[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[October 24, 1996]
[Pages 1916-1919]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1916]]


Remarks in Lake Charles, Louisiana
October 24, 1996

    The President. Hello. Hello, Louisiana! Hello, Lake Charles! Thank 
you. Let's give a hand to the bands over here. [Applause] Thank you for 
the music. Thank you. Can you hear me way in the back, back there?
    Audience members. Yes!
    The President. Thank you. Can you hear me over by the school buses? 
Somebody up here can hear real well. [Laughter]
    Ladies and gentlemen, I am delighted to be back in Lake Charles. I 
did not know until I came up on this platform that I'm the first sitting 
President in history to visit your community. All I can say is, if the 
others had seen what I see here today, they would have been here a long 
time ago. Thank you very much. Thank you.
    I want to thank Senator Bennett Johnston for his career, for his 
service to Louisiana and to the country. I will miss him very much. But 
you know, he was having a good time up here. I think he's enjoying this 
retirement. Thank you, John Breaux, for being my friend and supporter 
and for a great leader for Louisiana. Thank you, Congressman Cleo Fields 
and Congressman Bill Jefferson, for being here. Thank you, Lieutenant 
Governor Kathleen Blanco, Treasurer Ken Duncan, Insurance Commissioner 
Jim Brown, Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom. Thank you all. Thank you, 
Police Jury President Allen August.
    I know that there was speaking here earlier for the congressional 
candidates, Hunter Lundy and Chris John. As a Democrat, I like this 
Louisiana system, finally, because we have two people in our party 
running for the congressional seat here. Congratulations to the voters 
here in this parish.
    I want to say a special word of thanks to Mayor Willie Mount for her 
leadership of this community and for what she said about Lake Charles 
and your motto, ``Moving forward together.'' I want to say a little more 
about that in a minute. But you made us feel very welcome here today, 
Mayor, and we thank you.
    I want to thank my good friend Mary Landrieu for running for the 
Senate and thank her for embracing and sharing the ideals that we're 
trying to create for America in the 21st century. And I hope every one 
of you will help her to help you in the United States Senate in January.
    Let me thank Kent Kresea, the CEO of Northrup Grumman, and Jami 
Lowe. And also I'd like to thank Stanley Leger, the director of the 
SOWELA Tech College, for giving Jami the education, the opportunity and 
so many others the opportunity to learn the skills they need to get good 
jobs for the 21st century. Let's thank all three of them. [Applause]
    Let me say--I want to ask you to do one other thing. I asked Jami 
Lowe--every place I go I ask a citizen to introduce me. And the reason 
we do that is because I want the American people, the young people here 
in this audience, those of you who are registered voters, to understand 
every day that there is a connection between what we do a long way away 
in Washington and how you live in Lake Charles, and the decisions we 
make together shape the future we have together. But that's the first 
speech Jami Lowe ever made, and she had to make it to over 20,000 people 
to introduce the President. Let's give her another hand. I think she did 
a remarkable job. [Applause]
    I want to thank all of you here at Northrup Grumman who work on the 
J-STARS program. I did see it in action in Bosnia. Last month, our 
Department of Defense decided to acquire 19 more J-STARS for the United 
States Air Force, and we are trying to persuade our NATO allies to buy 
them for NATO. This morning the NATO Military Committee agreed that we 
needed an air surveillance system; now it's my job to tell them what air 
surveillance system we need, the J-STARS, and I'll do my best.
    In 1992 I came here to Lake Charles and had a town meeting, and I 
told you if you would give me a chance to create more opportunity, 
create more responsibility among the American people, and bring us 
together more, we would be better off in 4 years. There were 100 people 
working at Northrup Grumman in 1992; there are 1,400 people working here 
today. And that story is repeated all across America as 10\1/2\ million 
more Americans are at work, more than half of them in higher wage jobs. 
America's on the right track to the 21st century. We've got

