    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [October 23, 1997]
    [Pages 1413-1419]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1413]]

    Remarks During the Morning Session of the White House Conference on
    Child Care
    October 23, 1997

    [The First Lady welcomed the conference participants, and a videotape
    was shown.]

        The President. Thank you very much. Welcome to the White House.
    Thank you very much, Kathy Carliner, for your remarkable statement. And
    I thought you were very good in the film. Rob Reiner wants to give you a
    screen test. [Laughter]
        I am so happy to see all of you here. There are many people here who
    might well be introduced, but I think I must start with the people who
    are terribly important to whether we will be able to fully achieve our
    part of the great agenda we are going to lay out today, the Members of
    Congress who are here. And I'd like to call their names and then, when I
    finish, ask them all to stand.
        Senator Herb Kohl, who sponsored legislation on child care; Senator
    Jack Reed; Congressman Bill Clay; Congressman Sandy Levin; Congresswoman
    Rosa DeLauro; Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey; Congresswoman Sue Kelly;
    Congresswoman Maxine Waters; Congressman Xavier Becerra; and Congressman
    Nick Lampson. Would the Members of Congress who are here please stand?
    Thank you for coming.
        I'd also like to thank my longtime friend--Hillary and I have been
    friends of Governor Jim Hunt and his wife, Carolyn, who are here, for
    almost 20 years now. And I think Governor Romer is here or on his way.
    Mayor Cleaver, we're glad to see you. And John Sweeney, the head of the
    AFL-CIO, and others who have come to be with us today, I thank you very
    much.
        This is a happy day at the White House, first, for all the people in
    the administration and all those who have worked with them for months
    and months and months to help this day come to pass. And second, and
    even more important from my point of view, this is a happy day because I
    have been listening to the First Lady talk about this for more than 25
    years now--[laughter]--and it may be that I will finally be able to
    participate in at least a small fraction of what I have been told for a
    long time I should be doing. And I say that in good humor but also with
    great seriousness.
        This is an anniversary of sorts for me. It was 6 years ago today, as
    a newly announced candidate for President, that I went back to my alma
    mater at Georgetown and began a series of three speeches outlining what
    I thought America ought to look like in the 21st century and what I
    thought we would have to do to create a country in which everyone had an
    opportunity, everyone was expected to be a responsible citizen, and
    where we came together, across all the lines that divide us, into one
    community.
        There are many things that are necessary for that to be done, but
    clearly two of them are, first, people in this country have to be able
    to succeed at work and at home in raising their children. And if we put
    people in the position of essentially having to choose one over the
    other, our country is going to be profoundly weakened. Obviously, if
    people are worried sick about their children and they fail at work, it's
    not just individual firms, it's the economic fabric and strength of the
    country that is weakened. Far more important, if people fail at home,
    they have failed in our most important job and our most solemn
    responsibility.
        Second, we'll never be the kind of country we ought to be unless we
    believe that every child counts and that every child ought to have a
    chance to make the most of his or her God-given abilities.
        That's why we're here today, to examine where we are and what we
    still have to do. And what we still have to do is quite a lot, to make
    sure we live by what we believe when we say that all parents should be
    able to succeed at home and at work and that every child counts. No
    parent should ever have to choose between work and family, between
    earning a decent wage and caring for a child. Especially in this day and
    age when most parents work, nothing is more important, as you have just
    heard Kathy Carliner say, than finding child care that is affordable,
    accessible, and safe. It is America's next great frontier in
    strengthening our families and our future.
        As the Catholic Conference has noted, no government can love a child
    and no policy can

    [[Page 1414]]

