[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 29, Number 18 (Monday, May 10, 1993)]
[Pages 728-735]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the National Service Initiative at the University of New 
Orleans

 April 30, 1993

    Thank you very much. I ought to quit while I'm ahead. [Laughter] It 
is wonderful to be back in New Orleans and in Louisiana and to have the 
first chance I've had since the election to thank you for your support, 
your electoral votes, and the education you gave me on my many trips 
here during the campaign last year. I'm glad to be back on this campus. 
I want to thank your student body president, Robert Styron. I thought he 
gave a good speech. I think he's got a future in politics, don't you? 
[Applause] And Chancellor O'Brien. I want to thank Senator Breaux for 
his kind remarks and for his leadership of the Democratic Leadership 
Council. I want to acknowledge the presence here of Senator Johnston and 
many members of the Louisiana House and many other Members of the United 
States Congress, along with many others who are here with the Democratic 
Leadership Council, including my good friend and former colleague, the 
Governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, who's here. There are two members of 
my Cabinet here, the Secretary of Education, Dick Riley,

[[Page 729]]

and the Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Espy, also a DLC Vice Chair.
    I want to thank all the people who are here representing volunteer 
organizations. I met with some young people just before I came in here 
who are scattered around near me from Benjamin Franklin High School just 
across the way. [Applause] Absolutely no enthusiasm in that place. 
[Laughter] From the Delta Service Corps., from VISTA, from Summerbridge, 
from Teach for America, we also have some students here, apart from all 
of you from UNO, we have some students here who have worked in service 
projects at Xavier University and at Tulane. We also have people here 
who have been involved in service for a long time from ACTION, from the 
Older Americans Volunteer Program, from the National Association of 
Senior Companions and Foster Grandparents and the National Association 
of Retired Senior Volunteers. All these people I am very grateful to.
    I'd like to just acknowledge in general the people who are here from 
law enforcement organizations and firefighters' organizations and public 
employees and teachers' groups who have helped us on this national 
service project. And I want to say a special word of thanks to three 
other people. First of all, Gen. David Jones, a former Chairman of the 
Joint Chiefs of Staff who has worked very hard helping us put together 
this program, who is here. General Jones, thank you for being here. 
Secondly, a remarkable gentleman from New Jersey, an immensely 
successful businessman who retired early and is devoting his entire life 
to community service to rebuild the lives and the neighborhoods of the 
people in his community in New Jersey and now helping others around the 
country, a founding Member of the Points of Light Foundation, Mr. Ray 
Chambers, who is here. And I'd like to pay a little special attention to 
two members of Congress who are not here and to one who is, for their 
long work on the whole idea of national service. The two in the Senate 
who are not here are Senator Harris Wofford from Pennsylvania and 
Senator Sam Nunn from Georgia. And then Representative Dave McCurdy from 
Oklahoma, thank you for all of the work you've done on this over the 
years.
    I am glad to be here. You know, when I come down here I always sort 
of relax. I don't know why that is. I timed it just in time for the Jazz 
Festival, but I left my saxophone at the White House.
    This is the 100th day of my administration. In Washington, some say 
it marks a milestone. But in many ways it's just another day at the 
office for what we're trying to do in changing America. In the last 99 
days we have worked relentlessly to address the pressing and long-
ignored needs of the American people and to bring to the Government 
something it has not seen in a long time: an acknowledgment that bold 
action is needed, and needed now, to secure and enlarge America's 
future, and that in order to do it we not only have to change programs, 
we have to change the way the Government works and engage the energies 
of the American people in the process.
    In the last 100 days I think we have begun to change the direction 
in which our country has been going for a long time, and to go toward a 
new direction more like the one the American people demanded last 
November. We've also started an unprecedented debate in our Nation's 
capital about big ideas and better lives across our Nation, ideas that 
in many cases were shaped and nurtured by some of the people who are 
here today, as Senator Breaux said earlier, the members of the 
Democratic Leadership Council, of which I am proud to be a founding 
member. Unlike most organizations, the DLC has done more than just talk 
about the problems in our country. It has made an honest effort to 
develop real ideas about how to restore the American economy, and make 
the Government work, and rebuild the confidence and the link that exists 
between the American people and their Government when things are at 
their best here. And it's been a laboratory for experimentation and 
solutions.
    During my years with the DLC we really tried to refine our 
philosophy of what it would mean to take not only the Democratic Party 
but the United States of America in a new direction, to make our country 
work again and to reward work and family, to encourage education and 
enterprise, to establish what I have often called a new covenant with 
the American people: Creating oppor- 

