    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book I)]
    [February 10, 1997]
    [Pages 134-143]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis, Maryland
    February 10, 1997

        Thank you all for that wonderful reception. Thank you, Mr. Speaker,
    for what you said. Thank you, Senator Miller, for that 10-year walk down
    memory lane. [Laughter] It is true that when I met his mother I fell in
    love with her, even before I found out she had 10 kids. [Laughter] It's
    not often you meet a person who can elect you if her family votes for
    you. [Laughter]
        Thank you, Governor Glendening, for your leadership here on so many
    issues. Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Attorney General
    Curran, Treasurer Dixon, my old friend Comptroller Louie Goldstein. I
    was in the first grade when he became comptroller. [Laughter] The
    walking argument against term limits, you know. It's amazing. [Laughter]
        I'd like to thank so many Members of your very distinguished
    congressional delegation for joining me today: Senator Sarbanes and
    Senator Mikulski; Representative Wayne Gilchrest, your Congressman;
    Representative Connie Morella; Representative Ben Cardin; Representative
    Al Wynn; and Representative Elijah Cummings.
        Now, I know that Ben was formerly the speaker here and that Al and
    Elijah and Connie and Senator Sarbanes were all members of this body. It
    kind of makes you wonder how Senator Mikulski and Congressman Gilchrest
    got elected to Congress. [Laughter] It's obviously a good training
    program here. [Laughter]
        I'd like to thank the president of the Maryland State Board of
    Education, Christopher Cross, for being here. When he worked for
    President Bush, he and I stayed up all night one night writing the
    national education goals, which began the process which bring us to this
    point today. Thank you, sir, for being here. And I'd like to thank your
    State superintendent of education, Nancy Grasmick, for being here.
        Then there are two people who are not here, who are here with us in
    spirit, and I would like to ask that we all remember them today, our
    good friend Congressman Steny Hoyer and his late wife, Judy, who was one
    of the finest educators this State ever had. And I know we miss them
    today. Steny and his family are in

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    our prayers, and we are grateful for the dedication of Judy Hoyer's life
    to the children and the people of Maryland.
        I would also like to say I'm very glad to be here with two members
    of my Cabinet, Secretary of Education Dick Riley and the Secretary of
    Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala. They have served our
    administration and, more importantly, the American people exceptionally
    well, and I thank them for their presence here today. And when I finish
    talking, if you want anything else, call them. [Laughter]
        I should also say, since Senator Miller mentioned it, that my
    college roommate, who lived on the Eastern Shore, Tom Kaplan, is here.
    And he's still my friend after all these years, which is either a great
    tribute to his patience or to the roots and values of the people of
    Maryland. So I'm glad he's here.
        I wanted to come here today to talk in greater detail about the
    issues I discussed in the State of the Union that require us to prepare
    America for the 21st century. It is important that we gather here at
    this turning point in our history. It was, after all, in this statehouse
    that George Washington resigned his commission as general of the
    Continental Army. In fact, it was right down the hall in the Lieutenant
    Governor's office that Thomas Jefferson wrote George Washington's words
    of resignation. It was here that the Treaty of Paris was prepared and
    ratified, ending the Revolutionary War and beginning the greatest
    experiment in democracy and opportunity the world has ever known.
        Just think what began here in this building. What an experiment it
    has been, all the turmoil we have survived, the Civil War, the two World
    Wars, the cold war, the social upheaval, all the triumphs of our country
    in civil rights and women's rights, the environmental movement, workers'
    rights, bringing in all the immigrants, the explosion in science and
    technology, the political, the economic, the social achievements of this
    country. What an incredible experiment it has been since the events of
    so long ago when the treaty ending the Revolutionary War was signed and
    ratified here.
        At each step along the way, how did we keep growing, how did we
    overcome, how did we work through, how did we reach higher? We always
    had responsible citizens. We were always able to come together as one
    country. And we were always driven by a clear vision.
        I would argue to you that we are at another turning point today, and
    we need responsible citizens, a united country, and a clear vision. We
    face a moment of peace and prosperity, and it gives us an extraordinary
    opportunity to actually decide what kind of future we want for America
    in the 21st century and then go to work to build it. It is very
    important that we understand that such moments are extremely rare in our
    history.
