    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [January 20, 1999]
    [Pages 78-82]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Montgomery County Community in Norristown, Pennsylvania
    January 20, 1999

        Thank you very much. First, let me say to all of you that when we
    came in here tonight, I think it's fair to say that Hillary and Al and
    Tipper and I were literally overwhelmed by this reception. And I knew
    that this was a wonderful community; I knew this was a wonderful school.
    I knew there was a lot of enthusiasm, but it didn't all quite add up
    until I realized that we had caused your exams to be delayed. And I want
    you to know that we're having such a good time, we'd be delighted to
    come back about this time next term if you want. We can make this a
    regular thing. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Dr. Williams for his
    magnificent invocation. I thank Dr. Woodall for the remarks he made, for making us welcome here, and
    for the example that he and Mr. Spencer,
    the principal here, all the teachers here, and all the students and
    teachers from this school and the other schools here represented. I
    thank you for what you're doing and for the example you're setting for
    America.
        I'd like to thank all of our musicians and the choir for playing and
    singing for us. I thought they were great. And I want to thank
    Melissa for speaking so well. Weren't you
    proud of her? Did she do a great job, or what? [Applause] I'm glad I
    never had to run against her for anything. [Laughter]
        I also want to thank all these wonderful people from Pennsylvania
    who have come here, all the officials and citizens from this area and
    from Philadelphia and nearby areas. Let me say, there was a lot of talk
    tonight keying off Reverend Williams'
    invocation about vision.
        I'd like to say something else, if I might, out of respect to
    others. It is a good thing to have a vision, because otherwise you never
    know where you're going. So you have to have one. I ran for President,
    beginning in 1991, because I thought our country was drifting and
    because I believed that if you look at these young people here--one
    elementary school in this area has kids from 50 countries speaking 13
    languages--and if you look at all these young people and their parents
    and everybody in this room, and you imagine what the world is going to
    be like, and you know it's going to get smaller and smaller, and we're
    going to have more and more relationships, and the borders will become
    more and more open, it's hard to imagine any country in the world that
    is remotely as well positioned as America to give people the chance to
    make the most of their own lives.

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        But we had to have a vision. My vision for the 21st century was
    pretty simple. I wanted us to have a country for the children of the
    Gores and the Clintons and all the other kids in our country where every
    person who was a responsible citizen would have a genuine opportunity to
    live out their dreams. I wanted us to have a country where over all the
    differences between us--we would relish those differences, our racial,
    our religious, our cultural differences; our serious differences we
    would debate seriously. But we would honor our common humanity and our
    shared values as Americans enough to say, what unites us is so much more
    important than what divides us; we will build one America in the 21st
    century.
        And I wanted us to continue to be the country, as we grew more
    diverse and, therefore, had deeper and deeper ties with more and more
    other people around the world. I wanted America to recognize that
    because of our wealth and position, we have not only the opportunity but
    a responsibility to continue to be the world's leading force for peace
    and freedom and prosperity for others. It is good for ourselves to do
    the right thing in trying to build the rest of the world and build
    closer ties.
        Now, it is a good thing to have a vision; you can't get started
    without it. Otherwise you don't know where you're going. The Vice
    President talked about Tommy Lasorda and Mike Piazza. My favorite
    baseball player of all time, because he was such a wonderful speaker,
    was Yogi Berra. You know, Yogi Berra said, ``We don't know where we're
    going, but we're making good time.'' [Laughter] So you have to have a
    vision. But you have to have something else, too. You have to have
    people who are willing to act on it.
        I hope you could see with the four of us up here, we like being
    together. We've worked closely together. We see ourselves as a family,
    and we see our allies as a family. When I came to Washington, I wanted
    to do something about homelessness, but Tipper Gore helped me do it. I wanted to raise the consciousness
    of America about all kinds of things that we sort of kept hidden under
    the rug but were hurting people. Mental health was one of the most
    important. Tipper Gore helped me do it.
        I wanted to prove that we could have a smaller Government--we now
    have the smallest Federal Government since 1962--but I wanted to do it
    in a way that wouldn't just throw good Federal employees in the street
    and that would enable us to do more. The Vice President made it possible for us to do that; he led that effort.
