    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 25, 1999]
    [Pages 1000-1007]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Presidential Scholars
    June 25, 1999

        Thank you very much. Danielle, you did a
    fine job. Didn't she do a good job? I thought she was great. Thank you.
        I'd also like to thank my good friend Father O'Donovan, for allowing me to come back to my alma mater to make
    this speech and to be with you; and Bruce Reed, for the superb use he has made of the Presidential
    scholarship he got. He does a wonderful job in our office. I hope you
    got the joke he made about how he looks younger than you. We all rag him
    about how young he looks. Actually, when I was his age, I looked young,
    too. And then it just overcame me. [Laughter]
        I want to congratulate the Presidential scholars, the teachers,
    parents who are here. I am delighted to have this chance to be with you.
    Because I have been on an extended trip to Europe, I actually want to
    take a few moments to give a serious talk about where we are in
    Washington today and where we are in America and to talk to you a little
    bit about the whole nature of our public life and politics.
        Nearly 8 years ago, as Bruce said, I came to this hall, where I sat
    many times as a student, to ask America to join me on a journey, to go
    beyond what were then the competing ideas of the old political
    establishment in Washington that dominated the entire decade of the
    1980's. People, on the one hand, said Government was bad, and we should
    get it out of everybody's life and leave people alone to fend for
    themselves, or on the other hand, said Government was good and could
    solve most of our problems if it were just free to do so.
        I asked the American people instead to embrace a new way, something
    I called a New Covenant between America and its Government, an agreement
    with the citizens and their Government that we would jointly pursue
    opportunity for all Americans, responsibility from all Americans, and a
    community of all Americans.

    [[Page 1001]]

    I believed it would bring America back to prosperity.
        Over the years since I became President, I have come back to this
    hall several times to discuss in more specific terms the progress we
    have made in building that New Covenant and the opportunities still to
    be seized, the responsibilities still to be shouldered, the pillars of
    community still to be built.
        Washington is pretty far away from most American's lives most of the
    time. It is tempting for people in public life here, who are so far away
    from you, to fall into easy rhetoric in positioning themselves against
    their opponents. But politics at its best is about values, ideas, and
    action. When it is that, it becomes public service, and it is a noble
    endeavor.
        Let me give you some examples of the ideas we've had here. When I
    came here, our administration believed we could balance the budget and
    increase our investment in education, in technology, in research, in
    training people for the future. Those ideas, turned into action, have
    given us 18.6 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the
    highest homeownership ever, the longest peacetime expansion in history.
    And along the way we have virtually opened the doors of college to all
    Americans with the HOPE scholarship, the other tuition tax credit,
    improvements in the student loan program, a million work-study
    positions. We're well on our way to connecting every classroom in the
    country to the Internet by the year 2000.
        We believed that we could reform welfare and make it good for work
    and for families. That idea, turned into action, has cut the welfare
    rolls in half, while maintaining health and nutrition benefits for poor
    children and increasing our investment in child care for lower income
    workers.
        We believed we could make our streets safer by putting more police
    on the streets and taking guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't
    have them. Those ideas, put into action, have given us a 25-year low in
    the crime rate.
        We believed we could grow the economy and improve the environment.
    That idea, put into action, has given us cleaner air, cleaner water,
    millions of acres of land set aside from the California redwoods to the
    Florida Everglades. It has allowed us in the field of public health to
    have safer food and, for the first time in history, 90 percent of our
    children immunized against serious childhood diseases. And the economy
    has gotten better, not worse, as we have taken steps to advance the
    environment and public health.
        We believed that young people in our country, if given the chance,
    would serve in their communities and that they ought to be given a
    chance to earn some education credit. That idea, put into practice,
    produced AmeriCorps, our national service program, which in just 5 years
    has already had over 100,000 young people working in communities all
    across America, a milestone it took the Peace Corps 20 years to reach.
        And we believed America could be the world's leading force for peace
    and freedom and prosperity and security. Those ideas, turned into
    action, have given us over 250 trade agreements, new partnerships for
    America with Latin America and Africa, new initiatives against terrorism
    and weapons of mass destruction, progress on peace in Northern Ireland
    and the Middle East, a stand against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and now
    in Kosovo, where with our allies we have said that when innocent
    civilians are uprooted or slaughtered because of their race or their
    religion, if we can stop it, we will do so.
        We still have a lot of work to finish the job in Kosovo. We still
    have many challenges abroad, from peace in Northern Ireland and the
    Middle East, to our continuing efforts to help relieve the debt burdens
    of poor nations, to our efforts to stabilize the global economy. But I
    came back to Washington after my trip to Europe with a renewed energy
    for the domestic agenda. And I'd like to talk to you about it today,
    about the things we can do here today that will affect your communities
    today and very much affect your futures tomorrow.
        With our present prosperity, we actually have a rare opportunity to
    meet the remaining large challenges facing our country on the brink of a
    new century. But to do it, both parties must work together. There will
    be plenty of time for politics in the year and a half ahead, but this
    summer must be a season of progress.
        Just think how far we've come in the last decade. When I came here
    to speak in 1991, America was drifting toward a new century without
    direction. Now, our people, working with common purpose, have brought
    the Nation back to a position of unprecedented strength, with greater
    prosperity, greater safety, more social healing, more national
    leadership for the United States around the world.