[[Page 730]]

tunity but demanding responsibility from all so that once again we could 
be a true American community where we know and believe and live as if 
we're all in this together. This group has conceived many of the ideas 
that I've advocated since I've been in Washington from setting a limit 
on welfare and putting people to work to police reform and community 
policing to rewarding work of low-income working people by having an 
earned income tax credit that would lift the working poor with children 
out of poverty. So we could say if you work 40 hours a week in this 
country, you have a child in the house, you ought not to be poor. These 
are the kinds of things that this organization has done. They helped to 
develop the idea I want to talk to you today about that has so much to 
do with the future of the young people here and throughout our country: 
national service. This is an organization about ideas.
    Now in Washington, as you might imagine, we don't always agree with 
one another. And that is good--that's why we've got a system where the 
Government's divided up and we have two parties and we have people 
fighting all the time--as long as it's about ideas. But too often we've 
seen that the debate over big ideas gets mired in petty politics. I know 
one thing: The American people are tired of gridlock and petty politics. 
If we're going to fight, they want us to fight over ideas and the future 
of this country.
    In the past 99 days we tried to address the problems the American 
people told me they wanted to be addressed. We focused more than 
anything else on the economy, passing the outline of a budget that will 
reduce the deficit by more than $500 billion, increase investment in 
education and technologies and the things that will create the economy 
of the 21st century that all of you need so that you'll have good and 
decent jobs and a decent future laying the groundwork for a more 
prosperous tomorrow.
    Just in 100 days we've announced a policy to help to convert the 
defense cutbacks and the economic opportunities for people who are 
losing their jobs because of the military cutbacks; to take a new 
direction in technology to create more opportunities for our people; to 
be more aggressive in preserving the environment, but do it in a way 
that creates jobs, not a way that costs jobs; to have a trade policy 
that will really reflect our common interest with other nations and 
expanding jobs and opportunities everywhere. We've begun the long-
overdue renovation of the American economic base. The question now, 
unlike 100 days ago, the question is now not whether we're going to 
reduce the deficit but how and how much. The question now is not whether 
the Government will have a new partnership with the private sector to 
shape the economy but exactly what the details will be and how much our 
part will be.
    We've also taken on the issue of health care, something million of 
Americans cried out for last year. I got a letter today from a young 
woman I shook hands with whose--literally, her life is on the line, and 
she cannot get health insurance. It is wrong that in this Nation--we are 
the only advanced country in the world with 34 million people without 
health insurance. It is wrong that millions of Americans cannot change 
their jobs without losing their health insurance because they or a child 
or a spouse has been sick. It is wrong that the price of health care 
goes up 2.5 times the rate of inflation every year. And it is wrong that 
we spend 30 percent more of our income than any other country on Earth 
on health care and have less to show for it. But it is also wrong to 
assume that there is some magic, quick answer. That's why we've been 
working with a task force headed by the First Lady and over 400 people 
from all aspects of health care to do something about this.
    But now, for the American people the issue is no longer whether 
we're going to address the health care crisis, whether we're going to 
provide security to hard-working middle class Americans, whether we're 
going to cover the people who aren't covered, whether we're going to 
control costs, but how are we going to do it and how fast and when are 
we going to begin. I hope the answer is soon. And not too soon is soon 
enough for me.
    There was a lot of discussion last year about how bad the Government 
was, and it didn't work, and it was bloated, it needed a change. Look at 
the last 100 days: I've tried to set an example by offering a budget to 
reduce the White House staff by 25 percent; by putting the lid on and 
reducing the Fed- 

[[Page 731]]

