[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 26 (Monday, July 1, 1996)]
[Pages 1121-1127]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Family Re-Union V Conference in Nashville, Tennessee

June 24, 1996

    Thank you very much. Well, Mr. Vice President, I kind of hate to 
talk, that panel was so good. I sort of--I think they were the keynote, 
and I'll just try to finish it with a grace note.
    I'd like to begin by thanking the Vice President and Tipper for 
showing this consistent commitment to the American family. I mean, it's 
one thing to have one of these conferences, but to have one every year 
and have each one be better than the last and to be able to demonstrate 
to the American people that we are building on it and actually doing 
something with it--I mean, after that conference last year, I left here 
with a renewed commitment to make sure that when we passed the 
telecommunications bill it had the V-chip in it. I left here with a 
renewed sense that, because of the media people that were here, that we 
could work with the leaders of the entertainment industry to develop a 
television rating system, and we did. And I believe we'll be able to get 
an agreement to increase the quality and quantity of educational time on 
television. And I believe a lot of good things will come out of this 
conference as well. So, for--we're indebted to them for a lot of things, 
but this will be a lasting legacy.
    I also want to thank Dr. Erickson and Representative Purcell, 
Speaker Naifeh, Gov- 

[[Page 1122]]

ernor Wilder, and the other officials that are here, Attorney General 
Burson, Attorney General Humphrey, and State legislators from across the 
country. And I thank you for coming.
    I'd like to begin by saying you could probably tell that we're all 
kind of into this, and that's a very important thing for me for you to 
know. I believe as we move into this new era that the people of this 
country are going to have more chances to live out their dreams than any 
generation of Americans before them. But we have to do it in a way that, 
number one, gives everybody a chance to live out their dreams, not just 
a few--or not even just many or most, but everybody who is willing to be 
a responsible citizen should have a chance to live out their dreams. And 
we have to do it in a way that brings us together, instead of dividing 
us.
    This is an incredibly diverse country. This is an incredibly complex 
and diverse economy. We are being more and more drawn into a global--not 
just a global economy but a global society. And it is absolutely 
imperative that we have a commitment to dealing with these challenges in 
a way that increases opportunity for all and brings us together.
    When Hillary and I and Al and Tipper all sort of moved into the 
White House, one of the things that I tried to do was to kind of get a 
fix on the people who were working for us. Now, a lot of people who work 
for the White House are young people who haven't started their families 
yet, and that's probably good because they work these crazy hours and 
they never seem to get tired. I used to be that way myself. [Laughter] 
And then a lot of people who work for us, all their children are grown, 
so they can accommodate bizarre schedules and long hours.
    But we have a significant number of people in very responsible 
positions who still have children who are either school age or pre-
school age. And one of the things I told them when we started this was 
that we were on a mission to change America for the better, but it 
wasn't as important as taking care of their kids, and that if they ever 
thought that their families were really suffering, they ought to quit, 
because the most important job any of us have, starting with the 
President, is to be a good parent. And several of them have taken me up 
on my admonition--[laughter]--sometimes at great personal loss to me.
    One of the most brilliant people who ever worked in the White House, 
at least in the last several years, Bill Galston--a man who made an 
enormous contribution to our administration, full of new ideas and ways 
to move America into the 21st century--came to me one day and he said, 
``My boy keeps asking where I am. He's 10 years old. You can get 
somebody else to do this job; no one else can do that job. I have to go 
home. You said I could, and now I have to.'' And he did. And I think 
he'll never regret it.
    My Deputy Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles, whose wife went to college 
with Hillary--his wife is a very prominent executive in the textile 
industry, and her job got bigger and bigger and she was going to have to 
travel more. And they just had one child left at home, and he was going 
into his senior year. And Erskine said, you know, he said, ``I just love 
working here. I love public service, and I don't need the money. But my 
boy should not be at home in his last year in high school. And I don't 
want him to ever wonder, not a single time, for the rest of his life, 
whether he was ever the most important thing in the world to his 
parents. And I'm going home.'' And he did. And his son just graduated 
from high school, and he's going to Princeton next year. He made the 
right decision.
    So I say that to all of you to try to put this into some sort of 
context and also to try to emphasize what I was saying earlier. One of 
you said--one of the panelists said, ``You know, we don't live to work, 
we work so we can live. And we Hope that we find fulfillment in our work 
and we do good things.'' Politics, if you will, is one step removed from 
that. What is the purpose of the national enterprise? Well, the first 
thing we're supposed to do is to give you a safe world to live in, no 
cold war but new threats, terrorism and things like that. The second 
thing we're supposed to do is try to help give you a safe country within 
which to live, safe streets and a clean environment and healthy food. 
The third thing we're supposed to do is to kind of create a structure of 
opportunity and a structure of fairness, so that everybody has a chance 
and we all have a chance to grow