    [[Page 1002]]

        Our economy is perhaps the strongest in our history, and something
    you may know more about than I do, it is increasingly clear that it is
    being powered in large measure by a once-in-a-lifetime technological
    revolution. For example, the high-tech sector accounts for only 8
    percent of our economy but for fully one-third of the growth we've had
    over the last 6\1/2\ years.
        We are now seeing an explosion of technology, and productivity along
    with it, from the Internet that links offices around the world to
    computers used to track warehouse inventories. You will have a chance,
    thanks to technology, to work in jobs that have not been created yet, in
    industries that have not yet been imagined. But right now we are
    benefiting immensely for it. Just this morning we learned that in the
    last quarter, our economy grew at the brisk rate of 4.3 percent, with
    virtually no inflation. If we can keep that going, that's very good for
    your future.
        I think that those of us who work here now will be judged, however,
    primarily by whether we choose to seize this opportunity to ensure your
    future, not just the short term but the long term, or will it be
    squandered with petty arguments and animosities and special interest
    politics.
        I regret to say that the atmosphere in Washington has become
    increasingly poisoned by bitter partisanship. I don't understand exactly
    why, since we keep doing better and better and better in America. It may
    be that some people believe they have the luxury of engaging in
    shortsighted partisanship because the country is doing so well. I think
    that is a bad misreading of reality.
        Moreover, it is clear to me that in the last few weeks our Nation
    has come together in an unprecedented consensus of conscience and common
    sense on issues like gun violence, where the Congress unfortunately
    buckled under to special interest pressure. Partisanship has even
    paralyzed the basic work of writing our spending bills, something we
    have to do here every year. Let me give you an example.
        Not very long ago, I issued an order saying that the United States
    Government would cut our greenhouse gas emissions coming out of our
    buildings by 30 percent over the next few years to meet our
    responsibility to deal with the challenge of global warming. Now, you
    have to understand, this doesn't cost you anything. This saves you
    money. We're going to reduce our energy use so that we reduce our
    greenhouse gas emissions coming out of our facilities by 30 percent.
    It's a no-brainer. It's no money, nothing. The only people that lose are
    the people that won't be pumping electricity to us.
        Unbelievably enough, just yesterday a Senate committee voted to
    largely block my executive action to cut the Government's emissions by
    30 percent, an action that would save you $750 million a year.
        Now, I think I can stop that. But it's an example of what happens
    when adults with responsibility fall into small-time wrangling and even
    want to stop things that are 100 percent good and not controversial.
        I say again, the interesting thing to me is if you look at all the
    surveys or just go out and talk to people, or if we would sit down and
    talk, you would see that across party lines, across regional lines,
    across income lines there is actually quite a remarkable consensus
    emerging in America on a number of issues--outside Washington. But the
    American people have to depend on those of us who work in Washington to
    take the consensus ideas they have embraced and turn those ideas into
    action.
        Remember what I said at the beginning: Politics at its best involves
    values, ideas, and action, and the balancing of all those things in ways
    that change lives.
        Now, some other people here really believe that because the
    Presidential election season has already started, the battle for
    Congress has already started, even though it's a year and however many
    months away, that the best politics is just to run out the clock and
    wait until the next election and hope that the country is doing so well
    and we enjoy the lazy days of summer so much, nobody will notice. I
    don't agree with that, either.
        And I would like to say to you, as young people, there are an awful
    lot of very good people in public life who don't think that way, who
    want to get things done. And I hope someday many of you will be among
    them. But you will find that all of your life one of the greatest
    struggles you have to embrace is against being small, against being
    defensive or angry or combative for the sake of it, or thinking about
    some slight that someone imposed on you yesterday, instead of some good
    thing you can do today and tomorrow.
        And we have to break out of that now. This country has not had an
    opportunity like this,