        We have perhaps had only one before. After World War II, we
    dominated the world economically. We were the most powerful country in
    the world militarily. We had some ability to decide our future, and
    thank goodness we did the right thing with the Marshall plan and
    rebuilding Europe and Japan, our former friends and our former foes. But
    we were constrained by the cold war.
        At the beginning of this century probably is the time most like this
    one when we entered the industrial era as a powerful and wealthy country
    at peace. But never have we been quite like this, as the world's only
    superpower, just completing 4 years where we produced more new jobs than
    at any other 4-year period in our history, looking toward a world that
    is full of troubles, to be sure, but so full of explosive opportunities.
        We have an incredible responsibility--we in America and you in
    Maryland. Thanks to the leadership of your Governor and the work that
    all of you have done, unemployment's at a 6-year low. Things are going
    well for you here. Your family incomes have risen to fourth in the
    Nation. Your welfare rolls have dropped almost 25 percent since 1995.
    Student achievement has risen, and more schools are meeting the high
    standards you have set. We are well positioned.
        But it is a moment of choice. We cannot afford to squander this
    moment in complacency or division. That's normally what happens to
    people when they sort of get happy and satisfied. They get complacent,
    or they fall out over little things. And this is not a time for us to
    squander in petty bickering or small ambitions. This is a time for us to
    build a new century.
        We have to meet all the challenges we still have. There are still
    too many poor children in this country and too many lives of children
    being lost on the streets of America every day. There are still too many
    of our areas in our cities and isolated rural areas that have not felt
    the uplift of the economic recovery. We still

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    have not balanced the budget. We still have not finished all the
    unfinished business of the cold war. Not everybody who works hard is
    feeling the opportunities that are available in America. We have
    unfinished business.
        Then we have new challenges that we have to face. We have to prepare
    for the aging of the baby boomers. I know I'm the oldest one; that's a
    self-interest plea here, I think. [Laughter] We have to prepare for the
    aging of the baby boomers. We have to make sure that we're ready for
    this new worldwide competition. We have to meet the new security threats
    of the 21st century, in terrorism and ethnic and religious and racial
    conflicts. We have to meet the new environmental challenges of the 21st
    century, most of which will be global in nature.
        So there are challenges out there. But the most important thing is,
    there are staggering opportunities. More people will have more chances
    to live out their dreams than any people who ever lived in the history
    of the Earth, if we do the right things--if we do the right things.
        We have worked for the last 4 years essentially to try to make sure
    America works again, that we are functioning at a reasonable level of
    proficiency so that we can have the freedom to do that, to shape our
    future. And we have changed the economic course of this country away
    from supply-side economics to investment economics, to move toward a
    balanced budget, to reduce the deficits, the interest rates, to expand
    our trade around the world and to invest in our people. And the results
    have been good.
        We've tried to move the debate over social policy in Washington away
    from rhetoric to reality, centered on families and communities. You've
    got now 5 years of declining crime. You've got the biggest drop in
    welfare rolls in history. You've got real efforts being made through the
    family leave law and other things to help people succeed in raising
    their children and in the workplace. We're in a position now to know
    what works and to know that we can have confidence that if we work
    together, we can make a difference in assaulting our most profound
    challenges here at home.
        We've tried to define the role of Government away from the old fight
    that's dominated America almost ever since World War II, to say
    Government is not the problem; Government is not the solution.
    Government's job is to create the conditions and give people the tools
    to solve their problems and make the most of their own lives.
        So now we have this chance. And it's hard when you're not threatened
    by a foreign enemy to whip people up to a fever pitch of common,
    intense, sustained, disciplined endeavor. But that is what we must do,
    my fellow Americans. That is what we must do.
        We are strong enough to shape a future that will take advantage of
    all this life-enhancing technology, of these new economic opportunities,
    of the new opportunities we have to build a structure of peace around
    the world, of the new opportunities we have to put the information age
    at the fingertips of the poorest as well as the wealthiest children in
    our country. And we had better do this. Our children and our
    grandchildren will never forgive us if we blow this chance to make their
    future the best future in the history of this country.
        It is obvious that to prepare our people for the 21st century we
    will need a new, more far-reaching, deeper partnership in America. The
    era of big Government is over, both because we can't go on running
    national deficits till the end of time and because the nature of our
    problems requires a different approach. But the era of big national
    challenges is far from over. It will never be over. And the ones we face
    are very big indeed.
