[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[July 24, 1998]
[Pages 1313-1319]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the American Legion Boys Nation
July 24, 1998

    Thank you very much. Good morning, and thank you, ``Sheriff'' Riley, 
for that introduction and for your wonderful work for the education of 
our young people.
    I'd like to welcome your Boys Nation director, Ron Engel; your 
legislative director, George Blume; your director of activities, Jack 
Mercier, celebrating 35 years with Boys Nation--he was here when I was 
here, back in the ``dark ages''; your national chairman for the American 
Legion, Joseph Caouette President Sladek; Vice President Rogers.
    We've got a good representation for former Boys Nation people here. 
I know Fred DuVal, my Deputy Assistant, who was in Boys Nation class of 
1972, has already spoken to you. I'd

[[Page 1314]]

also like to recognize Sean Stephenson, class of 1996, now an intern in 
Cabinet Affairs; thank you for what you're doing here. And I'd like to 
acknowledge someone who has worked with Boys Nation, year after year as 
long as I've been here, in facilitating this event, a long, longtime 
friend of mine, Dan Wexler, who is leaving the White House. This is his 
very last event. And thank you, Mr. Wexler, for a wonderful job for the 
United States.
    As some of you may know, a few days ago we had a reunion here at the 
White House for our 35th anniversary of our Boys Nation summer, and 
``Nightline'' ran 2 nights on our reunion. I asked your president if 
he'd seen either one of them; he said he saw the first one, the second 
one he was here on duty. But I had an opportunity to meet with about 
half the men who were with me 35 years ago, and we were reminiscing. It 
was exactly 35 years ago on this day, July 24, 1963, that President 
Kennedy spoke to us right here in the Rose Garden about our future. He 
made us believe that together we could change the world. I still believe 
that, and I think it is no less true for your generation. Indeed, I 
believe you will live in the time of greatest possibility in all human 
history.
    Today I want to talk with you a little bit about what we have to do 
as a country to make the most of those possibilities, specifically about 
what we have to do to strengthen our education system.
    When I was here, President Kennedy complimented us for supporting 
civil rights legislation which the Nation's Governors had declined to 
do. I was very proud of that because two delegates from Louisiana and I 
and one from Mississippi were four Southerners who broke from the pack 
and ensured that the legislation would pass. But I have to say that, 
looking back over the years, we knew then that our school systems were 
separate and unequal and that we never could make them what we ought to 
until we integrated our schools so that we could integrate our country. 
What we did not see then and what we know now is that equal access to 
public schools does not guarantee the educational excellence that should 
be the birthright of every American on the edge of the 21st century.
    Today we enjoy a remarkable amount of peace and prosperity and 
security. We have the lowest unemployment rate in 28 years, lowest 
percentage of our people on welfare in 29 years, lowest crime rate in 25 
years. On October 1st we will realize the first balanced budget and 
surplus we have had in 29 years. We have the highest homeownership in 
history, and the Government has played an active role in this, but it is 
the smallest Government we have had in 35 years, since I was here where 
you are today.
    Still, the world is changing fast, and it is full of challenges that 
we have to meet. We must build an alliance of nations, committed to 
freedom and human rights and to fighting against terrorism and organized 
crime and drug trafficking, against weapons of mass destruction, and 
racial, ethnic, and religious violence that bedevils so much of the 
world. We must build a global alliance against the global environmental 
and health challenges we face, including the degradation of our oceans 
and especially the problem of climate change.
    Those of you who come from Texas and Arkansas and Oklahoma and the 
other places in the South that have been experiencing record heat know a 
little about this, but it's worth pointing out that the 9 hottest years 
on record have occurred in the last 11 years; 1997 was the hottest year 
ever recorded; each and every month of 1998 has broken a record. So 
unless something happens, notwithstanding this cool morning we're 
enjoying now, 1998 will be the hottest year on record. Unless we act 
now, by the time you're my age, you will have a much, much more severe 
problem to confront.
    We have a lot of challenges here at home. We have to save Social 
Security and Medicare for the 21st century in a way that protects the 
retirement age of the baby boomers without bankrupting our children and 
our grandchildren. Until your generation--that is, you and all the 
people younger than you, starting the year before last--entered school, 
my generation--and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers--were the largest 
group of Americans ever. When our fathers came home to meet our mothers 
after World War II, there was a sense of enthusiasm and exuberance which 
manifested itself in unusually large families. [Laughter] And we all 
enjoyed being part of the baby boom generation, at least I think most of 
us did. But all of us now, I think without regard to our station in 
life, are quite concerned about the potential burdens we might impose on 
our children.
    Not so long ago, I had to go home to Arkansas because we had some 
serious tornadoes.

