    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
    [January 20, 2000]
    [Pages 89-92]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 89]]

    Remarks on Launching the Agenda for Higher Education and Lifetime
    Learning
    January 20, 2000

        Thank you very much, Nina, for being
    exhibit A for the announcement that we're here for today. Thank you,
    Secretary Riley, for your leadership in
    every aspect of education and especially in this one.
        I thank Secretary Slater for coming. I
    suspect he's here for two reasons. One is, Rodney Slater grew up in a
    county that, when I was Governor, was one of the 10 poorest counties in
    America. And he happened to be a good football player and was able to go
    to college in Michigan and play football. And he, later in his career,
    became an officer at a university in our home State. So he also is
    exhibit A for why every child should be able to go to college.
        I want to thank Representative Rush Holt
    for being here. He is not only a former distinguished professor at
    Princeton, but he has a task force on access to higher education in his
    congressional district. And the people who live in his district actually
    are among those who will be most benefited if this entire proposal
    passes, as we hope it will.
        In their absence, I want to thank Congressman Ford and Senator Olympia Snowe,
    who had been very, very strong on this issue. And the two people I want
    to thank most, obviously, are Senator Schumer and the First Lady, who
    lobbied me relentlessly on this for the better part of a year. If you've
    ever been lobbied by either one of them, you know--[laughter]--it's sort
    of like, are you going to say yes now, or put yourself through all this
    misery and say yes later? But it's been very interesting. I'll say more
    about it in a moment. [Laughter]
        We know when we open the doors to college, we open the doors to
    opportunity. When we make college more affordable, we make the American
    dream more achievable. That's why we're all here today. I'm glad there
    are so many young people here today. They're probably sorry that they're
    not really getting out of school; they could have gotten out of school
    anyway--[laughter]--but I'm glad you all came and waited.
        Some in Congress, I note, are saying that because this is an
    election year, we really shouldn't try to do anything for the American
    people. We're here today to give perhaps the most powerful example for
    why we should reject that view. Nothing, not a national election or a
    Washington snowstorm, should get in the way of making a college
    education more affordable for all Americans. [Applause] Thank you.
    Students can't put off their growing up for a year; families can't put
    off going to work for a year; and neither should we.
        Today is a happy day for me. This is my seventh anniversary as
    President of the United States. I am profoundly grateful for the long
    way we have come as a nation in these last 7 years, that today we have
    the lowest poverty rate in 20 years, the lowest unemployment and welfare
    rates in 30 years, the first back-to-back budget surpluses in over 40
    years. I am grateful that we are coming together, that we have the
    lowest African-American and Hispanic unemployment rates we have ever
    recorded, that we have the lowest female unemployment rate in 40 years,
    the lowest single-parent household poverty rate in 46 years, and that in
    the last couple of years we have finally begun to see a reversal in the
    increase in inequality of incomes of working people, which was going on
    for nearly three decades.
        So the family of America is growing stronger, and that is
    fundamentally a tribute to the hard work and adaptability of the
    American people. It has also been helped along the way by our hard-won
    economic strategy of increasing trade, getting rid of the deficit, and
    investing in the education of our people and in the economy in which
    they will live.
        More than ever, with globalization and the information-based
    economy, investing in the minds of our people is the most important
    thing we can do to assure our continued success as a nation. But that
    has been the American policy for quite a long time now. The land grant
    college system was established under Abraham Lincoln; the GI bill after
    World War II; the Pell grants in the 1970's; and the HOPE scholarship in
    1997. We have made education and access to higher education a bipartisan
    national priority for quite a long while.
        You heard the other stories that were told. I was sitting here
    thinking, I was the first person