        I wanted to prove that we could grow the economy and improve the
    environment by doing things like building new cars that would triple gas
    mileage. The Vice President has led our
    efforts there, and in dealing with all the promise of new technology in
    trying to hook up all our schools and libraries to the Internet, and in
    managing a big portion of our relations with Russia, South Africa, and
    other countries. I can say without qualification that no Vice President
    in history has had so much responsibility or done so much good. So the
    vision requires an action.
        And if it hadn't been for Hillary, for all the good intentions in the world, we wouldn't
    have done nearly as much to advance the cause of health care or child
    care or education or to observe the millennium. We wouldn't have been
    able to do it.
        When I see Joe Hoeffel standing up
    here talking--and I know he's going to be a strong force on the
    committees that he's gotten; I see another new Congressman out there, my
    longtime friend Bob Brady from Philadelphia.
    I know that they will be implementers of a vision. Or Chaka
    Fattah, who got you all worked up, up there,
    when he stood up; do you know what he did? He passed a bill in the
    Congress last year that I was for, but I could not have passed it. I'll
    tell you the truth: I could not have done it. But he went around to
    Republicans and Democrats alike and said, ``You know, I come from
    Philadelphia. There are a lot of poor kids there that have never had a
    real chance. They come from poor families. They live in tough
    neighborhoods, but they've got good minds. Will you help me pass a bill
    that will provide the necessary financial support for college students
    to come in and mentor these kids in middle schools so they'll go on to
    college?'' And we did it because of that.
        Now, I'll give you one other example. Last time I came here as
    President was in 1993, to a conference on entitlement reform.
    Entitlement reform is a fancy way of saying with everybody living longer
    and the baby boomers about to retire, all the rest of you aren't going
    to be able to afford to pay our medical and retirement bills unless we
    do something. That's what entitlement reform means.

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        And I knew the first thing we had to do was to get the economy
    going. And I said, ``You know, I've got this economic plan, and it's not
    going to be very popular with a lot of people because it has a lot of
    tough decisions. We're asking people who are the wealthiest people in
    America to pay a little more in income taxes, sometimes a lot more if
    they were really well off. We're asking people who are used to getting
    Government programs to do without a few hundred of them until we get
    this budget in balance. But if we do it, we'll lower interest rates,
    cutting home mortgages and the interest rates on car payments and credit
    cards, and we'll get investment back in the country. We'll have jobs
    coming back in the country. And the money you will save on the stock
    market going up and the interest rates going down will be far greater
    than the money those of us who are well off had to pay in a little more
    taxes.'' It was very controversial, and people said, ``Oh, it will bring
    an end to the economy. It will end the American economy as we know it.
    It will drive us into recession.''
        Well, you heard what the Vice President said about the country with
    the longest peacetime expansion in history, the lowest peacetime
    unemployment since 1957, and all of that. What you should know is that
    this county, this county has had, since that economic program passed and
    the interest rates started going down, 1,800 new businesses and 44,000
    new jobs, the highest growth in the State of Pennsylvania.
        The decisive vote that made all that possible was cast in Congress
    by Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky. We won by one vote in the House, and it was tied in
    the Senate. The decisive vote in the Senate was cast by Al Gore. And as he says, since he gets to vote whenever
    there's a tie, whenever he votes, we win. [Laughter]
        Now, the point I'm trying to make is we had a good vision, but
    somebody has got to carry the water; somebody has to make the decisions;
    somebody has to push the rocks up the hill; somebody has to take that
    step and jump off the diving board; someone has to move. People have to
    act on their vision. That's why I said last night and that's why that
    sign says, ``Let's get to work.'' We have a good vision, but we must
    act.
        And for all of you, I thank you. I wanted to come here to this
    school because this school district represents what I think America
    ought to do. I know not every school district has the resources. So if
    we want everybody to end social promotion but have summer school and
    after-school programs, we have to provide the funds from Washington to
    help the school districts do it. If we want to turn around schools that
    aren't working, we have to provide help from Washington. And we're doing
    that.