[[Page 1315]]

After I toured the damage sites, I had dinner at the airport in Little 
Rock with about 20 people I grew up with. And I try to stay in touch 
with them, and we just went around the table, and most of them are just 
middle class working people. Every one of them was absolutely determined 
that we had to make the changes now to prepare ourselves to retire in 
ways that didn't impose undue burdens on our children. Because when we 
begin to retire, when all the baby boomers get into their retirement 
age--that is over 65--at present birth rates and immigration rates and 
retirement rates, there will only be about two people working for every 
person retired.
    Now, this is a significant challenge. But it can be met. It is, in 
this way, like the problem of climate change. If we act now and take 
modest but disciplined steps now, well ahead of the time when we have to 
face the crisis, then we won't have to take big, dramatic, and maybe 
draconian steps later. So, especially saving Social Security is 
important.
    And I'd like to say just a couple more words about it, because I 
want all of you to think about it; it's important. The idea behind 
Social Security is, number one, even though your retirement may be a 
long way off, you can know that it's going to be there for you. Number 
two, even though most Americans have something other than Social 
Security to retire on--and you should begin as soon as you get into the 
work force to save and plan for your own retirement, because if you save 
a little bit when you're young, you'll have a whole lot when you're 
older--Social Security actually is responsible for keeping about half of 
our senior citizens out of poverty. And beginning about 10 or 15 years 
ago, we achieved a remarkable thing for a society. We had a poverty rate 
among seniors that was lower than the poverty rate for the society as a 
whole. We want to continue that, and we can.
    Thanks to our fiscal discipline, we're going to have the first 
budget surplus we've had, as I said, in 29 years. And this gives us some 
money to help to pay for the transition. I believe it is very important 
to set aside every penny of this surplus until we save Social Security. 
Now, that's a big challenge here in Washington, because after all, it's 
an election year, and it's more popular to give tax cuts or even to have 
big new spending programs than to say to people, ``Okay, we've got this 
money, but we don't want to spend it right now. We may well be able to 
afford new spending programs; we may well be able to afford a tax cut, 
but we need to know how much it's going to cost to fix Social Security 
and how we can make it as small a burden as possible today and 
tomorrow.''
    That's why I have said save Social Security first. If it doesn't 
take all the money of the projected surplus, then we can figure out what 
else to do with it. I believe that is important. Some people here 
disagree with me; some want a tax cut before we fix Social Security. I 
am determined not to let that happen, because I think we should invest 
in your future, not squander it.
    I do not believe that those of us who are adults should enjoy a 
limited small tax cut now and sacrifice your future tomorrow. And I'm 
going to do what I can to stop that. I think there is broad support for 
this position among both Democrats and Republicans in Washington, and I 
hope very much that, by the time you're out in the work force and having 
children of your own, that this will be yesterday's problem, and you 
will not have to confront it. And we're going to do our best to see that 
that happens.
    Let me talk a little about, very briefly, some other challenges we 
face. We have to provide access to affordable quality health care to all 
Americans. More and more Americans, probably a lot of you here, are in 
managed care plans. Managed care has done a lot of good. It's cut a lot 
of inflation out of health care costs. But health care decisions ought 
to be made by doctors and patients, not by accountants and insurance 
company executives who are determined to save money whether or not it's 
the right thing to do for the patients. That's the idea behind the 
Patients' Bill of Rights we're trying to pass up here in this session of 
Congress.
    I think it is very important that we recognize that, in spite of all 
this economic growth, there are still areas of our country which have 
not reaped the benefits of American enterprise. There are inner-city 
neighborhoods, there are Native-American communities, and as a lot of 
our farmers have been telling America lately, there are a lot of rural 
American communities that still have not felt the benefits of the 
economic recovery. If we can't find a way to expand opportunity to these 
areas now, when we're doing so well, we will not be able to do it the 
next time a recession comes along. So that, I think, is a very important 
challenge.