[[Page 1123]]

together. And if you think about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, 
and the whole history of our Nation, it's been one long struggle to make 
this country a country with more opportunity, more fairness, more unity, 
living up to the ideals that the founders enshrined, so that people can 
then make all their own decisions--and most of the decisions made have 
nothing to do with Government, about how they're going to organize 
work--and hopefully the work will permit them to live good personal 
lives and build strong families. And that's the way I look at my job.
    Now, what we have been talking about today are the worries of 
parenthood. It seems to me there are at least three big challenges that 
parents face today. Parents are worried about--to go back to what Mrs. 
Jordan said, even if I teach my kids good values, will something in the 
society and the culture change my child's life or destroy it? Will my 
child be subject to violence, to gangs, to drugs, to teen pregnancy? 
Will my child be subject, even long before that, to cultural influences 
or other dangers over which I basically have no control, especially if I 
have to work and my kid is home watching television 4 or 5 hours a day?
    Dad says, ``Cigarettes are bad for you, and besides that, it's 
illegal.'' Right before you get out of the car to go to school or get 
out of the school bus, you see this great Joe Camel ad on the billboard. 
You know, Joe Camel is more well-known to 6-year-olds than Bill Clinton. 
[Laughter] And more interesting looking. I mean, you know, let's face 
the facts. I mean, it's an interesting, brilliant strategy. Mother says, 
``Son, you can't be violent. Sticks and stones can break your bones; 
words won't hurt you. Don't get mad; walk away.'' And then Mom goes to 
work. The kid flips on the television and watches 4 hours of people 
killing each other with assault weapons.
    So it's a challenging thing. That's what last year's conference was 
all about. And again, I want to take my hat off to the people in the 
entertainment industry who are coming to grips with this really tough 
problem of rating television programs.
    You know, it's pretty easy to rate movies. There is a certain fixed 
number of them that come out every year. You just think about how many 
channels you have at home and how many hours a day those channels are on 
and how many different programs are on them and you get an idea of the 
staggering task that the entertainment industry has voluntarily taken on 
itself so that parents, by the time we get V-chips in all these new 
television sets, so that parents will actually have a guide so they'll 
know what they're doing to program the V-chip and use it.
    But it's a move in the right direction. It's what we were trying to 
do when our administration became the first one in history to take on 
the whole issue of the access of young people to exposure to tobacco 
advertising and sales. Now, it's illegal in every State in the country 
for kids to buy cigarettes. But 3,000 kids a day start smoking, and 
1,000 of them are going to die sooner because of it. There is no other 
public health problem in America with those kinds of numbers. So we have 
to try to do something about it.
    I want to say a special word of thanks again to Al Gore, who lost 
his only and beloved sister to lung cancer, for being a constant voice 
of conscience in our administration, for getting us to come to grips 
with this. This is what they call in Washington politics a character 
builder. It's no accident that no one else had ever done this before. 
And it's not a free decision. But it was the right thing to do, and 
we're trying to do it, to try to create a framework within which other 
people can build their lives.
    Even the crime bill itself was designed to create a framework: the 
safe-and-drug-free schools initiative or putting 100,000 police on the 
streets in community policing or taking the assault weapons off the 
street or passing the Brady bill, which has kept 60,000 felons, 
fugitives, and stalkers from buying handguns in just 3 years. That's an 
important thing. All I can do is to create a framework within which 
others are going to be given the opportunity to change the culture of 
this country community by community.
    But let me tell you, lest you grow fainthearted, we're about to 
enter the fourth year in a row of violent crime dropping in America. So 
don't let anybody tell you it can't be done. It can be done; we can 
change this. But we are a long way from home, and we

