    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 36 (Monday, September 9, 1996)]
    [Pages 1660-1666]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks at the Meeting of the National Baptist Convention USA in
    Orlando, Florida

    September 6, 1996

        The President. Thank you. Thank you.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

    [[Page 1661]]

        The President. Thank you, Dr. Lyons, Thank you for your support.
    Thank you for exciting the crowd here.
        Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
        The President. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Lyons. Thank
    you, ladies and gentlemen, for making me feel so very, very welcome. To
    Mrs. Lyons and General Secretary Cooper, Mr. Lowery; Dr. Glover, Mrs.
    Hickson, thank you for your work on this Teenage Alliance; to your
    guests and my friends, Bishop Graves and Bishop Brown; to Governor
    Chiles and Congresswoman Brown and Congressman Conyers. Congressman
    Conyers, thank you especially for your leadership in the fight against
    the church burnings. To Congressman Fauntroy and my good friend, Mayor
    Webb.
        Governor Chiles and I have had a good time in Florida the last 2
    days, although I think we can all certify it's still summertime down
    here. [Laughter] I was thinking about coming into this meeting today,
    and I was thinking, I don't know how we could be so close to heaven, and
    it still be so hot. [Laughter]
        I know you've had a lot of distinguished speakers before me at this
    podium--my good friends, Reverend Andrew Young and Reverend Jesse
    Jackson. I thank Reverend Jackson for what he said yesterday about his
    back to school program, which I heartily endorse, getting the parents to
    take the children to school, meet their children's teachers, receive
    report cards, turn the television off, and read to the kids. That's a
    pretty good program. I thank him for that. And for his idea about going
    to the juvenile system and saving our young people before they get in
    trouble. I thank him for that, and I know you do.
        I'd also like to say how very moved I was by Pat Brooks' singing
    today. It was magnificent, and I thank her for that. I was thinking that
    is truly a gift from God, and I'm glad she shared it with us today.
        I'm glad to be back with you. I have a lot of friends in this
    audience. My friends from Arkansas, Dr. James, Dr. O'Neil, Dr. Jones,
    Reverend Keaton, Reverend Barnes. I've seen a few of them here. I'm sure
    there are more here from home.
        I thank your former president, Dr. Jemerson, for his long
    friendship; and my good friend, John Matos Miles back there, from Kansas
    City. I'm going to be in his town next Tuesday. Reverend Bifford--so
    many others who are here--I thank you all for many, many, many years of
    friendship and partnership.
        I'm glad to be in Orlando, and I was thinking today about 2 years
    ago when we were together in New Orleans. We talked then about what we
    could do to build the kingdom of God here on Earth. I want to look at
    the progress we have made since then and about what we have to do
    together.
        First, let me just say I'm sorry I was late today but I was getting
    an update on the hurricane, and I'd like to share it with you and ask
    for you to keep those people in your prayers. The people of the
    Carolinas are working to cope with the effects of Hurricane Fran. Eleven
    people have died. They and their families must be in our prayers.
        Today I am declaring a major disaster in the State of North
    Carolina. Our Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, James
    Lee Witt, is on his way to the Carolinas even as we are here. We're
    going to do everything we can to help the people of North Carolina and
    South Carolina in this difficult time. But again, I say to you here in
    Florida, those of you who went through Hurricane Andrew know what it's
    like. We need to be praying for those people and supporting them. And
    there are, doubtless, people here from those two States. In addition to
    the hurricane, there has been and will be more rain, and there's a lot
    to do.
        You are people of faith. And today we need that faith more than
    ever. The Scripture says that ``faith is the assurance of things hoped
    for, the conviction of things unseen.'' And we have seen, all of us in
    our own life, that if we have faith, we can make real and we can see
    those things that we hope for, that we were convicted about.
        That is why you teach your children right from wrong, why you pass
    on the values that you believe in, in frequently tough surroundings, why
    we try to build a better future, building strong families, strong
    communities, strong lives. This church has done that in the toughest of
    times.

