    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 31, Number 21 (Monday, May 29, 1995)]
    [Pages 867-870]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at the Women's Bureau Reception

    May 19, 1995

        Thank you very much. I was sitting here listening to my marvelous
    wife speak, and I was thinking, you know, I've been seeing her lately
    long distance, on Oprah Winfrey and on the ``Morning Show'' this
    morning, and I thought, boy, I'm glad she lives here. [Laughter]
        I want to thank Secretary Reich and the Women's Bureau Director,
    Karen Nussbaum. She has done a wonderful job. I am very grateful to her
    and to him. I want to say a special word of appreciation to the people
    who sponsored this event today: from American Home Products, the senior
    vice president, Fred Hassan, and the corporate secretary, Carol
    Emerling. Let's give them a hand for what they did. [Applause] There are
    many distinguished women leaders here today, but I do want to recognize
    one person who has been a friend of mine for more than 20 years now,
    Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, from Texas. We're glad to see you.
    Thank you very much for being here.
        You know, the concerns of working women are one of the few subjects
    that I didn't have to be educated about--[laughter]--because I grew up
    with them. I lived with my grandparents till I was 4, and my grandmother
    was a working woman from the 1930's on. In the little town where I was
    born, an awful lot of the women, both white and black, who lived in poor
    families or near-poor families worked as a matter of course. No one gave
    much thought to it one way or the other. My mother was a working woman
    from the 1940's on, beginning shortly after I was old enough to at least
    crawl around on my own. And it certainly never occurred to me from the
    first day that I met Hillary that she would do anything other than
    pursue her career. [Laughter] As a matter of fact, I spent the first 2
    or 3 years of our relationship trying to talk her out of it because I
    thought it would be bad for her career. But it's worked out all right
    for her, I think. [Laughter]
        You know, 75 years ago a reception like this would not have taken
    place. In 1920, women had less than one in five jobs in this economy
    and, as Hillary said, were only then gaining the right to vote. When she
    said, ``In 25 years from now, the President and her husband would open
    the time capsule,'' I looked at Karen and Bob and said, ``If the
    demographic trends continue, the percentages will almost mandate a woman
    President.'' [Laughter] Karen said, ``Yes, if they vote their own
    interests.'' [Laughter] To which I replied, ``We should give them every
    opportunity.'' [Laughter]
        When the Women's Bureau was born, it was designed then to improve
    the lot of women in the work force by fighting for fair wages and
    expanding opportunities for education and training and protecting women
    physically at work.
        Those folks 75 years ago, I think, would be surprised at how far
    we've come. Hundreds of women here celebrate the progress that we have
    made in all walks of American life. I'm proud that in this
    administration we have six women Cabinet Secretaries, twice as many as
    has ever served in any Cabinet of the President before. Over 40 percent
    of our appointees have been women, and a far higher percentage of women
    have been appointed to the bench and to major Federal positions than
    previous administrations. Two of these appointees are former Directors
    of the Women's Bureau: Esther Peterson, the U.S. Representative to the
    U.N. General Assembly, and the Assistant to the President for Public
    Liaison, Alexis Herman, who is here with six other Directors of the
    Women's Bureau. Let's give them all a hand here. [Applause]
        All of you represent women across this country who work long hours,
    do your best to raise your families, and contribute to your

    [[Page 868]]

    communities. Extraordinary working women today are doing their best to
    hold our country together, our communities together, and frankly, our
    hard-pressed middle class together. They deserve our admiration, our
    respect, and most importantly, our support.
        I ran for office in large measure because I was afraid that having
    won the cold war, we might squander the peace and the victory; that
    having struggled so hard to make the American dream available to other
    people around the world, we might lose it for large numbers of our
    people here at home as we move into the 21st century and the global
    economy, the technological revolution opening all of us to unbelievable
    pressures and changes which can be good or difficult.
        I believe that my job is, first, to provide for the security of the
    American people; secondly, to give people the tools they need to help
    themselves live up to their God-given potential; and thirdly, to try to
    create as many opportunities as I possibly can.
        In a way, the first major piece of legislation I signed as
    President, which had been bouncing around here for 7 years and had
    suffered through two vetoes, was emblematic of all three of those
    objectives. It was the family and medical leave law.
        Not very long ago, I was home for a couple of days and I went back
    to my old church, and a lady I didn't know came up to me and said, ``I
    really want to thank you. I know we're not supposed to talk about
    politics at church, but I don't really think this is politics. I got
    cancer, and I had to take some time off and deal with it, and my husband
    had to take some time off and work with me. And neither one of us lost
    our jobs, and we're both back working now. And it wouldn't have happened
    if it hadn't been for the family and medical leave law.''
        I am proud of the fact that we have moved aggressively to immunize
    all of our children under the age of 2; to enroll every pregnant woman
    and infant in the country who needs it in the Women, Infants and
    Children Program for nutrition; to expand Head Start and lift the
    standards in our schools and expand apprenticeship programs for young
    people who don't go on to universities; and something which will make a
    big difference in the lives of young women in the future, to
    dramatically expand and make more affordable loans to go to college.
        But there is much, much more to be done. I am proud of the fact that
    last year the Small Business Administration cut its budget but expanded
    loans to women entrepreneurs by 85 percent in one year--I might add,
    without reducing loans to qualified males. [Laughter] We expanded for
    everybody.
        But I think it's important that we recognize that women in the
    workplace are caught in a lot of cross-currents today, because all
    American workers, or at least more than half of us, are working longer
    hours for the same or lower pay that we were making 10 years ago. And
    therefore, more and more parents are working harder for the same or less
    and spending less time with their children. Women feel this pressure
    very deeply insofar as they have either sole, primary, or even just half
    of the responsibility for taking care of their children as well as
    earning a living. Because male workers over the age of 45, on average,
    have lost 14 percent of their earning power in the last 10 years, women
    in the work force and in the home feel the anxiety of their husband's
    sense of loss and insecurity and frustration and anger.
        What is causing all this, and what are we to do about it? Well, what
    is causing it all is the impact of the global economy and the dramatic
    revolution in technology on our society, opening up all kinds of new
    changes in ways that are perfectly wonderful if you can access them but
    terrifying if you cannot. For example--we don't have the figures yet on
    '94, but I think '94 will confirm '93's trend--in 1993 we had the
    largest number of new businesses started in America in any year in
    history and the largest number of new millionaires in America in any
    year in history. And that is a good thing. That is a good thing. And
    that is happening because so many of us are now able to access the world
    of the future. Many of you in this room are part of the trend toward a
    brighter, bigger, broader tomorrow.
        But there is also a fault line in our society that is splitting the
    middle class apart, putting unbearable pressures on families, making
    them less secure and making them less able to live up to the fullest of
    their abilities. You know it, and I know it.

