    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [February 14, 2000]
    [Pages 239-245]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Receiving the League of United Latin American Citizens
    Lifetime Achievement Award
    February 14, 2000

        Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Well, thank you,
    President Rick Dovalina. Elvia
    Morales, thank you very much for reminding us
    of why we're all here working every day. She did a fine job, didn't she?
    I was very proud of her. Thank you.
        I thank the students from Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School
    for Public Policy for joining us, and their teachers and
    principal. Thank you all again for being
    here, and good luck to you.
        I'd like to thank Senator Chuck Robb
    from Virginia and Congressman Silvestre Reyes from Texas for joining us today. Thank you very
    much, gentlemen. I want to thank our Secretary of Energy, and my dear
    friend, Bill Richardson, for the wonderful
    statement that he made in opening this meeting today.
        I thank all the people of our administration who are here, but I
    would like to especially acknowledge my Deputy Chief of Staff, Maria
    Echaveste; my Assistant to the President who
    deals with all the Governors, mayors, and half

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    the headaches in America, Mickey Ibarra;
    Administrator of the Small Business Administration Aida
    Alvarez, whom you've acknowledged already; Army
    Secretary Louis Caldera, who's here; the
    President of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, George
    Munoz; the Chairwoman of the EEOC, Ida
    Castro; and the Director of the Selective
    Service Commission, Gil Coronado. And there are
    other present and past members of the administration here. I thank you
    all.

    Tornado Damage in Georgia

        I have, before I begin--and I know you'll all forgive me, because
    they, too, are part of our American family--I have to say that I am very
    saddened by the terrible loss of life and the other damage which
    occurred as a result of the tornadoes which swept Georgia early this
    morning. And we're working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
    which is already there and providing me with regular updates on the
    situation.
        I know that all Americans join me. Let me say, my home State very
    often had the largest amount of tornado damage in the country in any
    given year, and the loss of life in Georgia this morning is unusual and
    terrible. And I ask for your prayers for those people today.

    LULAC Lifetime Achievement Award

        Let me also say, I am deeply touched by this beautiful award. I have
    always said that the President's job was reward enough, and no one
    should give the President an award. And you always have to check your
    pulse to make sure you're still living, when you get an award, if you're
    in my business. [Laughter]
        But having said that, I accept it, and I am delighted to have it,
    because this has been a lifetime passion of mine. Bill Richardson talked
    about the people I met in Texas 28 years ago. I was born in a little
    town in southwest Arkansas which now has one of the Federal migrant
    centers there, because it's on the way that people come up from Mexico
    through south Texas and then go all the way up the Mississippi River in
    their migrant work, all the way to the cherry crop in Michigan.
        When I went to Texas 28 years ago, in addition to meeting impressive
    people, I always begged to be permitted in my work to go to San Antonio
    and to the Rio Grande Valley. And I just went back to the Rio Grande
    Valley last week. When I went there as President, I found that I was the
    first elected President to go to the valley since Dwight Eisenhower 40
    years before. I have been there three times because--partly to help the
    people there who are doing so well--it's now the third fastest growing
    area in America, population wise, and they're lifting themselves up; and
    partly because I want the rest of America to know about their
    contributions and, generally, the important role that Latinos are going
    to play in 21st century America.
        I also want to say that more than any other person in America, the
    President accomplishes nothing on his own and would be nothing without
    all the people who help. So this award really belongs to all the people
    in this administration, especially my Hispanic appointees whom I've
    mentioned and two who once were here who aren't anymore, Federico
    Pena and Henry Cisneros. I thank them for what they did. And I'd like to say a
    special word of appreciation also to the Vice President, who has done so
    much, through the empowerment zone program and in so many other ways, to
    lift the lives of our Hispanic-Americans. And I thank him for that.
        I would like to thank all the LULAC members who are here and all the
    members of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda who are here--and for
    all you are doing to try to help forge unity among the great diversity
    within Hispanic America, something many Americans don't know enough
    about. For all the differences of ethnicity, national origin--and
    occasionally even a difference of opinion--Hispanics in this Nation are
    united by common values of faith, family, hard work, by a common vision
    of a unified future.
        When I became President 7 years ago, America was already a very
    diverse country, not nearly so much as it is today. It was clear to me
    then that we had to go beyond the kind of divide-and-conquer politics
    which had dominated our country for many years; that if we could make a
    virtue of our diversity--if we could not only tolerate one another but
    celebrate and honor one another--it would be America's meal ticket to
    the globalized information society of the 21st century.
        And so we have worked for 7 years, as your president said, for a
    society in which there is opportunity for all and responsibility from
    all and a community of all Americans. And it is

