[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book I)]
[March 18, 1998]
[Pages 397-401]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at the Carpenters Joint Apprenticeship Training Center in
Las Vegas, Nevada
March 18, 1998

    The President. Thank you. It's a good thing we've got a 22d 
amendment, or I would run again. Thanks for saying that. Let me begin by 
saying that when Maggie Carlton was talking, 
I leaned over to John Sweeney and I said, 
``John, I'd give anything if we could just get her speech on television 
tonight. That's the America we're trying to build for everybody.''
    I know that your husband and your daughters were proud of you, but I 
think every working man and woman out here was proud of you for what you 
said and what you represented. Your family is living proof that if we 
reward people for their work, if we enable people to succeed at work and 
at home raising their children, if we give them the chance to be good 
citizens, then America is going to do very well indeed.
    I want to thank the others up here on this platform with me. I want 
to thank John Sweeney for his brilliant, 
energetic leadership of the labor movement. He has been terrific. I want 
to thank Doug McCarron for his 
leadership of the carpenters and his ever-present willingness to let me 
know exactly what he thinks I should be doing on every issue. [Laughter] 
I want to thank Bob Georgine for many 
things, but I want to congratulate him most recently on helping to bring 
about the major labor agreement in Nevada between building and 
construction trade workers, Bechtel, and the Department of Energy, and 
so many other triumphs on behalf of the working people he represents. 
Thank you.
    I am especially indebted to Linda Chavez-Thompson, the executive vice president of the AFL-CIO, for her 
membership on the President's National Advisory Panel on Race in our 
attempt to build an America in the 21st century where we all get along 
and work together across all the racial and ethnic lines that divide us.
    Let me also say I am profoundly grateful to my former colleague and 
longtime friend, Governor Bob Miller; and to 
Mayor Jan Jones who was such a great 
friend of my mother's, as well as a friend of mine, for their personal 
kindness to me, and their leadership here in this great city and State. 
You are very well served, and I know you know that.
    I brought a lot of folks with me today from the administration, but 
three in particular work with the labor movement. I thank the Deputy 
Secretary of Labor, Kitty Higgins, and Maria Echaveste and 
Karen Tramontano coming from the White 
House. They've worked with a lot of you, and they do a lot of work for 
you, whether you know it or not, every day. And I'm very proud of them.
    Now, you know, I took a tour of what goes on here before I came out, 
and I told some of the folks on the tour--I thanked Bill Howard and Paul Sonner, who was the 
instructor in the classroom I visited, and all the people who are in the 
Joint Apprenticeship Training Center today who helped to enlighten me 
about what you're doing. But I told some folks that 30 years ago I 
actually spent a summer building houses, and I decided I didn't want to 
work that hard, which is how come I got into politics. [Laughter] It 
didn't strike me as being any easier now than it was 30 years ago. 
[Laughter]
    But there are a lot of interesting things going on in this program. 
I hope, for example, that just my presence here and the fact that so 
many members of the media came with us will lead

[[Page 398]]

people to know that more and more construction is now being done with 
reprocessed steel instead of wood in homes and hotels and other things. 
And that has enormous environmental and energy implications for the 
future, if we can make that work, and that you are being trained to do 
that work.
    I do feel that I learned enough today to go home and build a two-
bedroom house for Socks and for Buddy, and that's what I intend to do. 
[Laughter] Unfortunately, when I do it, I won't earn the union wage, but 
I will have your knowledge.
    Let me say to all of you that, first, I just want to thank you for 
giving me a chance to be here. You know, every now and then, you just 
have to get out here in the country; it helps the President to remember 
why he ran, what he's trying to do, and for whom he is really working. 
And I have seen all of that here today.
    You here have shown me a model of two-by-fours and teamwork; a model 
for the Nation of cooperation between business and labor; cooperation of 
crafts across generations, adapting old-fashioned values to today's 
workplace. There are just 653 days left in the 20th century; there are 
just 653 days left in this whole millennium. This century will be 
remembered as a time when millions of working men and women fought for 
and won basic freedoms too long denied them: the right to safe 
workplaces; the freedom to organize; the ability to put an end to 
abusive child labor; the right to have health insurance and retirement 
and earn a decent wage for labor. Working families across our country 
gained their voice in the 20th century, and in so doing, they built the 
greatest middle class in human history.
    Now, what will happen in the new century? Well, what will it be 
like; how will it be different? The first thing we know is that things 
will change more and faster for all of you in the new century than it 
did in the old one. The sheer volume of knowledge is changing--is 
doubling, doubling, every 5 years. When I became President there were 50 
websites on the Internet--50--5, 0. Now, 65,000 are being added every 
hour. So your life is going to go by at a faster pace.
    The second thing you know is that it will be more global. We will be 
in a global economy, but we will also be in an increasingly global 
society. If you doubt that, just look around the room here. If we had 
had this meeting 10 years ago----