    [[Page 869]]

        That's why the family and medical leave law was important. If people
    are going to be working for smaller companies, not bigger ones, and
    moving around, at least they ought to know they can take some time off
    without losing a job if there's someone sick in their family or if a
    baby is born or some other emergency arises. That's why it was
    important.
        That's why the efforts of the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary
    of Education to create a fabric, a seamless fabric, of lifelong
    learning, whenever people lose their jobs or feel that they're
    underemployed, it's terribly important.
        And that's why I believe it is especially important to women that we
    raise the minimum wage this year. Women represent three out of five
    minimum wage workers but only half the work force.
        I have done everything I could to create a climate in which people
    are encouraged to choose work over welfare, in which people are
    encouraged to be successful parents and successful workers. I believe
    that. That's what the earned-income tax credit was all about in 1993.
    Let me tell you what that meant: That meant this year that the average
    family of four with an income under $27,000 got a $1,000 tax cut below
    what they paid before this administration came into office. And it means
    3 years from now, if the Congress will stick with it and not repeal it,
    we will be able to say that no one who works full-time and has children
    at home, when they go home from work, will live below the poverty line.
    That is the best war against welfare we could wage.
        But it isn't enough. If we do not raise the minimum wage this year,
    next year it will be, in real dollar terms, the lowest it has been in 40
    years. Now that is not my idea of what the 21st century American economy
    is all about. I want a smart-work, high-wage economy, not a hard-work,
    low-wage economy. And the working women of America and their children
    and their husbands deserve it is well.
        You know, I don't get to watch a lot of kind of extra television,
    but the other night, just by accident, I was watching a news program
    where a special was being done on the minimum wage. And I don't even
    know if it was a national program or one of the State networks around
    here, but they went down South to a town that had a lot of minimum wage
    workers. And they went in this plant to interview a remarkable woman who
    worked in this plant at a minimum wage. And they said to this lady,
    ``You know, your employer says, if we raise the minimum wage, that
    they'll either have to lay people off or put more money into machinery
    and reduce their employment long-term. What do you say to that?'' I
    could not have written the script. [Laughter] This lady sort of threw
    her shoulders back and looked into the eyes of the television reporter
    and said, ``Honey, I'll take my chances.'' [Laughter]
        If we are going to bring our budget deficit into balance, which will
    be good for all of us, if we are going to have to over a period of years
    cut back on expenditures that the Government used to make, that makes it
    even more important for people who do go out into the private sector and
    work full-time, play by the rules, and want to make their own way
    without public assistance, to be rewarded for that work. This is a huge
    issue.
        One other thing I want to say that must be done this year: The
    Secretary of Labor has taken the initiative in trying to consolidate a
    lot of these various job-training programs into a fund from which you
    can get a check or a voucher, if you're unemployed or underemployed, to
    take to the local community college or the training institution of your
    choice to get permanent reeducation opportunities for a lifetime. And we
    ought to do that.
        I'd like to close by introducing someone who was a working woman,
    who was a particular influence in my life at an early time. The people
    who sponsored this event invited me to pick someone to participate, and
    so I picked this person. Lonnie Luebben was my 11th grade honors English
    teacher. And I believe that I was in the first class she taught, but
    anyway, she looked awful young at the time--[laughter]--and she still
    does. She had a remarkable way of making literature come to life. And
    one of the most memorable trips I ever took in my life--I still
    remember--it was the first time I ever went to the wild mountains of the
    Ozarks in north Arkansas, along the river that was

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    the first river Congress, over 20 years ago, set aside in the national
    wild rivers act. They thought it was the wildest of all the rivers in
    the United States. [Laughter] And we explored caves that still had
    ammunition stored from the Civil War. We talked to mountain people who
    had never been more than 20 miles away from home. It was one of the most
    remarkable experiences I have ever had. She taught me a great deal about
    American folklore and literature and life. And just before we walked out
    here, she gave me a contribution for the time capsule, the textbook with
    which she taught our class so many years ago.
        So if you will forgive me, I would like to close this event by
    asking my teacher to come up here and accept my thanks for being a
    working woman over 30 years ago. Thank you very much.
        Again, let me thank American Home Products. Let me thank all of you
    for coming. Let me thank Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson. And I've
    just been told that Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey is also here somewhere;
    thank you. There she is, the heroine of the State of the Union Address.
        I thank you all. Please stay around. Have a good time. We're
    delighted to see you. Goodbye. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:38 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House, at a 75th anniversary celebration of the Department of Labor's
    Women's Bureau. This item was not received in time for publication in
    the appropriate issue.