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    working. We have the strongest economy we have ever had, with the lowest
    Hispanic unemployment rate in history, as you pointed out, a 20-year low
    in poverty, over 2 million fewer children in poverty, the lowest welfare
    rates in 30 years, the lowest crime rates in 30 years. We are moving
    forward.
        But what I would like to say to all of you is that in my judgment--
    and I say that as a person who is no longer running for any office but a
    person who looks on these children as America's children--we have only
    scratched the surface of our potential as a nation. And we have only
    scratched the surface of the potential of our young people. And we have
    only scratched the surface of what we can do because of our increasing
    diversity.
        Therefore, it is more important even than it was 7 years ago when I
    took office in a time of stagnant economy and social difficulty and
    political gridlock. It is more important now--now that we know we can do
    better, now that we know we're moving forward--that we understand
    clearly we have only scratched the surface and that we resolve to say we
    have only begun to meet the big challenges and seize the big
    opportunities that are out there for our country and especially for this
    generation of young Americans in the new millennium.
        I would like to mention some of them but begin by saying we have a
    special opportunity in this year, as we do every 10 years--but since we
    just changed centuries, it's particularly momentous to begin by getting
    an accurate picture of precisely who we are as a nation and what we are
    becoming. That's why I want to say a few words about the vital
    importance of the census in 2000. It begins next month.
        In the 1990 census, 8 million children were uncounted--8 million
    people were uncounted, and over a quarter of them were children. Parents
    with limited English often failed to include their children on the
    forms, or left them out for fear that landlords or housing officials
    might learn their families had grown, not realizing the information on
    census forms is totally confidential.
        Now, if we believe everybody in our American community counts, we've
    got to make sure everyone is counted in this year's census. It's
    important for the Federal investments that are made in States and
    communities--yes, that's one reason it's important. It's important for
    the drawing of congressional district lines and the allocation of
    representation in Congress. But it is also important because it gives us
    a picture of where America is. And we compare it with where we were 10
    years ago; we can see where we're going.
        I must say, as a public official, I found the 1980 and the 1990
    census documents extremely important in showing, among other things, the
    profound impact of education on income for younger workers. If you
    compare the 1990 census with the 1980 census, it shows you more
    grippingly than any other study can how important it is for us to get
    our young people not only out of college but in 1990 through--out of
    high school but through at least 2 years of college if we expected them
    to get jobs with growing incomes.
        And what this 2000 census will show is how important it is not only
    to make 2 years of college but 4 years of college available to all the
    young people in America. These are the kinds of things you learn in the
    census, because behind all those numbers there are real lives and real
    life stories. And when you put them all together, you see the patterns
    emerge. This is a profoundly important issue. If we want to make good
    decisions about where we're going, we first have to know exactly who we
    are.
        Now, we have, to try to do better in this census, launched a program
    called ``Census in the Schools'' that will provide classroom teachers
    with lesson plans and other materials to encourage children to tell
    their parents to fill out the forms, to include information on the whole
    family, and to make it clear that no one outside the Census Bureau, not
    even other Government agencies, can ever see the information included on
    the census forms. If every American knew just those things, I believe
    more Americans would be counted.
        Today I am glad to announce that over one million classrooms already
    have committed to using this ``Census in the Schools'' material. More
    orders are coming in every day. I'm also pleased to announce the Census
    Bureau today is launching three new public service announcements to get
    that message out, again, that all the census information is strictly
    confidential. The announcements feature three of my favorite baseball
    players, Barry Bonds, Derek Jeter, and Ivan Rodriguez. Thank you
    for doing that.
        I also want to congratulate Dr. Ken Prewitt, the Census Bureau Director, and his staff for their
    hard work and to say a special word of

