[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.