        National leadership can point the way. It can move barriers out of
    the way that have prevented our States, our cities, and our people from
    solving their own problems. But the real responsibilities of building
    this future are ones we all must bear together. I will do my part. I
    will do what I can to see that the National Government does its part.
    But in turn, you must work with me and with others to make sure that we
    seize this opportunity while we stand strong enough to do so.
        Today I want to talk about two critical areas, giving our children
    the best education and finishing the job of welfare reform, breaking the
    cycle of dependency, moving millions of more people from welfare to
    work. Taken together, these issues really are at the core of our
    national mission to prepare America for the 21st century.
        Everyone must have the tools to succeed in the knowledge economy.
    That means education and training. Everyone willing to work hard with
    those tools must have a chance to do so. That means finishing the job of
    welfare reform. Education and welfare reform are about bringing

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    all Americans to the starting line of the economy, then making sure all
    of them are ready to run the race. Our number one priority must be to
    ensure that America has the best education in the world.
        I cannot add much to the statement we made so long ago in the
    national education goals, 7 years ago now--almost 8 years ago--but my
    shorthand statement is: Every 8-year-old has to be able to read, every
    12-year-old should be able to log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old
    should be able to go to college, and every adult American should be able
    to keep on learning for an entire lifetime. That should be our goal.
        Because our future was at stake in the cold war, we had a bipartisan
    foreign policy. Politics stopped at the water's edge. Well, now our
    future is at stake, in large measure depending upon whether we can give
    all of our people world-class education. Therefore, we must have a
    nonpartisan commitment to education, and politics should stop at the
    schoolhouse door in the 21st century.
        It is not enough for Members of Congress and members of the State
    legislatures and elected executives to embrace this commitment. Our
    businesses, our educators, our parents, all our citizens must make the
    same commitment. I'm gratified that you have a number of Maryland
    parents and teachers and business people committed to education here
    today. I thank them for being here, and I thank you for inviting them.
        In my State of the Union Address, I laid out a 10-point call to
    action for American education, which is embodied in this booklet. And I
    want to say just a few words about a number of issues today and then
    focus on one in particular. And I want to thank the State of Maryland
    for taking the lead in doing so many of the right things. A lot of you
    have worked with me, going back long years in the past when I was a
    Governor, on these educational issues, and I thank you for what you've
    done.
        First, every child has to be able to read independently by the third
    grade. I'm pleased that the University of Maryland at College Park has
    already pledged more than 2,300 of its students to work as reading
    tutors over the next 5 years. That is a great thing. We're going to use
    35,000 of our AmeriCorps volunteers to help to try to mobilize a million
    of these students. We think we can get at least 100,000 out of the new
    work-study students approved by Congress in the last budget. Then all
    the schools have to make use of volunteers once they are trained. But we
    have to do this.
        You just think about it. If 40 percent of our children can't read at
    grade level, how in the wide world do we expect them to learn algebra,
    trigonometry, calculus, physics, biology, chemistry? It is very
    important. Unless we get this done, the rest cannot happen. And it is
    going to take a national effort of monumental proportions to do it. But
    we can do it, because the children can do it. The children can do it.
    They just need for us to do our job, and they then will do the rest. So
    I want you to help us to finish that job.
        We must expand public school choice. And Baltimore City has done
    that through its charter schools. We must rebuild crumbling schools. And
    you heard the Governor say that's a priority for him as well. We must
    make it possible for all of our children to have access--the same
    access, in the same time, to the same knowledge. That's what hooking up
    all these classrooms to the Internet is all about. And I thank Maryland
    for its commitment to that objective.
        In the last 4 years, we have opened the doors of college wider than
    ever before through the direct college loan program and expanded Pell
    grants, 200,000 more work-study positions, and the AmeriCorps program.
    But we have to do more. And I am very pleased, Governor, that you have
    proposed these State HOPE scholarships to open the doors of college.
        I just came back from Georgia--Secretary Riley and I went to
    Augusta--230,000 people in the State of Georgia who maintained a B
    average have had their tuition and their schoolbooks paid for by the
    State HOPE scholarship program. In a representative crowd there, I had
    person after person after person of all ages telling me, ``I was a HOPE
    scholar; I had a chance to go to college; I never could have done it
    otherwise; I wouldn't have made it otherwise.''
        There is no better expenditure of our money. It will raise the per
    capita income of this State more quickly. It will get over inequalities
    in income groups more quickly, and it will bring people together for a
    stronger future more quickly than anything else.
