    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [January 28, 1998]
    [Pages 123-126]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois
    January 28, 1998

        The President. Thank you very much. Well, I was just sitting here
    thinking two things. First, when the Vice President got really warmed up--[laughter]--I thought to myself,
    first, it will become slightly obvious to this audience that he and I
    come from a little further south in the United States. [Laughter] And
    then I was thinking, when he really got going, I wish I had people
    walking the aisles passing the plate. It was amazing. [Laughter]
        Anyway, the second thing I thought in the midst of this wonderful
    event was that I wish that I could take the Pep Band with me for the
    next month or two wherever I go. [Applause] Thank you.
        Audience members. We love you, Bill!
        The President. Thank you. I want to say to Chancellor Aiken and President Stukel and
    Mayor McCollum, Mayor
    Satterthwaite, Congressman Ewing, Senator Durbin, and
    Senator Moseley-Braun, Secretary
    Riley, and Mr. Vice President, I am
    delighted to be here. I have spent a lot of time in Illinois in the last
    7 years, and this State has been very good to me in many ways. The Vice
    President has been here a lot, and Hillary
    came and got a honorary degree and
    was able to speak here. And I have heard from also our families, friends
    what a wonderful place this is. I don't know how, with all my roaming
    across America, I have never lit down here before, but I'm sure glad I
    got here today. And I thank you for making me feel so welcome.
        If you heard the State of the Union last night or just listened to
    the Vice President here today you know that--you know there's a reason
    we're here, because you represent, both all of you individually and this
    great institution, what we're trying to build for the future of America.
    Last night I talked about all the changes that have occurred just in the
    last few years. We've had one foot in the 21st century for quite some
    time. The generation living today has lived through more changes in more
    different areas in a shorter time than virtually any generation in the
    history of this country.
        And when the Vice President and I took office, we were committed to
    trying to make America work again, to try to fix the things that just
    weren't working for ordinary people, and then to free us up to sort of
    imagine the future and take the steps that were necessary to get us to
    the future we want to build. That's really what I talked about last
    night: How can we strengthen this country for the 21st century? What do
    we have to do?
        Now, I don't want to go over everything that was said, and besides
    that, I can't do as well as the Vice President. He must have gotten 30 more minutes sleep than I did last
    night. [Laughter] He was terrific. But I want to talk to you about just
    two or three things that I think we should be thinking about for
    tomorrow.
        Let me begin with a bit of history, and your chancellor mentioned it
    earlier, or the president did. Shortly before--shortly after Abraham
    Lincoln was elected President, Congressman Justin Morrill, from Vermont,
    asked his colleagues to help him create a system of land grant colleges.
    It was in the middle of the Civil War, and frankly, most of them thought
    he was nuts. You know, people were worried about the survival of the
    Union. But Abraham Lincoln was always worrying about other things, even
    in the middle of the Civil War.
        At night, when I work in the White House, I go to an office that
    I've had restored to the way it was in the mid-1800's. And I remember
    that that room was Abraham Lincoln's waiting room during the Civil War.
    And all during the

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    Civil War, at certain appointed hours, he kept a time apart to meet with
    ordinary citizens. If you wanted a job in a post office in Baltimore in
    1862, if you came at the appointed day, at the appointed hour, you could
    walk up to the room that I go into every night, and sit there, and
    Abraham Lincoln would see you; the President would see you and listen to
    you tell why you wanted a post office job. And when he was asked why he
    did this, he said, ``I have to remember that people are concerned about
    other things, and I want this war to be over so all of us can go back to
    thinking about things like that.''
        So he always thought about what life would be like when the war was
    over. And he was open to this. In 1862, Morrill's bill passed, and
    President Lincoln signed it into law. It became one of the wisest
    investments our Nation ever made, and the University of Illinois, here,
    was one of the original land grant colleges under that Morrill Act.
        It's played a dramatic role in helping to shape our Nation. You
    heard and you were cheering about all the Nobel Prize winners and all
    that. The Vice President pointed out that it was here that the
    transistor was invented; Jack Kilby, class of
    '47, co-invented the microchip. NCSA, headed by Larry Smarr, launched a billion-dollar browser industry. Illinois
    and other land grant colleges have literally led our way into the
    information age.
        And it all stemmed from something somebody did in 1862 that no one
    could have imagined would one day have led to all you see around you. I
    think Lincoln would have liked the Pep Band. [Laughter] But he could not
    have imagined it.
        So that's what we've been trying to do. And you heard the Vice
    President say that basically our view was--the first thing we had to do
    was we had to get rid of the deficit, but we had to do it in a way that
    would enable us to invest in our future. We had to shrink the
    Government, but we had to do it in a way that would allow us to be more
    active in the areas that were important to our future, that would help
    to bring us together and widen the circle of opportunity. And the
    strategy is working.
