    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
    [June 24, 1998]
    [Pages 1033-1036]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998 and an
    Exchange With Reporters
    June 24, 1998

        The President. Thank you very much, Sonia.
    And Jonathan and Jesse, welcome to the White House. Thank you, General
    Reno. Thank you, Senators Kohl and DeWine, for coming. And
    Congressman Hoyer, thank you for your hard
    work on this. I'd also like to thank Congressman Henry Hyde, who is not here, for his leadership on this legislation.
    Welcome Judge David Ross, the Commissioner of the
    Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement; United States Attorney
    Helen Fahey; child support advocates; and Leslie
    Sorkhe and Gerri Jensen, two other mothers who are here. I thank you all for
    being here.
        I am very pleased to sign a vital new law that shows what we can
    achieve when we act in the national interest. For 5\1/2\ years now we
    have renewed our economy with a strategy that balances the budget while
    it invests and instills the future of our people and in the strength of
    our families. The key to expanding opportunity in this new century I
    want to say, though, is education.
        I want to say a little more about child support in a minute, but
    these two young men behind me and all the children of our country
    deserve a world-class education. I have asked the Congress to help me in
    that, to help us to reduce class size by hiring 100,000 teachers and
    building or repairing 5,000 schools. I have asked them to help me
    institute high standards to connect all classrooms to the Internet, and
    I've asked them to make child care for working parents more affordable.
        Yesterday the Republicans in the House of Representatives took a
    huge step in the opposite direction. Last night they began to
    dramatically cut education investments from Head Start to after-school
    to antidrug programs. This is out of step with our values and with
    America's shared vision of our future. In the coming months I'll have
    more to say about this, but you can be sure that I am going to keep
    fighting to advance education, to invest more in education, to lift
    education standards, to expand education opportunities. And if they
    continue to fight against all these things it will, I expect, be the
    major conflict of the coming months.
        I still hope that I will not have to sign an education bill or veto
    one that short changes the future of our children. I don't intend to
    sign it. I hope a veto won't be necessary, but there is no excuse for
    this. We have a balanced budget. We're going to have a surplus. We have
    the money. We ought to give it to the children and their future.
        This bill today is a gift to our children and the future. The quiet
    crisis of unpaid child support is something that our country and our
    families shouldn't tolerate. Our first responsibility, all of us, is to
    our children. And today we all know that too many parents still walk
    away from that obligation. That threatens the education, the

    [[Page 1034]]

    health of our children, and the future of our country.
        One of the main reasons single mothers go on welfare is that fathers
    have failed to meet their responsibilities to the children. Even when a
    family manages to stay out of poverty, a father's failure to pay child
    support puts mothers who are raising children by themselves under
    terrible pressure. A lot of women are forced to work two jobs, to work
    at night, or simply to worry sick about their children either because
    they're away from them all the time or because they're with them but
    they don't have enough to support them.
        When fathers neglect support of their children, it aggravates all
    the other problems a family faces. When I was Governor and then when I
    ran for President the first time in 1992, I made child support
    enforcement a big part of my concerns. I've always asked parents to take
    responsibility for their children. I've always pledged to do my best to
    force them to do so if they refused.
        We have waged an unprecedented campaign to make deadbeat parents
    live up to their obligations. Thanks to tougher laws, more sophisticated
    tracking, powerful new collection tools we've increased child support
    collections by 68 percent in the last 5 years. Almost a million and a
    half more children are getting child support today.
        There are two other signs of success that I would like to report.
    Last year our effort to find out the identity of fathers allowed us to
    establish paternity in 1.3 million cases, up from only 510,000 in 1992.
    Our new national database for identifying deadbeat parents across State
    lines has found more than 1 million delinquent parents in just the first
    9 months of its operation. Before we created this database, deadbeat
    parents found it easy to avoid paying up by skipping from job to job or
    State to State. But with this database there is no where left to run.
        With these and other successful child support initiatives, we
    believe that we've made a real difference for people like Sonia and her
    two fine sons. But we can and must do more. Current law is too soft on
    the most serious cases of neglect, the cases in which a parent flees
    across State lines or national borders and skips out on supporting
    children for a year or more. In 1996 I asked the Attorney General to draft legislation to crack down on this appalling
    practice. Senators DeWine and Kohl and Congressman Hyde and
    Hoyer championed their cause, introduced
    versions of the legislation, and helped to secure an overwhelming
    bipartisan majority for the bill I am proud to sign into law today.
        The Deadbeat Parents Punishment Act of 1998 deals with child support
    evaders in the most serious cases. From now on if you flee across State
    lines and refuse to pay child support you may be charged with a Federal
    offense, a felony offense, and may land in jail for up to 2 years. One
    way or the other people who don't support their children will pay what
    they must.
        I thank all the Members of Congress and all the children's advocates
    who are here today, who contributed this major victory to our children.
    Now we can work together to ensure that the progress we have made on
    child support is not accidentally undone; let me mention that, one more
    very important issue. Under bankruptcy reform bills now in the Senate
    and House some mothers could find themselves in competition with
    powerful banks and credit card companies to collect the child support
    they need. In that competition I think we all know who would lose, our
    children.
        We are working with Congress now, and we will continue to do so to
    produce a bankruptcy reform bill that demands responsibility from both
    debtors and creditors and stems abuse. But any bill must make protecting
    child support payments a high priority. It would be ironic indeed, after
    all this work we have done, to increase child support collections--and
    here we are signing a bill today to make it more difficult to avoid the
    collections--if we turned around and passed a bankruptcy bill that put
    mothers and their children back in the pack along with other creditors.
    That's not the right thing to do. So I hope that we will see action on
    the bankruptcy bills and on the education bills that will reflect the
    same priority for our children that this bill does today.
        And again, let me thank all the advocates and all the sponsors and
    let me thank Sonia and her two fine sons for being here. This is
    a happy day for Attorney General Reno and me, and
    I would like to ask you all to come around now, and I'll sign the bill.
        Thank you.
        You guys stand on either side here. Sonia, you come up here and I'll
    show you how I

