[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 20 (Monday, May 22, 1995)]
[Pages 842-846]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks on the First Anniversary of the School-To-Work Opportunities Act 
of 1994 in White Plains, Maryland

May 17, 1995

    Well, Nancy, you may not be famous yet, but you're a lot more famous 
than you were 5 minutes ago. [Laughter] I wish I had thought of that 
Michael Jordan line. I'd throw the whole speech away. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Nancy and Lorrie and the other students who showed 
me around this fine place and showed me what they do here. I thank you 
for that. I thank Secretary Reich and Secretary Riley for the work they 
have done to put this school-to-work partnership together with the 
Education Department and the Labor Department. I thank Senator Kennedy 
for his sponsorship of this legislation and your Congressman, Steny 
Hoyer, for the work he did to pass it. I'm glad to see Mr. Pastillo 
here, and I thank him and all those who have worked so hard on this. 
I'll never forget the conversation I had with the Ford CEO, Alex 
Trotman, about this issue in the White House not all that long ago, in 
urging more corporate involvement in business sponsorship of the school-
to-work concept. President Sine, I thank you for being here and for the 
work that all the community education institutions in America are doing 
to help prepare young Americans to succeed in the global economy. They 
may be the most important institutions in the United States today, and I 
thank you for that. I want to thank all the State and local officials 
from Maryland who are here, Lt. Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and 
Senator Miller, I'm glad to see you. And I know that, Governor McKernan, 
you shouldn't feel alone, there are lots of Republicans here today--
[laughter]--county commissioners, members of the House of Delegates, 
county officials here, the Sheriff and others.
    This ought not to be a partisan issue. And I thank you, sir, for 
your leadership. He wrote a fine book about it, which Mr. Pastillo 
referenced in his introduction. And Governor McKernan sent me a copy of 
it, autographed it, and I read it. And I thought if my dear mother were 
still living, she would wonder which of us were more successful, because 
she always thought whether you wrote books or not was a real standard of 
whether you'd done anything in life. [Laughter] So according to my 
mother's life, you've done something very important. And we are very 
grateful to you, sir, for the leadership you have given this movement 
all across America. The United States needs desperately for every young 
person in this country to have the opportunity that these young people 
have had. And thanks to you and your efforts, more will have that 
chance. I thank you.
    I would also like to thank our host here, Automated Graphics. Thank 
you very much for having us here. We are grateful, and we appreciate it.
    I want to say a little about this in a larger context. What we are 
doing here today to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the school-to-
work program is really adapting to the information age in the 21st 
century, one of the oldest traditions in the United States. Just 
imagine, for example--here we are in Maryland--what if we were here 200 
years ago? You would be a young person living in a settlement in 
Maryland called Port Tobacco, which was then a big town around these 
parts. You'd be in a promising new country. George Washington would be 
your President. John Adams would be your Vice President. Pretty good 
lineup. [Laughter] And everybody would be optimistic. And

[[Page 843]]

most people would be like Nancy, they'd get up at 5 a.m. or 5:30 a.m. 
every morning and go to work. If you wanted a better job, you'd probably 
leave the country and come into town, where you would walk down a main 
street, and you would look at the people who were working. Two hundred 
years ago, you'd see a blacksmith, a carpenter and, of course, a 
printer. If you wanted to learn how to do those jobs, you'd simply knock 
on one of the doors and hope that in return for hard work, you could get 
a craftsman to teach you those skills. That's the way it was done 200 
years ago.
    And for a long time, that's the way it was done, as one generation 
kept faith with the next. Well, we know that we can't exactly do it that 
way anymore, but if you think about it, that's what the school-to-work 
program is all about in modern terms for the modern economy. And it's 
very, very important.
    This year, we are seeing grants that involve over 100,000 students 
nationwide, over 40,000 employers, including very large and very 
powerful employers in this country but also some very, very small ones. 
And there are over 2,500 schools all across America involved in this 
program. The act was a genuine partnership; it set up no bureaucracy 
whatever. It simply made grants to local partnerships, many of them in 
poor areas, and gave students the chance to show what their hard work 
could do.
    This year, we are doubling the school-to-work funding for the eight 
pioneer States that already have programs. Seed grants will go out to 20 
new States so that all 50 States will have some participation in the 
school-to-work program. By 1997, every State in America will have a 
school-to-work program up and running.
    One thing that I want to emphasize that is very important is that 
the school-to-work program rests on a few very big ideas. One of the 
ones that's most important to me is that there is no choice to be made 
between practical workplace skills and academic knowledge, that the two 
reinforce each other and go hand in hand. When I was growing up, there 
was always this bright line between what was a vocational practical 
skill and what was an academic skill. It was probably a mistake then; it 
is certainly a mistake now. We have to abolish that line.
    School-to-work is for all kinds of students. After high school, some 
will go straight to a job, some will go on to a community college, 
others may go to a 4-year college. Some who hadn't planned on getting 
more education will get more education because they were in the school-
to-work program and because they see it will help them in their work 
lives.
    Our country has enormous potential and a few very large problems. 
You know what they are as well as I do. You know we have too much crime 
and violence. You know we have major pressures on the family and the 
community in our country. What you may or may not know is that 
underlying a lot of this is the fact that more than half the people in 
this country today are working a longer work week than they were 10 
years ago for the same or lower wages. And the reason is we have not 
created in this country the kind of education and training programs we 
need to adapt to a global economy, where everybody's earnings are to 
some extent conditioned on the pressures being put on us from around the 
world and where everybody's earnings more and more depend upon not only 
what they know, but what they are capable of learning.
    In the last 15 years, for example, earnings for high school dropouts 
in the work force have dropped at breathtaking rates. They're about 25 
percent lower than they were 15 years ago. Earnings for high school 
graduates are not down that much, but they're also down significantly.
    The only people for whom earnings have increased in the last 15 
years are people who get of high school with usable skills and have at 
least some kind of education and training for about 2 years after high 
school. It can be in the work place; it could be in the service; it 
could be in a community college; it can be in a college, but you have to 
create this sense of ongoing upgrading of the skills if we're going to 
grow the middle class and shrink the under class in this country. If we 
could do that, a lot of our other problems would be smaller.
    I want to emphasize again that this has been a bipartisan effort, 
which perhaps ought