        So I applaud the proposal you have put before the legislature here,
    and I also tell you I will do my best to pass our national version of
    the HOPE scholarship to give a tax credit of $1,500

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    for 2 years--that's the typical cost of community college tuition--and a
    tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for the cost of tuition for any
    education after high school. This will make a difference.
        We also propose making the IRA available to more savers and then let
    people withdraw from their IRA tax-free if the money is used to pay for
    education--and the biggest increase in Pell grant scholarships for needy
    students in 20 years. And our ``GI bill'' for America's workers would
    take the 70 different Federal programs for job training, put them in one
    big block, and send a skill grant to an unemployed or an underemployed
    worker and say, ``Here, you take it to the nearest institution of
    education and get the training you need.'' Nearly every American lives
    within driving distance of a community college or another community-
    based university or educational institution that can provide the
    training today that all people know they need to have a better future.
    So we need to do these things together, and they will make a big
    difference.
        I also believe we have to teach our children to be good citizens as
    well as good students. And I'd like to thank the Lieutenant Governor for
    supporting the statewide program of character education you have here,
    to have a statewide code of discipline, to remove disruptive students
    from the classroom, to promote community curfews. And again, I thank you
    for being the only State in America to require community service to
    graduate from high school. You have the first class of seniors
    graduating today. That's a good thing. That's a good thing.
        To give you some idea how long it takes for some of these things to
    catch on, 10 years ago, in 1987, the then-Republican Governor of New
    Jersey and now the president of Drew University, Tom Kean, and I
    cochaired a Carnegie commission study on middle school, and one of our
    recommendations was that national service should be a requirement for
    public school students. People should learn that they are connected to
    others in their community and make it a positive, good, wholesome thing.
    Only Maryland has done it so far. But I certainly hope--perhaps my
    presence here will help--I hope other States will follow your lead. This
    is an important part of building a common future for America.
        Let me say the most important thing we can do in education is to
    hold our students to high standards. Children will grow according to the
    expectations we have of them. They cannot be expected to know what it is
    they should know or even how high they can soar until we give them the
    right set of expectations. When 40 percent of our third graders are not
    reading as well as they should or, to put it in plain language, when 40
    percent of 8-year-olds cannot read a book on their own that they ought
    to be able to read, we have a lot to do. When students in Germany or
    Singapore learn 15 to 20 math subjects in depth each year, while our
    students typically race through 30 to 35 without learning any in depth
    in a given year, we aren't doing what we should be doing to prepare them
    for a knowledge economy that demands that they be able to think and
    reason and analyze, in short, demands that they be able to learn for a
    lifetime of working in ways that have not yet been invented, perhaps not
    yet even imagined. This is impossible without a good foundation in the
    basics.
        Maryland is making a good start. You've developed clear standards
    for what children should learn by the third, fifth, and eighth grades,
    in particular, in reading and math, and clear tests to measure them
    school district by school district and school by school. You're holding
    schools accountable for making the grade, rewarding excellence,
    intervening in schools that aren't performing. Because you have set high
    standards, you have seen 5 years of steady, sustained progress toward
    meeting those standards.
        But Maryland and all other States must do more. To compete and win
    in the 21st century, we must have a high standard of excellence that all
    States agree on. That is why I called, in my State of the Union Address,
    for national standards of excellence in the basics, not Federal
    Government standards but national standards representing what all our
    students must know to succeed in a new century. I called upon every
    State to test every fourth grader in reading and every eighth grader in
    math by 1999, according to the national standards, to make sure they're
    being met.
        We already have widely accepted rigorous national standards in both
    reading and math and widely used tests based on those standards. In
    reading, Maryland and more than 40 other States have participated in a
    test called the National Assessment of Education Progress or, as all of
    us educational junkies call it, the NAEP test. It measures a State's
    overall performance

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    against a high national standard of excellence. It's a good test. In
    math, tens of thousands of students across our Nation have already taken
    the Third International Math and Science Survey, called the TIMSS test,
    a test that reflects the world-class standards our children must meet
    for the new era. As I said in my State of the Union, last month
    Secretary Riley and I visited northern Illinois, where eighth grade
    students from 20 districts took the test and tied for first in the world
    for science and second in math. We know it is the world standard, and we
    know the world standard is the right standard to which we should all
    hold ourselves.
