    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (1999, Book II)]
    [September 6, 1999]
    [Pages 1491-1495]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at Coleman Place Elementary School in Norfolk, Virginia
    September 6, 1999

        Wow! Let's give her a hand. [Applause]
    She was great. Come on, more. [Applause] I asked Le'Shia when we went up
    here, I said, ``Are you going to have a good time?'' She said, ``Yes, I
    am.'' [Laughter] I think she's got a good future in politics if she
    keeps it up.
        Well, good afternoon to all of you and happy Labor Day. I want to
    thank you for coming out today. I want to thank those who are here: my
    longtime friend and former colleague as Governor, Senator Chuck
    Robb; and Congressman Scott and Congressman Sisisky. They
    are working to pass legislation in Washington which would make what we
    do today part of a national movement so that all of our children could
    have what Le'Shia says she wants and the children here deserve. And I
    think we owe Senator Robb and these Members of Congress our support for
    their leadership for our children.
        I also want to thank our wonderful Secretary of Education, Dick
    Riley, who, as Chuck Robb said, worked with
    us nearly 20 years ago; the three of us were working together. He just
    finished a big bus tour all across the South, celebrating the start of a
    new school year and the rededication of the American people and our
    educators and our families to higher standards and better performance
    for all of our children.
        I want to thank your mayor; your
    superintendent; your board
    president; our principal here, Jeanne
    Tomlinson, who showed me around; and the
    teachers who visited with me; the great labor leaders John
    Sweeney and Bob Georgine, who are here; and the presidents of the American
    Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, Sandra
    Feldman and Bob Chase; the Norfolk Federation of Teachers president, Marian
    Flickinger; the Tidewater Central Labor
    Council president, Jerry Hufton; the Virginia
    State AFL-CIO leader, Jim Leaman; Cheri
    James of the Virginia Education Association; and
    all the State legislators who are here. Will you raise your hand, all
    the members of the legislature who are here? We've got a ton of
    legislators who are here. I wanted to do that to show you that what we
    are here about--the education of our children and the modernization of
    our schools--has broad and deep support, and I am profoundly grateful to
    all of them.

    Tropical Storm Dennis

        Before I get into my remarks--most of what needs to be said has
    probably already been said--but I want to just say a word, if I might,
    about the harm that Virginia has sustained from Tropical Storm Dennis
    and from the tornadoes that have devastated parts of your State.
        On Saturday in Hampton, which is quite near here, 150 homes were
    destroyed and 6 people were injured. As we pray for their swift
    recovery, we are also already working on those who lost their homes and
    to help them get their homes and their property back. FEMA is on the
    ground in Hampton, and I want to say a

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    special word of thanks to the State and local officials for their prompt
    and very able action, which might well have saved lives.
        I also want you to know that, as has been requested, I have declared
    a major disaster for the Commonwealth of Virginia and have ordered
    Federal aid to be made available to help the State and local recovery
    efforts.