        But I want people to see this school district all over America, on
    the news tonight, in the articles tomorrow. I want people to know we
    came here to a place that has done important things, to give kids who
    need it extra help, to have high standards, to do things that will
    create a vision that people will want to act on. I think to have a motto
    like ``learn and live to serve'' is a stunning thing, and I hope you
    will live by it all your lives.
        Most of you here know this, but for the benefit of the press, I want
    to say this: Every high school graduate in this school district gets a
    license, a driver's license-sized copy of the diploma, and on the back
    it has the computer skills the graduate has mastered. That's a driver's
    license to the future. I would like to see that modeled in other places
    all across America, as well.
        So you've already heard what we have to say, but it's plain that
    America is working again. But every one of you knows--if we had time to
    do it, I'd give everybody a piece of paper, and I'd ask you to write
    down--you might do this when you go home tonight. I'd ask you to write
    down somewhere between three and six things--no more than six--that you
    believe are the long-term challenges that will face you young people in
    the 21st century and what is it that we could do now that would pave the
    way to a better future for you.
        I can tell you that I did my best in the State of the Union last
    night to say, ``Okay, we've got America working again, but what are the
    long-term challenges?'' And you've heard them talked about tonight, and
    I won't belabor them. But let me say, we have to build strong
    communities in the 21st century that gives everyone a chance at
    opportunity. That means we have to do more to have the kind of economic
    opportunity in places where unemployment is high and people make low
    wages that you have here. That means putting more money in there. It
    means teaching adults better skills. It means teaching those who are
    first-generation Americans to read better, if that is what it takes. It
    means doing whatever is necessary to get

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    these economies going. It means continuing to drive the crime rate down.
    It means making all communities livable communities, to set aside the
    land that we need to set aside, to have the green space, to manage the
    traffic, to do the things that will make people free and happy if they
    live anywhere in America.
        These are the kinds of things we have to do. It means reconciling
    work and family. One of the best things that the
    Gores have done is, for the last 7 years,
    they have had a conference in Tennessee every year on the challenges
    modern families face. And most all of them relate somehow or other to
    the need to balance work and family, a challenge that faces Americans in
    all income groups. I'll bet there is not a family here that has not at
    some point in the last couple of years faced some sort of challenge of
    balancing your responsibilities to your children to your
    responsibilities to your work.
        That's why we want a child care plan that includes help for stay-at-
    home parents when the children are very young, but real help for working
    people that can't afford quality child care on their own. Because in
    America, when I look at all of you, I want you to be free and confident,
    when you start your families, that you can do what you want in your work
    life, but you know that your first responsibility is to raise your
    children, and you're going to be able to succeed at that responsibility.
        The Vice President told you that rather gripping story about the
    HMO's. The truth is we have to manage the health care system; it's like
    any other system. We have to keep the costs as low as possible. But the
    quality of our people's health counts most. That's why we say you ought
    to be able to see a specialist if you need one. You ought to be able to
    go to the nearest emergency room. You ought to be able to have your
    medical records private and all of the other things in our Patients'
    Bill of Rights, because we've got to balance the need to save money with
    the fundamental necessity of providing quality health care to all
    Americans.
        And I'd just like to say one other thing. We've said a lot about
    education tonight, but I would like to say something about the very
    first subject I talked about last night in the State of the Union, and
    that is the aging of America. And again I want to say, this is an issue
    that should be of primary importance not to today's retirees but to
    tomorrow's retirees, their children, and their grandchildren yet unborn.
    Because when the baby boomers retire--and that includes the parents of
    just about all of the students here; people between the ages of 34 and
    52 were the people born in the generation after World War II, the
    largest group of people in history in America, young people, until the
    present class of students which numbers over 53 million. Now, when we
    retire, we're going to double the number of seniors by the year 2030.
    There will be two people working for every one person drawing Social
    Security. And what we've got--and the average life expectancy is already
    76 years old plus; for the young people here, it's probably about 83
    years. This is a high-class problem. The older you get, the more you'll
    be glad that that's going up. [Laughter] This is a high-class problem.
