[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[July 16, 1996]
[Pages 1127-1130]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the National Governors' Association Conference
July 16, 1996

    Thank you. Thank you very much, Governor Thompson, for your kind 
words and for all your good work as chairman of the NGA over the past 
year. And thank you also for your work on reform, especially on 
reforming welfare, not only in the bold plan you have developed in 
Wisconsin but also as a leader on behalf of the NGA on Capitol Hill. And 
to Governor Miller, let me add my congratulations to you as you take on 
the responsibility of leading the NGA. It's one of the best jobs I ever 
had, and I know you'll enjoy it as well.
    I regret very much that I can't be with all of you for this meeting. 
I had especially looked forward to being with my good friend and my 
fellow Democrat Governor Pedro Rossello in Puerto Rico, and I hope I can 
see you there before too long. But I'm glad you're there, and I'm glad 
you're having a good meeting.
    This is the 4th year I have spoken to the NGA as President. And more 
than ever before, I believe that we are poised together to make real, 
bipartisan progress and that our Nation's Governors have a critical role 
to play. I want to thank all of you for the work you have done so far to 
grow your economies, to help your people be better educated, to reform 
welfare and fight crime and preserve the environment and move people 
forward.
    We have to think a lot about that now. We all know that just 4 years 
from now we will enter that long awaited and very much discussed 21st 
century. You know as well as any group of Americans that there are 
tremendous forces of economic and social change remaking our country. I 
believe that on balance this is a positive and hopeful time, an age of 
enormous possibility, a chance for us to build a country and a world for 
our children that is stronger and safer and more full of opportunity 
than any that has existed before. I believe we can do that if we meet 
these new challenges with our most enduring values. We have to offer 
opportunity to all. We must demand responsibility from all. And we must 
work hard to come together across all our diversity as a great American 
community. We'll have to meet these challenges not by edicts from 
Washington but by working together at all levels, by cutting redtape and 
working with the private sector, by setting national goals

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for ourselves but challenging States and localities to find the best way 
to meet those goals.
    Four years ago when I sought the Presidency, our Nation was drifting 
with uncertain steps toward this new century. Unemployment was nearly 8 
percent; job growth was very slow; the deficit was at an all-time high. 
After 12 years as a Governor, I vowed to do what chief executives in 
every statehouse in America must do: Put in place a comprehensive 
strategy for economic growth and follow a path of fiscal responsibility. 
We cut the deficit, expanded trade, invested in our people and 
technology and the future.
    The results are in. Our economy has now created over 10 million new 
jobs; 3.7 million Americans have become new homeowners. Today we learned 
again that inflation continues to moderate. Real hourly wages have begun 
to climb for the first time in a decade. And we have surpassed our goal 
of cutting the deficit in half.
    Just this morning we're releasing the mid-session review of the 
budget. Four years ago the deficit was $290 billion and headed upward. 
Today we are projecting it will be $117 billion this year. We've cut the 
deficit by 60 percent in 4 years, bringing it to its lowest level in 
dollar terms in 15 years. As a share of our economy, it's now at its 
smallest level since 1981, the smallest percentage of the economy--
excuse me--since 1974. We've got a lot more to do. I am determined to 
finish the job and balance the budget in a responsible way and at the 
same time do more to give all Americans the education and training they 
need to succeed in this new economy.
    But the fact is our economy is now the soundest it's been in a 
generation. Unlike the expansion of the 1980's, we can also be pleased 
that this growth is being felt in all regions of our country. America is 
growing, and your States are helping it to grow.
    We're also making real and bipartisan progress in other areas as 
well. We've put in place an anticrime strategy that was tough and smart, 
putting 100,000 police on the street, toughening penalties, taking guns 
off the street by banning 19 deadly assault weapons through the Brady 
law. Now, not a single hunter has lost a gun due to these bills, but 
60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers have been denied guns. We're 
encouraging communities to pull together to give their young people the 
values and the discipline they need. That's why we've been working to 
give communities the ability to impose stronger curfews, enforce truancy 
laws, and require things like school uniforms.
    These strategies are being tried in communities all across our 
country. And all across our country the crime rate is coming down for 4 
years in a row. We must now bring this same focus to bear on the rising 
tide of youth crimes and gangs and drugs. I ask you to work with our 
administration to tackle this challenge as well. Although the crime rate 
is going down, in too many areas in our country the juvenile crime rate 
is going up. But we see in the areas where it's going down that there 
are strategies that work there, too.
    If you look at the areas where we've moved forward in the economy, 
in dealing with the crime problem, we've done it not by clinging to old 
arrangements or discarded philosophies or political partisan divisions 
but by moving forward together, developing new approaches, taking the 
best ideas from all sides, putting our values of opportunity, 
responsibility, and community to work.
    Now, as all of you know very well, none of our challenges cries out 
for these approaches more than welfare. All Americans, without regard to 
party, know that our welfare system is broken, that it teaches the wrong 
values, rewards the wrong choices, hurts those it was meant to help. We 
also know that no one wants to change the current system in a good way 
more than people who are trapped in it.
    Since the time when I served as cochair of the NGA's welfare task 
force about a decade ago now, I have been committed to ending welfare as 
we know it. I worked with many of you for years to fashion new 
solutions. Today, after long years of effort, I believe we are poised 
for a real breakthrough in welfare reform. Real welfare reform requires 
work, imposes time limits, cracks down on deadbeat parents by enforcing 
child support, provides child care.
    Now, you haven't waited for Congress to act, and we've worked with 
you to change the face of welfare. We've cut through redtape and worked 
with you to set up 67 welfare reform experiments in 40 States, with more 
to come. We've granted more than twice as many waivers as the previous 
two administrations combined. And now, 75 percent of all welfare 
recipients are already under new rules. The New York Times called this a 
quiet revolution in welfare.