eral bureaucratic expenses, the administrative expenses of the Federal 
Government by over $10 billion; by moving dramatically to reduce the 
influence of special interests on Executive Branch appointments by 
having the toughest ethics laws and restrictions on people becoming 
lobbyists for other interests when they leave the payroll of the 
President of the United States; by asking the Vice President to share 
the most sweeping review of the way the Federal Government works in a 
generation, with a promise of real reform and reinventing Government, 
something else this organization has long believed in.
    We are moving. And the Congress is moving to join. The Congress has 
voted to cut the administrative costs of running the Congress, something 
many of you never thought you would see happen. They did that. The House 
of Representatives voted yesterday to give the President of the United 
States a modified line-item veto, and I hope the Senate will follow 
their lead. I hope soon they will send to my desk the motor voter bill 
which will make it easier for young people and other people to vote and 
participate in their country's political process. And there will be 
campaign finance reform and lobby reform legislation and a crime bill 
that will put more police on the street and give us the capacity we need 
to take our communities back. These things are going on. The question is 
no longer whether we're going to reform the way Government works but how 
fast and how much and how well. And those are the right questions, my 
fellow Americans, good questions to ask.
    And now I come to the last, and in many ways the most important 
issue that we have tried to address--the economy, yes; health care, yes; 
reform in the way the Government works, yes--but also what about the 
American people. How can each American make a contribution? How can each 
American do the work that all Americans must, taking responsibility for 
himself or herself and growing up into a vibrant community? We have 
tried to address those issues as well. The buzz word now people use is 
empowerment. I used to call it responsibility. I often have said, and I 
want to reiterate today, the United States Government cannot create an 
opportunity for anyone who will not be responsible enough to seize it. 
Opportunity is a two-way street and requires responsibility. That is the 
only way we'll ever rebuild the American community.
    In the days and months ahead, you will see the Secretary of 
Education talk about his remarkable education program to provide tougher 
national standards in education but also to give people at the 
grassroots level more flexibility in making public education work. You 
will see the Secretary of Agriculture and the Secretary of Housing and 
Urban Development talk about how we can empower even the poorest 
Americans to start their own businesses, save their own money, and take 
control of their own future. You will see other people talking about how 
we can reform the welfare system. All of these things are at the core of 
the notion that we ought to make it possible for every American to live 
up to the fullest of his or her God-given ability. And that is what in 
the end national service is all about: helping ourselves and helping 
each other at the same time.
    On this 100th day of my administration I want to recommit myself and 
those who work with me to the values that have made our Nation without 
peer in all human history, those of opportunity, responsibility, 
community, and respect for one another. Today I want to propose applying 
those values to a revolution of opportunity for our hard-pressed 
families and for those who have been left out. As a first step we're 
going to ease the terms of college loans, helping students from middle 
and lower-middle income families to clear a major path to the American 
dream, the path of higher education. In return we'll demand 
responsibility from young people. We'll make it easier to borrow money 
and much easier to pay it off, but this time you have to pay it off. You 
can't just default on the loan. And we will also offer the young people 
of America the opportunity of paying their loans back by serving their 
communities in a new program of national service.
    In just a few days I will send to the Congress two bills containing 
our proposals, first to strengthen college opportunity and to establish 
national service. Together they will revive America's commitment to 
community and make affordable the cost of a college education for every 
American. It's no secret

[[Page 732]]

that over the last 10 or 12 years the cost of a college education is 
about the only essential think that's gone up even more rapidly than 
health care costs. And middle class parents, and even upper middle class 
parents, not to mention lower income people, have borne the burden, 
paying now about five percent of median income just to put one child 
through a 4 year in-State public college. It costs an average of over 
$5,200 a year for that education. That means families are depleting 
savings and many students are faced with cutting back to a part-time 
course load or having to drop out simply because of the cost of a 
college education. A college dropout is now more than twice the high 
school dropout rate. We cannot afford that, and we can do better.
    I propose a new way to finance college for millions of students who 
seek loans every year. We call it an EXCEL account. With it, students 
can repay the loans they take out not with a percentage of the loan they 
borrowed but with a percentage of their actual earnings. Now think about 
that. For students driven by debt into careers with high pay and low 
satisfaction this can be very liberating. Take a student torn, for 
example, between pursuing a career in teaching and corporate law. This 
student now can at least make the career choice based on what he or she 
wants to do and not the size of the outstanding student loan, because we 
propose to let everybody have the option of paying the student loan back 
based on how much they earn not just how much they owe. That is an 
incredible incentive.
    However, under the current system, as many of you know, students 
faced with big bills or just inconvenient responsibilities have too 
often taken the irresponsible route and defaulted on their loans or have 
been found in default because they couldn't find a job. Often times 
there's no serious effort to collect the loan because the Government 
guarantees 90 percent of it. So if the bank makes the loan, it costs 
more than 10 percent to go collect it. What's the result? The taxpayers 
every year pay about $3 billion on other people's loans, money that 
could be spent on your education, on the schools here, on the future of 
the children here, just for bad loans. It isn't right.
    Under our system, the Department of Education would engage the 
Internal Revenue Service. We would have the payroll records. And you 
wouldn't be able to beat the bill because you would have to pay the loan 
back as a percentage of your income, if you choose, but you'd have to 
pay it because you pay taxes and because we have your records and 
because you won't be able to get out of it. And that is the right thing 
to do.
    But these EXCEL accounts are just the beginning. We hope they will 
lead more and more Americans not only to seize the opportunity of a 
college education and to exert a stronger sense of responsibility but 
also to seek to serve their communities through a program of national 
service. It was Thomas Jefferson who first told the American people in 
essence that the more you know, the more you owe. In his words, and I 
quote, ``A debt of service is due from every man to his country 
proportioned to the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to 
him.'' This statement reminds us that values never go out of fashion, 
that civic responsibility is as good for democracy today as it was when 
Thomas Jefferson said that, and that if you really want to be the best 
citizen of your country, you have to give something back to your 
country. With national service, we can literally open a new world to a 
new generation of Americans where higher learning goes hand-in-hand with 
the higher purpose of addressing our unmet needs, our educational, our 
social, our environmental needs, to secure the future that we all will 
share. National service will mark the start of a new era for America in 
which every citizen, every one of you, can become an agent of change 
armed with the knowledge and experience that a college education brings, 
and ready to transform the world in which we live, city by city, 
community by community, block by block. I say to you, we need you.
    You know, there's a lot of talk in America today, and I spend hours 
every week worrying about the effect that automation and technology is 
having on employment. Indeed, as we see the productivity of American 
enterprises rise, their need for workers goes down because they can do 
more with computes that they used to do with people. So

