[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 32, Number 43 (Monday, October 28, 1996)]
[Pages 2144-2149]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Miami-Dade Community College in Miami, Florida

October 22, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Thank you very much. Let me, first of all, 
say I have had a lot of introductions in my life--[laughter]--I have had 
a lot of real good introductions in my life, but I have never been 
introduced better than Jerry Sawyer did it just then. And he was up 
here, you know, talking, and he got a real head of steam up, and he 
started talking about how the other side said my economic program would 
fail and they all voted against it and they said the sky would fall, and 
then all the good things that happened. I thought to myself when he was 
up here really wound up, I thought, now, where were you when I was 
preparing for that debate last week? I could have used you, Jerry 
Sawyer.
    President Eduardo Padron, thank you for having us here at this 
wonderful place. Governor Chiles, thank you for your leadership for 
Florida and your friendship and advice to me. And the same for you, 
Lieutenant Governor MacKay. Congresswoman Carrie Meek was up here. She 
told me that she started out here at Miami-Dade Community College. And I 
could tell that you are still her people, and she is still yours, and 
you should be very proud of her--very proud of her.
    I'd also like to thank some other folks who are up here with us 
today: Attorney General Bob Butterworth; our insurance commissioner, 
Bill Nelson; Congressman Peter Deutsch; and of course, the chairman of 
your board of trustees, Martin Fine. Thank you all for being here. Thank 
you, gentlemen, for coming. Thank you.
    I have wanted to come here for a long time, to the largest community 
college in the entire United States of America. I am grateful to you for 
many things. But some of you may not know it--I actually have a member 
of my Cabinet who went to school here, whose parents taught here, and 
whose mother, I believe, is still in the audience. Carol Browner went 
here and then on to the University of Florida and wound up being head of 
the Environmental Protection Agency, where she is helping us to save the 
Florida

[[Page 2145]]

Everglades. Thank you, Miami-Dade. And I'd like to thank her mother if 
she's here in the audience.
    Ladies and gentlemen, this is college day for us. The First Lady is 
at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. The Vice President is at the 
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. I got to come here to 
America's largest community college because I believe that community 
colleges work the way America has to work in the 21st century.
    If you just think about it, this is not a bureaucratic organization; 
it's a flexible, creative organization. You change from year to year the 
programs you offer. And you have to meet a high standard of excellence, 
otherwise you'll be punished for what you don't know in the marketplace. 
It is a purely democratic organization--that's small ``d'' democratic--
in the sense that it's open to all. Nobody asks you what your race, your 
religion, your ethnic background is. All you've got to do is be willing 
to work hard, learn what you're supposed to learn, take the exams, make 
the most of your own lives. If you show up, you're a part of the 
community college, and you ought to be a part of the American community, 
as well. This is the way America ought to work, the way these community 
colleges work.
    Today I came here to talk about expanding opportunity to colleges. 
But I want to say something about what Jerry mentioned. Today we got 
some more evidence that America's economy is on the right track with low 
unemployment, low inflation, and low mortgage rates. We now have 4\1/2\ 
million new homeowners in the last 4 years. And lower interest rates 
have helped 10 million more Americans to refinance their old mortgages 
at lower rates, saving huge amounts of money for those families.
    Homeownership is an idea that ought to be available to every working 
American. We now have the highest rate in 15 years. And by the 21st 
century, if you'll give us 4 more, Secretary Cisneros and the rest of us 
who are working on this will have an all-time high of homeownership. By 
the year 2000, more than two-thirds of the American people will be 
living in their own homes if you will work with us and help us to build 
that bridge to the future.
    My fellow Americans, you've got a big decision to make on November 
5th. Are we going to build a bridge to the future or a bridge to the 
past? Are we going to build a bridge wide enough and strong enough for 
everybody to walk across together? Or will we say, ``There's the future 
out there. I hope you can make it?''
    Audience members.  No-o-o!
    The President. Are we going to tell the American people, ``You're on 
your own,'' or are we going to say that, yes, it does take a village to 
raise and educate our children and build our country and go forward 
together?
    You heard Jerry say it, and you know we're in better shape than we 
were 4 years ago: 10\1/2\ million more jobs, the deficit cut by 60 
percent, nearly 2 million fewer people on welfare, the lowest violent 
crime rate in 10 years. We are moving in the right direction. But your 
vote will decide what bridge we take to the future and whether we build 
one wide enough for everyone to walk across.
    I want to ask every one of you who's here tonight--this afternoon, 
this beautiful Florida afternoon, to do something tonight when you go 
home. I want you to do this, not for me but for you. Just take a few 
minutes and see if you can say to yourself the answer to this question: 
What do I want my country to be like when we start that new century? 
What do I want my country to be like when my children are my age, when 
my grandchildren are my age? What is my dream for America?
    For 4 years I've been working on that dream for America, mine. It's 
simple and straightforward. I want the American dream alive and well for 
every single person who is responsible enough to work for it. I think 
everybody should have the chance to live out their dreams and to live up 
to their God-given capacities. I want this country to be the world's 
strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I want us to 
go forward together, where families can succeed at home and at work, 
where we're living in harmony with our environment, and most important, 
where we're living in harmony with each other. That is my vision.
    And so I have worked to create more opportunity for all, to 
reinforce the principles