[[Page 1124]]

still have breathtaking rates of violence among juveniles. You go back 
to what Robert said about young people needing to be taught to be 
parents and to be responsible. So I thank you for that.
    When we set up this national service program, AmeriCorps, what we 
were trying to do was not have a Government program but to try to give 
people a chance, to set up a structure within which people could go out 
in their communities and solve their own problems. So I wanted to deal 
with that.
    The second pressure I think parents face is increasingly financial. 
You heard Ms. Allen talk about that. It's no accident that, on average, 
families today are spending more hours at work and less hours at home 
than they were 25 years ago. Don't let anybody tell you that Americans 
aren't hardworking. We are working fools. [Laughter] Some of us because 
we like it, others because we have to. But we do it; we show up. We show 
up. All the surveys show most people on welfare are dying to go to work. 
We have 1.3 million fewer people on welfare today than we did 3\1/2\ 
years ago, partly because we're giving the States the ability to create 
opportunities and then move people to work. This is a working country. 
But you have to be able to create a strong and secure family. Otherwise, 
the harder you work, the more you fall behind and the more frustrated 
people get.
    Now, what can the Government do about that? Well, we can create a 
framework. We've cut the deficit in half and got interest rates down and 
expanded trade and invested in technology and infrastructure and 
education, and the American people produced almost 10 million new jobs. 
That's a good thing. It's a good thing. The interest rates brought 
mortgage rates down; we've got almost 4 million new homeowners in the 
last 3\1/2\ years.
    But that doesn't resolve all the problems. There's still--this 
economy churns so much, and so many of our jobs are now being created in 
smaller companies where people normally are used to having less 
security, that we have to find ways, I believe, to reward work by giving 
people lifetime access to education, training, health care, and 
retirement.
    That's what this debate in Washington is about over the Kassebaum-
Kennedy bill. It would give 25 million people access to health insurance 
by simply saying, you don't lose your health insurance if you have to 
change jobs or if someone in your family has been sick. That's what 
insurance is for.
    That's what the small business package of pension reforms that we 
sent to Congress is all about. It basically says if you're a self-
employed person or you work in a little business and you work for a 
whole series of small businesses and you're always changing jobs or 
you're out of work for a while, you ought to be able to take out a 
pension and keep it even through the bad times, and you ought not to 
have to wait a long time when you move from one job to the other to know 
that that pension is secure and seamless and continuous. As far as I 
know, there is no opposition in the Congress to this package in either 
party, and I'm hoping we can get that out.
    The Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Labor worked very 
hard on a proposal to collapse all the job training programs in the 
country. Somebody loses their job; they just get a voucher worth $2,600 
a year to go to the local community college or do whatever is necessary 
to get job training. And these are the kinds of things that we think are 
very important.
    And the last thing I would say is that we know that the fastest 
growing essential in every family's budget in the last 12 years, believe 
it or not, was not health care, it was the cost of college--was the only 
thing that went up more rapidly than health care costs. So we proposed 
to give families a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for the cost of 
college tuition and to make the 13th and 14th years of college 
universally available in America by giving families a tax credit for the 
cost of going to a community college. So we could say to people, look, 
it's just not enough to have a high school diploma anymore, and if 
you're just coming out of high school or if you've been in the work 
force for years and you want to go back, everybody, 100 percent of the 
people ought to have guaranteed access to at least 2 years of education.
    Now, these things I think will change the framework within which 
families have to live and work and will give them more income security 
and more stability. It doesn't guaran- 

[[Page 1125]]