    substitute for a family's care. But there is much that we can do to help
    parents do their duty to their children. From my days as Governor of
    Arkansas to my service as President, strengthening families has been a
    central goal of what I have worked on. I'm very proud that the first
    bill I had the opportunity to sign into law as President was the Family
    and Medical Leave Act, so that no parent has to choose between caring
    for a child or keeping a job when a family member is ill.
        The expanded earned-income tax credit helps to ensure that parents
    who work don't have to raise their children in poverty. No one who is
    out there working full-time with children should have to worry about
    that. Expanded Head Start programs are serving more families than ever
    before. We've collected record sums of child support enforcement. The
    historic balanced budget I signed this summer provides a $500-per-child
    tax credit and helps parents to pay for their children's college
    education through IRA's, expanded loans and Pell grants, the HOPE
    scholarship, and other tax credits.
        The Congress has before it now a program of Secretary Riley's called
    21st Century Community Schools, in which we ask for funds to help our
    States keep our schools open after classroom hours for children who have
    no place else to go and need that environment.
        We've also made some progress on child care. Since 1993, child care
    assistance has increased by 70 percent to help families pay for nearly a
    million children. Last year in the welfare reform debate, we fought and
    won the battle to expand child care assistance by $4 billion over the
    next 6 years, giving States an unprecedented opportunity to lead, to
    innovate in efforts to make child care more affordable.
        But we have to do more. With more families required to rely on two
    incomes to make ends meet, with more single-parent families then ever,
    more young children are left in the care of others even in their
    earliest years. And as the First Lady said, we learned at our Conference
    on Early Childhood and the Brain, that's when children develop or fail
    to develop capacities that will shape the entire rest of their lives.
    It's also true that more and more schoolchildren are returning to empty
    homes after school.
        The first thing we have to do is to make it possible for parents to
    spend time with their children whenever possible. That's why I hope the
    Congress will vote to expand the family and medical leave law so that
    parents at least can take some time off for their children's medical
    appointments, teacher conferences, and other basic duties. And I support
    flextime laws that will allow workers to choose between receiving
    overtime in pay or in time off with their families.
        But during those times when children can't be with their parents,
    they must get care that keeps them safe and that helps them to learn and
    grow. As we all know, too often that isn't the case. Too often child
    care is unaffordable, inaccessible, and sometimes even unsafe. The cost,
    as Hillary said, strains millions of family budgets. And government
    assistance meets just about a quarter of the need. Even for those who
    can afford it, sometimes good care is hard to find, as Kathy said in her
    remarks. Waiting lists sometimes takes months or years to move, forcing
    many parents to cobble together unstable arrangements.
        The shortage of care puts older children at risk, as well. Five
    million of them between the ages of 5 and 14 are left to fend for
    themselves after school. And as they get older, that increases the
    chances that they'll be exposed to drugs, tobacco, and crime.
        Finally, studies have shown that too many child care facilities are
    literally unsafe. The tragedies that have befallen families who depended
    on child care continue to make headlines all across our nation. This
    conference is an important step forward in addressing all these issues.
    What we learn today should spur us on to find ways to help parents, all
    parents, afford safe, affordable, high quality child care, whether it's
    at home, a child care center, or a neighbor's house.
        In the coming months, our administration will develop a plan, to be
    unveiled at the next State of the Union, to improve access and
    affordability and to help to assure the safety of child care in America.
    In the meantime, I want to announce four specific things we can do right
    now.
        First, I'm asking Congress to establish a new scholarship fund for
    child care providers. Too many caregivers don't have the training they
    need to provide the best possible care. Those who do have training are
    rarely compensated with higher wages. The scholarship program I propose
    will help students earn their degrees as long as they remain in the
    child care field

    [[Page 1415]]

    for at least a year, and it will ensure that caregivers who complete
    their training will receive a bonus or a raise.
        Second, we have to weed out the people who have no business taking
    care of our children in the first place. I am transmitting to Congress
    the ``National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact,'' which will make
    background checks on child care providers easier and more effective by
    eliminating State barriers to sharing criminal histories for this
    specific purpose. I urge Congress to pass and States to ratify this
    legislation.
        Third, I've asked Secretary Rubin to oversee a working group on
    child care, composed primarily of business leaders working with labor
    and community representatives, to find ways more businesses can provide
    child care or help their employees afford high quality child care. And
    again, I thank John Sweeney for his important support of this
    initiative. In some ways, the most gripping part of that film we saw was
    the father talking about how he was just consumed with worry at work. No
    parent should ever have to go through that.
        Finally, we must use community service to strengthen and expand
    access to after-school programs. Today, the Corporation for National
    Service through its To Learn and Grow Initiative will pledge to help
    after-school programs all across our country to use volunteers to
    provide better care to children. It is releasing a how-to manual for
    groups who want to incorporate community service into after-school
    programs. And I think that, Secretary Riley, if we can win in our little
    budget battle here on the 21st Century Community Schools, then together,
    we can do some real good out there on this issue.
        My friends, for centuries--over two now--the American dream has
    represented a compact that those who work hard and play by the rules
    should be able to build better lives for themselves and for their
    children. In this time and even more into the future, child care that is
    too expensive, unsafe, or unavailable will be a very stubborn obstacle
    to realizing that dream. So let us commit ourselves to clearing the
    obstacle, to helping parents fulfill their most sacred duty, to keeping
    the American dream alive for them and, most important, for their
    children.
        Thank you very much.

    [At this point, the First Lady opened the panel discussion. Ellen
    Galinsky, president and cofounder, Families and Work Institute,
    discussed the need to provide better quality child care as a choice for
    parents.]