        Unfortunately, these current tests, both the Assessment of Education
    Progress for the fourth grade reading test and the Third International
    Survey in Math and Science for the eighth graders, do not provide
    individual scores; they only measure how an entire State is doing. What
    we need are tests that will measure the performance of each and every
    student, each and every school, each and every district, so that parents
    and teachers will know how every child is doing compared to other
    students in other schools, other States, and other countries, not just
    compared to them but, more importantly, compared against what they need
    to know.
        It is a false thing to compare all kids against one another unless
    all children are first held to a high standard. That's what we want to
    know. That's the only thing that really matters. That is why I'm
    presenting a plan to help all students in all States meet these
    standards and to measure them.
        Over the next 2 years, our Department of Education will support the
    development for new tests for fourth grade reading based on the National
    Assessment of Education Progress and eighth grade math based on the
    International Math and Science Survey, to show how every student
    measures up to existing, widely accepted standards. These tests will be
    developed by independent test experts in consultation with leading math
    and reading teachers. The Federal Government will not require them, but
    they will be available to every State and every school district that
    chooses to administer them. I believe every State must participate and
    that every parent has a right to honest, accurate information about how
    his or her child is doing based on real, meaningful national standards.
        Now, already in the last week I have heard some people saying,
    ``Sounds like a Federal power grab to me.'' That's nonsense. We will not
    attempt to require them. They are not Federal Government standards. They
    are national standards. But we have been hiding behind a very small fig
    leaf for very long, and the results are not satisfactory. Anybody who
    says that a country as big and diverse as ours can't possibly have
    national standards in the basics, I say from Maryland to Michigan to
    Montana, reading is reading and math is math. No school board is in
    charge of algebra, and no State legislature can enact the laws of
    physics. And it is time we started acting the way we know we should.
        There's another thing that will be said now and that you will have
    to confront, because I know how much--I've been through a zillion State
    legislative sessions; everybody's got a new idea and everybody wants
    more money and there's never enough to go around. And you will be told--
    and it is true--that we have lots of standardized tests. That's true,
    there are lots of standardized tests, but there is no national test
    testing the standards. That's a very different thing. There is no
    national exam given to all of our children that says, here's what a good
    fourth grader ought to learn.
        Keep in mind, we don't want Johnny to make a better score than Mary
    on this test. We want 100 percent of our kids to pass this test. And
    then when a lot of them don't, we don't want to give them an F. We want
    to give them a hand up. We want to say, ``We haven't done what we
    should, and we're going to do this.''
        It is amazing, you know, we take it for granted we have the best
    military in the world. Think how silly it would be if everyplace in
    America where we do basic training, they said, ``Well, you know,
    Louisiana is a long way from Georgia. We couldn't have possibly have
    uniform standards for basic training in the military. Just sort of come
    up with whatever you think will be good, and we'll hope it works the
    next time we're in the Persian Gulf.'' [Laughter] You're laughing.
    That's what we do. And even if you do the very best you can, we don't
    know the truth. It's wrong for these children not to know the truth.
    This is not a put-down, now, this is a lift-up.
        We've got the most diverse democracy in the world. We have 4 school
    districts now where the children's first languages comprise over 100
    different languages, in 4 school districts in America. Who are we
    kidding that we're going to create the kind of country we want, where

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    everybody's got a chance to make it, when we haven't even taken the
    first elemental step to say, here's how everyone should read by the
    fourth grade; here's the math everybody ought to know by the eighth
    grade?
        There is more to do after that, but let's start with something that
    really matters. We've never done it. This has nothing to do with local
    control of education. Secretary Riley has done more to get rid of
    Federal rules and regulations, to give States and local school districts
    more control without the rules and more flexibility than anybody has in
    a long time. But no matter how much flexibility you have, sooner or
    later your children are going to have to face the fact that they either
    can read or they can't, they either can do the math or they can't, they
    know algebra or they don't. And if we play around with all these games
    and hide-and-seek excuses, in the end the only people that are going to
    be hurt are those kids, and the rest of the country will pay the price
    from now on. And we've got to stop it. [Applause] Thank you.
        I want to give you two pieces of good news, one of which you can be
    especially proud of. You all know that the business community has been
    calling for this for a long time. Governor Glendening was recently with
    the other Governors last year at an education summit in New York with
    the business community, and they were saying we have to have standards.