tee any results, but at least it sets up a framework within which 
families can succeed.
    The third thing, though, that we have heard a lot about today is 
time. A lot of people say, ``I can make money, but if I do I have to 
give up all my time.'' And this is a very important thing. There are so 
many families, two-parent families that are working two full-time job 
and a part-time job or two. There are so many single parents who are 
working two jobs or working so much overtime they're worried about 
whether they will ever see their kids. And I think about this a lot.
    You know, when Hillary and I were young parents and she had already 
spent many years studying all this--she took an extra year in law school 
to work at the Child Study Center where we were in law school so that 
she would know a lot about the impact of the law on children and their 
interests. And I'll never forget, one day I was working on something, 
working like crazy, and Chelsea was about a year old, and she said, 
``You know all that stuff they tell you about quality time,'' she said, 
``It's about half not true.'' She said, ``Time counts; show up.'' 
[Laughter] You know, time counts.
    And I can remember a lot of nights when I would read my daughter to 
sleep, and I would fall asleep before she would. And she would elbow me 
and say, ``Dad, finish the book. Finish the book.'' [Laughter] But it 
meant something. Even the nights when I wasn't very good, you know, it 
meant something. And I'm proud to say that my daughter is about to be a 
senior in high school, and she can still count on one hand the number of 
things that I have missed over her whole life. But I'll tell you 
something, she hasn't forgotten a single one of them. [Laughter] And 
sometimes I hear, ``You remember when I was in the second grade; we had 
such, and you were--'' but I like that. I like that. I'm glad she felt 
entitled to complain.
    And when Katherine Wright was talking about the videotapes--one of 
the great highlights of my recent life is that we did that in reverse, 
Katherine. I was in Russia meeting with President Yeltsin when Chelsea 
had her junior prom, and she did a videotape so she could send a message 
to her dad that she was sorry that I couldn't send her off. And I 
thought to myself, well, that's one she didn't hold against me. And that 
kind of bothers me. She has reached the age when I'm not around, she 
doesn't hold it against me as much. But at least--[laughter]--at least I 
have a film of it.
    Every person is entitled to build that memory bank. Somebody who is 
out there working for 6 bucks an hour in a factory, they are just as 
entitled to build that kind of a memory bank as the President of the 
United States. They're just as entitled to it.
    And let me ask you also to look at this from the children's point of 
view. We did a great job here. All of these companies and the public 
employees that are here, and the people in the Federal Government who do 
a good job of this, we talk about how it makes for happier workers, and 
happier parents make more productive workers, and you make more money. 
And you see that immediately. But let me ask you to think about this 
over the long haul.
    Think about the cumulative impact of all those extra stories at 
bedtime. Fifteen years later you have a more literate citizenry. Think 
about the cumulative impact of the extra hour or two helping your child 
with homework. Fifteen years down the road you have a more productive 
citizenry. Think about what it means to sit at your sick child's beside. 
By the way, sometimes they don't make it. Fifteen years from now you 
have people who are freed from the bitterness of thinking that they were 
deprived of the right to share what life they had with their children. 
It may seem small, but it may mean the difference in whether you raise a 
whole bunch of productive citizens or self-absorbed and completely 
alienated people. It may make the difference in whether people, when 
they grow up, live lives of responsibility or lives of rage, that they 
still--they never quite understand.
    So we talked a lot of about how this can be done and you can make 
money today about it because people would be happy and more productive, 
and that's terrible important. But if you think about it in generational 
terms, which is how we ought to be thinking about it, it can also shape 
what this country looks like way into the 21st century. That's why in 
some ways the first bill I signed as President, the family and medical 
leave law,

[[Page 1126]]

may be the most important, because of the framework it established for 
other people to do things.
    I can tell you this, that I still talk to people all the time--about 
10 days ago or so we had the Children's Miracle Network and all the 
children's hospitals, telethon people, in the White House. And I was 
upstairs, and they said, ``Mr. President, these people are downstairs 
and would you like to go down and say hello to them.'' So I did. And 
they had all these children who had been desperately sick--some of them 
were well now; some of them were still sick--and their parents, one from 
each State. And these kids were--they had been through a lot, and their 
parents had been through a lot. And most of their parents were just 
working people. And two of them on the way out, separately, said to me, 
``I do not know what I would have done without the family and medical 
leave law. it enabled me to take care of my child without hurting my 
family, without losing my job.''
    Twelve million people have now taken advantage of that law. And a 
recent study by a bipartisan commission on leave said that 9 out of 10 
companies involved said the act had not cost them any money or done 
anything to their profits. And obviously, since--and let me put it in 
some larger context. I'm about to go to Europe in a couple of days to 
the annual meeting of the G-7 countries, the big seven economies. In the 
last 3\1/2\ years, those economies have created a total of 10 million 
jobs, 9.7 million in the United States and 300,000 in the other 6. So 
the family leave law did not hurt the American economy, it helped the 
American economy.
    Now, again I say the most important thing is for us to have a 
framework. Then, by far, more significant would be changing the culture 
of America--have, as Vance Opperman said, having more companies follow 
the leads of the companies that are here. But I do believe that we've 
had a lot of time now to think about this and work on this in the last 3 
years. I've listened to people talk about it. I believe there are two 
more changes we can make that would help the American economy, not hurt 
business, and strengthen families. And I want to propose them here today 
in the hope that you will bring us the same good fortune that you did 
last year with the V-chip and the telecommunications bill.
    First of all, the family and medical leave law has done a lot of 
good, but it is extremely narrow in its purpose. In other words, you're 
entitled to time off without losing your job in a workplace of 50 
employees or more if there's a medical crisis involving a parent or a 
child, an immediate family member, or the birth of a child. That's 
better than it used to be. But I believe, just based on--and you heard 
some of this today--I believe we should expand the family leave law.
    I would propose that we pass a family leave II that would allow 
employees to take up to 24 hours a year--that's not a lot of time--for 
parent-teacher conferences or for routine medical care for a child, a 
spouse, or a parent, because there are a lot of parents who cannot go to 
school to see the child's teacher because the work schedule and the 
schedule of the school don't work. And there are a lot of times when 
there is a routine, what at least starts out to be a routine medical 
problem, where it really makes a difference if the parent can go, 
especially with a young child, or where there's nobody else to take the 
parent.
    So I am very hopeful that we can get some support for this. I also 
think it would create a more honest workplace. I mean, I bet every one 
of us knows somebody who's called in sick or said they had car trouble 
so they could go meet with their child's teacher or take a child or a 
parent to the doctor. So I think that we ought to pass family leave II, 
and I believe it will make a difference.
    Secondly, I think we need to make the workplace more family-
friendly, especially where a lot of overtime is concerned, and give 
people more flextime in taking overtime either in income or in time with 
their families.
    Now, traditionally, overtime has been a very important way for a lot 
of American workers to realize their dreams. Overtime is really the 
difference between a good middle class existence and being in real 
trouble for a lot of workers. And I don't believe we should change that. 
But with more Americans working more hours, simply spending time with 
your family can be a dream in itself: a vacation, a maternity leave that 
goes