        The President. I'd like to ask one question. First of all, I can't
    help saying this--when I heard you say that warm and responsive child
    care actually triggered a biochemical reaction that reduced stress--I
    wish we could have a center like that for the White House staff and the
    Congress staff. [Laughter] We may actually come up with a revolutionary
    new proposal here today. [Laughter]
        Let me ask you a serious question. One of the things that I
    constantly try to deal with here, that I'm supersensitive to because I
    was a Governor for 12 years before I came here, is trying to determine
    who should do what--what we can do and make a difference, what we have
    to basically either exhort or incentivize or require some other people
    to do.
        I was quite taken by the comment you made that only 36 hours of
    training of a child care worker can make a huge difference. I can't help
    thinking there probably are a lot of young, often single parents that
    might benefit from the same 36 hours of training. And I'm wondering how
    you think that issue ought to be dealt with. Should States basically
    upgrade their training standards and put funds into it? Should there be
    training centers established, more than are there now--even if everybody
    were required to do it, are there enough places that do the training in
    all States?
        Talk a little bit about how we might set up an infrastructure and
    pattern of training to give--let's suppose we said within 2 years we
    wanted every child care provider, even people who do it out of their
    homes, wherever, to get the 36 hours of training, and we'd like it to be
    open, let's say, to low-income parents who are having their first
    child--how would we do such a thing?

    [Ms. Galinsky discussed available resources and the level of interest in
    training.]

        The President. But what percentage of the people who are now
    providing child care get that kind of training? That's the question I'm
    trying to get.

    [Ms. Galinsky responded that in a recent study, few caregivers actually
    completed required training. The First Lady agreed that the child care
    licensing system compared poorly to that for

    [[Page 1416]]

    other professions. The discussion then continued concerning care before
    and after school hours.]

        The President. Thank you. I would just like to make a couple of
    observations. I thought what you said was terrific. First of all,
    until--the crime rate in America has been going down for 5 years now,
    rather steeply, but it's been going up among people under 18. It may
    have leveled off, may be dropping a little bit now; we're hopeful. But
    if it is, it's because more and more communities are doing what you
    suggested. We need another--at least another year to see whether it's
    changed.
        You are very familiar with what's been done in Boston, and one of
    the things that's been done is the whole sort of juvenile justice system
    has been geared to be warm and responsive. Juvenile probation officers
    make house calls with police officers, and community groups walk the
    streets in the afternoon to, basically, almost pick the kids up and give
    them things to do and get them involved with things. And as far as I
    know, it's the only major city in America where nobody under 18 has been
    killed by a gun in 2 years now. But it's not rocket science. It's a
    systematic attempt to take personal responsibility for all these
    children after school. And I can tell you, if you see the flip side of
    it in these juvenile crime rates, it's really touching and quite moving.
        The other thing I wanted to say is, I wondered if you had any sense,
    just as a practical matter, of whether these programs tend to work
    better if they are school-based. And the reason I ask that is, I think
    that we fight these battles around here all the time of how to spend the
    school money--and most money for schools comes from the State and local
    level anyway. But I think one of the biggest problems that these schools
    have on the issue you've talked about is that in school after school
    after school after school, financial problems have caused them to cut
    back on their art programs, cut back on their music programs, cut back
    on their nonvarsity athletic programs. The things that children used to
    typically do after school or could stay after school and do, these
    school districts, as they're now budgeting and as they're now staffed
    and under the rules under which they now labor, they cannot--more and
    more schools are dropping these programs. And I think it's disastrous,
    because a lot of it is just exactly how children relate in a kind of a
    nonlinear, just purely intellectual way that both of you have said is so
    important. And I was wondering if you've seen that and if you think
    that's contributing to the problem.
        I mean, a lot of people, without any programs, used to just stay
    after school because there was an art project, there was a music
    project, you were getting ready for a concert, the intramural teams were
    playing. And this is--you know, there are huge school districts in this
    country where all of these things are a thing of the past. People look
    at you like you've lost your mind when you talk about this now; they
    haven't had these things in years.
        And it may be that one of the things we ought to be exploring is
    whether we can reinstitute some of these things in the lives of our
    schools that would naturally lead to an out-of-school atmosphere so they
    wouldn't think about adopting a new program approach. Anyway, I just
    kind of wanted to ask you that: Are the schools the best place if they
    work, or does it not matter, if you do it right?

    [Michelle Seligson, founder and director, National Institute on Out-of-
    School Time, responded that it was a community-by-community decision and
    then described the components of good after-school programs. The
    discussion then continued.]

        The President. I have to excuse Secretary Rubin in a moment to
    return to his duties, but I wanted to make one point and ask one
    question. The point I want to make is, he tries real hard to put on that
    sort of cold shtick, you know, that this is just economics, but----
        Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin. ``Shtick'' is an Arkansas
    term. [Laughter]
        The President. I learned that from him, that word, you know.
    [Laughter] But I'm sure you could see there was more there.
        It occurred to me, listening to you talk about this, that this child
    care issue is an example of what makes our work both wonderful and
    maddening. How many times have Secretary Riley and I said that every
    problem in American education has been solved by somebody in some school
    somewhere, so why don't we get uniform excellence?
        I just had the most difficult policy development process I have been
    through, I think, since I've been President, that Secretary Rubin and I
    did together. It was on trying to develop America's position on climate
    change. But it had

    [[Page 1417]]

    very little to do with the science. There is literally enough technology
    out there today to enable us, without lowering our standing of living,
    indeed while raising our standard of living, to substantially cut our
    emissions of greenhouse gases. And I can cite you industry after
    industry after industry that's made a ton of money doing it on their
    own, so why doesn't everybody do it? Why don't we even have a critical
    mass of companies doing it? And I ask you that question.
        So we've got another example here with child care. If you can cite
    these examples where all of these companies are making money and having
    happy, more productive employees, what are the barriers? Why is the
    market dysfunctional in cases like this, and what can we do to make it
    work? Because if we were trying to get hookups to the Internet, we'd
    have 100 percent penetration in one-tenth of the time it takes us to get
    10 percent penetration for educational excellence, environmental
    conservation, or the spread of child care. What's the difference?
    [Laughter]
        Secretary Rubin.  Are you asking me? [Laughter]
        The President.  I think it's the single, most important question
    about social policy today. You and I think about this all the time, but
    I don't know what you think about this.
        This is not in the notes, you know, he's not prepared to say this.

    [Secretary Rubin suggested a peer group approach to identify and promote
    best practices to deal with such problems.]

        The President.  Thank you.

    [The First Lady then continued the panel discussion on ensuring access
    to safe, affordable child care.]

        The President.  I was glad to hear what you said about not being
    able to sit still after 3 o'clock. I'm glad to know you've been sitting
    still before 3 o'clock. [Laughter] I didn't know--I have never seen you
    still for 2 minutes in all of our acquaintance. This is amazing.
    [Laughter]
        I don't think you can answer this now, but I think it's quite
    important that we be explicit about a dilemma that we will face as we
    move toward next year--the State of the Union, what our position ought
    to be. We all know that there will be, in the context of the budget
    agreement we just adopted, fierce competition for limited money. We're
    going to have some more money to put into this; we'll do the very best
    we can. It will be a priority, but still, it seems to me that there will
    be competition for what the best way the Federal Government can spend
    more money in child care is.
        We could increase the tax credit to either make it more generous to
    people who get it now or move it up in the income limits. We could
    expand Head Start, particularly the Zero To Three program, where we've
    only got just a few thousand kids now--25,000 or something--and I think
    the early results are pretty promising. It's a terribly important
    initiative.
        Or we could devise some way to help get these salaries up, which--
    you know, abysmal. When you were talking about the salaries, Hillary
    gave me a chart which showed that child care workers on the whole are
    better educated than the American work force and lower paid. So we keep
    saying we want all these people to come in and get more education and
    more training, and yet--and there are some cases where people don't have
    any education or training, but there are a lot of them that are quite
    well-educated that are working for ridiculously limited wages.
        So what's your sense about how we ought to go about making that
    decision? And I'll just give a blanket invitation to the audience, too,
    that if you were in my position and you knew you couldn't do 100 percent
    of all these things, would you do a little bit of all of them, would you
    focus on one, would you focus on the other? And I invite you to make
    your views known to us, either today during the conference or in
    writing, because this will be a difficult thing. Congressman Lampson is
    still here; he's going to have to make a decision about how to vote on
    this stuff. And we will have to decide.

    [Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala said that
    resources should be invested in quality, focusing on caregivers. The
    discussion then continued.]

        The President. Well, thank you very much. I agree with the last
    thing you said for sure. [Laughter]
        Let me say, the reason I wanted Governor Hunt to come here today,
    apart from our 20 years of friendship and my immense admiration for him,
    is that--if I could go back to the question I asked Secretary Rubin--the
    great trick

    [[Page 1418]]

    we have with all great social questions in America is--that we know that
    Government can't solve alone, either because we don't have the resources
    or the capacity--is how to have grassroots, community-based partnerships
    that still, when the day is over, add up to a system that serves
    everybody instead of just makes nice, touching stories we can all tell
    each other at seminars till kingdom come.
        And that is what they have done in North Carolina. They have kept
    the entrepreneurial spirit. They have the partnership. They've cobbled
    money together, from first one place, then another, and he's put a lot
    of new money in it, and because he has taken this initiative and set up
    a framework within which creativity and partnership can flourish, they
    have a system. And I still believe--I'll say it again--I think that is
    the great sort of challenge that America faces that goes across so many
    of our problems and plainly relates to this.
        The only question I wanted to ask you about it that I would like you
    to specifically address is, do you have enough money to deal with the
    dilemma that raising quality standards must increase your cost to some
    extent, and does that price anybody out of it? And if not, why not?

    [Gov. James B. Hunt of North Carolina stressed the need for additional
    State and Federal funding, as well as help from the business and
    nonprofit sectors.]

        The President. You know, just one other thing I'd like to say that I
    think we ought to consider--this is a little thing, but you talked about
    the bully pulpit--I think a lot of people are just plain old-fashioned
    ignorant about what's involved in being an effective, successful child
    care worker--would be surprised at the average educational level of
    child care workers in America and the average pay. And I think that we
    ought--one of the things that we ought to do with this bully pulpit idea
    of yours is start trying to find ways that every community and every
    State can honor outstanding child care workers the same way we honor
    teachers today, or scientists or others, because I think that's terribly
    important. I just don't think society--I don't think they mean to
    devalue people in this work, I just think they don't know--most people.

    [Governor Hunt agreed, noting that he held an awards banquet for child
    care workers in North Carolina last year.]

        President Clinton. I don't think you can underestimate how important
    it is for people to say to other people that they matter. And if it
    matters in your personal life, it's got to matter in all these other
    areas, too. I think it's a big issue.

    [The First Lady thanked Governor Hunt for his example, and the
    discussion continued.]

        The President. Well, that is, I think, an extraordinary way to wrap
    up our morning session. I can't think of anything that could be added to
    what you said. But if you think about what all of our last speakers
    said, it amounts to a plea to us to do what we can to both increase the
    coherence and completeness of community-based action within a framework
    that creates a system that involves all our children.
        And again, let me say to all of you involved in this work, I am
    profoundly grateful to you. I thank you for being here today. This has
    been an immensely enlightening day to me. I have been struggling to
    understand this issue, especially since one day several years ago--we
    all have our little epiphanies in life about these matters, but Hillary
    had been talking to me about child care for years, and one day when I
    was running for Governor, well over a decade ago--I used to make a habit
    in every election season of going to the earliest plant gate in my
    State, because the workers came to work between 4:30 and 5:30, and even
    the vote-hungriest politicians wouldn't get up that early, so I always
    had them all to myself. [Laughter]
        And I never will forget, one day I came home and I told Hillary, I
    said, ``You won't believe what happened to me at a quarter to 5 this
    morning.'' It was a Campbell soup plant in North Arkansas, and this
    pickup truck rolled up. And as often happened, the husbands and wives--
    and one was taking the other to work, and they would come up in the dark
    and kiss each other good-bye. And so this pickup truck came up, and this
    lady leaned over and kissed her husband good-bye and opened the door.
    And the light came on, and inside were three children under the age of
    5.
        And so I went over and talked to the young man when his wife went
    into work at a quarter to 5. I said, ``What are you doing with these
    kids? I mean, how do you do this?'' He said, ``Well, we've got to get
    them up every morning at a quarter to 4, and we dress them up.'' And he
    said, ``I keep them as long as I can, but

    [[Page 1419]]

    I have to be at work at 7. So I had to find somebody who would take care
    of them at 6:30''--three kids under 5. But he said, ``We've got three
    kids under 5. We both have to work.''
        Now, there are millions of stories like that. And they are no less
    gripping for the parents than those who don't have quite such strange
    circumstances. But it is inconceivable to me that we have had all of you
    wonderful people working at this and we've put all this money in it, and
    we still never developed a systematic approach or, in the words of
    Patty, a quilt that everybody can be a part of. And that, I think, we
    should all leave as our mission.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at approximately 10:15 a.m. in the East Room
    at the White House. In his remarks, he referred to working mother Kathy
    Carliner, who introduced the President; Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado;
    Mayor Emanuel Cleaver II of Kansas City, MO; John J. Sweeney, president,
    AFL-CIO; and Patty Siegel, executive director, California Child Care
    Resource and Referral Network.