    Today I'm proud to say that the national Business Roundtable is
    endorsing our call for national tests for fourth grade reading and
    eighth grade math. They will join our crusade to make American education
    the best in the world. And I want to thank especially Norm Augustine,
    who is the CEO of Lockheed Martin and the head of the Business
    Roundtable's education task force and who has done a lot to help you in
    Maryland with your schools. Just before the speech today, your State
    board of education chairman, Chris Cross, told me that the State board
    of education intends to incorporate these news tests of national
    standards into your State's program. And I thank you, sir, for that, and
    I thank you for that.
        Let me say that throughout my public career, I have been very
    interested in this whole issue of education. There are lots of other
    things I'd like to talk to you about today. I hope you will support the
    work that we are doing with the National Board of Certification for
    Master Teachers, to certify teachers in educational excellence. Governor
    Hunt from North Carolina has been working on that for years, and we
    certified the last teachers--the first teachers in 1995 but only 500
    since 1995. We believe we need at least one master teacher in every
    school district, hopefully in every school in America, someone who has
    been through the special, rigorous program of training and evaluation
    here so that then that teacher can share what he or she has learned with
    all the other teachers in the school. Our budget contains enough funds--
    and it's a relatively low-cost program--to provide for another 100,000
    master teachers in the next 4 years. So I hope you will support that as
    well.
        But let me say--I guess you can tell I feel strongly about this, but
    I have spent a lot of time in our schools, a lot of time listening to
    teachers, a lot of time listening to parents. I've worked harder on this
    issue over the course of my public life than anything else because it
    has a unique role in our history and an even more powerful role in our
    future. It is, of course, the key to individual opportunity. It is also
    the key to responsible citizenship. I am convinced it is the key to
    giving us the understanding we need to live together as one nation in
    the midst of all of our diversity. It is also the key to maintaining our
    world leadership for peace and freedom and prosperity. Only if every
    American has the full use of his or her mind can our country move
    forward together.
        So I hope that all of you will keep this in mind. I hope that you
    will push this, and I hope you will lead the way. I want to be able to
    take this crusade across the country and tell people, if they don't
    believe we can do it, call Maryland. You've had the courage to do it.
    Stand up. [Applause]
        Now, let me just say a couple of words about welfare reform, because
    that's very important. For years and years and years, all the
    Governors--I was one of them--said we want more control over the State's
    welfare system; we want to do that. We could reform the welfare system.
    We could make it work. We could end the culture of poverty and
    dependency. Well, you got it. [Laughter] And this has got to be a focus
    of your efforts now, because this is very, very important.
        We ended the old welfare system basically in two steps. First of
    all, in the last 4 years, Secretary Shalala and I worked with 43 of the
    50 States to launch welfare reform experiments

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    which, along with a growing economy and a 50 percent increase in child
    support collection--something I'm very proud of--helped to reduce the
    welfare rolls by 2\1/4\ million. That's the biggest drop in welfare
    rolls in the history of the country, an 18 percent drop. You can be
    proud of that and proud of what you did. Here in Maryland you did better
    than the national average. You used your waiver to move 51,000 people
    off the welfare rolls, and you had about a 25 percent drop. And you can
    be proud of that.
        You also answered my call to revoke the driver's licenses of people
    who deliberately--who can and don't pay their child support. And I think
    that's a good thing. We're going to do more to collect child support. We
    can move 800,000 more people off welfare tomorrow if people just paid
    the child support they owe and that they are capable of paying. So I
    thank you for that.
        Now we come to the hard part. The new law, supported by the
    Governors and all State associations, says that every able-bodied person
    on welfare must move to work within 2 years, that the States can have a
    little cushion fund to support those who can't move into the work force
    either because they're disabled or because the economy is not so hot.
        But now, think of this challenge. In the last 4 years, 2\1/4\
    million people moved from welfare to work in an economy that produced
    11.5 million jobs. That's a record for any 4-year administration. We
    have to do at least that well in the next 4 years. That reduced the
    welfare rolls by about 20 percent, 18 to 20 percent.
        So you've got about 10 million people left and about--maybe a little
    more than 10 million--and about 4\1/2\ million of them are adults and
    about 4 million, anyway, are going to be able-bodied and able enough to
    physically work. And then there will be some moving in and out of the
    work force as there always is, as people retire and all. But through
    deliberate efforts we're going to have to create at least 2 million
    jobs. And if we don't do it, what will happen?