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        The Scripture commands us in Nehemiah to rise up and build and
    strengthen our hands for the good work. Today, I ask your help in
    building that bridge to the 21st century I have been talking about all
    across America. A bridge that is wide enough and strong enough to carry
    every American across.
        Over the past 2 weeks I have taken a train ride and then a bus ride
    with my wife, my daughter, the Vice President and Mrs. Gore through
    America's heartland. In between, we had a pretty good convention in
    Chicago. I went on this trip to say to the American people we are on the
    right track to the 21st century, but I also wanted to look into the
    eyes, the hearts, the faces of the people for whom I have worked and
    fought for the last 4 years.
        Let me assure you, we are not taking anymore or anyone's vote for
    granted, and we know the only poll that counts is the one they take on
    November the 5th. I ask you to remember that and help others remember it
    as well.
        But think about the progress we have made together. Four years ago
    we had a skyrocketing deficit; unemployment at nearly 8 percent; new
    jobs were scarce; wages were stagnant. I came to this office with a
    simple strategy: Opportunity for all, responsibility from all, and a
    place for everyone in our American community, stronger and more united.
        Look at the results: Almost 4\1/2\ million new homeowners. The
    growth of homeowners who are African-American exceeding the national
    average. Record number of new small businesses and record number of
    businesses owned by minorities and women. The deficit down 60 percent,
    going down in each of our 4 years for the first time since before the
    Civil War that has happened. Crime down for 4 years; 1.8 million fewer
    people on the welfare rolls than the day I took the oath of office; a 40
    percent increase in child support collections; an increase in the
    minimum wage for 10 million Americans coming October 1st; 12 million
    Americans taking some time off when their babies are born or their
    parents are sick without losing their jobs because of the family leave
    law; 15 million Americans getting a tax cut, the hardest working,
    hardest pressed Americans; 40 million Americans having their pensions
    protected because of actions that have been taken. Health care reform
    that can help 25 million Americans because it says you can't lose your
    health insurance anymore just because you change jobs, and you can't be
    denied it just because someone in your family has been sick.
        And we had more good news today. According to the latest economic
    statistics, our economy is growing steady and strong, creating another
    250,000 jobs in August--just the latest evidence--strong growth, the
    highest consumer confidence in years. Since I became President our
    country has created 10\1/2\ million new jobs; unemployment has dropped
    to its lowest level in 7\1/2\ years. The American economy, my fellow
    Americans, is on the right track, and we need to keep it going in that
    direction.
        We have honored a commitment to provide an administration that looks
    like America and is committed to excellence. Forty-two African-Americans
    have been nominated to the Federal court bench since I became President.
    And our nominees as a whole have the highest ratings from the American
    Bar Association of any administration since the ratings began. You can
    have excellence and diversity. You can do that, and we are committed to
    it.
        Diversity and excellence has also been a hallmark of my Cabinet and
    our other administration appointees. We were blessed with the service of
    my great friend and the best friend American business and American
    working people ever had in the Commerce Department, Commerce Secretary
    Ron Brown. For the first time, three of the top staffers in the White
    House are African-American.
        Now, that is a good start, but we have to do more. We have to make
    sure that all Americans have a chance to be a part of the prosperity and
    the possibility we are creating for the 21st century. Every American who
    is responsible should have the opportunity to succeed, to live out their
    dreams, to live up to the fullest of their God-given potential. And that
    is the great challenge we face today. I want to build a bridge to the
    21st century where every single American has a chance to live up to
    their God-given potential.

    [[Page 1663]]

