    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [November 17, 1997]
    [Pages 1592-1595]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to Cessna Employees in Wichita, Kansas
    November 17, 1997

        I think we should give them another hand. They were fabulous,
    weren't they? [Applause] Thank you, Tanya and Jodee. Thank you, Russ
    Meyer; thank my friend Eli Segal for doing such a great job in getting
    other companies into this endeavor. Thank you, Michael Starnes, for the
    incredible support that the United States Chamber of Commerce is giving
    to this effort.
        I thank Secretary Glickman and Secretary Herman and Secretary Cuomo,
    who is not here, for the work they have done in supporting this endeavor
    and others like it around America. I'd also like to thank the large
    number, the unusually large number of public officials who are here
    today, proving that we come to celebrate a victory for America, a
    victory of people, not party or politics but an old-fashioned victory
    for American dignity and possibility, for people succeeding at work and
    succeeding in raising their children, an old-fashioned reaffirmation
    that our American dream is still very much alive and well if we all
    pitch in and do our part. So thank you, Governor Graves, and thank you,
    Senator Roberts and Senator Brownback, Congressman Tiahrt, Congressman
    Ryun, Mayor Knight, and the other State officials and legislative
    leaders and council members who are here. I am very grateful to all of
    you for being here.
        The sign says it's all about people, and I would like to suggest
    that you consider renaming the 21st Street Campus to the 21st Century
    Campus, because you really are an embodiment of the future America has
    to make.
        Ladies and gentlemen, before I make the few remarks I'd like to make
    on this issue, I think it is appropriate, since it's my first appearance
    of the week, to just give you a brief update on the situation in Iraq.
    Even when I was walking through here, a number of people asked me about
    it.
        First, it's important that you understand what is at stake here.
    Since the end of the Gulf war, for 6 years, inspectors, under the
    authority of the United Nations, have been trying to find and destroy
    Saddam Hussein's capacity to threaten his neighbors and potentially
    others around the world with nuclear or biological or chemical weapons.
    They have found and destroyed more weapons of mass destruction potential
    in the last 6 years--these quiet inspectors whom no one knows--they have
    destroyed more

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    of this potential than was destroyed in the entire Gulf war with all of
    the air attacks.
        What they are doing matters. It matters to you, to your children,
    and to the future, because this is a challenge we must face not just in
    Iraq but throughout the world. We must not allow the 21st century to go
    forward under a cloud of fear that terrorists, organized criminals, drug
    traffickers will terrorize people with chemical and biological weapons
    the way the nuclear threat hung over the heads of the whole world
    through the last half of this century. That is what is at issue.
        In his defiance of the international community, Saddam Hussein has
    forced the withdrawal of the inspectors. Now, I am trying to settle this
    issue peacefully, but our diplomatic efforts must be backed by our
    strong military capability. We cannot rule out any options. But the
    bottom line is, we have to understand this, it is essential that those
    inspectors go back to work. The safety of the children of the world
    depends upon it. And I ask for your support.
        I told Russ Meyer this morning that before I got my present job, I
    spent a lot of time flying around the farmland and the mountains of
    Arkansas in Cessna airplanes. And it occurs to me that for a long time
    now, Cessna has helped a lot of people take to the air in your planes.
    Today we come to celebrate Cessna's efforts to help people fly higher
    all by themselves, and it is a truly remarkable thing.
        This program, the partnership between Cessna and HUD, the Labor
    Department, the city of Wichita, the State of Kansas, provides training
    because people need it to get good jobs, provides child care--and by the
    way, I got to visit the child care facility today, so in addition to my
    model airplane, I have a Lego-constructed giraffe. [Laughter] And I
    think if it's all the same to you, I'll put them both up in the Oval
    Office so people can see what's going on here. It provides temporary
    housing, recognizing that a lot of people who have been poor and who
    have children and don't have transportation to go a long way to work.
    And most important, it provides a job. Every company in America ought to
    take notice of what Cessna is doing. It's a model for the Nation. It
    proves once again that the best social program ever devised is a job, a
    good job with dignity that allows people to support their children.