[[Page 844]]

more properly to be a nonpartisan effort. After all, in the post-cold-
war era, there are certain things that are critical to the American 
dream; growing the middle class and shrinking the under class and giving 
people the chance to help themselves is clearly that. We ought to have 
partisan differences over how best to achieve that goal, but we ought to 
be committed to that goal. And if you're committed to a goal, very often 
you wind up agreeing on the details.
    For example, there's been a remarkable amount of bipartisan support 
in the United States Congress and in the administration on what the 
defense budget ought to be at the end of the cold war. Everybody knows 
it has to go down, and everybody knows it shouldn't go down too much 
because every time in our history we've taken it down too much, we have 
wound up getting ourselves in trouble, and we have to build it up all 
over again. Better to spend enough money to maintain the strongest 
military in the world to prevent bad things from happening. So we argue 
a little bit around the edges, but more or less we are moving in the 
same direction, because we understand that's important to our security. 
The same thing could be said today about the other problems we have.
    We have two big deficits in America today. We've got a huge 
Government deficit--a budget deficit. But we also have an education and 
training deficit. And we can't solve one without the other. We ought to 
bring both into balance. We ought to get rid of both deficits. And I 
think we can.
    In the last 2 years, we've made a remarkable amount of progress. 
Over a 7-year period, the budgets that were adopted in the last couple 
of years reduced the deficit by $1 trillion. Your budget deficit would 
be gone today, we would be in balance today, were it not for the 
interest we have to pay on the debt we ran up in just the 12 years 
before I took office. So this is a--what I want to say to you is that 
this idea of having a big structural deficit in America with our budget 
is a new idea, but it didn't happen overnight. And we can't solve it 
overnight, but we have to solve it. And we are moving on it, and we will 
continue to do so.
    We also see in the last 2 years, thanks to Senator Kennedy and 
others, a remarkable bipartisan assault on the education deficit: big 
increase in Head Start, the Goals 2000 initiative, which is designed to 
see that more of our schools meet really high standards and that we 
measure them and tell people the truth about how our schools are doing, 
but that we help our schools to achieve those standards through 
grassroots reforms. We've reformed the student loan program, to lower 
the cost of college loans, make the repayment terms easier but be 
tougher on collecting the bills so that the defaults have gone from $2.8 
billion a year down to $1 billion a year, but we're making more loans to 
more young people at lower costs. Those are the kinds of things that we 
did all in a bipartisan manner.
    Now we've asked the Congress to collapse a lot of these training 
programs into a big voucher so that when someone loses a job or if 
someone's working for a very low wage and they need to go back to the 
community college or participate in a program like this, they can just 
get a voucher from the Government and use it for 2 years to get training 
throughout a lifetime. Because all of you who are in this program, 
you'll have to continue to upgrade your skills over the course of your 
working life if the objective is to have good jobs, good jobs, good 
jobs. These are all things that we have been doing together and we need 
to continue to do it.
    There is this bill that I have spoken about, this rescission bill. I 
want to tell you about it. A rescission bill is a bill that cuts the 
budget in the year where you're in right now. That's what this 
rescission bill--the rescission bill proposes cuts to the present budget 
year. I believe we ought to make some more cuts. We've got to keep 
bringing the deficit down. The problem I have with the rescission bill 
that was reported out of the conference committee between the Senate and 
the House is that it makes the education deficit worse. And it doesn't 
even make the education deficit worse to reduce the budget deficit; it 
makes it worse to increase pork barrel spending.
    Earlier this year, I worked with the United States Senate on a 
rescission bill which would cut exactly the same amount in Federal 
spending as this bill does and provide needed funds to the Federal 
Emergency Management Agency to deal with the horrible prob- 