        Nothing is more important to that, as Dr. Lyons said, than
    education. In the last 4 years we have expanded Head Start, helped our
    schools shrink class size, supported new, smaller charter schools to
    help provide excellent educational opportunities, and we now know that
    an enormous percentage of the students in them are minority students and
    poor students.
        We've expanded antidrug education and prevention programs, imposed a
    zero tolerance for guns, opened the doors to college wider than ever
    with more scholarships, and a lower cost college loan program. We have
    created the national service program, which has provided opportunities
    for 50,000 young people to serve in their communities, solving problems
    and earning money for college.
        Now we must do more. I want that bridge to the 21st century to be
    one where computers are as much of the part of the classroom as
    blackboards, where highly trained teachers expect, demand, and get peak
    performance from all of our students, where every 8-year-old can point
    to a book and say, ``I read it all by myself.''
        I want us to build a bridge to the 21st century which makes at least
    2 years of college as universal as a high school education is today. I
    propose a $1,500 tuition tax credit, a Hope scholarship to make the
    typical community college available to every single American, a
    refundable tax credit to cover the costs of tuition. I believe we should
    give our families a tax deduction of up to $10,000 a year for the cost
    of any education after high school, 4 years of college and graduate
    school, whatever it takes. This kind of investment would be good for
    America. I believe we should let families save in an IRA, an individual
    retirement account, and withdraw from it, if necessary, to pay for an
    education without any penalty.
        But we must do more. Forty percent of our 8-year-olds cannot read as
    well as they should. But every child--every child should be able to read
    on his or her own by the 3d grade. I propose to send 30,000 reading
    specialists into our communities to work with volunteers, to mobilize an
    army of volunteers with the help of our young AmeriCorps people, with
    the help of college students on work-study, to mobilize up to one
    million tutors so that every single child in this country who needs a
    tutor can get one, so that by the time all of our children are eight
    they can read on their own. They can't learn the rest of the way unless
    they can read young.
        I want to connect every classroom and library in every school in
    America to the information superhighway by the year 2000, not just
    computers and trained teachers but a connection to the vast array of
    knowledge that is now available at the fingertips of anyone who knows
    how to use it.
        Think of what this means, my fellow Americans. If we can do this it
    means that, for the first time in the entire history of the United
    States, children in the poorest rural classroom, in the remotest area of
    America, children in the poorest inner-city classrooms, in the most
    isolated parts of America, for the first time will have access to the
    same information in the same way at the same level of quality as the
    children in the richest schools in America. This will democratize
    education in a way we have never done before ever in our history.
        I want the United States Government to help our local school
    districts for the first time in helping to rebuild dilapidated schools
    and build new ones in the areas that are growing and do not have the
    resources to do it on their own. We have never done this, but I see over
    and over and over again as the largest class of students in American
    history start school this year, you cannot expect these children to
    learn if they are in circumstances that are absolutely deplorable. And
    if local people will do their part to do more, we will help them to do
    more so that we can build the schools of the 21st century.
        Now, if we do these things, every 8-year-old will be able to read,
    every 12-year-old will be able to log in on the Internet, every 18-year-
    old will be able to go to college. That's a bridge worth building. Will
    you help me build that bridge to the 21st century?
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which all Americans
    take personal responsibility for themselves and their families and their
    communities and for our country. I want every child to grow up in a
    community where work is the standard, where earning a paycheck is a
    thing of pride. The welfare reform law I signed gives millions of Ameri-

    [[Page 1664]]

