    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [June 16, 2000]
    [Pages 1162-1164]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1162]]

    Remarks at Abigail Adams Elementary School in New York City
    June 16, 2000

        The President. Thank you very much. I think we ought to give Mary
    Minnick another hand. She did a great job.
    [Applause] And I want to thank her, the other faculty members, the staff
    members of P.S. 131 and their families, and your principal, Walter
    O'Brien. Thank you for making us feel welcome
    today.
        And I want to thank Zahra Mohamed and
    Andrew Wood, the covaledictorians of the sixth
    grade. They remind us of what this is all about. And you can see from
    the student cheers who has the votes here. [Laughter]
        Chancellor Levy, thank you very much.
    Representative Lowey, Representative
    Meeks, Representative Crowley, thank you all for your leadership for this worthy
    cause. To all the local officials who are out there, but especially my
    long-time friend, the Queens borough president, Claire
    Schulman; Superintendent Michael
    Johnson; School Board President Bill
    Johnson. And I'd like to recognize Randi Weingarten again, the president of the United Federation of
    Teachers--the teachers are helping us so much here--along with Ed
    Malloy, the president of New York Building
    and Trades Union, and Denis Hughes, the
    president of the New York AFL-CIO. They're also trying to help us get
    our kids in world-class buildings.
        Let me say to all of you, as so often happens when I get up to
    speak, everything that needs to be said has already been said. But I
    want to say a couple of things to put this in perspective from my point
    of view. First of all, I want to thank you. Thank you, New York; thank
    you, New York City; thank you, Queens, for being so good to me and to Al
    Gore, to Hillary and Tipper, for these last 8 years. Thank you for
    giving us the chance to serve.
        For 7\1/2\ years now, we've worked hard to turn the economy around,
    to get the crime rate down, to help people move from welfare to work, to
    help people balance work and family, to clean up the environment as we
    grow the economy, to make this country one America across all these
    incredible racial and ethnic and religious and other lines that divide
    us, to make our country a force for peace and freedom around the world.
    And we're in good shape today. We're having the longest economic
    expansion in our history. We have the lowest minority unemployment in
    our history. We're going to have 3 years of back-to-back surpluses for
    the first time in anybody's memory.
        And here's the point I want to make. What are we going to do with
    these good times? I've got a simple question. What is it that you as
    citizens propose to do? I've done everything I could do to turn our
    country around, to build that bridge to the 21st century that all of us
    can walk across together, to leave our country in good shape so that
    you, the American people, could decide, what are you going to do for the
    future? And I think the answer is simple. Look at these kids here. Just
    look at them. Look at all the different ethnic groups they come from.
    Look at their different heritages. Look at the different countries their
    parents come from. This is America's future. This is America's future.
        Now, if I had come to you 8 years ago and said, ``In 5 years, we're
    going to have the largest number of kids in our schools in history, and
    we've got a lot of them in old buildings, a lot of them in overcrowded
    buildings, a lot of them in downright unsafe buildings, a lot of them in
    buildings that can't be hooked up to the Internet, and I want to do
    something about it,'' you might have said then, ``Well, Mr. President,
    that's very nice, but the country is in too much trouble, and the
    Government is broke.'' But that's not true anymore. We have the money to
    give all our kids a world-class education. The only issue is, do we have
    the vision; do we have the will; do we have the compassion to give our
    children a world-class education?
        Randi was telling me right before we
    came up here--and Chancellor Levy confirmed
    it--we've got a program now to put 100,000 more teachers out there for
    smaller classes in the early grades. We've only finished a third of it,
    and New York can't take any more. Queens certainly can't take any more
    because you don't have any classrooms to put the teachers in, in the
    smaller classes.
        We've got a program now that would provide after-school programs for
    every kid who needs it in America, but if you don't have the facilities,
    where are they going to go to the programs?