[At this point, a member of the audience interrupted the President.]

    Audience member. Shut up!
    The President. Couldn't have said it better myself. You ought to run 
for office. [Laughter]
    Now look around; if we had had this meeting 10 years ago, think how 
differently this crowd would have looked. So the world is changing. The 
way we work, the way we live, the way we relate to each other. What will 
happen in this new century? What will happen if technology dominates 
more? We won't run out of work; we'll have different kind of work. The 
unemployment rate today is very low, but there are almost 400,000 
vacancies in America in computer-related jobs. So we know that things 
will change more and we'll have to educate and train more. And even old 
jobs will be done in new ways.
    But we also know that, if we do it right, we've got a chance finally 
to include all working people in the American middle class. We've got a 
chance to bring dignity to the lives of all people. We've got a chance 
to give every child the chance to live up to his or her God-given 
abilities. In short, we've got a chance to bring the American dream home 
to everybody who will work for it. And we ought to seize that chance.
    That's the American dream that the employees of Frontier Hotel spent 
6 years, 4 months, and 10 days fighting to achieve. And this is 
important. But maybe even more important, it's the American dream that I 
learned again today up in that classroom I just visited. It's the 
American dream that I learned again today that union members want for 
all working families.
    I see it in Washington. John Sweeney has 
a relatively small percentage of the membership of the AFL-CIO that will 
get a direct benefit when we raise the minimum wage again. But he works 
for it just as hard as if 100 percent of his members were going to be 
benefited by it, because he knows it's the right thing to do.
    And today, when I was in that classroom upstairs, you know what the 
students were learning in the classroom? They were learning about how 
much of their base pay is in fringe benefits--what's retirement, what's 
health care, what's continuing education, what does all this money

[[Page 399]]