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    sign a bill into law. See I have all these pens because there are all
    these people who want one. [Laughter] I have to find a way to use every
    one of these pens when I sign this. So don't start laughing at me, all
    right?

    [At this point, the President signed the bill.]

    China's Refusal of Radio Free Asia Visas

        Q. Mr. President, hasn't this latest rebuff by China cast a really
    severe pall over your trip to China now? They've really turned you
    down----
        The President. You mean the Radio Free Asia thing?
        Q. ----on special appeal--visas.
        The President. I think they made a mistake. And before I leave here,
    as a matter of fact in just a few minutes, I'm going to do an interview
    with Radio Free Asia correspondents to send a clear signal that we don't
    believe ideas need visas and that we support freedom of the press in our
    country.
        I think in a way it will help to highlight some of the very
    important issues that we wanted to discuss. I hope that this trip will
    not only allow me to learn more about China and allow the American
    people to learn more about China but will help me to explain America and
    what we believe in and why to not only the Government but to the people
    of China and this is a good beginning here.
        Q. Well, have they encouraged you to----
        The President. I will do my best to do that. I think they made a
    mistake. And as I said, ironically, is the Chinese granted more visas to
    more journalists from more different media outlets than they ever have
    before. So they were actually showing a greater openness than they have,
    and because they reversed themselves on the Radio Free Asia visas, for
    reasons I don't understand, they have denied themselves that credit. So,
    I intend to press this issue by doing the interview in just a few
    minutes.
        Q. Is this going to mean that it will be harder for you to reach
    agreements with the Chinese on detargeting nuclear missiles, on market
    access--is this disagreement going to make that a harder process?
        The President. I don't know. I hope that we can deal with all these
    issues independently. I think the Chinese understand, as we do, we've
    got a big common stake in nonproliferation of weapons of mass
    destruction. I expect to make some progress. We have a big stake in the
    Asian economic situation and the difficulties there. We have a big stake
    in our own bilateral economic relations and the impact that a lot of
    this will have in terms of integrating China into the global economy.
        So I would think that they would not let this get in the way of what
    is in their self-interest, just as I won't let it get in the way of what
    is in the interest of the United States, but our values are an important
    part of our interest.
        We don't live by money alone, or even by power alone, but also by
    our ideals and convictions, so I think it is important to point this up.
    But I also think it's important that you see it in it's proper
    framework.
        The irony--as I said, this is an ironic situation because the
    Chinese granted more visas to more different media outlets apparently
    than ever before. They granted this visa and then reversed themselves. I
    think it was a mistake, and I'll do my best to make it clear why.

    President's Visit to China

        Q. Are you going to see dissidents now--I mean, as a retaliation?
        The President. I'm going to see a number of people from different
    elements in Chinese society, and I'm going to do what I think is best to
    promote the cause of human rights.
        Q. Is the White House taking any symbols of democracy, as has been
    suggested by some Republican lawmakers such as copies of the American
    flag or the Constitution?
        The President. I'm sorry, I don't have anything to say about that.

    Nuclear Detargeting Agreement

        Q. What about detargeting? You didn't mention that specifically, and
    I had asked you about it. Do you see an agreement on that?
        The President. I think it would be a good thing if we could reach an
    agreement on it. I think it does two things. It literally delays
    significantly the amount of time it takes to arm a missile and aim it,
    therefore, eliminating the possibility of accidental firing. And it also
    really increases, I think, the confidence between the countries that
    were moving to reduce the nuclear threat. So I hope we can do that, but
    I don't know yet. I don't have an announcement to make. But you know--
    I've made it very clear that I would like to do that.
        Thank you very much.

    [[Page 1036]]

    Note: The President spoke at 9:10 a.m. in the Oval Office at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Sonia Evans, who introduced the
    President, and her sons, Jonathan and Jesse.