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    I think it is very important that we build an America, as Secretary 
Riley says, that crosses the boundaries of race and religion and 
culture; that respects, revels in our diversity; that enjoys our heated 
arguments; but that recognizes that underneath it all we are bound 
together by those things that the framers laid out so long ago. We all 
believe in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We all believe 
that we have constituted a free Government of willing citizens because 
there are things we have to do together that we can't do alone. We all 
believe that America will always be on a permanent mission to form a 
more perfect Union.
    So I say to all of you, even though I think it's a great thing to 
have vigorous debates--I love them. I think it's a good thing that we 
have different opinions. I think it is a terrific thing that we have 
people in America who come from every other country on Earth. Just 
across the Potomac River here, in Fairfax County, there are students 
from 180 different national, racial, and ethnic groups in one school 
district, and they come from 100 different language groups. That is 
great for America in a global society. But we still have to find a way 
to be one America, to recognize that what we have in common as human 
beings, as children of God, is more important than what divides us.
    And finally let me say, we have to build a world-class system of 
elementary and secondary education. You heard Secretary Riley say that 
we have done a lot of work to open the doors of college to everyone who 
is willing to work for it. And just about everyone in the world believes 
that America has the finest system of higher education in the world. Now 
we have the HOPE scholarship, a $1,500 tax credit for the first 2 years 
of college; tax credits for the junior and senior year, for graduate 
school, for adults who have to go back for continuing education; a 
direct student loan program that allows you to borrow money and then pay 
it back as a percentage of your income so you don't ever have to worry 
about borrowing money, making you go broke later, just to get an 
education; more work-study positions, more Pell grants. We have the 
AmeriCorps program for young people who want to do national service for 
a year or two and then earn credit for college. And this has been a 
very, very good thing.
    But almost no one believes that every American has access to world-
class elementary and secondary education. And if you think about all the 
other challenges I have mentioned, they all rely on a well-educated, 
responsible citizenry. You have to be well-educated, and you have to be 
a good citizen to say--take the Social Security challenge--``Don't give 
me a little bit of money now. Save me a huge headache later. Save my 
children; save my grandchildren. I'll give it up right now so we can do 
something good for tomorrow.''
    You have to be well-educated to imagine what the world would be like 
if this climate change continues and the polar ice caps melt and the 
water levels rise and the Everglades are buried or the Louisiana sugar 
plantations are underwater or Pacific island nations are buried, to 
understand what it means when the climate changes and mosquitoes bearing 
malaria go to higher and higher climates and infect more and more 
people, and then they get on airplanes and meet you in the airport, and 
now people in Norway come home with airport malaria. It sounds funny, 
but it's happening. You have to have an education to understand these 
things.
    It helps to be well-educated to understand the importance of 
diversity and respect for diversity and still what we have in common. So 
every other challenge we face requires us to meet the challenge of 
educating all our citizens.
    We've come a long way since 1963, when most of the schools in the 
South were segregated, and when I was here--listen to this--one quarter 
of our high school students dropped out of school before they graduated; 
less than half went on to college. Today, almost 90 percent of high 
school students do graduate, and nearly 70 percent will get some further 
education.
    Many of you are here, as I was 35 years ago, in part because of a 
special teacher who's had a positive influence on your life. Our schools 
have always been the cornerstone of our democracy. At a time of 
increasing diversity through immigration, they are more important than 
ever. Ninety percent of our children are in our public schools, and in 
an age of information and ideas, a strong education system is now even 
more important to you than it was to me when I was your age. Now is the 
time to strengthen public education, not to drain precious resources 
from it. That is America's first priority, and it is our 
administration's first priority.
    If our schools are to succeed in the next century, however, it will 
require more than money.

