[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 13 (Monday, April 3, 1995)]
[Pages 507-513]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to Students at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida

March 30, 1995

    The President. Thank you very much, Bill Lanthripp, for that 
introduction. Thank you, President Paloumpis and thank you, ladies and 
gentlemen, for making me feel so very, very welcome here today. I also 
want to thank those of you who brought the little children here; it's 
wonderful to see them--that little girl back there in her green dress 
and that little girl there, this young man there; you look great. Thank 
you.
    I want to thank some of my partners in trying to make your future 
better who are here with me: your Governor and Lieutenant Governor, 
Lawton Chiles and Buddy McKay. I thank my friend, Congressman Gibbons, 
for

[[Page 508]]

being here, the Speaker of the House, Peter Wallace, and your 
representative, the Majority Leader of the House, Jim Davis. I thank 
them all for being here.

    I also want to say that I almost got here in time. I got here a day 
ahead of the new mayor's inauguration, so I want to thank on the next to 
the last day of her tenure, my longtime friend, your Mayor, Sandy 
Freedman, for doing such a good job for Tampa. And I want to wish your 
new Mayor, Dick Greco, all the best, and I look forward to working with 
you.

    Ladies and gentlemen, if I could start on a more serious note, I 
just had the opportunity to meet at the airport with the families of the 
two Tampa police officers, Mike Vigil and Kevin Howell, who were shot 
and wounded last week. I also had the opportunity to meet an HCC 
student, Mike Meyers, who saved one of those officer's lives, because 
he's a certified emergency medical technician. He told the police he was 
a paramedic, and they brought him there. He grabbed his bag and rushed 
to the fallen officers, and he did a very fine job. And I had a chance 
to thank him for that, and it's an encouragement to all of us to learn 
some of the skills that he knows. You never can tell when you will need 
them. I understand that Officer Vigil remains in critical but stable 
condition, but I was just informed by his family that the doctors say 
his chances are now better than 50-50 that he's going to make a good 
recovery.

    I am delighted to be back in Florida. I had the opportunity to spend 
the night at the Governor's mansion last night and to address the 
Florida Legislature today about the challenges facing our country and 
what we're going to do about it. Today, I want to talk to you about your 
future. I spend a lot of time in community colleges like this one, 
because I think in many ways, this is the most important institution in 
American society as we move toward the next century.

    With all of the challenges we face, we basically know what works. 
What works is, educating all of our people; what works is doing what it 
takes to generate more jobs; what works is bringing people together 
across racial and income and other lines; what works is a commitment to 
give more people a shot at the American dream, to grow the middle class 
and to shrink the under class, and to prepare for the future. And that's 
what community colleges do.

    In a very real sense, what I have been trying to do as President is 
to bring that spirit and those ideas into the National Government. I've 
worked for a dozen years as a Governor, in which time I had the honor 
and privilege to spend countless hours in educational institutions, from 
elementary schools to community colleges, to vocational training 
schools, to our 4-year universities. And I found when I went to 
Washington that every reason that I worried about the country when I ran 
for President turned out to be true.

    I ran because I thought this country was on the verge of a new 
century, dominated by the end of the cold war, the emergence of the 
global economy, wealth tied more to knowledge than ever before, when we 
had new opportunities but new challenges, and that Washington was in the 
grip of old-fashioned partisan political rhetoric, dividing us when we 
needed to be united, holding us back when we needed to go forward.

    Now, we are all engaged in a great debate which you hear every day 
on the news as you watch events unfold about what your Government should 
be doing in this moment. The old view was that there was a Government 
solution in Washington for every big problem in the country and that 
Government could actually help people with big problems. Well, we know 
that that's not exactly right; they're not one-size-fits-all, Government 
knows best, out of Washington. And we know that there are great limits 
on how much Government can help people to fulfill their abilities.

    The new rage is to say that the Government is the cause of all of 
our problems, and if only we had no Government, we'd have no problems. I 
can tell you, that contradicts evidence, history, and common sense. Now, 
the truth is--so the question is, what are we going to do? I can tell 
you what my view is, and it is different from either extreme. I believe 
we need a Government that doesn't pretend to be a savior but that 
doesn't sit on the sidelines. I believe in a partnership.