[[Page 733]]

people ask me all the time, where will we find the jobs for this new 
generation of Americans? How can we drive this unemployment rate down? 
But if you look around this country at all the human problems, all the 
homeless people, all the environmental waste dumps in our cities and our 
rural areas, all the problems that we've got in every community in 
America, and see all the kids that are in trouble--15 million of them at 
risk and needing somebody to pay attention to--you know where the work 
needs to be.
    Late last night when I was preparing to come down here, I took a 
little time off at my desk and I read the letters that my staff had 
given me. And I got a letter from a woman who grew up with me. I've 
known here since we were in grade school. In this letter she said, ``You 
know, someone asked me a couple of days ago: How are we going to save 
all these kids in this country that are in trouble?'' And she said, 
``Without even thinking, I blurted out, the same way we lost them, one 
at a time.'' And so today my fellow Americans, I issue a call to 
national service, to Americans young and old, Democrats and Republicans, 
white, black, Hispanic, Asian and you name it, all of us that make up 
this great Nation. I call you to national service because it is only 
that together we can advance a tradition rooted in our people's history, 
helping our people to help themselves. And with national service we can 
rejoin the citizens in communities of this country, bonding each to the 
other with the glue of common purpose and real patriotism.
    We have many young people here today, students of this place of 
higher learning where we're gathered. In you I know I see the builders 
of tomorrow. And I say to you, as good as the education is here and at 
the other great institutions represented here today and all across 
America, the power of academic learning is incomplete unless every 
American can share in it. That is the only way we can lift our whole 
country up. I say to you further that our country needs you. We need 
your knowledge and your initiative and your energy. We need you because 
you are still stripped and free of the cynicism that has paralyzed too 
many of your parents and your grandparents, and led us to spend too much 
time talking about what we can't do instead of seizing what we can. You 
are not afflicted by that, and I pray you never will be.
    We need to make sure that we can use your energies and your talents. 
One way is by making sure that the low wages that public service often 
offers won't be a route to the poorhouse for someone with college loans. 
As I said, we're going to make it easier for you to pay off your college 
loan. But also, if you engage in national service, we'll make it easier 
for you to pay off a college debt or to earn credits toward it before 
you go to college, or while you're in college.
    For each term of service, 1 or 2 years, participants in national 
service programs will receive benefits that can be used toward past, 
present, or future obligations, whether for college or advanced job 
training. You can get a college education and, in addition, through 
service, perhaps the best experience of your life. That's a pretty good 
investment.
    I've talked a lot about the students here. And they do play a large 
part in this plan, but they're not alone. Here in New Orleans many of 
you already know what it means to make a difference in your community 
because you've just been doing that for a long time. And I'm very proud, 
as I said. I'm going to get another cheer about this, but one of the 
models that I had a little something to do with is the Delta Service 
Corps, and I appreciate what they're doing. [Applause]
    There are people here working to restore housing. There are people 
here working in other ways. I just want to mention three: Lawrence 
Williams, a team leader in the Corps who has helped to restore housing 
for low-income people with the local Habitat for Humanity Project; Jane 
Sullivan, a retired public schoolteacher and a former VISTA volunteer 
who helps rural communities gain better access to health care, housing, 
and other assistance; and a young person I met just a few moments ago, 
Parris Moore-Brown, who works with parents in housing programs for drug 
awareness outreach and now plans to work with the physically challenged. 
She says that she has no tolerance for self-pity, and she lives what she 
preaches. She hasn't been slowed by what her birth dealt her, a brittle 
bone disorder that has left her as an adult, and by her own measure,