    [[Page 1003]]

    with this level of prosperity and this level of progress on social
    problems, in decades. And there actually is quite a lot we can do.
        For example, there are things, believe it or not, that both parties
    agree on here. We should certainly act on them. [Laughter] And then
    there are things on which we have honest disagreements. On those, we
    should seek to find honorable compromise. The American people give us
    these jobs to get things done. In the weeks and months ahead, I will do
    all I can, working with Congress, taking executive action, summoning
    citizens to deal with these challenges. But first let's start with what
    we agree on. You might be surprised by the list.
        To make sure that Americans should never have to choose between
    going to work and paying their medical bills, we must pass the proposal
    to let disabled Americans keep their Medicaid health insurance when they
    take a job. Believe it or not, people who normally who get Medicaid lose
    their insurance if they take a job. The problem is a lot of disabled
    people can't get any other insurance. Their bills may be $40,000,
    $50,000 a year. But all of us are better off if those folks can go to
    work. They are more fulfilled. They are living their lives better. They
    also become tax-paying citizens. And whatever their medical bills are,
    they would be paid, regardless, by Medicaid.
        So we now have a bill that solves a huge problem. And believe it or
    not, almost everybody agrees on it, Republicans and Democrats alike. So
    let's start with that, the easy one and a very good one, that will help
    untold numbers of Americans and their families. Congress should pass it,
    and I will sign it.
        To honor work and strengthen our families, we should raise the
    minimum wage. There are still too many people who work 40 hours a week
    whose children are in poverty. Democrats and many, many Republicans
    agree that we should do this. So Congress should pass it, and I will
    sign it.
        To renew our elections and stem the rising tide of campaign
    spending, we must pass strong campaign finance reform. Finally, after
    years, it appears that a majority of lawmakers in both parties, in both
    the Senate and House, agree. But the leaders of the Republican majority
    are blocking the bill. Instead, they ought to let the Congress vote--
    everybody votes his or her conscience. But if it passes--and I believe
    it would--I would certainly sign it.
        To protect the interest of 160 million Americans who use managed
    care, we should pass a strong, enforceable, and bipartisan Patients'
    Bill of Rights. Now, you all probably know what the problems are here:
    More and more Americans are going into managed care, and managed care
    has done a lot of good in our country to slow the rise in health care
    costs. But we should not ask people to sacrifice quality of care.
        Our Patients' Bill of Rights would simply say that if you're in an
    HMO or any other kind of health care plan, you wouldn't lose a right to
    see your specialist, if you needed. You wouldn't give up the right to go
    to the nearest emergency room if you were hurt in an accident; believe
    it or not, some people do in their plan. You couldn't be forced to give
    up your doctor in the middle of a treatment; for example, if you were 6
    months pregnant and your employer changed health care providers, you
    couldn't be required to change doctors, or if you were in the middle of
    a chemotherapy treatment and your employer changed health care
    providers, you wouldn't give it up. And you would have a right to
    protect yourself to make sure these rights were enforceable.
        Now, these problems have been evident now for the last few years.
    Yesterday we learned that it had gotten so bad, that doctors are so
    angry that the doctor-patient relationship is being breached by
    insurance company accountants' meddling, that they're even organizing a
    union to bargain with the HMO's.
        Now, again, I've seen survey after survey after survey. There is no
    partisan issue here. Republicans and Democrats and independents all get
    sick. [Laughter] Right? I mean, they do. There's not a partisan issue
    here. Most doctors are Republicans; most nurses are Democrats.
    [Laughter] So what? This is not a big deal. This is not a partisan issue
    anywhere in the whole country but Washington, DC.
        Over 200 medical and consumer organizations have endorsed this
    Patients' Bill of Rights, and one has opposed it, the health insurance
    companies. Now, if we get a vote on this--because out in America,
    doctors, nurses, and patients agree, and Democrats and Republicans will
    agree--it will fly like a hot knife through butter. But again, the
    leadership of the Congress is trying to find a way to block the bill.
    It's not right. So I say again, just let everybody vote his or her
    conscience. And if they send it to me--and they will--I will sign it.