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    in my family to go to college. And I remember when I was accepted to
    Georgetown--rather late, I might add, in the year. [Laughter] And they
    gave me a $500 scholarship, for which I was very grateful. And I think
    the tuition back then was about $6,000, which 37 years ago, -6 years
    ago, seemed like all the money in the world to me. And I was literally
    guilt-ridden when I went off to college to think of the burden I was
    imposing on my family. And I remember we had a family meeting about it.
    I remember my high school guidance counselor called me in the office and
    said I was nuts, that I'd pay it back many times over in the future. But
    it bothered me a lot.
        And then later, as I stayed in school and went on to law school, I
    was able to do it all because I had the help of scholarships and loans
    and jobs. And if I hadn't had that help, there's no way in the world I
    would be standing here today. I know that.
        And because of the changes in the financial costs of higher
    education that Senator Schumer talked about and because of the changes
    in the economy, it's even more important that we do more today, not only
    for individual students but for the health and well-being of the
    American system. So that's why we're here.
        You have already heard that we have been working on this hard for 7
    years. We've more than doubled college aid in those 7 years, increasing
    Pell grants by more than 50 percent, rewriting the student loan program
    to make it easier and cheaper to get student loans, and then
    importantly, to let students pay off their loans as a percentage of
    their income, so there would never be an incentive for people who had
    those loans to drop out of school for fear that they could never repay
    them anyway.
        We established AmeriCorps, which now has allowed 150,000 of our
    fellow citizens to serve in their communities and earn some money to go
    to college. We've expanded the work-study program from 700,000 to a
    million work-study slots. We've allowed families to save more in their
    IRA's and then to withdraw the money tax-free if it's being used to pay
    for a college education. And of course, as Secretary Riley said, we
    created the $1,500 HOPE scholarship tax credit to make 2 years of high
    school after education through a community college just as universal as
    a high school education is today.
        That HOPE scholarship tax credit and the lifetime learning tax
    credit, which helps families pay for the last 2 years of college,
    graduate schools, or going back to school or to a training program, were
    designed to open the doors of college to all, and to recognize that in
    this economy, learning must go on for a lifetime. And it's working.
        Today--listen to this--today, 67 percent of high school graduates
    will be enrolling in college next fall. That's an increase of 10 percent
    just since 1993. But we know we haven't truly succeeded in opening the
    doors of college to all if you mean everybody who wants to should be
    able to go to a 4-year school and stay--and stay--until they finish.
        Parents all across the country are genuinely stretched. And parents
    in a surprisingly wide range of income groups are stretched because of
    the loan eligibility, the Pell grant eligibility limits, and other
    things. So today what we're attempting to do is to launch an agenda for
    higher education and lifetime learning for the 21st century that will
    make college more affordable for more families and, in the process,
    genuinely open the doors of college to everybody.
        But we also want to encourage more people to stay in college once
    they go. And we want to do more to guide young people, starting in their
    middle school years, to be thinking about college so that if they can't
    afford it, they'll be able to get in and go.
        First, the centerpiece of this budget for the coming year will be a
    landmark $30 billion college opportunity tax cut to help millions of
    middle class families pay for college. It will give families a tax
    deduction of up to $10,000 in tuition costs, providing as much as $2,800
    in much-needed tax relief. And as Senator Schumer said, this has never
    been done before.
        Now, let me tell you how this works. I am for this, and I believe
    it's the right thing to do. But all of you need to know that we think
    there's a pretty strict limit on what the total aggregate tax cuts I can
    propose and sign into law is. I had to veto one last year, because I
    thought it was too big. Why? Because the main thing that's brought us
    all along is the strength of our economy. And that requires us, in my
    judgment, to keep this budget balanced, to keep running surpluses, and
    to get this country out of debt over the next 15 years for the first
    time since 1835.
        So as you might imagine, one of the things that we have to do, we
    have these huge, fascinating debates at this time every year about