        Keep in mind, this welfare reform bill has this ringing declaration:
    Everybody who can work, everybody who's able to work has to take
    responsibility for their own lives, no more permanent dependency full of
    moral precepts. Well, the morality shoe is now on the other foot. Those
    of us who supported that, we now have a moral obligation to say,
    everybody we told, ``You have to go to work'' actually is able to work.
    Because if we are not able to do that, then the law's consequence will
    not be to liberate people from dependency but to make people who are
    dying to go to work even worse off just because they couldn't find a
    job.
        This is a serious, stiff challenge. And the challenge is primarily
    on you and the employer community, which is the way you said you wanted
    it. But it's there now. You know that great old country music star Chet
    Atkins used to say, ``You got to be careful what you ask for in this
    life; you might get it.'' So here it is. What are we going to do? Is
    there a way out? Yes, there is. Can we do this? You bet we can. You bet
    we can. We can to it, but we have to do it together. And we have to do
    it with discipline. And we need a plan. And it needs to go down to every
    community. And we're going to have to ask people to help. And you need
    to really closely follow your numbers and make sure you're doing what it
    takes to be done.
        How are we going to do it? First, we have to pass the Federal
    program that I recommended, which will give tax credits to private
    employers of up to 50 percent of a salary up to $10,000 to hire people,
    only if they hire people from welfare to work. And then we have to
    support the provisions of the welfare reform law which continue the
    health care, continue the nutrition, and provide much more money for
    child care than the previous law. That's the good news.
        This legislation also gives you the authority for the first time to
    take money that had been used on welfare checks and give it to private
    employers as a wage or training supplement. Now, this can be very
    important in convincing nonprofit employers who don't pay taxes anyway
    to hire people off welfare and make an extra effort. All the community
    nonprofits, every church or other religious organization in the State of
    Maryland of any size, without regard to their faith, they're all under
    an admonition to care for the poor. Now you can say, ``We'll give you a
    little money to help, if you will do the rest.''
        Missouri had a program like this in Kansas City, where they gave the
    welfare check to private employers for more than a year--they could keep
    it for a couple years--as a wage and training premium if they would hire
    people off welfare. I met a man who had a data-processing

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    storage company with 25 employees, and 5 of his employees he'd hired
    from the welfare rolls, and he loved it. And they loved it.
        And if we can do it, it is better to hire people in small groups or
    one-on-one, because you're trying to lift people out of a culture of
    dependency into a mainstream culture of work. But this man was willing
    to do that. And they have to pay about $1.75 above the minimum wage to
    get the wage subsidy there and to give people a living income. But still
    it costs them less than the minimum wage to do it.
        Florida has just decided to follow suit. And I hope other States
    will follow that lead. You've got to--believe me--to meet these job
    targets, your employer community is going to need every last option you
    can give them. And somebody's got to have a plan--I mean a game plan,
    that challenges every sector and every community to do what has to be
    done. So I urge you to use the flexibility you have been given to do
    that.
        Secondly, I urge you to make sure that the money you have saved from
    welfare reform will be used to move even more people to work. I know
    Maryland has taken its considerable savings from welfare reform efforts
    and put them into a special rainy-day fund to create jobs and to move
    people from welfare to work. And that's something other States ought to
    copy, because if welfare reform is going to succeed in the beginning,
    all States are going to have to use those savings on efforts like child
    care, wage subsidies, employment incentives, or other ways to create
    private sector jobs.
        Let me just say one other thing. I hope as you do this you will not
    forget a sort of a parallel population not on welfare, and those are
    young, single men who are unemployed who are eligible for food stamps
    but not welfare. Keep in mind, their loss to the work force is an
    enormous loss to our society. It leads to higher crime. It leads to
    fewer two-parent families. It leads to robbing them of the potential of
    what they might become. And a lot of places now are beginning to try
    to--instead of talking just about the welfare population--[inaudible]--
    the young, unemployed population so that these young, single men can be
    treated in the right way, too.
        And in Missouri, what they did, we gave them a waiver, and they
    actually took the food stamp payments for the young, single men and gave
    them to employers with the same sort of incentive as the welfare
    payments for young women going from welfare to work. So I urge you to
    think about that.
