    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [August 4, 1997]
    [Pages 1042-1046]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Urban League
    August 4, 1997

        Thank you very much. Chairman Linen and members of the board, Hugh
    Price. Hugh, I want to thank you for that introduction. I hope somebody
    got that on tape. [Laughter] I was embarrassed there for a while, it was
    so nice. [Laughter]
        Let me say to all of you what you already know, which is that Hugh
    Price has been a breath of fresh air on the Washington scene. He has
    been a brilliant leader for the Urban League, and I look forward to his
    leadership for many years to come. He's not as term-limited as I am, I
    don't think, so we ought to keep him around for a while. I think he's
    been great.
        Congressman Payne and ladies and gentlemen, I have many things for
    which to be grateful to the Urban League. The two that come most
    immediately to mind are Vernon Jordan and Ron Brown, and I thank you for
    that. And I'm delighted to see Alma here--thank you. She's already heard
    her quota of speeches by me, so this is great forbearance I think.
        When I was Governor of Arkansas, I had the privilege of working with
    your local chapters. I saw firsthand how the Urban League could change
    the lives and the minds of people. And I want to say a special word of
    thanks for the support that you have given the work that we are now
    engaged in here for at least a year with regard to our initiative on
    racial reconciliation. It means a lot to me, but it also sends a strong
    signal to Americans that we can no longer afford to ignore the
    continuing racial divisions that undermine our greatness.
        I might just say parenthetically what many of you already know, that
    this year we're spending--and with a distinguished advisory board headed
    by Dr. John Hope Franklin--is a year that will deal with the unfinished
    business of the work of reconciling and moving forward on an equal basis
    African-Americans and white Americans. But it also must look forward to
    what America is becoming. Today, we have only one State, Hawaii, which
    has no racial majority.

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    But in just a few years, within a decade, California will have no racial
    majority. That's over 13 percent of our population. And within 30 to 40
    years, unless there is a dramatic change in our population, there will
    be no single race in the majority in America. We have always said our
    country is about ideas and ideals and principles. We're about to find
    out. [Laughter] We're about to find out. And we had best be ready for
    it.
        In this global society of ours, it is an incredible advantage if we
    can not only get along and tolerate each other but actually celebrate
    our differences and be united as one America. And I would say in that
    regard, I would like to thank all the business people and others who are
    supporters and members of and active in the Urban League who have
    reached across racial lines to try to build that one America. I am
    grateful to you as well, and I thank you very much.
        Whitney Young once said, ``It's better to be prepared for an
    opportunity and not have one than to have an opportunity and not be
    prepared.'' Unfortunately, a lot of Americans for too long knew about
    being prepared for an opportunity and not having one. I come here today
    to say we have an opportunity, and we must be prepared.
        Tomorrow I will sign the balanced budget legislation into law. We
    have already reduced the size of the Government's deficit by 80 percent
    from the time I took office, but we have done it while investing more,
    not less, in the education of our children and in the revitalization of
    our urban areas and in our preparation for tomorrow through research and
    development.
        Tomorrow's budget I want to talk about a minute because it
    represents unprecedented opportunities and the means for all Americans
    to seize them. Already unemployment and inflation are at their lowest
    points in a generation. Our neighborhoods are freeing themselves from
    the fearful grasp of crime and violence, more than in years. Last year
    the drop in violent crime in the United States was the largest in 35
    years. The African-American unemployment rate is the lowest in more than
    20 years. We've had a historic drop in the number of people dependent
    upon public assistance for their livelihoods. But now we are going to
    try to finish the job.
        Our historic balanced budget is an empowerment budget preparing
    Americans for the 21st century. I saw what Hugh Price said here
    yesterday about economic power being the last frontier, and I have seen
    Mr. Brack's new magazine cover, which I understand is sold out already,
    but I agree, we have to be about the business of giving people the power
    to make the most of their own lives and their families and their
    neighborhoods and their communities. That is the last frontier.
