[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.