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a 15-year high in homeownership, a 20-year low in child poverty. We've 
got drops in the crime rate and 2 million fewer people on welfare. This 
country is moving in the right direction.
    I want to talk to you a little bit today about some of the things we 
need to do. And let's start with Jami Lowe. Most of the people in 
America who get on welfare do not want to stay on it forever. They want 
to get off and go to work. They want to succeed at home and at work, the 
same thing most families want in America. We have worked hard with 
States to reduce the welfare rolls. And I signed a new welfare reform 
bill which requires every State and every community to turn the welfare 
check of every able-bodied person in America into a paycheck within 2 
years. That's exactly what we're going to do with more people like Jami 
Lowe.
    One thing we've done is to make more absent parents pay their child 
support. We've increased by 50 percent the child support collections in 
only 4 years. Think of it; we've gone from 8 to $12 billion a year in 
just 4 years, and we're going to do better in the next 4. We can move 
800,000 people off welfare tomorrow if people would just pay the child 
support they owe and they're legally bound to pay, and we intend to see 
that it is done.
    But we also know that we have to create jobs if we want people to 
take them. That means where there are jobs available, like those here at 
Northrop Grumman for people like Jami, there must be education and 
training. That's why the tech college here deserves a lot of support. We 
intend to continue to support people with more investments in the 
education of the American work force. I want to make it easier for 
people to go back to work and get the education and training they need. 
I have asked Congress to pass a new ``GI bill'' for America's workers, 
to create a skills grant worth over $2,000 a year to every unemployed 
and grossly underemployed person in the country so everybody can go back 
and get the kind of training that Jami had. And I hope you will support 
me in that as we try to build our bridge to the 21st century. I have 
offered the American people a specific plan to move another million 
folks from welfare to work by giving special tax credits, bonuses to 
businesses to place people in work, by allowing local communities to 
actually give the welfare check to employers for a while as a job 
supplement to train people on the job.
    Folks, we do not have to have a welfare system where half the people 
are trapped in dependency forever. We can move all the people who are 
able-bodied from welfare to work and make them a part of America's 
mainstream society if we're committed to doing it together. We're going 
to make people go to work; we've got to create those jobs out there for 
people to have. I hope you'll help me to create those jobs and change 
welfare forever.
    I'd like to say a special word of thanks here in Louisiana to the 
Goodwill Job Connection. They have worked very hard here and in Florida 
to move 1,500 people from welfare to work. In Louisiana, 80 percent of 
them are still off welfare after 2 years. I'm telling you, folks, don't 
believe we can't change the welfare system. We can change it forever and 
for good, and we'll have every American in the mainstream, working, 
raising their children, being part of one society, not having some 
isolated forever and trapped in poverty, if you will help us and we 
decide to do it together in every community of America. Will you do 
that? [Applause]
    My fellow Americans, this is an important election, and you have to 
decide. The people you vote for and the decision you make whether to 
vote will determine what kind of future the children in this audience 
have. The kids here today, before you know it, they'll be doing jobs 
that haven't been invented yet. A lot of these young kids will be doing 
jobs that have not even been imagined yet. The world is changing 
rapidly.
    You will decide whether we balance our budget and keep our economy 
going, whether we do it without gutting our commitment to the future 
through education and environmental protection, whether we do it without 
undermining the commitments of Medicare and Medicaid. You will decide 
whether we have targeted tax cuts to help families educate their 
children and raise them and buy a first home and deal with medical 
emergencies. You will decide. That's a big part of building a bridge to 
the 21st century. And I hope you will decide, yes, that's the way we 
have to build that bridge. Will you do that? [Applause]
    You will decide whether we continue to support policies that help 
our families succeed at home and at work. Twelve million people have 
taken a little time off from work when a baby