        Six years ago when I ran for President, I wanted to restore what I
    always thought was the basic bargain in America that everybody had a
    right to an opportunity in life if they exercised the personal
    responsibility that goes along with it. That is the only way we can keep
    the American dream alive in the 21st century for everyone, and it's the
    only way we can continue to lead the world for peace and freedom. In the
    end, it's the only way we can come together across all the differences
    in our increasingly diverse Nation.
        In the last 5 years, as Secretary Glickman said, the American people
    have made a lot of progress toward restoring that basic bargain.
    Unemployment is the lowest in 24 years. The deficit has been cut by 92
    percent, and now that the balanced budget law is triggering in, it will
    be even-balanced soon, for the first time in a generation. We see the
    lowest crime rate in 24 years, the biggest drop in welfare rolls ever,
    incomes rising and poverty dropping, the environment improving as the
    economy advances, something a lot of people didn't think was possible.
    And families are getting more support not only in work but in raising
    their children and educating them and in meeting all their obligations.
        So there is a sense of confidence in this country that you can feel
    in this room today that we really can make America work for everybody
    again. You have earned that confidence--you and all the American
    people--through hard work, a vision for the future, and a willingness to
    embrace new ideas for new times.
        But I will say again, as many on the program have said before, if
    we're going to make America everything that we want it to be, everybody
    has got to have the chance at the brass ring in life. And we know that
    if our free enterprise system is going to work, we're going to have to
    be able to train people for the areas where there are job shortages,
    which, by and large, there are areas that pay more.
        You already heard our chamber president talk about the shortage of
    truck drivers. Whatever it's worth, when I was Governor, I paid to train
    a bunch of them, and I'm proud of it. And we're going to get on that and
    see what we can do.
        We have literally hundreds of thousands of openings in computer-
    related jobs in America--literally. You've got people out here dying to
    go to work and jobs over here and a mix-match between them because they
    haven't done what Cessna has done. Either the training is not there

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    or the child care is not there or the transportation is not there.
    There's something keeping people, who are dying to do their part, from
    getting there.
        So that's why we're here to celebrate. The main reason I showed up,
    apart from the sheer satisfaction of it and the joy, is that sometimes
    when I show up it gets enough publicity that people find out what you're
    doing. I don't care if they hear what I say; I want them to see what
    you're doing so other people will do it.
        Now, when I took office I had already been involved with this whole
    issue of welfare reform for a long time. I became seriously concerned
    about this in 1980 when I realized what a problem it was. And over the
    years I served as Governor of my State, I spent quite a bit of time in
    welfare offices. I spent a lot of time talking to people who had been on
    public assistance. I spent a lot of time talking to employers who tried
    to hire people, and when it didn't work out, to try to find out why it
    didn't work out. And I think that I have learned a fair amount about it,
    and every good thing I've learned was confirmed here today.
        It was obvious to me that if we were going to ever break the cycle
    of dependence in America, we had to change our approach and we had to
    change our idea about what the role of Government is. Some people
    thought that it was inevitable that a certain number of people are
    always going to be poor and in difficult circumstances. That may be
    true. Misfortune happens to a certain number of people, and nearly for
    all of us misfortune will happen to us in some way or another over the
    course of our lives. But that doesn't mean that the answer was just to
    keep the status quo, because the status quo wasn't working; giving
    people a check that didn't even keep up with inflation was not working.
    Neither was neglect an option. So our governing philosophy has been to
    try to create the conditions for good economy and then give people the
    tools to make the most of their own lives and, whenever possible, to
    work in partnership with the private sector.
        In the first couple of years I was in office, we did that by giving
    over 40 States permission to try their own hand at moving people from
    welfare to work. Eventually, we were able to agree--the Republicans and
    the Democrats together by an overwhelming majority in the Congress--to
    reform the present welfare system, saying that everybody who can work,
    must work, but also providing support for employers who are willing to
    hire welfare recipients, maintaining Government support for children's
    health care and nutrition where necessary, providing extra help to
    communities with very high unemployment rates, and I think probably most
    important of all, giving the States some more help to provide adequate
    child care when people are working for employers that are much smaller
    than Cessna and perhaps not able to provide that on their own.