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    thanks to the Census Monitoring Board members I appointed, including
    Cruz Bustamante and Gil Casellas. Thank you very much for what you have done. Thank you,
    Gil.
        Now, let me just say briefly a few words about the other things we
    have to do if we want to do more than scratch the surface of our
    potential. I just presented my budget to the Congress last week. The
    budget contains a lot of new investments, some of which were mentioned.
    It also, however, continues to pay our debt down. And there's a lot of
    controversy about that. Some people are saying, ``Well, isn't it enough
    that you got rid of the deficit? Why are you paying the debt down?''
        So I want you to know why I hope that all of you will support not
    only investing more money in education and in health care and in the
    environment and in new jobs but also paying the debt down. Because if we
    pay the debt down, every working family in this country with a home
    mortgage, a car payment, a college loan payment will have lower interest
    rates. Every struggling small business in America will be able to borrow
    money at lower cost to expand. And these children, when they become
    adults, will be able to finance whatever they have to finance at a lower
    cost than would otherwise be the case if we get the Government out of
    the business of borrowing so there is more there for the private sector
    and for individual citizens. Just think of it: We could be out of debt
    for the first time since 1835.
        There's something else I want to say. Even though the primary
    beneficiaries of this endeavor are the young, it is also important that
    we do this in a way that takes the benefits of debt reduction and
    secures Social Security and Medicare for the time when the baby boomers
    retire, so that we will not impose unbearable burdens on our children
    and our grandchildren.
        When we all retire, those of us in the baby boom generation, the
    people born between 1946 and 1964, there will only be about two people
    working for every one person drawing Social Security. It is, therefore,
    imperative that we begin now--not later, now--to prepare for that day.
    And because we are fortunate enough to have a strong economy, we can
    know, if we do the right things today, that these children will not have
    to worry about raising their children because they can't afford to do
    that and take care of their parents. So that's another very important
    thing we have to do.
        We have the opportunity to meet the challenge of the aging of
    America. And the older I get, the more I see that as a very high-class
    problem. [Laughter] That is a good problem. But it can only be good if
    our children have greater opportunities than we do, not fewer.
        A couple of other things I would like to mention that I think are
    very important--you were kind enough to say that in 1993 the Congress,
    by the narrowest of margins, passed a big deficit reduction package that
    also gave tax relief to 15 million working people--and a lot of them
    were Latinos--through what is called the earned-income tax credit. It is
    a good program because it basically gives money back, off taxes, to
    lower income working people, particularly with children.
        I have proposed another big expansion of that, which would help a
    lot of Hispanic families. It would give more money to families where
    both the mother and the father are working. It would give lots more
    money to families that have more than two children. You've talked about
    coming from a large family. I think this is very important. The way that
    program works now, it virtually punishes working families that have more
    than two children at home. I think we ought to keep such families
    together and reward them and help the parents to succeed. So I hope you
    will help me to expand that.
        I hope you will help me to get another increase in the minimum wage.
    And I hope that you'll help me with these education programs. My budget
    would give us enough funds to give after-school and summer school
    programs to children in every school that's underperforming in the
    entire country. That's a huge, huge advantage.
        Of all the ethnic groups in America, the percentage with the
    highest--the group with the highest percentage of people without health
    insurance are Hispanic-Americans. Over 40 million Americans still have
    no health insurance--more than there were in 1993 when I took office--in
    1994 when I tried to find a way to provide coverage to everyone.
        We passed a couple of years ago the Children's Health Insurance
    Program, which gave States the ability to insure children who came from
    families who were not poor enough for Medicaid but not well enough off
    to afford private health insurance. We now have 2 million