    cans a chance, but not a certainty, to have that new kind of beginning.
        We fought hard to keep the guarantees of health care, school
    lunches, nutrition and child care for children and families. But this
    new law also says, from now on, able-bodied people must work for the
    income check.
        Now, I strongly believe that. I was proud and I was proud to see you
    clapping when I said the welfare rolls were smaller by 1.8 million in
    the last 4 years. A strong economy helped that to happen. But the
    experiments, the work we've been doing with people like Governor Chiles
    to help people move from welfare to work, has also helped.
        So I say to you, it's all very well for the Congress or the
    Governors to say, ``Okay, we have a new system and everybody who is
    able-bodied has to work,'' but to make that morally defensible and
    practically possible, there has to be work for those people to do.
        I want to tell you about some of the things we are doing to help
    create more work in the inner cities, in other poor areas, for people on
    welfare, for single, unemployed men who depend upon food stamps but
    don't have welfare and can't find jobs. Under this law, every State--
    when it becomes effective, every State in the country can say to any
    employer, any private sector business, any non-profit organization, and
    any church, anybody that employs people--now the State can say, ``If you
    will hire somebody off welfare, we'll give you the welfare check as a
    supplement for the wages and the training.''
        It means, folks, when you go back home, your church could receive a
    person's welfare check, and add to it only a modest amount of money to
    make a living wage and to take some time to train people and bring their
    children into the church and make sure their children are all right and
    give them a home and a family.
        Will you do that? Will you go home and consider hiring somebody from
    welfare to work if your State will give you some money to help you do
    it? I want every pastor in this audience to think about it. Just think
    about it. If every church in America hired one person off welfare, if
    every church in America could get some help to do that, it would set an
    example that would require the business community to follow, that would
    require charitable and other nonprofit organizations to follow. We
    cannot create a Government jobs program big enough to solve this whole
    thing, but if everybody did it one by one, we could do this job. We
    could give those folks the work we promised and expect the
    responsibility we ask in that law. And I hope you will consider doing
    that. You could make all the difference in the world.
        We must do more for businesses. I propose to give an extra tax
    credit for people who hire folks off welfare. I propose to give private
    job placement firms who do a good job of placing other people, funds if
    they place people from welfare to work and they stay there.
        I want to have 3 times as many empowerment zones as the ones we now
    have in cities like Chicago and New York and Baltimore and Kansas City.
    I want to have 3 times as many of those, because I have seen in Detroit
    alone, $2 billion in private section investment poured into inner-city
    Detroit. The unemployment rate in 3 years dropped from 8\1/2\ percent to
    under 4 percent. We can bring jobs back to the inner city when business
    understands that the greatest market for American business are people in
    America who are underemployed and unemployed in places that need new
    investment. I hope you will support that approach as well.
        I propose to create more community development banks, 3 times as
    many empowerment zones. I propose an investment fund to help our cities
    put welfare recipients to work immediately, repairing schools, making
    their neighborhoods clean and safer. We can do this, but we're all going
    to have to work at it. And I want you to help me build that bridge to
    the 21st century that says if we tell you you have to work, we're going
    to make sure you have work to do. There's plenty to do in this country,
    we just have to organize it so we can all do it together. I want you to
    help me do that.
        I want to build a bridge to the 21st century in which all Americans
    live in strong, healthy communities. If you will give us 4 more years,
    we'll clean up two-thirds of the toxic waste sites that are still out
    there so our children can grow up in every community next to parks, not
    poison. It's wrong that 10 million

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    children live within four miles of toxic waste sites, and we can change
    it.
        We want to clean up the ones that block our urban centers, called
    brownfields. We can do that, create more jobs in the cities, attract
    more business and development by cleaning the environment. I want to
    build a bridge to the 21st century where we have stronger families and
    we help our parents to raise their children and to protect them. Proverb
    says, ``Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old, he
    will not depart from it.'' That is why we passed the Family and Medical
    Leave Act and why we want to expand it; why we have done our best to
    stop the advertising, marketing, and sales of cigarettes to children;
    why we are giving parents the V-chip to help them screen out
    inappropriate television shows; why we are helping parents and
    communities to give our young people both discipline and values through
    supporting communities who decide on their own to have curfew policies,
    tougher truancy laws, school uniform programs.
        All these things are our way of saying to communities and parents,
    we want to help you do the job that we know you want to do. We want
    people to succeed at home and at work. If America cannot succeed at home
    and at work, and do both, America cannot succeed.
        Finally, let me say, I know here above all I am preaching to the
    choir, but I want you to help me build a bridge to the 21st century that
    can only be built by all of us together. Nothing we do will matter if we
    cannot heal the divisions and bigotry that still crop up in this country
    from time to time.
        That is why I have said on affirmative action, we ought to make it
    better, we should mend it, but it's not time to end it. That is why I
    put the full force of my office behind the effort to stop the rash of
    church burnings that have plagued us in recent months. And let me say, I
    know, as church people and as Americans, you feel exactly the same way
    whenever you see a white church burned, a synagogue defaced, or an
    Islamic center destroyed. It's wrong for everybody. It's wrong for
    everybody.
        If you look around the world, folks, it's amazing how much time I
    have to spend as your President trying to get other people to lay down
    their hatreds. And what are these hatreds rooted in--in the Middle East,
    in Northern Ireland, in Bosnia, in Rwanda, and Burundi? What are they
    rooted in? Religious, racial, ethnic, tribal hatreds. People get in the
    habit of living so that they define themselves and how good they are by
    how bad their neighbors are. How holy they are in their faith by how
    unholy people who have another faith are. How righteous they are by how
    evil people who are different are. And it is a miserable way to live. It
    is self defeating.
        Why in the wide world people would tear up that beautiful little
    country of Bosnia? Yes, they have different religions and, yes, they
    have different ethnic labels, but the truth is, biologically they're not
    different. It is a product of historical accident. For decades, they
    lived in peace together. Sarajevo, one of the beautiful cities in the
    world--why do they keep doing this? What is it in the human heart that
    we have to purge? How wise were our Founders not to make America a place
    where you had to do anything but believe in the values of the
    Constitution. How wise was Thomas Jefferson to know that the great
    hypocrisy in our founding was slavery when he said, ``I tremble--when I
    think of slavery, I tremble to think that God is just.''
        And now we are struggling not only to deal with the relationships
    between African-Americans and the majority community with all of the
    progress we've made in over 200 years, but also the fact that the
    fastest growing minority in America are the Hispanic-Americans. The fact
    that we had 197 nations represented at the Olympics; in our largest
    county, Los Angeles County, there are people from 150 of those places--
    in only one American county.
        Now, if you look at the world we are living in and the one toward
    which we are going, if we can all get along together, that's going to be
    the greatest asset any country in the world has. We have folks here from
    everywhere.
        I gave a speech a few years ago to one of the California State
    University campuses in Los Angeles, and there were people in the student
    body in one school from 122 different national, racial, and ethnic
    groups, in