[[Page 845]]

lem in Oklahoma City, to help to finish the work of rebuilding 
California after the earthquake, to help us to fight domestic terrorism, 
to do things that really need to be done and still reduce the deficit.
    But there's a right way and wrong way to do it. I think you have to 
cut pork barrel projects before you cut people. Unfortunately, in this 
conference committee what was, I think, a pretty good bill became a bad 
bill. It cuts our efforts to help people and puts pork back in the bill.
    I want more than $16 billion in spending cuts, but there's a wrong 
way and right way to do it. This bill that came out of the committee 
cuts our efforts to make sure our schools are safe, drug-free, which is 
a big deal in a lot of places in America. It cuts our efforts to help 
our schools meet new higher standards through innovative reforms, cuts 
our efforts to provide college aid to young people who will work in 
community service projects in AmeriCorps, the national service program, 
and, yes, it also cuts the school-to-work programs.
    Now, in this bill, they found a way to pay for $1.5 billion worth of 
courthouses and special-interest highway projects and other low-priority 
spending. They kept in the law an unforgivable tax loophole which lets 
billionaires beat their U.S. taxes by giving up their citizenship after 
they've earned the money as American citizens. But they cut more from 
education, away from the Senate bill that I had already agreed to.
    Now, I believe a bill that cuts education to put in pork is the 
wrong way to balance the budget, and I will veto it. We should be 
cutting pork to give more people like these young people standing behind 
me a chance to be at school-to-work.
    I want to make it very clear: I am not against cutting spending. I 
have a bill right here which will cut out their pork, restore education, 
and reduce the deficit by more than the bill they're sending to my desk. 
So, yes, I'm going to veto that bill, but I want them to pass this bill. 
Let's cut the deficit and put education back.
    I want to say this again: I have no problem with cutting spending. 
I've been doing it for 2 years. We've got to keep doing it. This 
proposal cuts the pork, restores education, and reduces the deficit by 
more than they propose to do it. So, yes, I will veto the rescission 
bill, but I want to cut the spending. And I will send this to Congress 
immediately. We shouldn't--we shouldn't be cutting education to build 
courthouses. We should be cutting courthouses to build education. That 
is the right way to do it.
    Let me also say that in the bill that went into this conference 
committee between the House and the Senate there was a so-called lock 
box, which I supported, which basically said, if we're going to cut this 
spending, let's reduce the deficit. Let's don't spend--let's don't take 
these cuts and put them into paying for tax cuts when we've still got a 
big budget deficit. The lock box was taken out in the conference, too. 
And I think that was a big mistake.
    You know, we cut some other things that weren't all that easy to cut 
because we thought we had to bring the deficit down. I don't think we 
should start by getting our priorities reversed.
    And finally, let me just mention, I was with Congressman Hoyer on 
Earth Day not very long ago, and I was in Maryland. We talked about the 
environment. There's another thing which is in this bill which I really 
object to, which would basically direct us to make timber sales to large 
companies, subsidized by the taxpayers, mostly in the Pacific Northwest, 
that will essentially throw out all of our environmental laws and the 
protections that we have that surround such timber sales. It will also 
put us back into the courts. So it would seem to allow to cut more 
timber, but actually it means lawsuits and threats to the environment.
    I don't want to spend too much of your time on it, but this kept our 
country tied up in court for years and years. We finally got out of 
court with a plan that would cut trees, save the environment, and help 
communities in logging areas to go through economic transformation to 
diversify their economy. That is the right way to do this.
    So let's go back and make this bill what it ought to be: A deficit 
reduction bill that also takes care of Oklahoma City, the California 
earthquake, the terrorism threat, and reduces the deficit and keeps 
programs like

[[Page 846]]

school-to-work in place. That is the proper way to do it.
    Remember, we have two great deficits. It is true that for the first 
time in our history we let the budget deficit get out of hand. That is 
true. We are bringing it down. We've got to bring the budget to balance. 
That is true. But you cannot do it by ignoring the fact that one of the 
reasons that we're hurting is that people aren't making enough money. 
And when they don't make much money, they don't pay much taxes, and that 
also increases Government deficits not just in Washington but at the 
Statehouse in Maryland, in the local school districts, in the local 
communities, in the local counties.
    We have to attach both of these deficits together. And we can do it. 
This is a very great country, and this is not the biggest problem in the 
world. This is not the Second World War; this is not the Great 
Depression; this is not the Civil War. We do not need to throw up our 
hands. We do not need to get into a shouting match about it. And we 
ought to be able to agree, just as we agreed on the goal of national 
security to win the cold war, that we are going to win the war for the 
American dream in the 21st century by getting rid of both of these 
deficits, the budget deficit and the education deficit. You have helped 
us by being here today.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 12:28 p.m. at Automated Graphics Systems, 
Inc. In his remarks, he referred to Nancyann Kesting and Lorrie Long, 
school-to-work students; Peter J. Pastillo, executive vice president, 
Ford Motor Company; John Sine, president, Charles County Community 
College; and former Maine Governor John McKernan, Jr., chairman, Jobs 
for America's Graduates.