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    what does or doesn't go in the administration's budget. And that's where
    the arm-twisting from Senator Schumer and
    the First Lady came in. And they made
    the compelling argument--and you heard Chuck say he and Olympia had this bill in the Senate--that there was no
    benefit we could give to middle class people that would benefit more
    families more than this one and no benefit we could give to families
    that would benefit America more than this one.
        So again I say, we know this idea has bipartisan support, even in
    Washington. And I'll bet you'd have to take a magnifying glass to find
    anybody out in the country who is against it, once I can explain that it
    won't affect our ability to balance the budget and pay off the debt.
        So this is the core. This has never been done before by our country.
    And when you take this, plus what we've done with the HOPE scholarships,
    with the other lifetime tax credits, with the Pell grants, with the
    work-study slots, and with the changes in the student loan program, we
    will really be able to say, everybody who wants to go to college can go.
    It is important that it pass, and I want to ask all of you to help me to
    pass it in this session of Congress.
        Nina talked a little about her
    situation, but she was too modest to tell you that she's on the dean's
    list, so that helps her qualify for additional scholarship aid. But her
    father works overtime when he can. Her mother works two jobs. Now, what
    does all this mean to her? For her family in their income group, with
    the HOPE scholarship, the new college opportunity tax cut would
    translate into a $4,300 tax break for her family by the time her
    brother, George, enters college. That's real money. That will make a
    difference to her family, and it will make a difference to America.
        This plan, I say again, is important for families, but it's also
    important for the state of our economy. We give tax relief today for
    businesses that invest in new plants and equipment. In an economy that
    runs on brainpower, we ought to give tax credits and tax cuts for people
    that invest in that brainpower. With this action we are much closer
    toward taking the worry out of paying for a child's college education.
    We're another step forward toward helping the middle class with a
    targeted tax cut. And we're another step forward again in saying that we
    have literally opened the doors of college to all.
        I am also pleased to announce that we will increase Pell grants to
    up to $3,500, and that will benefit nearly 4 million Pell grant
    recipients. And that's important.
        Now, for all of you who are in higher education--this is the second
    thing I want to say that's important--the second element of our plan is
    to strengthen our efforts to help Americans stay in college. We have
    really good numbers now, and it's going to get better with this--with
    the number of young people going to college. But the dropout rate is
    way, way too high, given the needs of the economy and the benefits to
    young people in staying and getting their degrees.
        One-third of the lowest income students drop out of college, and
    less than half of them earn degrees within 5 years. Our budget will
    establish the college competition challenge grants to reduce the dropout
    rate and improve the chances of success for nearly 18,000 of these
    students. We're also going to expand the successful TRIO program to help
    even more students stay in college. We will launch a dual degree
    initiative to expand opportunities for students at minority institutions
    to allow about 3,000 minority students to earn a degree in fields where
    minorities today are woefully under-represented.
        The third and final part of our higher education agenda is focused
    on helping young people get on the right track to college and to stay
    there. We need to encourage more students at an early age, to get them
    excited about academic achievement and to give them a sense that they
    actually can go to college and get a degree and have the life of their
    dreams.
        We passed an initiative we called GEAR UP, which does just that. It
    reaches out to middle school students who are at risk, using college
    students to mentor them, to encourage them to set high expectations, to
    stay in school, to study hard, to take the right courses to go to
    college, and to make sure they know exactly what kind of aid they would
    qualify for, so they didn't decide when they're 12 or 13 or 14 that they
    won't be able to afford to go.
        Our budget will double the number of students who can participate in
    GEAR UP to include 1.4 million young people. Many of them come from
    families where they would never entertain the prospect of going to
    college and where the message they get now--on the street, in the
    school--is that because of their circumstances, they won't be able to
    make it. We're giving them the exact reverse message, that they will
    absolutely be able to make it.

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    And young people in universities all across America who have
    participated in mentoring these kids deserve the thanks of a grateful
    nation. We're going to double this program, and I hope you'll help us
    pass that as well.
        One more aspect of this is our youth opportunity grants, under the
    leadership of Secretary Herman at Labor and
    the Youthbuild initiative at HUD. These things are working, again, to
    reach young people who otherwise too often get let out and left behind.
        Taken together, these steps will provide families with the college
    relief they need, students with the support they need, our economy with
    the skilled work force we need, and our communities and our Nation with
    the better citizens we all need.
        People who decide to invest in their futures through education are
    taking the long look ahead, making sacrifices today for rewards
    tomorrow. That is the challenge we face today as a nation. We have, for
    the first time in my lifetime, economic prosperity, social progress,
    national self-confidence, the absence of serious crisis at home or
    paralyzing threat from abroad. All those conditions have not existed at
    one point in my lifetime. And it is imperative that we take the long
    look ahead. There is no better way to make the most of this magic moment
    than by helping all Americans make the most of their God-given
    abilities.
        Thanks for being here. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:55 p.m. in Presidential Hall in the
    Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building. In his remarks, he
    referred to student Nina McLaughlin, who introduced the President. The
    transcript released by the Office of the Press Secretary also included
    the remarks of the First Lady.