[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 15 (Monday, April 17, 1995)]
[Pages 577-579]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to AmeriCorps Volunteers in Dallas, Texas

April 7, 1995

    Thank you. Let's give Alexis another hand. [Applause] Was she great, 
or what? I don't think there is much more for me to say. [Laughter] She 
said it all, and she said it well. Congratulations. Thank you for your 
example. I want to say, also, a special word of welcome and thanks to 
your Congresswoman, Eddie Bernice Johnson. We have been friends now for 
over 20 years. And I'm sure that when we first met, well, I thought she 
might be in Congress some day, but I'm sure she never thought I'd be 
President. [Laughter] I want to thank all your--the local leaders for 
being here. We have people from the city council and from the county 
commission and from the State legislature. And we have Mrs. Rouse who's 
on the State commission for AmeriCorps. And Texas has been so supportive 
of AmeriCorps.
    The Dallas Youth Service Corps is doing a great job here with the 
Greater Dallas Community Services Community of Churches and other 
AmeriCorps programs. But I want to tell you something you may not know. 
Texas has the largest number of AmeriCorps volunteers of any State in 
the country. You have people who are walking a police beat, teaching 
kids, building homes, helping seniors, cleaning up litter, immunizing 
children, doing all kinds of things to make this State and these 
communities and our children stronger and better for the future and 
earning money for education, as well.
    I want to say a special word about this group. I didn't have a 
chance to ask everybody their story, but I can tell you just from the 
biographies I got walking down the block here, this is what I had in 
mind when we started AmeriCorps. I have met one person here who got off 
welfare to work in AmeriCorps and got a GED, and several others said 
they had gotten their GED. I met one person here who's done part of a 
college education and is going to use the AmeriCorps money to help pay 
for those college loans to get the college education. I met one person 
here who was born to a mother on welfare and was a Head Start child who 
is a college graduate who came all the way to Texas to help people who 
were like her when she was a little girl.
    When I started this national service program with the idea of giving 
our young people a chance to serve in a domestic Peace Corps, just like 
the Peace Corps was when I was a young man, except I wanted it to also 
be like the GI bill. My idea was that we needed more people to go to 
college, but we needed more people to relate to each other across racial 
and income and political lines. And if we had a national service project 
where people could do whatever folks in the community needed done, not 
what some bureaucrat in Washington would decide but what people in the 
community needed done, and if they could do it without regard to their 
race, their income, their background, just if they were willing to serve 
and they wanted to earn some money to pay for college education or to 
pay for their further education, then we had a chance to get the 
American people together.
    Everywhere else, the American people--somebody's always trying to 
divide us from one another. They're always trying to get us to fight. 
They're always publicizing our fights. AmeriCorps is about getting 
people together, doing grassroots work, earning money for education by 
serving your community. And all of you are doing it. I am very, very, 
very proud of you.
    As you know, and as Alexis said, there's been some controversy about 
the AmeriCorps program. And there are some people who say, ``Well, we 
have to cut the deficit and we have to cut some spending, so we ought to 
cut that because it's new, or we ought to cut that because it's 
inefficient.''

[[Page 578]]

Well, it's not inefficient. You've got 20,000 young people out here 
working all across America for a minimum wage, working like crazy, and 
earning some money to go to college just like they would if they were 
serving in the military. The people who are serving in the military earn 
the GI bill. They're eligible for up to $30,000 in benefits. But letting 
people earn enough for 2 years worth of benefits at about $4,700 a year, 
that's not too much to pay to give young people the privilege of service 
and the energy and the opportunity to work with other people in other 
ways.
    There are people who say that any national program is too 
bureaucratic. There is no bureaucracy here. These programs in Texas were 
funded by competition. People have to compete for these projects and 
compete for these slots. And nobody gets it unless they're doing a good 
job.
    Then there are people who say that if we actually give young people 
the opportunity to work full-time in volunteer work and pay them a 
minimum wage and then let them earn some money to go to college, somehow 
that will discourage all the other volunteers. Well, look around here. I 
don't think that's a very good argument. All you've got to do is look 
around to see that that is not true.
    There is plenty of work to be done in this country, folks. And the 
Government cannot do it all, and it cannot be all paid for. It's got to 
be done by community service groups. And you're a part of that.
    And there are people in our country who have dreams and aspirations 
and who have personal problems, and they can't be solved by some high-
flown program. They have to be solved by people who make a decision to 
change their lives, just like all these young people behind me and all 
of you out there with your AmeriCorps T-shirts. But it helps to change 
your life if you know there's somebody pulling for you, somebody giving 
you a chance to serve, and somebody giving you a chance to get a good 
education so you can have a good future. That's what AmeriCorps is all 
about. We ought to keep it. We ought to stand behind it, and we ought to 
keep going.
    You will find this hard to believe, I bet, but when I was your age--
most of you--when I got out of high school, our country had a lot of 
problems. The racial problems were more severe than they are now. And we 
were involved in a cold war with what was then the Soviet Union. And we 
didn't know for sure that there would never be a nuclear war. And now, 
for the first time since atomic bombs have been made, there are no 
nuclear weapons pointed at the American people by the Russian people. I 
am proud of that.
    But this age and time has its own problems. If anybody had ever told 
me that we'd have as many children born out of wedlock, I wouldn't have 
believed that. If anybody had ever told me we'd have as many single 
mothers raising little children in poverty, I would not have believed 
that. We have new problems and new challenges. And the only answer to it 
is for people in the community to take responsibility for themselves and 
for each other and to have the chance to pull themselves up and work 
their way out. What did you say? That you wanted a hand up, not a 
handout. That's as good a way to say it as I can imagine. That's what 
AmeriCorps is all about.
    This is a very great country, and there is nothing we face that we 
cannot do. But we're going up or down together. And if we're going up 
together, we're going to have to make sure everybody, everybody has a 
chance to get a good education, because in a world economy, what you can 
learn determines what you can earn. And we're going to have to remember 
that whatever we do and how ever busy we are and whatever else we've got 
on our mind, we need to take some time out to serve, to be citizens, to 
work together to solve our common problems.
    Don't you feel better at the end of every day, after you work and 
you do something for somebody else? When you go home at night, aren't 
you proud of it? And aren't you making friends with people who are 
different from you that you would never have known otherwise? And don't 
you think that will stay with you all your life?
    I just want you to make the most of your life that you can, solve as 
many problems in this community as you can, get that education, and stay 
with AmeriCorps. I'll stay with you, and together we can save it.

[[Page 579]]

    God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 3:15 p.m. at Fair Park. In his remarks, he 
referred to AmeriCorps volunteer Alexis Brisby and Eloise Medows Rouse, 
board member, Texas Commission for National and Community Service. This 
item was not received in time for publication in the appropriate issue.