[[Page 1129]]

    Well, I am proud that there are 1.3 million fewer people on welfare 
now than the day I took office and that child support collections are up 
40 percent. But there's more to do. As you know, the State of Wisconsin 
has submitted a bold plan to reform welfare. We're working closely with 
Governor Thompson's staff, and I am committed, as I've said before, to 
getting this done.
    I'd just like to emphasize the things about this Wisconsin plan 
which are compelling to me: the idea that people should be required 
immediately to be ready to go to work but that in return, they would 
have health care and child care guaranteed and that the welfare money 
could be used to pay income supplements or wage supplements to private 
employers to put these people to work and that if there is no private 
employment, these folks would be given community service jobs.
    That's what we ought to be doing everywhere. If we can create these 
jobs, we ought to require people to take them. I know every Governor 
would agree with me that for all the good that's come from these 
waivers, however, we can do a lot more once we pass comprehensive 
national welfare reform. If we pass national welfare reform, we can do 
an even better job of collecting child support across State lines. And 
if we pass national welfare reform, we can eliminate this waiver process 
altogether.
    For too long the welfare issue has been marred by partisanship; it's 
been mired by gridlock. But in recent weeks up here, all this seems to 
be changing. I think we've now reached a real turning point, a 
breakthrough for welfare reform. The new leadership of the Senate, along 
with the leadership of the House of Representatives, now indicated that 
they want to move forward with bipartisan welfare reform and are 
dropping their insistence that welfare be linked to the block granting 
of Medicaid. They've said that they want to work to pass legislation I 
can sign, rather than sending me legislation they know that I would 
reject.
    As you know, Congress sent me a welfare reform bill last year that 
fell short of my principles as well as those expressed by the NGA in 
your February resolution. After my veto and your unanimous resolution, I 
am pleased that the congressional leadership has made several 
significant improvements that have made this a much better bill. They've 
added $4 billion in child care, included a $1 billion work performance 
bonus to reward States for moving people from welfare to work. They 
removed the spending cap on food stamps so that States don't come up 
short in tough times. Their original bill made cuts in structural 
changes that were tough on children: a school lunch block grant, a 25 
percent cut in SSI for disabled children, cuts in foster care. The 
current bill drops all these provisions.
    Congress has taken long strides in the right direction. Now as we 
approach the goal line, we do have a chance to make history and make 
this bill even better. We can give all our people a chance to move from 
welfare to work, to transform our broken welfare system once and for 
all.
    So I hope that Congress will continue to improve the bill along the 
lines that you and I have long advocated and along the lines of the 
strong bipartisan bills introduced by Senators John Breaux and John 
Chafee and Representatives John Tanner and Mike Castle, another former 
colleague of ours. We must not let this opportunity slip from our grasp 
as it has too many times before. Let's put politics aside. Let's give 
the American people the best possible welfare reform bill. And let's do 
it before the August congressional recess.
    I am determined that this will be the year that we finally transform 
welfare across America. If Congress doesn't act, we still have to 
continue to act, to make responsibility a way of life and not an option. 
Today I am taking the steps that I can take as President to advance the 
central premise of welfare reform, one that is embodied in all the 
proposed welfare bills: that anyone who can work must do so. We'll say 
to welfare recipients, ``Within 2 years you will be expected to go to 
work and earn a paycheck, not draw a welfare check.''
    Here is how we will do that. I am directing the Department of Health 
and Human Services to require everyone who takes part in the jobs 
program to sign a personal responsibility contract and commit to going 
to work within 2 years. States can then take away the benefits if they 
fail to live up to that commitment.
    Today, 28 States already impose work requirements and time limits, 
every one of them under welfare waivers granted by our administration. I 
believe all 50 States should follow that lead. This action will ensure 
that that happens even before welfare reform legislation passes. Of 
course, this will take effect only if Congress

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fails to enact welfare reform legislation. I far prefer a bill passed by 
Congress, and I know you do too. So let's agree: One way or another we 
will make work and responsibility the law of the land, but we want a 
good welfare reform bill.
    Ten years ago at an NGA meeting in Hilton Head, South Carolina, I 
heard testimony from a woman from Little Rock, a woman who had moved 
from welfare to work through our State's work program. She told us, 
``The best thing about work is not the check. The best thing is when my 
boy goes to school and they ask him, what does your mama do for a 
living, he can give an answer.''
    Well, today, 10 years later, that lady has a job, and she's raised 
three children. One has a job, and two are in school. By her undying 
effort and her unbreakable spirit she shows us that we can make a 
difference, that this cycle of welfare can be broken, that welfare can 
be a second chance, not a way of life.
    So let me say in closing that we can meet all our challenges if 
we'll work in this way and if we'll follow the example of the NGA: be 
bipartisan, cooperative, look for results, not abstract rhetoric, not be 
ashamed to learn from each other and take our best ideas from each 
other, and putting our values to work. That's how we can reform welfare 
and meet our other challenges. If we do that, this country will enter 
the 21st century stronger and more vibrant than ever before, with the 
American dream alive for all our people.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke by satellite at 11:20 a.m. from Room 459 of 
the Old Executive Office Building to the NGA conference in San Juan, 
Puerto Rico. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Tommy G. Thompson of 
Wisconsin and Gov. Bob Miller of Nevada.