[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-


[[Page 1966]]

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.