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was born or a family member was sick. And we still have record numbers 
of new businesses, record job growth. The family and medical leave law 
has made us a stronger, better country. I want to see it narrowly 
expanded so people can go to parent-teacher conferences with their kids 
and take their family members to doctor's appointments. That will make 
America a stronger country. You will decide. I hope you will decide to 
do it .
    You will decide whether we continue to move forward on health care 
reform. Just before I left, Congress--we passed a law which I've been 
working for hard, which says now to people, you cannot be taken--your 
health insurance can't be taken away anymore just because you changed 
jobs or somebody in your family gets sick. That could protect 25 million 
Americans in their health insurance. And we also passed a law that says 
insurance companies can't force new mothers and newborn babies out of 
the hospital in 24 hours anymore. We're going to protect that.
    Now, you will decide whether we adopt my balanced budget plan, which 
helps families that lose their jobs or between jobs keep health 
insurance for their children for 6 more months. That is your decision, 
and I hope you will decide to help us build that bridge to the 21st 
century. You will decide whether we keep putting 100,000 police on our 
streets. It's led to 4 years of decline in our crime rate. You will 
decide whether we continue to help keep our kids away from drugs and 
gangs and guns and violence. You will decide whether we continue to 
support the safe and drug-free schools program as we have or cut back on 
it as our opponents have proposed.
    Most important of all for these young people here, you will decide 
whether we make a major new commitment to guarantee every child in 
America a world-class education. I want you to help me do three things.
    Number one, 40 percent of the 8-year-olds in this country can still 
not read well enough on their own, and we know if our children can't 
read, they can't keep learning. I propose to take 30,000 AmeriCorps 
volunteers and reading specialists to go across this country and 
mobilize a million volunteers to go and help the parents and the schools 
of this country, so that by the time we start that new century, every 
single 8-year-old in America can pick up a book and say, ``I can read 
this all by myself.'' And I want you to help me do it.
    The second thing I want you to help me do is to make sure that we 
hook up every single classroom and library in the United States to the 
information superhighway by the year 2000. Now, if you're older like me 
and you don't understand all that computer stuff, let me tell you in 
plain language what that means. If we make sure all of our classrooms 
have computers, educational materials, trained teachers, and they're 
hooked up to the Internet and the World Wide Web and all these other 
networks, here's what that means. It means for the first time in 
history, in the poorest school districts in Louisiana and Arkansas, in 
the most remote rural districts in the high plains of the United States, 
in the toughest inner-city school districts--for the first time ever in 
those school districts--in the middle class districts, in the rich 
districts, in the schools, public and private, for the first time ever, 
every child will have access to the same information in the same way at 
the same time. It will revolutionize education in America, and I want 
you to help me do it for our children and our future.
    And the last thing I ask you to do is to help me open the doors of 
college education for all. I want to make sure every person in this 
country, of any age, who wants to go back to school can do it. I propose 
to give families in this country a tax credit, a dollar-for-dollar 
reduction on their taxes for the costs of the typical tuition at a 
community college or a technical school, for 2 years of education after 
high school. I want to let families save in an IRA for years but then be 
able to withdraw from it without any tax penalty if they use the money 
for education or buying a home or health care. And I want to give the 
families of Louisiana and America a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a 
year for the cost of any college tuition. It should not be taxed, the 
education of our children and of their parents, as we move into the 
information age. Will you help me do that? [Applause]
    Folks, when the mayor opened the program, she said that Lake 
Charles' motto was ``moving forward together.'' And then I saw this 
editorial in the morning newspaper that says, ``Mr. President, this area 
is a success.'' And the editorial said, ``Oh, yes, we've had some help 
from the Federal Government, but most of it we did ourselves with 
citizen spirit.'' Well, I agree with that. I agree with that.

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    But you have to decide whether we're going to move forward together 
and whether the President, the Congress, and the National Government are 
going to be your partner to help people have the tools to make the most 
of their own lives, to build strong careers, strong families, and strong 
communities. I've tried to be that kind of partner. I'm proud that this 
country is better off than it was 4 years ago. I'm glad we're on the 
right track to the 21st century. And I have run a campaign of ideas, not 
insults, to give you the ideas of what I will do in the next 4 years, if 
my contract is renewed in less than 2 weeks from today. But you have to 
decide. You have to decide.
    If you want Lake Charles to move forward together; if you believe 
that in order to have a successful work environment, you have to move 
forward together; if when you go to church on Sunday, you like to be 
sitting there with people who are committed to moving forward and 
learning together; if you believe your family has to work by people 
working together, shouldn't your country work that way too? Shouldn't 
your country work that way too? [Applause]
    You know, there's been a lot of debate about it in this country. But 
I believe the First Lady was right; I think it does take a village to 
raise a child, to build a community, to build a country, to build a 
future. And I want you to help us build that village.
    I have said all across America, I am trying to build a bridge to the 
21st century that is wide enough and strong enough for all of us to walk 
across. Louisiana needs that bridge. My native State to the north needs 
that bridge. America needs that bridge. We dare not walk away from the 
elderly, from the frail, from those who need our help. We dare not walk 
away from our children and their future. We do not need to sacrifice our 
environment to grow our economy.
    All we need to do is to make a commitment to build that bridge and 
to move forward together. You've got the right slogan, Lake Charles. 
Let's live by it. Let's know that our responsibility begins by showing 
up on Tuesday, November 5th, to vote for it. And let's build that bridge 
together to the 21st century.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:08 p.m. at Northrup Grumman Corp. In his 
remarks, he referred to Northrup Grumman Corp. employee Jami Lowe.