        The budget I signed into law last summer includes $3 billion for
    welfare-to-work programs, increased tax incentives for businesses to
    hire people off welfare. So we changed the role of Government. But
    that's only the first step. We also have to change the role of the
    private sector. And again, I cannot say enough about your CEO and all
    the leaders of this company, all up and down, everybody who has been
    involved in this program, because you have shown what has to be done.
        We know that almost all the jobs in America are in the private
    sector. I'm very proud of the fact that way over 90 percent of the new
    jobs created in America in the last 5 years have been in the private
    sector. The capacity to train people for the jobs that are needed in a
    given place is in the private sector. But most of all, the necessary
    vision, mind, and heart to do the job are here. That's why we started
    the Welfare to Work Partnership. And I asked my friend Eli Segal, who
    left a very successful business career first of all to help us start our
    national service program, AmeriCorps, to head up this Welfare to Work
    Partnership.
        Last May, we started with 105 companies at the White House who said
    they would be a part of this. They pledged to enlist 1,000 companies
    between May and November. It's November. Now, how have they done? In 6
    months, more than 2,500 companies in America have pledged to hire
    welfare recipients. These companies have over 5 million employees. Some
    of them are big, like Cessna; 100 of them--or, excuse me, 24 of them are
    in the biggest 100 companies in America. But 75 percent of them are
    small businesses. We need all of these companies.
        In addition to that, Eli's got an advisory board of Governors which
    includes 10 Democratic Governors, 10 Republican Governors. Again, this
    is not about politics or party; this is about people. This has to be an
    American crusade. More

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    and more businesses are realizing that this can be a good thing not only
    for our families and our country but for businesses as well.
        And again, let me say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce launching a
    campaign to convince every chamber in the country to join the effort is
    the big next step, because you heard Russ say, we've got 2,500
    companies; when we get 10,000, we'll really be talking turkey, and we'll
    be doing something that will make a big dent in this nationwide.
        I am delighted that we've had almost 2 million people move off the
    welfare rolls since the welfare reform law passed, almost 4 million
    people in the last 5 years. But, you know, there are a lot more folks
    out there, and we have to do it. We are going to strengthen the work
    requirements of welfare reform, but we need to strengthen the support we
    give to people to meet those work requirements.
        Let me just say in closing that I think it was obvious to anybody
    who was here today that the most popular speakers were Tanya and Jodee.
    What I want to say to you is, I've been all over the country, and I've
    met a lot of people who had a setback in life--many of them have
    terribly abusive situations at home, almost every one of them
    passionately devoted to the welfare of their children--who thought they
    would be stuck on welfare forever, and somehow they made it out. And the
    real idea behind all of this is, if some people can make it but
    everybody wants to make it, it's up to those of us who have made it, as
    Russ said, to create a system where everybody who wants to has a shot.
    Because it's important that we understand, while Tanya and Jodee are
    remarkable people--and I might add, such good speakers that they might
    consider public office as a career option in the future--[laughter]--
    they are not alone. Their stories are mirrored by--there is a story in
    every one of these graduates who stood up here today. When they all
    stood up and we clapped, every one of them has got a story like their
    two stories. And what you have to know is, every person out there in
    America who is in a difficult situation has also got a story and a heart
    and a mind. And most of them aren't in a program like this now and
    aren't even close to it.
        That's why we're here. If you liked what you saw when they spoke,
    you would love it if everybody with that story could be standing before
    a microphone in the community in which they live making the same speech.
    That is what we're here to ensure. And thanks to Cessna, we've got a lot
    better chance than we had before.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:20 p.m. at the Cessna Campus Building. In
    his remarks, he referred to Tanya Oden and Jodee Bradley, graduates of
    the Cessna welfare-to-work program; Russ Meyer, chief executive officer,
    Cessna; Eli Segal, president and chief executive officer, Welfare to
    Work Partnership; Michael Starnes, president, U.S. Chamber of Commerce;
    Gov. William Graves of Kansas; and Mayor Bob Knight of Wichita.