    [[Page 1004]]

        Now, these are measures awaiting action that could be enacted
    quickly. And if America will send a signal to Congress that they want
    action, we can pass them.
        There are some, however, broader, more fundamental and, frankly,
    more difficult issues that I hope we can resolve this year. First, I
    believe, as I said in my State of the Union Address, that we have a duty
    to you to use the bulk of this surplus over the next 15 years to solve
    the long-term challenges of Social Security and Medicare and to do it in
    a way that pays down our national debt.
        Now, why? Because that means that future generations will have
    guaranteed income and health care in their retirement years. And it
    means as we pay down the debt, we will keep interest rates low,
    investment high, and guarantee when you get out of college there will be
    lots of good jobs available because we'll have a stronger and stronger
    and stronger economy. We can actually get rid of America's debt over the
    next 18 years if we will do this.
        So I hope, even though we have honest, here, honest philosophical
    differences about what the best way to reform Medicare is, what the best
    way to reform Social Security is, the point is we ought to be able to
    proceed in a spirit of honorable compromise because the goals are so
    important and the stakes are so high and because, frankly, the choices
    are a lot easier when you have a surplus than when you have a big
    deficit.
        Next week I will propose a detailed plan to strengthen Medicare, to
    cut its costs, to modernize its operations, to use competition and
    innovation, to strengthen the core guarantee of quality care for all
    Americans who are elderly and eligible. I will also, for the first time,
    propose a way to help senior citizens with their greatest growing need,
    affordable prescription drugs. It is a huge issue out there for seniors.
        Now, finding agreement on Social Security and Medicare will be hard.
    Finding agreement on tax cuts will be hard, although I hope the Congress
    will at least adopt targeted tax credits for long-term care and child
    care that I proposed. But we can do it. Now, regardless, Congress has to
    pass a budget this year. We must decide on how to use the surplus. So I
    hope we can work together to make progress on these goals.
        Second, we ought to continue to advance our economy by doing more
    for the education of our people. As we have balanced the budget and cut
    the size of the Federal Government--listen to this--we have cut the size
    of the Federal Government to the same size it was when I was your age.
    The Federal Government now is the same size it was in 1962. That was a
    long time ago. [Laughter] Anyway, as we have done that, we have nearly
    doubled our investment in education and training. Why? Because, as was
    said in my introduction, the information age will be the education age.
        Last year, at my urging, with school populations in our country at
    record highs, Congress passed a budget that began to hire 100,000 new
    teachers to reduce class size in the early years. Unbelievably to me, in
    the budget the majority is now writing, they repeal their pledge to
    finish the job of hiring those teachers. I just want Congress to keep
    its word. I think when you tell people something in an election year,
    you ought to still be for it the next year when there is no election.
        I have also sent Congress an ambitious education reform plan because
    this is a year, as we do every 5 years, we have to reauthorize the
    general program under which we give money to schools all over America.
    And I believe we should dramatically change it to hold schools and
    school districts and States more accountable for results and to give
    them more funds for after-school, summer school programs and to target
    and turn around failing schools.
        It is controversial. But it is based on what is working in the
    States that are having success in lifting all their schools in student
    achievement. Again I say, there may be those who disagree with me
    philosophically; we ought to have an open debate about this and come to
    an honorable compromise. We do not have to continue to spend money in
    the same old way when we know we can spend it more effectively based on
    what we have seen in our schools.
        Third, let me say something that I hope will be important to all of
    you and has doubtless been experienced by some of you. We've got the
    strongest economy on record, all right, but there are still too many
    poor neighborhoods and rural communities where prosperity is something
    you read about, not experience. And I believe we should be committed to
    going into this new century leaving no one behind. This is not only a
    good thing to do ethically; it is also good economics.