        This budget will give every American willing to work hard and take
    responsibility that kind of opportunity. It honors our values by
    strengthening our families, investing in the education and health care
    of our children, moving more people from welfare to work, continuing to
    make our communities more livable. It is the strongest budget for our
    cities in over a generation. It keeps America firmly on the course of
    bringing new businesses, good jobs, and hopes back to our most
    distressed urban areas. It will help us to ensure that the blighted
    downtowns of the late 20th century do not follow us into the 21st. It
    will instead give them the chance to buzz again with energy and
    optimism, generated by Americans working hard, teaching children,
    raising families, and preparing for the future.
        Beyond the right kinds of investments in this budget, we've fought
    for and won the kinds of tax cuts and credits that will truly benefit
    working families and communities. This balanced budget will keep
    interest rates down and investment up. Already what we have been able to
    do has produced 13 million jobs in 4\1/2\ years. And I am proud of that,
    but we have more to do.
        In this budget, we fought for and won $24 billion to bring health
    care to as many as 5 million children who don't have health insurance
    today. This is the single largest investment by the National Government
    in health care since the passage of the Medicaid program in 1965.
        Today, there are about 10 million children who don't have health
    insurance. Interestingly enough, if the 3 million kids who are out there
    today who are eligible for Medicaid could simply be identified and
    enrolled and then we could use this money to reach 5 million more--the
    children of working parents who don't have health insurance on the job--
    we would be almost 80 percent of the way home to providing health
    insurance for all American children. I hope you will help us to identify
    those children. And we'll do our best to make sure that the programs
    work. They'll be administered State

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    by State. And the Urban League is organized State by State; we need you
    out there working State by State to make sure this program reaches
    children.
        But we can make a profound difference in the lives not only of these
    children but their families, by simply guaranteeing that they will have
    the health insurance that they ought to have for the hearing test, the
    vision test, to go to the dentist, to see the doctor, and if, God
    forbid, they needed to go to the hospital. It's a big deal, as my
    daughter used to say.
        We fought for and won a $500-per-child tax credit to help families,
    millions of them, and especially those struggling to lift themselves
    beyond poverty and raise their children well on modest salaries. That
    includes firefighters, police officers, nurses, teachers, technicians,
    people who deserve all the help they can get to raise their children as
    they work hard to serve us and make America a better place.
        We fought for and won the most significant new investment in
    education in over 30 years and the largest increase in investment in
    helping people to go on to college since the GI bill passed 50 years
    ago. Through expanded Pell grants, the biggest expansion in two decades;
    tuition tax deductions for the cost of all 4 years of college and
    graduate school and going back to school for adults; education IRA's and
    our HOPE scholarship, which will open the doors of college to all
    Americans for at least 2 years after high school, we are establishing a
    system in which every American who is willing to study hard will be able
    to go on to college and to thrive in our new economy. It is very
    important.
        And I might emphasize that this will be especially important as we
    try to bring America together in this new knowledge-based economy. The
    African-American high school graduation rate is now, thankfully, almost
    as high as the high school graduation rate for white Americans. But the
    rate of college graduation still shows a great differential, and you can
    see it in the unemployment rates; you can see it in the income rates. We
    owe it to the young people coming up to make sure that everybody,
    including people already out there in the work force, who is willing to
    go back to school and able to go back to school should not be barred
    from going back to school for financial means. This budget will make
    sure that they will not be.
        We have fought to more than triple the number of empowerment zones
    from 9 to 31 across America, to bring businesses and jobs back to
    downtown areas with a combination of tax credits that will leverage
    billions of dollars in new private investment over the next 5 years. I
    have seen this working in communities all across America. I have seen
    what happened in Detroit. I have watched the unemployment rate be cut in
    half in 4 years when the private sector works with vigorous community
    leaders and takes maximum advantage of the incentives in the empowerment
    zones. And we have to keep going until that kind of investment is
    present everywhere. And I might say, there are even more generous
    incentives to invest in the Nation's Capital, to bring it back and bring
    it back to where it ought to be, where people want to live here, want to
    go to school here, and feel safe on the streets, and we know we've got a
    functioning economy. And I want to assure you that I'm going to keep
    working until Washington, DC, is what the people of Washington and the
    people of the United States deserve for it to be.