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    children in that program. We'll soon have somewhere between 4 million
    and 5 million, as we get them all enrolled.
        The Vice President has made a
    suggestion that I embraced in the State of the Union to allow all their
    parents to be enrolled, as well. If we did that, we could insure about
    25 percent of all the uninsured people in America. And keep in mind,
    we're talking about working people here. We're talking about people that
    get up every day, for very modest earnings, and they pay their taxes.
    They obey the law. They raise their kids and do the best they can, and
    they cannot afford health insurance. And with one simple action, we
    could insure 25 percent of the people in America who don't have health
    insurance. So I hope you will support that.
        And then our Hispanic Education Action Plan was mentioned earlier.
    This budget has over $800 million more for that, to try to get tutoring
    and after-school and mentoring programs specifically targeted at Latino
    children to help them meet higher standards, to help them finish high
    school, to help them go to college.
        Now, why is that important? Well, you heard Elvia's story. And if I could have anything come out of this
    ceremony today, by the way, it would be her story, not my speech. Why?
    Because think of all the obstacles she had to overcome--back and forth
    to Mexico, this in Spanish, this in English. You know, you hear a lot of
    people preach about what our children should learn and how everybody
    ought to learn in English, and I believe that and all that. But they
    don't think about the practical problems.
        Remember the story this young woman told of her life. She has had a heroic journey, to have a degree
    from a 4-year institution that's a fine institution of higher education.
    And she did that. Doubtless, she had a lot of support along the way, as
    she said. But it was still--I mean, it took my breath away to think
    she's telling the story of her life. She's got one more hurdle she has
    to leap over.
        And I'd far rather people remember her
    life story than anything I say today--first, because it should inspire
    these children and people like them all across America; and second,
    because it would remind people, in the Congress and in other places
    where we have responsibility, that it's all very well to tell our young
    people they should be responsible citizens, but when they're doing the
    best they can, the rest of us need to pitch in and help them. And we
    need to give them more support.
        I will say again, this is the most sobering thing--I am glad we
    continue to be a nation of immigrants. The largest group of immigrants
    still coming to America are people whose first language is Spanish,
    although they are increasingly a diverse lot, as all of you know.
    Because so many of our children in our schools are first-generation
    immigrants, we have the continuing frustrating problem that the dropout
    rate in high schools is far, far higher among our Hispanic children than
    among any other group.
        Last year we reached a milestone: For the first time ever, high
    school graduation rates of African-Americans was more or less equal to
    the high school graduation rate of the white majority. That's a great
    step forward. We should be proud of that. But the dropout rate among
    Hispanic children is still high. Why? A lot of them are still quitting
    to go to work to support their families. An enormous number of others
    still have serious language problems.
        One of the most important things we've tried to do in the last few
    years is to make sure all of our kids who are in our schools can read
    independently by the end of the third grade. We have 1,000 colleges
    sending tutors into the schools now. I noticed Jim Barksdale, a Silicon Valley executive, the founder of Netscape, put
    over $100 million into a foundation at the University of Mississippi the
    other day to do nothing but teach people to make sure they could teach
    our young people to read--because when children get to junior high
    school or middle school, as it's commonly called now, and they can't
    keep up, a lot of people drop out because they're bored stiff because
    they're not fluent in the language enough to keep learning the material.
        So I say to you, remember Elvia's story.
    It shouldn't be that hard. She was great, but it shouldn't be that hard.
    We've got to do more to keep all our children in school, get them out of
    high school, get them on to college. That's what this Hispanic education
    effort is all about.
        And the last point I want to make is, while we've seen a big drop in
    welfare rolls and a significant but not nearly large enough drop in
    child poverty, we have to recognize that there are still lots of people
    in places this economic recovery has left behind. That's why I want to
    expand the number of empowerment zones and enterprise communities and
    give people more