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        I keep thinking every day, now, how can we continue to grow this
    economy? How can we drive unemployment even lower, create even more
    jobs, without having inflation? One way is to find new investment in
    America. So I say to you, we've spent a lot of time seeking new markets
    abroad, but our most important new markets are right here at home.
        Two weeks from now, for 4 days, I will lead an unprecedented trip
    across America so our country can see the places I'm talking about. I'll
    go to the hills and hollows of Kentucky, to the Mississippi Delta, to a
    poor community in the Midwest, to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in
    South Dakota, to Phoenix, to inner-city Los Angeles. I'll be joined by
    distinguished corporate leaders and political leaders of both parties.
    Again, this is something that should not be a political issue at all. We
    want to shine a spotlight on the pockets of poverty that remain in
    America and on the potential they have for new investment, new jobs, new
    hope, new opportunity.
        I will ask Congress to do its part by passing my new markets
    initiative. It provides for tax incentives and loan guarantees for
    people to invest in these areas, the same kind of incentives we give
    people today to invest in emerging economies abroad. I think that
    whatever we encourage people to do abroad, we ought to give the same
    encouragement to do at home, to give our people those kinds of chances.
        Finally, I think we ought to do more to protect our young people
    from violence, to redeem the awful sacrifice of the children of
    Littleton, of the other school shootings, of the 13 American children we
    lose every single day to gun violence.
        After Littleton, our whole Nation came together in grief and
    determination. We know there are many causes of youth violence, and
    therefore, there must be many solutions. Hillary and I are launching a
    national campaign against youth violence to bring all kinds of people
    from all sectors of our communities together. We have done this before,
    like Mothers and Students Against Drunk Driving dramatically reduced
    drunk driving in America, just for one example. And we can do that.
        Of course, more must be done at home. Young people can have a
    greater influence on each other. Schools, houses of worship, other
    places where children gather can do better. The entertainment community
    must do more to stop marketing violence to children. I'm proud that
    theater owners have agreed--[applause]--I wonder if that's coming more
    from the adults or the young people. [Laughter]
        I feel very strongly about this. I'm proud that theater owners
    agreed that from now on, young people will be carded for R and PG-13
    movies. I'm glad, thanks to the Vice President and Mrs. Gore, that next year
    TV's will have the V-chip in half of all new TV's sold and that Internet
    and video game companies are helping with ratings and blocking
    technologies. We have our differences with various sectors of the
    entertainment community from time to time, but they have actually done
    quite a lot with the TV rating systems, the video game rating systems,
    the blocking technologies in the last few years, and they deserve credit
    for what they have done, as well as urging to do more.
        But we have to face the fact that if you have more children spending
    more time alone--and let me say that one big difference between the time
    when I was your age, or even Bruce was your age, and today, in America
    as a whole, the average--average--young person spends 22 hours per week
    less with his or her parents than 30 years ago. From birth through age
    18, that's over 2 years less time that the average young person spends
    with his or her parents--over 2 years. You don't notice it so much; it's
    just a few hours a day.
        Why is that? More single parents, more working parents, more people
    living in suburbs spending more time going to and from work. Everybody
    is busy, busy, busy. And most of you are turning out just fine, and most
    of your parents are doing the best they can and doing a fine job. But we
    shouldn't minimize the fact that when this happens, the most vulnerable
    children among us will be even more vulnerable.
        And that is why this whole entertainment culture counts, not because
    of you but because there are among us always vulnerable people. And
    there will be more of them, and they will be more vulnerable. And that's
    why the access to guns matters.
        I've heard this--I got a letter the other day from a really nice
    person that I admire, saying, ``Mr. President, we've got all these laws
    on the books, and if somebody wants a gun they can get it.'' Now, if you
    say that, it seems self-evident, since there's way over 220 million guns
    in the country. It seems self-evident. But let's look at the facts here.