        We worked to provide tax incentives to businesses who agree to clean
    up and redevelop some 14,000 brownfields. Now, that's a term of art.
    Those are environmentally contaminated but otherwise attractive business
    sites in urban areas. Most business people simply cannot afford the risk
    or the cost on their own. This budget will give them the incentives
    necessary to do it. Our cities are full of places which would be good
    for new investments were it not for the environmental liability staring
    investors in the face. This will help to lift that burden and bring
    investment back to our inner cities.
        Finally, we're working to more than double our investments in this
    budget in community development financial institutions, the community
    banks that make loans to individual entrepreneurs to start businesses in
    areas where they wouldn't be started otherwise, often the loans being
    made to people who couldn't get the loans otherwise.
        When I became President, I found that our country through our
    foreign aid programs had been setting up these banks for small
    entrepreneurs in poor countries for years, but we weren't doing the same
    things for the American people who had something to contribute to their
    own economies in the neighborhoods of America. We're going to keep going
    until we've got a vigorous community development bank in every
    neighborhood in America. I might say,

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    in deference to one of your board members, I especially appreciate the
    support we have received from NationsBank in the community bank effort.
    They have made a huge difference to the acceptability and the viability
    of this in this country.
        This budget will continue our efforts to fund 100,000 community
    police officers walking the beat, making our communities safe, helping
    our kids to stay out of trouble. Crime has dropped for 5 years in a row.
    And mayor after mayor after mayor tells me the more people want to live
    in our cities and feel good about living in our cities, the more they
    will invest in our cities and put people to work there.
        Finally, let me say that last summer, when I signed the welfare bill
    into law, I promised to work to fix the severe shortcomings of the bill,
    to eliminate aspects of the law that had nothing whatever to do with
    welfare reform, and to find ways to encourage more employers to hire
    people from welfare rolls. This budget makes good on those promises. It
    restores both Medicaid and SSI benefits to the legal immigrants who work
    hard and pay taxes in our country. They should not be punished if they
    get hurt through no fault of their own. They ought to be entitled to
    benefits they pay taxes for like everybody else. It makes sure that
    disabled children who are now no longer defined as disabled under the
    supplemental security income law will not lose their Medicaid coverage.
    And it expands food stamp benefits for unemployed citizens trying as
    hard as they can to keep jobs and find jobs. And let me say why this is
    important.
        It's easy in the welfare debate, it's easy in the poverty debate, to
    forget about the younger single men, because they do not get welfare.
    But we need them very badly to be educated, to be trained, to be in the
    work force, to be of strong families, to be a constructive role in our
    future. Sometimes the only public benefits they get are from food
    stamps. That may be the only incentive we have to involve them in
    education, in training, in job placement programs. So restoring these
    benefits is very important.
        And for all of you who care a lot about the condition of poor people
    and helping them to become more independent and go to work, I say, yes,
    by all means, we have to move every able-bodied person off welfare. But
    let's not forget about all those young single men out there who need to
    be a part of America's positive future, who cannot be on welfare but can
    be standing on the street, and ought to be at school or at work and
    building good families and contributing to our future.
        This budget also provides $3 billion to the cities to help welfare
    recipients find and keep good-paying jobs--even more money to go with
    child care and job training and job placement--3 billion more dollars,
    and it will help.
        And finally, it offers tax credits for employers that hire people
    from the welfare rolls. We also made sure that these welfare recipients
    will be paid an honest wage, nothing less than the Federal minimum wage
    for the jobs that they do. And I think that is the right thing to do.
        Finally, let me say that we know the best thing we can do to empower
    our children to succeed in this new global economy is to make sure they
    have a world-class education. You have often said education is the great
    equalizer. And I read in the newspaper today, so I know it's so--
    [laughter]--that you said yesterday that we had to make sure our young
    people discarded their second-class expectations, that none of us should
    impose second-class expectations on young people. I say amen to that.