    [[Page 1163]]

    The Vice President persuaded Congress to
    enact something called the E-rate, which allows you to have discounts at
    schools with a lot of poor kids in it so every child in America can
    afford to be in a classroom that's hooked up to the Internet. But if you
    don't have the space--and some schools can't even be wired for the
    Internet--so what good is the program?
        Now, I am proud of the progress that's been made in education in
    this city, in this State, and in this Nation. But if we think that we're
    going to build the future of our dreams, making these kids go to school
    in places where they don't have computer labs, they don't have music
    rooms, they're suffocating, their buildings are being heated with coal,
    and their teachers are trying to teach 40 kids when they ought to be
    teaching 20, we're living in a dream world, and we need to do something
    about it to give them a better future.
        Now, here's what I've tried to do for 2 years. This is the third
    year I've proposed this. I want the Congress to pass a bill that would
    provide tax breaks so that we could help communities build, from
    scratch, 6,000 schools. I want the Congress to pass money every year for
    the next 5 years so that every year we can do major repairs on 5,000
    more schools every year. It's not very complicated. But what you have to
    understand is, we can afford it. We can afford it. It's just a question
    of whether we think it's important enough to do.
        Now, Nita is for it. Greg is for it. Joe Crowley is for
    it. Charlie Rangel is for it. We even have
    a few Republicans for it. Representative Nancy Johnson from Connecticut is for it, and I thank Nancy Johnson.
    This ought to be a bipartisan issue. When the kids show up there at
    school, they don't have to put their party affiliation down. We just
    know they need an education. We don't care whether they're Republicans
    or Democrats or Greens or Reforms or no affiliation.
        So I want to tell you that we have a bipartisan majority actually
    ready to pass the bill in the House of Representatives. So you might
    wonder: Well, this is a democracy; if a majority of the people want it
    and a majority of their elected representatives want it, where is the
    bill, and show me the money? [Laughter] Well, unfortunately, the people
    who control the rules and when bills come up don't want it. That's what
    this is about. We have not been able to persuade the leadership in the
    House and the Senate, the other party, to bring this up in a way that
    will enable us to pass it.
        What I want you to know----
        Audience member. [Inaudible]
        The President. That's not a bad idea, thank you. What I want you to
    know is that the leadership of the House is trying to keep these good
    people from having a vote on school construction. They don't want their
    Members to have to vote against it for the obvious reasons that you
    might notice, but they don't want it to pass.
        We have too many bills where we've got a majority for it, like the
    Patients' Bill of Rights, that we can't get up. So I am asking you, by
    your voices today, over the media, to the American people, and every day
    from now on as long as the Congress is here, by your support for your
    Representatives to say, ``Hey, we love this school, but it's not enough.
    And we love our kids, and you have our money. Spend it on their future.
    Spend it on their future.''
        Again, I say, this is not complicated. It's about political will and
    vision. And I want you to know, folks, I get really frustrated when
    Washington plays politics just because they think times are good and
    there are no consequences. But these kids will grow up before you know
    it.
        My little girl just got home from
    college--going to be a senior next year. I remember when she was that
    size. It doesn't take long for a child to live a childhood. And we don't
    have a child to waste. And you've got all these dedicated teachers and
    all these dedicated parents and all these dedicated school people out
    there, and we keep trying to put them in smaller and smaller and smaller
    boxes. This is wrong.
        Now, we have genuine philosophical differences over some things in
    Washington, but this shouldn't be a philosophical issue. Are we going to
    build these buildings or not? We've got the money. Some people say, let
    them do it at the local level. Well, you know as well as I do that we've
    got more kids in schools than ever before, but we've got a smaller
    percentage of property-tax payers with kids in schools than ever before,
    and it's hard, if not impossible, to raise the money to build and repair
    the schools only at the local level. The National Government has the
    resources. This is a limited program. These children deserve it.
        So I implore you all, by your voices today, and every day, say,
    ``Thank you, Nita Lowey.

    [[Page 1164]]

    Thank you, Greg Meeks. Thank you, Joe
    Crowley. Thank you, Charlie Rangel. Congress, give our kids the future they deserve.
    The whole country's riding on it, we can afford it, and we owe it to
    them. And we'll be awful glad we did.''
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 12:12 p.m. in the school courtyard. In his
    remarks, he referred to Mary Minnick, teacher, Abigail Adams Elementary
    School (Public School 131); Harold O. Levy, chancellor, New York City
    Public Schools; and Michael A. Johnson, district administrator,
    Community School District No. 29.