    [[Page 1006]]

        Since we passed the Brady law, over the strenuous objections of the
    gun lobby, who then said that no criminal ever gets a gun from a gun
    store--just since we passed the Brady law in 1993, we have put a stop to
    some 400,000 illegal gun sales, without stopping one legitimate sports
    man or woman from buying a gun. And you cannot convince any reasonable
    person in law enforcement that those 400,000 stops didn't have something
    to do with the fact that we have a 25-year low in the crime rate and an
    even bigger plummet in many areas of gun-related violent crime.
        Now, in the wake of the shootings after Littleton, I asked the
    Senate to pass a commonsense measure to help prevent youth violence by
    doing more in this vein to keep guns out the hands of criminals and
    children. For one thing, we should close the loophole that lets a
    criminal turned away from a gun dealer go to a gun show or a flea market
    in a city and buy a gun without a background check. The technology is
    there now for these background checks to be done without great burden to
    people who run gun shows and flea markets. But today they can buy a gun
    there, no questions asked.
        Now, the same people who said in 1993 that no criminals buy their
    guns at gun stores, they buy them other places, say that we should not
    have background checks at the other places. I think we should. I think
    we should require that safety locks be sold with every handgun. We
    should ban the importation of large-capacity ammunition clips. We should
    say violent juveniles should not own guns when they become adults.
        It took a pivotal vote by Vice President Gore to break a tie in the Senate so that the Senate did the
    right thing in closing the gun show loophole. Unfortunately, as most of
    you probably know, 2 weeks ago, the Republicans in the House of
    Representatives, with some Democrats but not many, shot down America's
    best hope for commonsense gun control--in the face of strong public
    demand, clear public need, and again I say, out in the country, no
    partisanship.
        The House filled the proposal full of high-caliber loopholes. And
    now they say they want to watch it die. The majority even pushed
    measures to weaken current law, for example, letting criminals store
    their guns at pawnshops, even if the reason they need to store it is
    because they're taking a sabbatical in prison. [Laughter] They say if
    they come back to get the gun, there shouldn't be a background check.
    [Laughter] We've had a pawnshop background check for a good while now.
    They want to get rid of that, as if that is somehow terribly burdensome
    to people.
        Well, I think we can do better than that. But I don't know how we
    can expect you to stand up to youth violence if the Congress won't stand
    up to the gun lobby. We have got to--[applause].
        So again, I say, it's not too late. The House and the Senate will
    now appoint conferees on this bill, because they have passed two
    different bills. Those people can put the provisions the Senate passed
    into the bill, send it to the House and the Senate, pass it, and I'll
    sign it. It's important that we strengthen, not weaken, our laws that
    make it easier for criminals to get and keep guns.
        Okay, so let's go back and review the bidding here. We have a raft
    of bipartisan bills: health care for the disabled; the minimum wage;
    campaign finance reform; the Patients' Bill of Rights. We have big
    issues on which there are disagreements but where honorable compromise
    is possible: long-term reform of Social Security and Medicare; paying
    down the debt. We have a clear case where Republicans and Democrats
    should join together to mobilize private capital to give new life to our
    poorest communities; legislation to hire more teachers and to raise
    educational standards; sensible but vital steps to protect our children
    from violence.
        These are big things. These are things worthy of a great nation and
    its elected representatives. I will work day and night to achieve this
    agenda. I hope you will support it, again, without regard to party. And
    I hope you will believe that good citizenship and public service are
    worth your time and effort.
        Many times when I have come here, and many times around the country,
    I have referred to a professor I had here, who I talked about in 1991,
    who taught Western Civilization. He said our civilization was unique in
    the belief of what he called ``future preference,'' that is, the idea
    that the future can be better than the past and that every individual
    has a duty to make it so.
        Now, you obviously believe that, or you wouldn't be here. I'm about
    to give you all your medal, and we're going to take pictures. And it's a
    whole monument to years and years and years of your effort believing in
    tomorrow, right? It is. You wouldn't be here if you didn't.

    [[Page 1007]]

    And that belief has had a lot to do with your Nation's success over the
    last 220-plus years. It has driven my public life. And it was validated
    again a few days ago by the pain and the hope I saw in the faces of the
    children of Kosovo.
        The more we think about tomorrow, the more energy, determination,
    and wisdom we have for the challenges of today.
        I believe in your future. I believe America's best days lie in the
    new millennium. I ask Congress to help me make it so.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:58 a.m. in Gaston Hall at Georgetown
    University. In his remarks, he referred to Presidential scholar Danielle
    Huff, who introduced the President; and Father Leo J. O'Donovan,
    president, Georgetown University.