    [[Page 1666]]

    one school. That is an enormous asset in a global world, where we're all
    being drawn closer together.
        On the other hand, if we fall into the trap that is strangling
    country after country after country and think the only way we can amount
    to something, the only way we can be somebody is to find somebody else
    to look down on, we're in for big trouble, because we've got more of
    that than any country in the world does--all of this difference.
        So I say to you, no people in this country have suffered more or
    longer than African-Americans from discrimination, but you know you will
    never and can never become what you wish to be by returning that in
    kind. That is the lesson you must teach others. That's why I react so
    strongly to these church burnings, because I see how other countries
    have been consumed. I see how far we've come in my own lifetime. I see
    that bright, shining future out there where there will be more
    possibilities for our children to do more things than ever before. In 10
    years our children will be doing jobs that have not been invented yet.
    They will be doing work that has not been imagined yet.
        I just approved a joint venture with IBM to develop a supercomputer
    within the next couple of years that will be able to do more
    calculations in a second that you can go home and pick up a pocket
    calculator and do in 30,000 years. That's how much change is going on.
    It's got to be a good thing for America. And it can only be a good thing
    if we go forward together--if we say, if you believe in the
    Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and
    you're willing to show up and do right tomorrow, you're my kind of
    American. I don't care what your race is, I don't care what your
    religion is, I don't care where you started out in life. We're going to
    join arm in arm and go across that bridge together.
        Will you help me build that bridge to the 21st century?
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 10:32 a.m. at the Convention Center. In his
    remarks, he referred to Henry J. Lyons, president, and his wife,
    Deborah, Roscoe D. Cooper, Jr., general secretary, and his wife,
    Crystal, T.J. Jemison, past president, John Modest Miles, liaison,
    government affairs, and Rev. Richard Bifford, secretary, National
    Baptist Convention USA; John Lowery, chief executive officer, Revelation
    Corp.; Clarence Glover, president, and Sandra Hickson, executive vice
    president, Teens Alliance With Clergy; Bishop William H. Graves,
    presiding bishop, Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; Bishop E. Lynn
    Brown, presiding bishop, 9th Episcopal District, Christian Methodist
    Episcopal Church; Mayor Wellington Webb of Denver, CO; Rev. Andrew
    Young, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; civil rights leader
    Rev. Jesse Jackson; P.J. James, president, and D.L. O'Neil and O.C.
    Jones, former presidents, Arkansas Baptist Convention; and Rev. R.J.
    Keaton, president, Arkansas Baptist College. A portion of these remarks
    could not be verified because the tape was incomplete.