    School Modernization

        Now, this is a remarkable day. This is Labor Day, which is really
    misnamed. Labor Day really means ``no-labor day.'' [Laughter] It's
    supposed to honor the working men and women by giving them a day off. So
    all of you had to show up here, and the leaders of American labor and
    education, the leaders of Virginia labor and education, have shown up
    here, many of them swinging hammers when they'd rather be swinging in
    hammocks.
        I want to thank the students who have made even a greater sacrifice;
    they have shown up at school a day early. [Laughter] And I see several,
    like Le'Shia, in their school uniforms, a
    policy that my family and I and our administration heartily support.
        I want to thank those of you who work here at this school and
    throughout this district. Your superintendent has already spoken eloquently. But there are tremendous
    gains which Norfolk students have made on your achievement tests,
    improving at greater than the statewide average, and I applaud you for
    that.
        I want to thank those who have helped this school achieve its
    improving excellence. I know your principal has gotten the Navy to donate computers and wire the rooms
    so that they can all be connected to the Internet, which is what we're
    trying to do for every schoolroom in America by our new millennial year,
    next year. I thank them. I thank the union electricians who are
    finishing the job today.
        And let me say I'm also very pleased that the Norfolk district has
    taken advantage of the Federal E-rate program, which was spearheaded and
    developed by Vice President Gore. It
    enables districts to purchase network equipment and other services, and
    where appropriate, to get cheaper rates to hook up to the Internet,
    because we want there to be no digital divide in our schools. The
    poorest children in America deserve to be a part of America's high-
    technology future, and we're determined to see that it will happen.
        Let me also say that I'm very pleased that Norfolk has been able to
    hire 33 new teachers this fall, thanks to funds that we won with the
    support of all three of these Members of the Congress last fall when
    Congress agreed to support my plan to hire 100,000 new highly trained
    teachers around America.
        All this shows that when we work together, when we put our children
    ahead of politics and leave politics at the schoolhouse door, we can
    make progress. President Kennedy once said that the time to fix the roof
    is when the Sun is shining. We are here, literally, fixing buildings
    today at a time when it may be a little overcast, but surely the Sun has
    been shining on America.
        We have the longest peacetime expansion in our history during these
    last 6\1/2\ years I have been privileged to serve as your President,
    19.4 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment rate in 29 years, the
    lowest welfare rolls in 32 years, the lowest crime rates in 26 years. We
    had a $290 billion deficit when I took office; it was projected to be
    $100 billion more than that this year. Instead, we have a $99 billion
    surplus with more to come, thanks again to Senator Robb, the Members of Congress who are here, and others who
    supported our program.
        I say this because now the big debate in Washington is, what are we
    going to do with our prosperity? There is a huge debate about this.
    Well, first of all, I think we ought to ask ourselves whether we've got
    any roofs in America that need to be fixed while the Sun is shining,
    before the rain comes again. I believe that we need to look at the
    great, long-term challenges of America. And I'll just mention three
    today.
        One, how do we keep this economic prosperity going and spread it to
    the people in the communities that have still not felt the positive
    effects of these recoveries? That's a big issue. Two, how do we deal
    with the challenge of the aging of America? The number of people over 65
    will double in 30 years as we baby boomers retire, and I can tell you,
    my generation--and I'm the oldest of the baby boomers--is determined
    that our retirement will not impose a huge burden on our children and
    their ability to raise our grandchildren. We don't want that to happen.
    And third, how can we meet the challenge of giving all of our children,
    from increasingly diverse backgrounds, a chance at the future that they
    deserve, beginning with a world-class education? And they, these
    children,