[[Page 1317]]

We have to raise standards for students and teachers. We have to 
heighten accountability. We should widen choices for parents and 
students. We have to expect more of everyone, of our students who must 
master the basics and more and behave responsibly; of our teachers who 
must inspire students to learn and to be good citizens; and of our 
schools which must be safe and state-of-the-art.
    We've worked hard to strengthen our public schools, to promote 
higher standards and to measure student progress, to do what we can to 
improve teaching and to certify more master teachers throughout the 
country, to give schools the means to meet our national education goals 
and to help students not going to 4-year colleges make the transition 
from school to work, to get more aid to students in schools with special 
challenges and to hook all the classrooms and libraries in our country 
up to the Internet by the year 2000, and to have more public school 
choice.
    But we clearly have to do more. I have called for smaller classes in 
our early grades and 100,000 new teachers to fill them, teachers that 
pass rigorous competency tests before they set foot in the classroom. 
I've called for an end to social promotion so that no child is passed 
from grade to grade, year after year, without mastering the materials 
and for extra help for those who don't pass, like the summer school 
program in Chicago.
    Chicago now has mandatory--mandatory--summer school for children who 
don't make the social promotion hurdle. And the summer school there is 
now the sixth biggest school district in the entire United States of 
America. I don't think I have to tell you that more children are 
learning and the juvenile crime rate is way down. We need more of that 
in America.
    These are important investments. We have to also do more. We need to 
build more schools and modernize more schools. I was in Philadelphia the 
other day where the average school building is 65 years old. They are 
magnificent old buildings. They're very well built, but they need to be 
modernized. A child that goes to school every day in a school where a 
whole floor is closed off or the roof leaks or the rooms are dark or the 
windows are cracked gets a signal, a clear signal that he or she is not 
as important as we all say they are day in and day out.
    I have been to school districts in Florida where there were more 
than a dozen trailers outside the main school building because the 
schools are so overcrowded and the districts don't have the funds to 
keep building schools to deal with the new students. We have to do that.
    We have to finish our effort to connect all our classrooms to the 
Internet. We have got to, in other words, make these investments that 
will make our country strong.
    President Kennedy said our progress as a Nation can be no swifter 
than our progress in education. That is more true now than ever before, 
and I hope in the remaining few days of this congressional session, our 
Congress will put progress above partisanship, leave politics at the 
schoolhouse door, and make the education of our children America's top 
priority.
    We know our schools are strengthened also by innovation and 
competition brought about increasingly in our country by more choice in 
the public schools children attend. Public school choice gets parents 
and communities more involved in education, not just in helping with 
homework or attending parent-teacher conferences but actually in shaping 
the schools.
    Some of you, having gone to public schools of choice, may know this 
from experience. David Haller, for example, from Arkansas, attends a 
school that's very close to my heart, in the town I grew up in, the 
Arkansas School of Math and Science in Hot Springs, which I help to 
found as Governor.
    Across our Nation, public school choice and, in particular, charter 
schools are renewing public education with new energy and new ideas. 
Charter schools are creative schools, innovative schools, public with 
open enrollment, strengthened by the commitment of parents and educators 
in the communities they serve. They can be models of accountability for 
all public schools, because they are chartered only when they meet 
rigorous standards of quality, and they should remain open only as long 
as they meet those standards.
    According to new data from Secretary Riley's Department of 
Education, parents are choosing charter schools more and more often 
because they're small, safe, supportive, and committed to academic 
excellence. We can do more of this.