[[Page 734]]

4 feet, 2\1/4\ inches tall. Where are you? Stand up on here so we can 
see you. After my meeting with her and the other young people today, I'd 
say she stands about 10 feet tall in America today. There are tens of 
thousands of people like Parris and Jane and Lawrence and those of you 
who are here with these service programs who are dying to be called to a 
new season of service, and we want to do that.
    Another part of our plan is to build on the National and Community 
Service Act that was passed in 1990, and the already flourishing 
programs that are started and up and going in every State in this 
country. National service is not going to be a Federal bureaucracy; it's 
going to operate at the grassroots with the real problems of real people 
and with the programs that work today. It will be locally driven because 
I trust the communities in this country to make decisions for 
themselves.
    I also want to say that while we want very much to have young people 
in this program who are working toward earning credits for college or 
paying their college loans off through national service, we need so many 
other people in service projects. We need our older people who never 
will go back to college but have a lifetime of experience and energy to 
give to the young people of this country. We need young people who may 
not be old enough to drive a car or to qualify for this program but can 
have a dramatic impact on fellow students by helping them learn better 
study habits or just keeping them out of trouble. I've learned already 
that, as the parent of a teenager, that the peers can have a big impact 
on the shape and quality of a child's life. Even a child can serve in 
programs that now begin as early as kindergarten. We have no upper age 
limit in America, or lower age limit for being a good public servant.
    To be successful, this national program will need the broad-based 
support of all the American people. Parents and children, churches and 
synagogues, colleges and universities and the potential providers and 
the beneficiaries of our services. In this vision of national service, 
everyone is a partner. And that includes, of course, the business 
community in this country. We need businesses to contribute to the 
effort, to match Federal money and local programs and to contribute at 
the national level, helping to make sure that the programs we choose are 
good ones indeed.
    What will set this legislation apart from other similar efforts in 
the past that rewarded service to our country is that it will totally 
eliminate the Federal Government bureaucracy. And believe me, no one 
will miss that. We're going to set up a national service corporation 
that will run like a big venture capital outfit not like a bureaucracy. 
And communities, as I said, will have the flexibility to make their own 
programs work. I think that I've seen enough today and I've heard enough 
of your applause to know that the American people are hungry for a 
chance to serve their country and to reap the rewards of civic pride and 
education in the process.
    In answering this call our people are following a proud history. 
More than a century ago President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead 
Act, and the frontier of this country was settled by countless families 
who took up the challenge in exchange for 100 acres to call their own. 
In the 1930's President Roosevelt enlisted millions of young people to 
restore the environment through the Civilian Conservation Corps. FDR 
gave others a chance to support themselves through the buildings made 
possible by the Works Project Administration. I was in the United States 
Justice Department just yesterday, a building built in 1934 by people 
who were giving service to their country, and it's still a beautiful 
monument to the legacy of that kind of service. The parents of the baby 
boom had the GI bill, which was one of the best investments our 
Government ever made. A generation ago, the young people of my 
generation saw suffering in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and many 
rushed to the challenge laid down by President Kennedy when he created 
the Peace Corps, which became our country's greatest ambassador, 
building bridges of understanding to far off cultures. And now, three 
decades later, a challenge has been presented to all of you, a new 
challenge and an old one, as old as America and as new as your future.
    A year ago when the Democratic Leadership Council met in New 
Orleans, I asked

[[Page 735]]

the following question: I said, I want you to think about what kind of 
citizens you're going to be--[inaudible]--administration that this was 
the day the American people were empowered to renew their Nation and 
their communities, to seize a better future for themselves, and to help 
all of us to be what the--[inaudible]--out of helping our fellow 
citizens and ourselves to become what we ought to be, this country will 
be all right.
    Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 2:10 p.m. in the Health and Physical 
Education Center at the university. In his remarks, he referred to 
Gregory O'Brien, Chancellor of the University of New Orleans. This item 
was not received in time for publication in the appropriate issue.