[[Page 1127]]

beyond what's mandated by law, or if the child's in trouble and you just 
need some time to spend time with your child.
    So today what I'm proposing is that we redefine compensation in a 
way that reflects the value of family and community. I'm going to send 
to Congress a flextime initiative that will give employees this choice: 
If you work overtime you can be paid time and a half, just as you are 
now and just as the law requires. But if you want, you can take that 
payment in time; and for every hour you work overtime, you can take off 
an hour and a half. In this sense, the proposal is fundamental to 
redefining work time. Workers can put in time and get money, or they can 
put in time and get time. You can choose money in the bank or time on 
the clock.
    It's important that this be a choice for employees. I should say 
that most employers in America would like this option. And there's a lot 
of support among employers for giving this kind of option. But it's also 
important how it's designed, because it will only work as a family-
friendly decision if there's a genuine partnership, which means, to go 
back to what our friend from Saturn says, this is a case where the 
employee has to make the decision. And that's very important. There must 
be complete freedom to choose. If you're required to work overtime in 
your job or you're given the chance to work overtime, then you, the 
employee, must get the choice of whether to take the overtime in money 
or time. Otherwise it could simply open the door wide for abuse of the 
overtime laws, so that families that need the overtime income could fall 
behind. But if it is honestly administered and fairly given to the 
employee, think what a difference it could make in critical family 
situations.
    Now, this is a case where more than anything else I think we have to 
change the culture. But we have to write strong protections into the 
law. And if you have any doubt, just look at the front page of the Wall 
Street Journal today, which talks about, in contrast to these companies, 
the widespread abuse of the overtime laws and how a lot of people are 
entitled to it and can't get it. So we'll have to write this law in a 
way that protects the employees. Otherwise, we'll have even more of what 
is already a problem that is bigger than the Labor Department can manage 
with its present resources.
    But I believe it's important. We have got to develop flextime 
proposals that recognize that Americans have priorities at home as well 
as at work. But if we do this, if we give people the opportunity to earn 
overtime and then take it in cash or time at their discretion and if we 
pass family leave II so that people can do some ordinary work that is 
profoundly important over the life of their children or their families 
as well as deal with the emergencies, I believe this will be a stronger 
country. I believe we will have a stronger economy. I know we will have 
stronger children in stronger families. And that is the most important 
thing of all.
    So let me say again, I'm very grateful to Al and Tipper Gore for 
doing this. It means a lot to Hillary and me just to know that they're 
our friends and our partners and that they share our values about this. 
There is nothing more important, I will say again, than doing a good job 
of raising our kids. I still think I did the right thing, even though I 
have lost some valued employees, in telling every one of them to leave 
if they ever thought their responsibilities at home were threatened.
    The Talmud says: Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over 
it and whispers, ``grow, grow.'' Our children are those blades of grass, 
and we must be their better angels.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 11:30 a.m. in Polk Theater at the Tennessee 
Performing Arts Center to participants in Family Re-Union V: Balancing 
Work and Families Conference. In his remarks, he referred to Martha 
Farrell Erickson and Representative Bill Purcell, house majority leader, 
Tennessee State Legislature, co-sponsors of the conference; Speaker of 
the House Jimmy Naifeh; Lt. Gov. John Wilder and Attorney General 
Charles Burson of Tennessee; Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III of 
Minnesota; and Vance Opperman, president, West Publishing Co.