        Finally, let me say, what is our vision? I can tell you what my
    vision--why do we do all this? Here's my vision. Here's where I hope
    we'll be in a few years. I hope all over America in a few years, we will
    have a community-based, employment-family support system for people who
    are out of work and people will come into this system whether they come
    off the welfare rolls or off the employment rolls through the
    unemployment rolls and we won't make a distinction. It will just be good
    people with kids or without kids, depending, who are out of work who
    need to get back into the work force. And we'll have a system for moving
    them back in, and we'll have a system of subsidies for people at the
    margins so that employers will be encouraged to make that extra effort
    to restore people to the dignity of work. And meanwhile, we'll always be
    helping people support their children in fulfilling their first and most
    important job.
        Now, that's my vision. That's what I hope we would get out of this
    welfare reform effort. But the next 2 years are going to be critical,
    because about 2 years from now, people are going to start running out of
    their 2-year time limit, and then the spotlight will shift from all of
    them to all of us. And we will be asked, what did we do when the welfare
    reform bill passed? What did we do to make sure that those we told,
    ``You have to go to work,'' had the chance to go to work? So I urge you
    to think about this.
        This is exciting, but it's bracing, because our society has never
    done anything like this before in ordinary times. And I do not believe
    that when the bill passed, people had really focused on the dimensions
    of the challenge. I had, and I was willing to make it. I'm willing to
    try to--to jump off this cliff, to hold up this high standard. I think
    we can do this. I think we can develop a work-based society that does
    not have people trapped in permanent dependence. But it's going to take
    everybody thinking about it, working on it, and doing things they had
    not done in the past. And so I ask you to do that.
        I just want to make one final point the Governor's already
    mentioned. I know Maryland is considering using its own money to
    continue providing some basic benefits for legal immigrants who have
    lost Federal aid now that the Federal bans have taken effect. That's the
    right

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    thing to do, but you shouldn't have to do it all by yourself. That's why
    every State and every Governor, Republican or Democrat, I hope will join
    with us to try to persuade the Congress to restore just the basic health
    and disability benefits that used to be available until this new law
    passed when misfortune strikes them.
        The argument made by the majority when they passed this was, when an
    immigrant comes to America, you've got to sign a piece of paper that
    says you're not going to take public benefits. Now, that's an
    understandable policy. We shouldn't be inviting people to come here just
    to get on welfare or to get on Medicaid or Medicare. But we can solve
    that, and did, by simply saying that every immigrant has a sponsor and
    the sponsor's income will be deemed the immigrant's income until the
    immigrant becomes a citizen. That's the way to solve that.
        But if you have all these immigrants coming here, and even before
    they can become citizens--suppose an Indian from New Delhi comes to
    Maryland to develop computer software programs for one of your growing
    businesses, and stays here 3 years, and has a 1-year-old child and a 3-
    year-old child. What does that person do if he or his spouse gets hit by
    a car or is the victim of a crime or one of the children is born with
    cerebral palsy and they don't have regular health care that will take
    care of all these things?
        What do we say? ``Tough luck. You had misfortune. Yes, you've worked
    hard; yes, you've paid your taxes; yes, you've been perfectly legal;
    yes, you've complied with every provision of the law; yes, you didn't
    try to sneak in our country, you waited your turn just like everybody
    else, but I'm sorry. Yes, we took the benefit of your brain; you made us
    a richer, stronger country; we wanted you in here; you had skills we
    needed, but I'm sorry''? This is wrong, folks. This is unworthy of a
    great nation of immigrants, and we ought to fix it.
        When you get right down to it, all this business about education
    reform and welfare reform and what do we have to do to prepare our
    country for the 21st century and will we have the discipline, strength,
    and courage to take advantage of this unique moment in history--it
    really comes down to two questions: What does America mean, and what
    does it mean to be an American?
        America must always be a nation becoming. We're never there. We're
    always becoming: becoming a more perfect union, full of new promise for
    our own people and new hopes for the world. And what does it mean to be
    an American? We're the ones who have to make that happen.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:20 a.m. at the Maryland State House. In
    his remarks, he referred to Casper R. Taylor, Jr., speaker, Maryland
    House of Delegates, and Thomas V. Miller, Jr., president, Maryland State
    Senate; Gov. Parris N. Glendening of Maryland; State Attorney General J.
    Joseph Curran, Jr.; State Treasurer Thomas N. Dixon; and State
    Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein.