[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.

[[Page 1043]]

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

[[Page 1044]]

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,

[[Page 1045]]

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

[[Page 1046]]

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.