go for? And they asked me questions about Social Security and how we 
were going to make sure that private pensions were secure. And I talked 
to them about what we've been doing on that the last 5 years.
    And they asked about health care and how working families got along 
that didn't have any health insurance, and why we didn't have health 
insurance for every single working family. And I said, ``If it had been 
up to me and the AFL-CIO, every working family would have health 
insurance today, and we ought to see it.'' I only wish my wife could 
have been upstairs to hear that conversation about health care.
    And they asked me about how people got along who didn't make as much 
per hour as they earned in fringe benefits alone. One young man said, 
``There are people building houses in other places who don't make as 
much per hour as we get in fringe benefits. How do they get along?'' And 
so we talked about how we try to help them with the family and medical 
leave, how we tried to help them with different changes in the health 
insurance laws, and how we tried to help them with changes in retirement 
systems.
    But I asked that group of young people when I left, I said, ``I just 
hope you'll never forget this, because we've got to make sure every 
family can succeed at home and at work, and as long as people like you 
care about people who aren't making as much per hour as you get in 
fringe benefits, we'll keep making it better for them.'' And I hope all 
of you will always feel that way.
    Now, let me just say very quickly, I want to talk to you about 
what's going on in Washington that will affect your future and ask you 
for your help. These are good times for the country. We're going to have 
the first balanced budget in 30 years. And 15 million new jobs in 5 
years, the lowest unemployment in 24 years, the lowest crime rate in 24 
years, the lowest welfare rolls in 27 years, the lowest inflation in 30 
years, and the highest homeownership in the history of the United States 
of America. That's the time we're living in.
    But what I want to say to you is, you don't have to be a carpenter 
to know that you don't fix the roof when it's raining. You fix the roof 
when the sun is shining. The sun is shining on America. But as long as 
there are people who don't have jobs, as long as there are people who 
can't make a decent living, as long as we don't have a system which 
guarantees lifetime high quality educational opportunities, like I saw 
there today, to all working families, the roof of America's house is not 
as strong as it ought to be.
    So what I came here today to tell you today is, this is a great 
time, but let me say again, it is changing fast. And we have to think 
about the challenges that all of you are going to face 5 years from now, 
10 years from now; what will your children face 15 and 20 years from 
now? And we have to do those things today, while we have the confidence 
and the strength and the prosperity to do them, that will secure the 
future of our children tomorrow in a new century.
    One of the main reasons I wanted to be here today is that I think 
all of you know instinctively that the most important thing we can do, 
in a world where the volume of knowledge is doubling every 5 years, is 
to give every person a world-class education and every adult access to 
education and training for a lifetime.
    Now, we've made a lot of progress in the last 5 years. When we 
started on--the Vice President and I started to try to hook up all the 
classrooms and libraries in the country to the Internet by 2000. We 
started in '94; only 34 percent of our schools were hooked up. Today, 75 
percent are. We're doing better. We've got 900 colleges out there with 
young people earning work-study funds by going into our grade schools 
and teaching our kids to read, to make sure everybody can read 
independently by the end of the third grade. That's important.
    And perhaps most important to all of you with children, we can 
literally say now--this is what we've done in the last year: We passed a 
$1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years of college; tax credits for 
junior year, senior year, graduate school; adults going back for further 
job training; an IRA you can put money into, withdraw from for your 
kid's education with no tax penalty; tax deductions for interest on 
student loans; 300,000 more work-study positions. People can go through 
our national service program, AmeriCorps, and earn money to go to 
college. We can literally say now because of the changes we've made in 
loans, in scholarships, and tax breaks, we have opened the doors of 
college in America to everybody who's willing to work for a college 
education. That will revolutionize their future.

[[Page 400]]

    But let's be candid with one another. Everybody with an informed 
opinion knows that America has the best system of colleges and 
universities in the world. There are literally 300, maybe 400--maybe 
more--places you can go and get a world-class undergraduate education in 
this country. But no one thinks we have the best elementary and 
secondary education in the world. Now, we have a lot of great teachers; 
we have a lot of great schools; our students are just as smart as 
anybody anywhere. But nobody thinks it's the best in the world. One of 
the reasons is we have a very diverse student body; we have local 
control of the schools; we have three different sources of funding from 
the State, Federal, and local government; and we don't have any national 
standards of what people should know or measurements of it.
    So I think we need more grassroots reform, but we ought to have 
national standards and voluntary national exams. We ought to spend more 
money to give smaller classes. We ought to make sure that in these 
places where they're overflowing with students and the school buildings 
are old and breaking down or the kids are out in housetrailers, they're 
in decent classrooms.
    And I have offered a plan this year to hire 100,000 more teachers to 
take class size in the first 3 grades down to an average of 18 students 
per class; to make child care of higher quality and more affordable; to 
help schools stay open after instruction hours are over because most 
kids get in trouble after school closes down and before their parents 
get home from work; to rehabilitate or build 5,000 new schools in the 
country; and also to provide greater health and retirement security to 
people who have put a lifetime of work in.
    Now, these are very important things. We have a balanced budget now; 
we can afford to do these things. But there are some troubling signals 
coming out of Washington that the Republican budget may not embody this 
commitment to education and our future. The budget they're talking about 
does meet my goal of achieving a balance and not spending any of the 
surplus until we fix Social Security. But it shortchanges our Nation's 
future. We're not fixing the roof for the 21st century, because from 
Head Start for young children to Pell grants, from job training for 
older workers, our commitment to education is under fire.
    I need your help. This ought not to be a partisan political issue. I 
can remember a time when, on education, both parties were foursquare for 
investing in the future of our country if we had the money. I'm telling 
you, we've got the money; it's time to invest in the future of our 
country and education.
    And if the Republican budget says no to new teachers and smaller 
classes, no to modernizing our schools, no to investing in higher 
standards for our children, the American people should say no to that 
budget. Give us a budget that will prepare our children for the 21st 
century.
    There are a lot of other things that I'd like to ask you to help me 
with, and I won't bore you with all of them, but just let me mention a 
few. We've got people in this country between the ages of 55 and 65 who 
worked hard all their lives and have lost their health insurance, and 
they're not old enough to get Medicare. And generally, they're in three 
categories. They are people who are married to folks who are old enough 
to be on Medicare, and so when their spouse got on Medicare the family 
lost their health insurance and the younger spouse has no health care 
and can't afford to buy any.
    They are people who lost their jobs, and they're over 55, and they 
can't afford just a single person's health insurance. They're people who 
took voluntary early retirement who are over 55, who were promised by 
their employers they would have health insurance and then the promise 
was broken. I think we ought to let those people and their families--
help them to buy into Medicare at cost. It will not hurt you; it will 
not hurt Medicare; it will help hundreds of thousands of people.
    Two years ago, we raised the minimum wage, and it was a good thing. 
And 2 years ago when we raised the minimum wage, people said, ``Oh, this 
is terrible. It will bring on inflation, and it will slow down job 
growth.'' And in the 2 years since we raised the minimum wage, inflation 
has gone down, and job growth has gone up. It's good for America to pay 
people at a decent wage.
    The minimum wage in real dollar terms is still lower than it was 20 
years ago; it's still lower than it was 20 years ago. With our economy 
as strong as it is, with job growth as good as it is, we can afford to 
increase the minimum wage by a dollar over the next 2 years, and I think 
it's the right thing to do.