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    are the first generation of American children to be larger than the baby
    boom generation.
        Now, I think we ought to meet those challenges. I think we ought to
    use this moment to get America out of debt for the first time since 1835
    and guarantee long-term economic prosperity with low interest rates and
    more investment and higher incomes and more jobs for all our people. I
    believe we ought to give tax incentives to people to invest in the
    poorest neighborhoods in America, whether they're on Indian reservations
    or in the Mississippi Delta or in the inner cities. We ought to give
    people the same incentives to invest in markets here in America we give
    them today to invest overseas in developing countries.
        I just finished a tour around America called the new markets tour.
    And I want to say a special word of thanks to a man who has been in
    business here many years who flew down with us today, Ron
    Dozoretz, for his efforts to help me
    bring economic opportunity to people who haven't had it. But let me tell
    you something. All of you know this; we may have the lowest unemployment
    rate in 29 years. We may have the lowest welfare rolls in 32 years. We
    may have the longest peacetime expansion in history. But you know as
    well as I do there are still people and places that have not been part
    of our recovery.
        Now, in Washington, all of the experts worry how we can keep this
    expansion going without inflation. How can we keep creating jobs and
    raising incomes without inflation? The easiest way is to put people to
    work who don't have jobs and turn them into consumers and taxpayers.
    That means no inflation and continued economic growth, and that is what
    I am committed to.
        The second thing we ought to do is recognize that if the baby
    boomers don't want to be a burden on their children and their
    grandchildren, then we ought to take this opportunity, the best we will
    ever have in our lifetime, to fix Social Security and Medicare and add a
    prescription drug coverage to the Medicare program and strengthen it so
    it will be there for the baby boom generation.
        And the third thing we have to do if we want our children to have a
    good future is, to have enough investment in defense, in science and
    technology, in the environment, and especially in their education.
        Now, I'm not against cutting taxes, but I think we ought to take
    care of the big, long-term challenges of America. If you pay the debt
    off, interest rates will be lower, and that'll be worth more to most
    average people and most wealthy people than a tax cut. If you, on the
    other hand, return to deficits and have a big tax cut at a time when the
    economy's going, the interest rates will go up and take the tax cuts
    away and higher home mortgage rates, higher car payment rates, higher
    college long rates, higher credit card rates. But if we say, okay,
    here's what it takes to get us out of debt, to save Social Security and
    Medicare, to invest in education, and the other things for our future,
    then we can give the rest of it back to the American people in a tax cut
    that they can use for retirement, for education, for child care, for the
    things that the American people need. But let's take care of first
    things first.
        In my lifetime, the United States has never had an opportunity or an
    obligation like this to prepare for the retirement of the baby boomers,
    to prepare for the future of the largest and most diverse generation of
    children our country has ever produced, to get this country out of debt,
    and keep a generation of prosperity out there as a beacon of shining
    hope to children from all backgrounds in America. We ought to take this
    chance to deal with the long-term challenges of the 21st century for
    America.
        Now, one of the tax cuts that we can afford, that meets more than
    one objective, is the one I have proposed that would help school
    districts build, renovate, or expand 6,000 schools. I've already said
    that Senator Robb is the sponsor of the bill in the Senate to do that.
    Two representatives here, Bobby Scott and
    Norm Sisisky, and others are helping us in
    the House. We now have 222 Members of the House--that's a majority--so
    we have some Republicans along with the Democrats helping us; there's a
    bipartisan effort there. But why are we trying to do this?
        A lot of you here who are older people remember the end of World War
    II when, in this school district, so many people came home with so many
    kids, they had to put up Quonset huts for people to go to school in.
    Now, there are those who say to me, ``Mr. President''--I've had Members
    of Congress say--``it's a laudable thing you want to do, but the Federal
    Government's got no business helping local school