        Now, as you look ahead, I'd just like to mention three things today
    that I think the University can have a major impact on, two directly and
    one indirectly. First, we should look to the millennium to try to speed
    the pace of scientific and technological advances in ways that benefit
    all of us. So I proposed last night a huge increase in medical research,
    an increase in the National Science Foundation, a doubling of the
    National Cancer Institute, because I believe we have enormous
    opportunities there, and you should be a part of that.
        I think it is highly likely that many of you who will be having
    children in the next 3 or 4 years will have children that will live into
    the 22d century because of the work that will be done in places like the
    University of Illinois.
        The second thing that I think we should think about is we should
    reaffirm our commitment to the exploration of outer space. I talked a
    little about the international space station last night and about
    Senator John Glenn at 77 years old going back
    into space. It's so thrilling, and I know all of you are happy about
    that. But we are learning a lot from our work in space about how our
    bodies work here on Earth and about how our environment works here on
    Earth and how it might be better preserved. And so I ask all of you to
    continue to support the work we're doing there.
        And finally, I'd ask you to support, as the Vice President said,
    this next generation Internet. I mean, can you really believe that only
    5 years ago there were just 50 webpages on the Internet; that the
    Internet was the private preserve of physicists 5 years ago, and now,
    most 8-year-olds know more about it than their parents? [Laughter] I
    mean, that gives you some sense of the speed of change.
        So we're trying to develop the next generation Internet, and Larry
    Smarr is helping us, and if it works, it will
    work about 1,000 times faster than the present one does. I don't know
    how we can absorb any more speed in information, but we have to be able
    to. We have to maintain public support across party lines and regional
    lines and age lines and race lines and all kinds of lines for
    investments in the future. We always have to be trying to shape the
    future, and we need your help to do that.
        Now, the second thing that I want to emphasize is that I want all of
    you to support the proposition that we have to make, in the years ahead,
    a college education as universal as a high school education is today.
    Now, why do I say that? Already it is perfectly clear from looking at
    all the census figures that any young person who has at least 2 years of
    college or more

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    is highly likely to get a job with growing income prospects and high
    stability and the prospect of positive change in the future. Now, a
    young person with less than 2 years of college is highly likely to be in
    a job where income increases don't keep up with inflation, subject to
    changes which may be unstable and not positive.
        We have to create a network of lifetime learning. We have to, first
    of all, make our elementary and secondary education as excellent as our
    higher education is today so more people will be prepared to go to
    college. But then we literally--we've got to make sure that college is
    open to all.
        Now, as the Congressman said, 1997 was the best year for education
    in a generation, and I believe, clearly, the best year since the GI bill
    was passed. If you listen to all the things that were done--and I'll
    just litanize them for you--I think you can make a compelling case that
    the doors of college have been opened to everybody who will work for it.
    Now, listen to this: 220,000 new Pell grant scholarships and the maximum
    amount increased; 300,000 new work-study positions; 50,000 AmeriCorps
    slots for people who do community service work and earn money to go to
    college. As Senator Moseley-Braun said, she cosponsored the bill to make
    interest on student loans tax deductible again; there are IRA's now that
    you can invest in and then withdraw from, tax-free, if the money is used
    for education. The first 2 years of college, virtually all Americans are
    eligible for a $1,500 tax cut to pay for tuition in the first 2 years of
    college, the HOPE scholarship; and then another tax credit for the 3d
    and 4th years of college, for graduate school, and for further job
    training--a lifetime learning credit.
        Now, this is an amazing thing. But what I want to say to you is, all
    of you who are here, I came here to ask, as a great university, in
    whatever service groups you're in, in whatever family or neighborhood or
    church networks you have, you need to get this message out to people who
    are coming on behind you. We need every child in this country to know
    that if he or she works hard and learns what they're supposed to learn,
    they can all go to college now. And we need them there for our future in
    the 21st century.
        Now, the last thing I want to ask your help on in the coming year,
    because we're going to have a big dialog about it, is something that all
    of you students probably never think about, and that is Social Security
    and your retirement. I don't know about you, but when I was your age, I
    never thought about it. [Laughter] I thought I would live forever,
    always young. And what Senator Moseley-Braun said is true: The older you
    get, the faster time goes.
        I never will forget, once, a few years ago, I saw a man who was 76
    years old at an airport meeting his brother, getting ready to go to his
    sister's funeral. And I said, ``What are you thinking about?'' And he
    said, ``Oh, I'm thinking about when we were 5 years old, how we used to
    play together.'' He said, ``You know, Bill, it doesn't take long to live
    a life.'' I say that to say that even the young must care for the
    future, even the young must think about their obligations to generations
    yet unborn; that America must work as a seamless web of community,
    always doing what is best for today and tomorrow.
