[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.

[[Page 1662]]

    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

[[Page 1665]]

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.