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    districts build schools; most States don't even do that, and it's a
    State and local responsibility.''
        Well, normally, that might be true, but just like World War II,
    these are not normal times. Harry Truman, in 1950, signed legislation to
    help school districts that needed it build the necessary facilities to
    get the kids out of Quonset huts. It happened right here where we are
    standing, and it ought to happen again because we have a bigger
    challenge now than we had in 1950.
        Your school district has already invested $45 million to expand and
    modernize schools, but as your superintendent told you today, it's still
    not enough. The window frames of this building are so old that if you
    tried to powerwash the windows, the glass would pop out. [Laughter] The
    electric service in the classrooms is so inadequate that if you plugged
    a new computer into the wall, the circuit breaker might cut off. When
    the door opens in some of these trailers, and it's raining, the kids
    sitting near the door get wet. When it's winter and the kids in the
    trailers need to go to the bathroom, they have to put on their coats and
    walk across the parking lot through the snow, or the rain and the
    freezing, to the main building.
        Now, folks, we have to fix this. You can say this is a Norfolk
    problem, but Chuck Robb told me there are 3,000 trailers in Virginia
    alone. This is a national problem. I was in a grade school in Florida
    the other day that had a dozen trailers out behind the main building.
    One little school. I have seen this everywhere. And if we can meet this
    big, long-term challenge to America, don't we have the obligation to do
    it? What is more important than the education of our children and their
    future?
        And let me say this. You can say if you want, and it would be true,
    that buildings don't make an education, that education is not a money
    problem. That's one of my laws of politics, by the way. When somebody
    tells you it's not a money problem, they are never talking about one of
    their problems. [Laughter] They are always talking about somebody else's
    problem. All these legislators are laughing at me when I say that.
    That's true. Of course, it's the magic with the teachers and the kids
    and the parents' support. But we now have evidence; there is a serious
    study which shows that children in adequate and well-furnished
    classrooms do better on achievement tests than kids from the same socio-
    economic backgrounds who go to places where the windows are broken and
    the paint is chipped and the facilities are inadequate and you can't
    hook them up to the Internet. So I say, let's give all of our kids a
    chance to maximize their God-given potential.
        Now, here's the problem that we're about to confront in Congress
    when the Congress comes back. They passed a tax cut that's too big to do
    this. And in order to fund their tax cut, they have to do one of two
    things, both of which they said they won't do. They either have to get
    into the surplus produced by your Social Security taxes, which they
    promised to save to pay the debt down, or they have to cut what we're
    already spending on education, on the environment, on health care, on
    technology and research. That's what the problem is.
        So that's why they haven't sent me an education bill. I guess if I
    had that choice, I wouldn't send one to the President either. [Laughter]
    They don't want to cut education when they said they wouldn't. They
    don't want to eat up the Social Security surplus when they said they
    wouldn't. And they can't figure out what to do. But I'll tell you this,
    if their tax cut passes and they respect the Social Security surplus,
    here's what would happen.
        Today, we're helping 12 million kids in poor communities to make
    more of their education. If their plan passes, 6 million of them
    wouldn't get help anymore. Today, we help a million kids to learn to
    read by the third grade. If their plan passes, half of them wouldn't get
    help anymore. Today, we're almost at our goal of a million kids in Head
    Start. There were some Head Start teachers out there when I was driving
    in today; if their plan passes, over 400,000 of them would lose their
    support. It means larger classes, fewer students, more trailers, and
    more leaky roofs.
        Now, I don't believe the American people want that. We can have a
    tax cut, but we've got to do first things first. Let's look after the
    long-term needs of the country, fix the economy long term, deal with
    Social Security and Medicare, deal with education, figure out what's
    left, and then give it back to the people in a tax cut. Let's deal with
    our responsibilities to our children and our future first. I have put
    forward a plan that does that.
        Back in 1950, when he sent his school construction program to
    Congress, President Truman said this--49 years ago; it sounds pretty
    good still today: ``The Nation cannot afford to

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    waste human potentialities, as we are now, by failing to provide
    adequate elementary and secondary education for millions of children.''
    Equal opportunity in education is America's ticket to the future. It is
    a bedrock value in this country. It is indispensable to the 21st century
    for individuals and for our Nation alike. Fifty years ago it was Quonset
    huts; today, it's trailers and broken buildings.
        Ladies and gentlemen, I thank all of you who worked to fix this
    building. I ask you to leave here on this Labor Day committed to fix all
    the buildings. I thank you for the applause you gave Le'Shia, and I thank all of her fellow students and their
    families for being here. I ask you to leave here thinking about all the
    little boys and girls like them all across America. I have been back and
    forth across this country, and I have seen the conditions that exist
    here today everywhere, in the largest cities and the smallest towns.
    There is nothing more important.
        Here in Norfolk we honor our military, which has made such a major
    contribution to this community. I want to thank the Navy Band for being
    here today, by the way. Thank you very much.
        There are those who believe that--and I saw some of their signs
    outside--that we don't need a strong military today because the cold war
    is over. I can tell you that's not true either. We still have
    significant challenges to your security. But I also want you to
    understand something I know you know, which is, maybe more than anything
    else, the future security of the United States of America will rest upon
    our ability to give every single child in this country the ability to do
    well in a global economy, in a global society, to live up to his or her
    dreams. That's what we're here on this Labor Day to support.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:28 p.m. on the playground. In his
    remarks, he referred to student Le'Shia Jamison, who introduced the
    President; Mayor Paul D. Fraim of Norfolk; John O. Simpson,
    superintendent, Norfolk Public School District; Anita O. Poston,
    chairman, Norfolk Public School Board; John J. Sweeney, president, AFL-
    CIO; Robert A. Georgine, president, Building and Construction Trades
    Department, AFL-CIO; James R. Leaman, secretary-treasurer, Virginia
    State AFL-CIO; Cheri James, president, Virginia Education Association;
    and Ronald I. Dozoretz, founder, FHC Health Systems.