from high school. We know that without reading, the history books are
    closed, the Internet is turned off, the promise of America is much
    harder to reach. We know the children who can read can learn from our
    Founding Fathers, explore the limits of the universe, and build the
    future of their dreams. If we're going to ensure that those are the
    children of America's future, they need not only the best possible
    teaching in school, they need individualized tutoring, help with their
    homework before school, after school, and over the summer, and they need
    more parents involved in helping them to learn to read and to keep
    reading.
        To meet this challenge we need one million tutors ready and able to
    give our children the personal attention they need to catch up and get
    ahead. Today I propose a national literacy campaign to help our children
    learn to read by the third grade, a plan that offers 30,000 reading
    specialists and volunteer coordinators to communities that are willing
    to do their part, people who will mobilize the citizen army of volunteer
    tutors we need, America's reading corps.
        We will only succeed, however, if the 30,000 are joined by legions
    of volunteers, seniors, and teenagers, business and civic groups,
    libraries and religious institutions and, above all, parents. We have to
    build on the groundwork we have been laying by AmeriCorps, our Nation's
    national service program. Today I am giving AmeriCorps a new charge:
    Make reading central to your mission.
        Let me tell you what they have done already. Let's just take one
    place. In Simpson County, Kentucky, a county in rural Kentucky, 25 of
    our young AmeriCorps volunteers helped 128 second-grade students make up
    almost 3 years of reading progress in just one school year. We can do
    that. We can do that.
        All over America, efforts like this are working. And in several
    places in America, organized attempts to train, galvanize, and energize
    parents are making a difference. We worked hard on that when I was the
    Governor of Arkansas, I've seen the program work in Missouri. Parents
    should be their children's first teachers, and we should give them the
    support they need to be those first teachers.
        There are a lot of things you can do for your children, but nothing
    will do them much more good in the long run than reading to them every
    night. I can still remember as many of Chelsea's books as she can. Some
    of them I can almost remember by heart, because kids want to hear the
    same ones over and over and over again. But when they grow and they
    learn to read on their own and you see their imaginations fire and you
    know their lives are going to be richer because of it, then every single
    tired night a parent spends reading a book to a child is a night well
    worth it. Every dollar we spend bringing in people to help these kids
    after school with personal tutoring is a dollar

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    well worth it. We know our children have to spend more time reading and
    less time in front of the television set. We know--we know that if every
    single parent would just spend a half an hour a night reading to their
    children, within a matter of years there would be no issue about whether
    our third graders could read as they should. We know that.
        We know, too, that the private sector can help. Let me say that one
    thing I'm really proud of in America is the way the business community
    is moving to change its standards of what's good for business. I was
    proud when I visited that Chrysler plant in Toledo that they gave their
    workers an average bonus of $8,000 a year last year because they all
    made money and they thought the workers were entitled to their fair
    share. I'm proud of that.
        But I want you to know something else; when we passed the
    telecommunications bill not very long ago to create hundreds of
    thousands of new jobs in the telecommunications industry, we also
    required new TV's to give you, the parents of this country, a V-chip so
    that parents will be able to control what their younger children see and
    not see inappropriate material. But it wouldn't work if the
    entertainment industry hadn't stepped up to the plate and said, ``We're
    going to start rating television shows the way we rate movies, and we're
    going to give that information to parents and let them make their own
    decisions.'' And now the entertainment industry is working with us to
    create 3 hours more of prime time educational television programming a
    week in the next couple of years. People are moving in the right
    direction. We need more of that.
        So let me leave you with this thought: We've got 10 million more
    jobs, a million and a half fewer people on welfare; the crime rate is
    coming down; child support collections are going up; America is growing
    together and going forward; wages are rising for the first time in a
    decade. But the most important thing we have to do is to make sure our
    children are ready for the 21st century. And I want you to join with me
    in saying, one way we're going to do that is to make sure every single
    boy and girl in America can read on his or her own by the time they're
    in the third grade. Will you do it?
        Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:30 p.m. at the Bacon Memorial Public
    Library. In his remarks, he referred to students Justin Whitney and
    Elizabeth Schweye; Michigan State Representative Joey Palamara; Mayor
    James DeSana of Wyandotte; and Patricia Cole, superintendent, Wyandotte
    Public Schools.