[[Page 509]]

I believe that the National Government's mission at the end of this 
century is as follows: Number one, we ought to be creating opportunity 
and demanding responsibility. Number two, I think we ought to be doing 
everything we can to empower the American people through education for a 
lifetime to make the most of their own lives. Number three, I believe we 
ought to be enhancing the security of the American people, not only by 
making the world a safer place but by making our streets and our schools 
and our homes and our workplaces safer places. And number four, I think 
we have got to dramatically change the National Government to make it 
smaller, less bureaucratic, less meddlesome, but still helpful to move 
this country forward. Now, if you look at the record in creating 
opportunity, we have brought down the deficit, we have expanded trade, 
we have increased our investments in new technology, and in the last 2 
years our Nation has produced over 6 million new jobs, the unemployment 
rate in Florida has dropped 3 percent from 7.4 to 4.3 percent. We are 
clearly moving forward and creating more opportunity.
    If you look at the empowerment issue, we have increased investments 
in education, everything from expanding Head Start to expanding the 
efforts of States to make apprenticeships for people that don't go to 
college to dramatically--and I mean dramatically--increasing the 
availability of scholarship for middle class people to get a higher 
education.
    If you ask: Well, what have we done on security? Well, look around 
the world. We are making progress in troublesome areas of the world, 
like the Middle East, in bringing peace, and Northern Ireland. We have 
made agreements with Russia and with other countries in the former 
Soviet Union to drastically reduce the number of nuclear weapons. And 
for the first time since the dawn of the nuclear age, there are no 
nuclear missiles pointed at the children of the United States of 
America.
    Now, if you ask what have we done to reduce the size of Government--
and I want to compliment Governor Chiles for his leadership in this--
Florida is one of the--really, the groundbreaking State in America, I 
think, in slashing unnecessary regulation. And I congratulate him on 
that.
    What are we doing in Washington? Well, we've reduced the size of the 
Federal bureaucracy by 100,000. We're going to reduce it by 270,000 over 
5 years. It'll be the smallest Federal Government since John Kennedy was 
President of the United States.
    We have reduced the Government deficit so much that if it weren't 
for interest on the debt, incurred in the 12 years before I showed up, 
we'd have a surplus today, not a deficit in the Government account. 
We're paying our operating bills. We're now giving Government regulators 
the authority not to fine people the first time they make a mistake.
    And Carol Browner, from Florida, who's the head of the EPA, has 
opened up an office in which people, good, honest business people can go 
and say, ``Look, I'm afraid I'm in violation of some environmental 
law.'' And instead of getting a fine, they'll get 6 months to fix it.
    We have changed the rules so that now if somebody makes a mistake in 
good faith, our Federal agencies have the right not to fine people but 
to say, ``You keep the fine if you'll spend it in fixing the problem, 
making the work place safer, making the environment cleaner.''
    So we are moving forward. With this new Congress, we are finding 
some areas of agreement that are quite important. I signed a law that I 
campaigned for President to support that applies to Congress all the 
laws they put on the private sector. I think it's high time.
    I signed a law the other day which limits the ability of the 
Congress to impose upon State governments and local governments, so-
called ``unfunded mandates,'' requiring them to raise your taxes because 
of some people in Washington want, instead of what you decided the mayor 
should do, or the Governor and the State legislature should do. And it's 
high time.
    And we're about to get agreement--we passed a line-item veto, which 
most Governors have, which allows a President to go into a big bill 
where a lot of pork barrel spending might be hidden with a lot of good 
things, so you can't afford to veto the bill

[[Page 510]]