        One of the things that we know now, folks, is that all of our
    children can learn. When I started--[applause]--thank you. Many years
    ago, almost 15 years ago now, when I started in earnest the work in my
    State on national education reforms and national standards of what
    children should take and what courses should be offered, it was really
    commonplace to hear people say, ``Well, you cannot expect America to
    measure up to the highest international standards from kindergarten
    through high school. Oh, yes, we've got the best college system in the
    world, but you just can't expect us to measure up.'' And I'd always ask,
    ``Why?'' And they said, ``Well, because we have too many children whose
    first language is not English. We have too many children who live in
    poor and difficult circumstances. We have too many children who live in
    violent circumstances. We have too much difference in the level of
    funding in our schools. Our school year is not as long as it is some
    other places.'' I heard all these reasons.
        You know, I remember the first time I left my home State; some
    people thought I was dumb just because I talked the way I did.
    [Laughter] Might have been right, for all I know. [Laughter] But I've
    heard all this, you

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    know, and I must say it was frustrating. Year-in and year-out, you'd see
    these international test scores, and America would always be below the
    international average. And we'd say, ``Yes, but their populations are
    more homogenous than ours. Their education systems are more
    homogenous.'' There was always some reason that sounded pretty good.
        Well, this sure--for the first time on the international math and
    science test scores, which several thousand American students,
    representative by race, by region, by income, take that test every
    year--this year our fourth graders scored way above the international
    average for the first time. So we don't have to listen to that anymore.
    We don't have to listen to that anymore.
        Now, the bad news is our eighth graders did not score above the
    international average, but we do know there are some reasons for that.
    We know that all the social problems that our kids live with get more
    intense around the time of adolescence. We know that a lot of our middle
    schools or our junior high schools are organized for the Ozzie and
    Harriet days of the fifties and the sixties, when the world was
    different than it is now. And they're often too big and not as
    functional as they need to be, and we need to rethink that. We know
    there are a lot of reasons, but I'll tell you something: One thing we
    know is that we can't blame it on the kids anymore, because the fourth-
    grade test proves that the children can do it. The fourth-grade test
    proves that the children can do it.
        And that's why I'm trying so hard to get America, finally, on the
    eve of the 21st century, to establish national standards and to test all
    of our kids at the fourth grade in reading and all of our kids at the
    eighth grade in math, because I know we can meet those standards. And I
    know you don't do any child a favor, in the world we're going to send
    them into, by holding them to lower expectations. If they're poor, if
    they have a difficult neighborhood, if they have a difficult home
    environment, you know what, they need good education even more than the
    rest of the kids. They need it even more. They need it even more, and
    they deserve it even more. They deserve it.
        So I ask you to help me. And if we implement this budget--children's
    health care, child and education tax credits, new businesses and jobs
    for our cities, welfare-to-work, high academic standards, these things
    will help our people to make the most of their own lives. But
    empowerment is a concept which, by definition, implies a response from
    every individual. Empowerment means, here are the tools, what are you
    going to do with it? And believe me, we still have not done everything
    we should for all of our cities, for our Nation's Capital, for all of
    our people. There will still be more work to be done. You will be doing
    a lot of it one on one, as mentors helping people, but at least the
    tools will be there.
        Now, our people must do what Whitney Young said, and every one of
    them has to be prepared to take advantage of these opportunities. So I
    hope you'll go back to your communities and enlist more people in the
    Urban League's mission, more people who will make sure that this budget
    will come alive, hiring someone off welfare, helping a child find his or
    her way, building partnerships with businesses to strengthen schools and
    create jobs, and reaching out across the lines of race and class and
    gender to find common ground and build our common bridges to that bright
    new century.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:40 p.m. at the Washington Convention
    Center. In his remarks, he referred to Jonathan Linen, chairman, board
    of trustees, Hugh Price, president and chief executive officer, and
    Vernon E. Jordan, Jr., former president, National Urban League; former
    Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown and his widow, Alma; John Hope Franklin,
    Chair, President's Advisory Board on Race; and Reginald K. Brack, former
    chairman, Time Inc.