        Now, what's that got to do with Social Security? There are polls
    that say that young people in their twenties think it's more likely that
    they will see UFO's than that they will ever collect Social Security.
    [Laughter] And all of you know that the Social Security system is
    supposed to be in trouble. Now, what does that mean? It is not in
    trouble today; nobody today has got any problems drawing their money. In
    fact, today we collect more money in Social Security taxes every year,
    quite a bit more, than we pay out.
        The problem is that when the baby boomers retire--starting with me,
    I'm the oldest of the baby boomers--people my age and down about 18
    years younger, we are the largest group of Americans that have ever
    lived, except the group that started first grade last year--second
    grade, or third grade, whatever it is, something in grade school--
    because we've got more children in schools now, public schools, than we
    had during the baby boom generation for the first time. But we're going
    to have 18, 20, 25 years where there will be a huge number of people on
    Social Security in their retirement years, compared to the people who
    are paying in. That is the issue.
        Now, the question is, what is the best way to prepare for the
    retirement of the baby boomers in ways that do not either rob those
    people who need it of their secure retirement or impose intolerable
    burdens on our children, who, in turn, will be burdened in raising our
    grandchildren?

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        I don't know anybody in my generation who believes that we ought to
    just take it out on you and put our feet up when we turn 65 and turn
    away from the obligations we have to contribute to the further growth
    and vitality of people who are younger than we are. So the question is,
    what is the fairest way to change this? What's best for people who are
    on Social Security now? What's best for the baby boomers? What's best
    for young people in their twenties and thirties just starting to pay
    into the system? What's best for the kids that are in high school now
    who haven't even started?
        We're going to spend a year having forums all across the country,
    completely nonpartisan, trying to bring people in and debate it. And
    then about a year from now, I'm going to convene the leaders of
    Congress, and we're going to try to craft historic bipartisan
    legislation to reform Social Security, to save it for the 21st century,
    to make sure it's there not just for the baby boomers but for everybody
    in this audience and all your children, too, so we'll have a system that
    works, so that people who work hard and do their part will know they'll
    have elemental retirement security and that we can do it without
    bankrupting the country. I think we can do it. I know we can do it. But
    it's going to take your good-faith involvement--people of all ages.
        And since what we do may affect how you proceed throughout your
    entire worklife, we've got to have people involved in their twenties, in
    their thirties. The young people of this country have got to be involved
    in this debate. It will affect you as much as anybody else.
        But if we do it, it will be just sort of like balancing the budget.
    You know how people said, ``Oh, you'll never get that budget balanced.
    You'll never do that. That's just something politicians talk about. It
    is a huge thing to do.'' Why? We spend less money on debt; we invest
    more money in our future; we have a stronger economy. The same thing
    will be true of Social Security. Once we make the adjustments necessary
    to fix it, the increase in confidence, the increase in savings, the
    increase in belief in the future of this country as we go forward
    together will be absolutely astonishing. And we need you to be a part of
    it.
        The last thing I want to ask about--the Vice President touched this
    briefly, and he knows more about it than I do--but we need young people
    in this country, particularly young people in our university system, to
    convince the rest of America that we must and we can address the
    challenge of climate change and global warming.
        Now, I can tell you, I have been working on the economics of energy
    efficiencies for over 20 years now in various guises. I am convinced
    that the technology is out there right now to do what we need to do to
    do our part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in factories, in power
    generation systems, in homes and office buildings. And we're getting
    very, very close in automobiles. We can get there.
        But listen, this is your future; this is your life; this is the
    world your children and your grandchildren will have to live in, in the
    21st century. This is crazy for us not to do this. We do not have to
    take the economy down; we will lift the economy up. And you have to take
    the lead in helping us meet this challenge.
        Scientific research, universal access to university education,
    reforming Social Security for the 21st century, dealing with the
    challenge of climate change: those are just four of the things that are
    out there. Keep your eyes on the future. Believe in this country.
    Believe in yourself. Reach out across the lines that divide us. Do not
    let people--do not ever let people who are divisive or pessimistic
    convince you that there is anything this country can't do. I can look at
    you and tell you that this country can do anything we put our minds to.
        Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:33 a.m. in Assembly Hall at the
    University of Illinois. In his remarks, he referred to Michael Aiken,
    chancellor, and James Stukel, president, University of Illinois,
    Champaign-Urbana; Mayor Dan McCollum of Champaign; Mayor Tod
    Satterthwaite of Urbana; and Larry Smarr, director, National Center for
    Supercomputing Applications (NCSA).