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    I am pleased to report some interesting progress. When I was elected 
President, campaigning on the idea that we should have more of these 
charter schools, there was only one such school in the country. It was 
in the State of Minnesota. I am pleased to tell you that this fall there 
will be 1,000 of them, serving more than 200,000 children. We're well on 
our way to meeting my goal of creating 3,000 such schools by the 
beginning of the next century, and again, I ask Congress to help us meet 
the goal and finish its work on the bipartisan charter school 
legislation that is now making its way through Congress.
    The Department of Education has released a guidebook to help 
communities learn from each other's successes. I commend it to you. 
Charter schools do very well in general, but they face a lot of 
challenges, including finding the funding to get started and keep going. 
Lack of access to startup funding, as the report I release today shows, 
is the biggest obstacle facing more rapid development of these schools. 
To make it easier for parents and educators to innovate, I have proposed 
to increase the $80 million for startup funds this year to 100 million 
next year. That's up from 6 million when we started in 1994.
    Now, let me just say one other thing. A lot of you are going back 
for your senior years. You'll be leaving your hometown school. Some of 
you will be going a long way away to college. I urge you to go wherever 
your dreams take you. But in the years to come, I hope you won't forget 
about your schools. I am very impressed by all the resolutions and the 
legislation that you have passed, and I have been given a review of it 
this morning before I came out here. But I'm also impressed by the 
commitment that so many of you have expressed to citizen service. I hope 
you will always take part of your time to be servants to young people 
who are younger than you are.
    Some of you may become teachers or professors, but most of you 
won't. Wherever your life's travels take you, every one of you can find 
some enduring connection to education. I hope some of you will consider, 
some time during your next few years, joining our national service 
program, AmeriCorps, and serving young people in your community and 
building up some more scholarship money.
    But whatever you do when you get out of school, I hope you will 
maintain a connection to young people and to their schools. You can 
volunteer your time, you can mentor someone who needs guidance. You can 
remember that only a very few young people ever have the experience 
you're having now, but hundreds and thousands more can hear about it 
from you and be inspired by it, to believe in our country and to believe 
in themselves and their capacity to learn and live out their dreams.
    As I get older and older, I think more and more, as is natural I 
suppose, about people who are coming along behind me. It's hard to get 
used to--most of us will tell you that we consider anyone who is a year 
younger than we are to be young, however old we are. I never will 
forget, once I was talking to Senator Mike Mansfield, who was our 
Ambassador to Japan, and Senator Mansfield must be about 96 now. He 
still walks about 5 miles a day. And he was having lunch with another 
former Senator, J. William Fulbright--who was a mentor of mine and for 
whom I worked when I was in college--when Senator Mansfield was 91, and 
Senator Fulbright was 87. He looked at him, and he said, ``Bill, how old 
are you now?'' And he said, ``I'm 87.'' And Mansfield said, ``Oh, to be 
87 again.'' [Laughter] So we all get our perspective from our own age.
    And for you, your future is all ahead of you. But just think about 
how many Americans there already are who are younger than you are, and 
think about how many there are who would never have a chance like the 
one you've had this past week. And just remember, never, never, never 
underestimate your ability to teach, to inspire, to guide, to help them 
to love this country the way you do, to embrace concepts of good 
citizenship the way you have, and frankly, to live a good, constructive, 
ambitious life the way you will. All of us--all of us--sometimes 
underestimate the enormous power that we have to influence other people 
one-on-one.
    Alexis de Tocqueville said a long time ago that America is great 
because America is good. America cannot be good except through her 
people. To say America is good is to say the American people are good. 
We have all these big challenges. I'm convinced we will meet them, as we 
have all our other challenges for over 200 years, because America is 
good.
    I ask your support in meeting those challenges, and I ask for your 
commitment never to forget all those young people who are coming along 
behind.

[[Page 1319]]

    Good luck, and God bless you. Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 9:25 a.m. in the Rose Garden at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Secretary of Education Richard W. 
Riley, who, as a boy, was elected sheriff of Boys State, South Carolina; 
and Kevin Sladek, president, and Jeffrey Rogers, vice president, 1998 
Boys Nation Session.