    But we do not want to get into a position where our retirement is a
    financial burden to our children and undermines our children's ability
    to raise our grandchildren.
        So when I tell you that we ought to set aside roughly 75 percent of
    this surplus we've got for the next 15 years to save Social Security and
    to save Medicare, and in the process, since we'll be saving the money,
    we'll be paying down the national debt, giving us the lowest level of
    debt we've had as a nation since before World War I in 1917, keeping
    interest rates down, investment high, jobs creation going, and incomes
    rising--I say that not just for those of us who will be older but for
    our kids and our grandkids. And I hope you will see it that way.
        This is a big test for us. We haven't had this kind of situation in
    a long, long time. And very rarely do societies have the luxury of being
    financially strong enough, militarily secure enough, and having enough
    information about the future to make the kind of decisions that I asked
    the American people to make last night. Yes, we ought to give some tax
    cuts, but they ought to be the right kind. They ought to be for child
    care. They ought to be for helping us to deal with our environmental
    challenges. They ought to be for people saving for their own retirement,
    because Social Security will never be enough for that. They ought to be
    for raising children.
        But we can save this money now and lift a burden from the young
    people here. I want every parent here to look at the young people here
    and ask yourselves: Do you really want to run the risk of squandering
    this surplus that

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    we have worked so hard for until we know for sure that our retirement
    will not compromise the integrity of their lives and their ability to
    raise their children as we have tried to raise them?
        Now, the young people here are going to have a fascinating time. The
    Internet is already growing by, you know, millions and millions of new
    pages every week. It's the fastest growing communication mechanism in
    human history. People are able to move around as never before, and even
    if you can't leave town now, you've got people from all over the world
    right next door.
        We are learning things that we have never imagined before. We are on
    the verge of not only unlocking the mysteries of the human gene but
    actually finding medical treatments to cure or even prevent things from
    Alzheimer's to arthritis to all kinds of cancers. This is a stunning
    time.
        I went to the auto show in Detroit the other day, and one thing I'm
    looking forward to--I love this job, and I'm not looking forward to 2
    years from now being barred from being President by the Constitution's
    two-term limit. But one thing I am looking forward to, now that I've
    been to the Detroit auto show, is getting back in those cars, because
    the cars of the future are going to be environmentally sound and
    hilariously fun to drive and safer.
        This is going to be an interesting time for you to live in. But we
    have to do our best in this time to, first of all, make it safe, dealing
    with the challenges of nuclear and chemical and biological weapons, to
    give you the strongest communities possible, to build one America across
    our lines of diversity, and to think about the future.
        When I ran for President in 1992, before I ever made the decision to
    run, a young man who is now not quite so young, he's a graduate student,
    named Sean Landris was driving me around Los
    Angeles. I was an anonymous, virtually anonymous Governor of Arkansas.
    But Sean Landris knew something about me and the speeches I had made and
    the things I was interested in, and he said, ``Are you going to run for
    President?'' And I said, ``Well, I haven't decided yet, but I might.''
    He said, ``Well, if you do, here's what I think your theme song ought to
    be.'' And he had a little tape deck in his car, and he put this tape
    deck in and this old Fleetwood Mac song, ``Don't Stop Thinking About
    Tomorrow,'' which was made before he was born. So we made it our theme
    song.
        And I believe that those of us in positions of responsibility have
    no higher responsibility than to think about your tomorrows. And when
    you reach our age, you will want more and more to think about the
    tomorrows of your children and your grandchildren.
        What I tried to say last night is, there's never been a time when we
    had brighter tomorrows. All we have to do is act on our vision. Let's
    get to work.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 7:30 p.m. in the gymnasium at Norristown
    Area High School. In his remarks, he referred to Rev. Charles D.
    Williams, pastor, Mt. Zion AME Church, who gave the invocation; Michael
    V. Woodall, superintendent, Norristown Area School District; Barry E.
    Spencer, principal, and Melissa Ghoston, student council president,
    Norristown Area High School; Tommy Lasorda and Yogi Berra, members of
    the Baseball Hall of Fame; and Mike Piazza, catcher, New York Mets. The
    transcript released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included
    the remarks of Vice President Al Gore.