and find the pork. And we're going to get that passed soon. And that's a 
good thing.
    But there still are some disagreements. And the American people, 
without regard to their party, will have to be heard on these 
disagreements, because you have to decide what you think the main 
mission of our country is. Is the main mission to make sure there is no 
Federal Government, or is the main mission to grow the middle class, 
shrink the under class, and support family and community and the future 
of this country? I think that is what the main mission of this country 
is.
    And let me give you some ideas. With all the cutting of the budget 
we have done--and last year, I gave the Congress the first budget in 25 
years that cut defense and domestic spending together. Only medical 
costs went up because of inflation. Everything else was cut. But I did 
not cut within that education. We increased our investment in education. 
Why? Because--look around you. It is the future of America.
    So are we going to grow the middle class, shrink the under class and 
be a safer country if more poor little kids go through Head Start? I 
think we are. Are we going to grow the middle class if more kids who get 
out of high school but don't want to go to college, at least get 2 years 
of some kind of training afterward in a community college--that type of 
thing? I think we are. Will we be growing the middle class and shrinking 
the under class if every person who wants to go to college can get a 
college loan at a lower cost and a better repayment schedule? I think we 
are.
    So this is a big decision we have to make in Washington. Let me give 
you a clear, explicit example. I recommended that we could save some 
money and do a better job by our young people if we changed the college 
loan program because it was a big bureaucracy. You know it was a 
guarantee, so the Government would guarantee a loan a bank would give 
you. The bank charges a fee; then if somebody doesn't pay it back, the 
bank gets 90 percent of the money from the Government. So they never 
sue, because the lawyer fee would cost more than 10 percent. Right? We 
were spending, when I became President, $1.8--$2.8 billion a year of 
your money for delinquent loans, because people weren't paying their 
student loans.
    Colleges and universities were complaining all over America that the 
paperwork was driving them bananas to process the student loans. The 
students were complaining that they couldn't get the loans in a hurry. 
And then when they had to repay them on a 10-year schedule, if you 
borrowed a whole bunch of money, you couldn't take a job that you might 
want if it has a salary so low you could never make your loan repayment. 
And it didn't just apply to people in what you call public service jobs.
    Yesterday in Atlanta, I had an economic forum, and I had two married 
medical students, a husband and wife from the University of Florida, 
come and testify. They are 4th-year medical students. They will owe 
$140,000 when they get out of medical school. You say, ``Well, doctors 
make a lot of money.'' They do, but not when they're residents. Right? 
They were going to literally have to spend one-half of their income, 
combined, paying off their students loans, while they're residents 
working 60-70-80 hours a week. Under our plan, they can pay it off as a 
percentage of their income. So when they start making money, they pay 
more. But now they get to make a living and work and become doctors. 
It's a better system.
    So how does this affect you? today, 40 percent of American 
institutions are eligible to participate in that. What I said is, let's 
let everybody participate. We'll cut the fraud rate. We've already taken 
it from $2.8 billion down to $1 billion a year. We've cut the fraud by 
nearly two-thirds. We'll cut the cost of the program. We'll loan more 
money to more students. We'll be less trouble to the institutions of 
higher education, and the deficit will go down because we'll save $6 
billion. That was my proposal.
    Now, here is the other proposal in the Congress. The other proposal 
is: Leave the banks with the money; cap the number of colleges that can 
participate at 40 percent; and instead, make students start paying 
interest on their loans while they're in college--add $2 billion a year 
to the cost of college.
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. To me, I don't think you have to be Einstein to 
conclude that does

[[Page 511]]

not make sense. Let's stay with our program. Let's save money and 
educate people and not go back to charging people more for student 
loans.
    Let me tell you something else. There's a lot of talk about tax cuts 
in Washington today. There is a limit to how much we can cut taxes 
because the deficit's big. We need to keep bringing the deficit down. 
But I believe we should have a modest tax cut for middle class people 
targeted to raising incomes and increasing the wealth of the country 
over the long run. Don't just write people a check. Give people who are 
playing by the rules some incentives to do more. That's why my bill says 
let's give people a tax deduction for the cost of education after high 
school. Get more people to get educated and do that. Why? Why? Because 
it's just like the GI bill after World War II: Everybody who goes to 
school is going to make a higher income and pay more taxes and run the 
deficit down and run the wealth of the country up. And if we keep it 
disciplined and small, we can afford it.
    But we can't afford just to go out here with these huge tax cuts 
with a deficit of the country as big as it is. The reason the Florida 
economy dropped in unemployment by 3 percent is that we brought the 
deficit down and increased our investment and expanded trade. So we got 
interest rates down and business opportunities up and generated more 
jobs. The most important thing is to keep the American people working 
and get their incomes up. And that's what we have to do.
    Now, you will see these debates over and over and over again. I want 
to mention two more, because they affect you. We're having a big 
argument about what to do about crime. Well, we finally passed a tough 
crime bill last year. Your Mayor helped us pass it. Your Governor, your 
Attorney General, your law enforcement official helped us pass it.
    And what that crime bill does is it says--first of all, it was 
virtually written by law enforcement officials--it says that we should 
have the National Government do three things to help bring the crime 
rate down: Help the States build more prisons so we don't let dangerous 
criminals out too soon; help local communities give kids something to 
say yes to and not just something to say no to, so we prevent crime and 
keep people out of trouble; and have a 20 percent increase in the police 
forces of the country so we can catch criminals and prevent crime. Those 
are the three things we did.
    Now, the Congress has proposed to reduce the amount of money we're 
spending on the crime bill but require the States to spend more on 
prisons and spend less on police and prevention, and tell the 
communities do whatever you want to with the money. And I'm opposed to 
that, and I want you to know why. Violent crime has tripled in the last 
30 years, and we have to do something about it--all kinds of violent 
crime. I just announced last week that the former attorney general of 
Iowa, Bonnie Campbell, is going to head the first-ever division of the 
Justice Department on domestic violence, violence against parents and 
children. We have to do something about this.
    Now, in 30 years, violent crime triples, but the police forces of 
the country increase by only 10 percent. You don't have to be a genius 
to figure out that there's some connection between a huge increase in 
crime and nearly no increase in the police force. How are they supposed 
to do what they're doing? Not to mention how much better armed the 
criminals have become--right?--which is part of the problem with these 
fine police officers.
    Now, we know, also, that one of the good news stories that often 
does not get told in this country is--I have seen this with my own 
eyes--there's city after city after city where the crime rate has gone 
down because of strategies that have been adopted like some of the 
strategies adopted right here in Tampa. When you put people out and you 
deploy police in the proper way and they work with people in the 
community, they not only catch criminals quicker but they also deter 
crime. I have seen it all across America. This is a good deal. Florida 
has already been awarded funds for more than 960 police officers, 18 of 
them right here in Tampa. We don't need to tamper with the crime bill. 
We ought to stay with it and implement it.
    I'm just going to give you one last example, because we have to 
decide what kind of country we're going to be and what we're going to do 
together. These young people