[[Page 401]]

    I also want you to know that we have to continue in Washington to 
fight for the right to organize and to function in a union that will 
permit you to have a life you enjoy. We know that workers in unions 
typically have not only higher pay, but have access to higher skills, 
better continuing education, which is good for the rest of the country. 
You make the rest of us stronger as you learn more new things and do 
more new things and continue to push us in the future. There is a bill 
now in Congress that would let businesses fire or refuse to hire union 
organizers. If it passes, I'll veto it. But you ought to help me do this 
in the first place. [Applause]
    But let me say--I thank you for that cheer. But what you really want 
is to never even have to think about cheering for something like that 
again. Because what really works--what really works is when we all work 
together. You can help management make a bigger profit. You can help the 
owners of every enterprise earn more money. You can make the private 
sector stronger and help create more jobs if we will cooperate in a 
spirit that says we have to reaffirm the dignity of the people who work 
for us day-in and day-out. They ought to be able to raise their children 
in dignity. They ought to be able to educate their children. They ought 
to be able to know that when their kids get sick they can go to the 
doctor. They ought to be able to know that when they come of age, they 
can go on to college. We ought to live in the kind of country that says 
we are going to make the future better for our children, and we are 
going to honor our parents.
    On my wall in my private office on the second floor of the White 
House, I have a letter written before I was born to my aunt in Texas by 
the man who was then the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sam 
Rayburn--legendary Speaker of the House of Representatives from Texas. 
And he wrote my aunt a letter when my father was killed in a car wreck. 
My aunt gave me that letter last year, 50 years later. But I see that 
letter all the time, and it reminds me not only of my family ties but of 
Sam Rayburn and the kind of leadership he gave to our country. Sam 
Rayburn said something about politics that all of you especially should 
always remember. He said, ``Any old mule can kick a barn down. It takes 
a carpenter to build one.'' And what I'm trying to do is to hold down 
the barn kickers--[laughter]--and lift up the builders. I want you to be 
with me.
    Thank you. Bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 12:35 p.m. in the training center shop 
area. In his remarks, he referred to Maggie Carlton, member, Culinary 
Workers Union Local 226, who introduced the President; John J. Sweeney, 
president, Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president, and Robert 
Georgine, Building and Construction Trades Department president, AFL-
CIO; Douglas J. McCarron, general president, United Brotherhood of 
Carpenters and Joiners of America; Gov. Bob Miller of Nevada; Mayor Jan 
Laverty Jones of Las Vegas; and Bill Howard, apprenticeship coordinator, 
and Paul Sonner, instructor, Carpenters Joint Apprenticeship Training 
Center.