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    incentives to invest in them. That's why I'm trying to pass this big new
    markets initiative, to give Americans the same incentives to invest in
    poor areas in America they get to invest in poor areas in Latin America,
    Africa, and Asia. I want people to invest overseas, but we ought to give
    them the same incentives to invest in underdeveloped areas right here in
    the United States and give our people an opportunity, too.
        So these are some of the things that I hope we will do. I hope the
    Congress will also agree to invest more funds in the education of
    immigrants to teach them English, to teach them civics, to support them.
        And finally, let me say, I want to thank those of you who are from
    Puerto Rico who came up to me today and talked to me about that. I have,
    ever since I ran for President, been committed to allowing the voteless
    citizens of Puerto Rico the right to choose for themselves the ultimate
    status of the island. And again, I have included resources in my budget
    for them to do that, and I ask Congress to look at this and to stop
    walking away from this. We cannot--we cannot--continue to pretend that
    there is any other ultimate resolution to this and to the difficulties
    that continue to arise, other than letting the people of Puerto Rico
    decide for themselves.
        And I have also done what I could to empower the residents of
    Vieques to decide for themselves whether the Navy training there should
    end in 2003. We ought to be a good neighbor, and they ought to be able
    to decide. And we ought to be able to work around whatever decision they
    make.
        Now, let me just mention one other big issue to me. Bill Richardson
    and Rick Dovalina were kind enough to refer to all the Hispanic-
    Americans who have served in this administration. And I'm proud of that.
    A big part of them, who cannot be here today because they are otherwise
    occupied, are those whom I have appointed to Federal judgeships. And
    unlike me, they are not term-limited. They get to stay a long time.
    Almost half my total appointees are women or minorities. And yet, these
    appointments have garnered the highest percentages of top ratings from
    the ABA, the bar association, in 40 years.
        Now, one of my frustrations as President right now is that I'm
    having a hard time getting all these candidates processed and voted on
    by the Senate. There are three first-rate Hispanic judicial nominees that the Senate has not voted on yet, and I want to call
    their names, because I want you to know who they are: Judge Julio
    Fuentes, for the third circuit, a distinguished civil litigator from
    Texas; Enrique Moreno, a graduate of Harvard and Harvard Law School,
    well qualified by the American Bar Association, has still not been given
    a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee--better qualified
    academically than many, many judges who have been appointed by all
    previous Presidents of both parties; and Judge Richard Paez, for the
    ninth circuit, he is a sitting Federal judge. He has finally been
    promised a vote in March. But he has been waiting--listen to this--for 4
    years for the Senate to vote on him. I nominated him 4 years ago.
        Now, why is that? Because some people don't want these folks on the
    court, but they don't want you to know they don't want them on the
    court, because then you may not want them in the Senate. [Laughter] Now,
    this is not rocket science; this is what's going on. So if you don't
    want somebody on the court, but you don't want the folks back home to
    know you don't want them on the court, you just arrange for there never
    to be a vote.
        It's not right. That they think that they're too progressive, they
    ought to stand up and vote them down. But they ought to--it's time to
    stop patronizing people or insulting them by playing games with them.
    Just vote them up or down. They're entitled to it, and they can take it.
    We can all take it. But when good people agree to submit themselves for
    Federal service and they are good people and they are not disqualified
    by the investigation, they're elevated by the investigation, they are
    entitled to be voted up or down. And I ask you to help us.
        Now, again I want to say, I hope that all of you when you leave here
    will remember that, even though the President should never get awards,
    I'm tickled to get this one. [Laughter] I hope you will remember the
    story of Elvia Morales' life and try to
    replicate it. I hope you'll remember these children who came to join us
    today from the Cesar Chavez Charter School. And I hope you will remember
    that we have just scratched the surface of what their lives and our life
    as a nation can be.
        Thank you very much.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:09 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Enrique (Rick) Dovalina, national

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    president, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC); Elvia
    Morales, graduate, California State University at Sacramento, who
    described growing up as a child of immigrants; Irasema Salcido, founder
    and principal, Cesar Chavez Public Charter High School for Public
    Policy; former Secretary of Energy Federico Pena; and former Secretary
    of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros. A portion of these
    remarks could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.