[[Page 512]]

that were introduced over here, the AmeriCorps volunteers--and they 
clapped and I was glad to see them--they're part of our national service 
program. It's a program basically to bring the idea of the Peace Corps 
to the streets of America. It's a program designed to say, ``If you will 
work, essentially, for minimum wage for a year, we'll give you about the 
equivalent college education benefit of the GI bill, if you'll help us 
to deal with our security problems here at home, help to volunteer and 
to rebuild America here at home.''
    Now, there are those who say, ``Well, we can't afford this. It's too 
expensive.'' We have 20,000 young Americans in AmeriCorps today, 
thousands of more who want to get in, who want to work for minimum wage 
and earn this education credit and build up our country. There are more 
people in AmeriCorps today then ever served in the Peace Corps in any 
single year in its history since President Kennedy started it, because 
the American people are dying to get out there and do something to lift 
this country up.
    Let me just give you a couple of examples. Two years ago, just 89 of 
our volunteers immunized 104,000 infants in poor areas in Texas. Believe 
me, they paid for the whole program in that one year. Here in Florida 
after the hurricane, our volunteers, working with Habitat for Humanity, 
built 75 homes, and they built them quicker and better because of that.
    These AmeriCorps volunteers are from Pinellas County. They're 
members of three local law enforcement agencies involved in community 
police departments, the Clearwater department, the St. Petersburg 
department and the county sheriff's office. They're working together to 
make what I just talked to you about, community policing, a reality, to 
make the streets safer. They're out there doing things that uniformed 
officers don't have to do that lower the crime rate and make people 
safer. That is what we ought to be doing. I think it is worth the 
investment.
    I'm cutting spending as quick as I can. We've cut more spending in 
the last 2 years than had been cut in a month of Sundays, and I will cut 
more, and I will work with the Congress to cut more. But it is not right 
to cut out AmeriCorps. We should be lifting up young people like this 
and giving them a chance to serve.
    So I want you to be a part of this. America needs to work like the 
community colleges work. People get in, and they're just judged based on 
their merit, and everybody gets a fair shot. And you know if you 
conclude the course, you've got a good chance to get a job and a better 
chance to live out your dreams. That's the way this country ought to 
work. It ought to be flexible, unbureaucratic, changing to meet the 
needs of a changing society, but it requires a partnership between the 
public sector and the private sector. Your Government in Washington, I 
am doing my best to change it to make it more like this. But we are 
creating opportunity. We are empowering people. We are enhancing our 
security. And we are downsizing this Government. We are making America a 
better place together, and I urge you to enter this debate and tell 
everybody that you can, ``We do not need more of the old-fashioned, hot 
air, partisan political rhetoric. We need a strategy to move this 
country forward.''
    And let me say this in closing, I got a letter the other day from a 
guy I went to grade school with. And he said, ``You know, Bill, one of 
the problems that you're having as President is that you're living out 
your dream. But too many people our age are living with broken dreams.'' 
I ran for this job because I wanted all the people my age to be able to 
live their dreams, and because I want you younger people here to be able 
to look forward to a life that is full and rich as the one I've enjoyed. 
And those of you that are young and don't have any children yet, I want 
you to think about having children with an atmosphere of excitement and 
hope and conviction that your kids will see America's best days. And I'm 
telling you, if we will keep our heads on straight and think about how 
we can pull together instead of how we can be driven apart, we will do 
that.
    God bless you, and thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:34 p.m. in the gymnasium at the Dale 
Mabry Campus. In his remarks, he referred to William Lanthripp, 
president, Dale Mabry Campus Student Government

[[Page 513]]

Association, and Andreas A. Paloumpis, president, Hillsborough Community 
College.