[[Page 2146]]

of responsibility from all, and to create an American community where 
every person, without regard to race, color, creed, gender, you name it, 
believe they have a place at the American table and in the American 
future. That is what I have worked for.
    But now you will decide. You will decide by how you vote. You will 
decide by whether you vote. You have to decide. You will decide whether 
we balance the budget and protect Medicare, Medicaid, education, the 
environment, and research; whether we have targeted tax cuts to help 
people educate their children and themselves, raise their kids, buy a 
home, deal with medical costs; or whether we adopt that big, risky tax 
scheme that would blow a big hole in the deficit, weaken our economy, 
and force even bigger cuts in education, in the environment, in Medicare 
and Medicaid than those I vetoed a year ago. You will decide.
    You will decide by how you vote. You will decide by whether you 
vote. You will decide whether we can help more people to succeed at home 
and at work. Twelve million families have taken a little time off from 
work without being fired when a baby was born or a parent was sick. It's 
helped the American economy, and I want to keep it and do more. I want 
to say that parents ought to get a little time off to go to those 
regular conferences with their children's teachers or to take a family 
member to the doctor, to a regular appointment. You will decide whether 
we do it and whether we build that bridge.
    We have started to protect our children from the dangers of guns and 
gangs and drugs and tobacco. Over the intense partisan opposition, we 
passed the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. We extended the Brady 
bill to say if you beat up your spouse or your child you should not be 
able to buy a handgun; you're a danger to society. We said to the 
tobacco companies, ``You may sell your products to adults but it's 
illegal for children to smoke, so stop marketing, advertising, and 
delivering cigarettes to our children.''
    We passed tough new laws against drug dealers, including the death 
penalty for drug kingpins. We dramatically increased funds to help our 
schools keep our kids out of trouble in the first place with safe and 
drug-free schools programs. We said to the States, ``We want you to 
start drug testing parolees.'' If people want to be out on the streets, 
they ought to stay off of drugs. If they're going to get back in 
trouble, they ought to lose their rights to walk the streets. Don't get 
any more kids in trouble. Your vote will decide whether we finish this 
work with tobacco and drugs and guns and gangs or whether we walk back 
on it.
    We passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill, which says to 25 million 
Americans we can't take your health insurance away from you anymore just 
because you changed jobs or somebody in your family's been sick. We 
stopped--we passed a law that said insurance companies cannot force 
hospitals to kick new mothers and their newborn babies out of the 
hospital after one day anymore.
    But your vote will decide whether we keep on doing that, whether we 
provide health insurance to another million children, whether we help 
families who lose their jobs keep their health insurance when they're 
between jobs, whether we continue to work with States like Florida to 
help offer affordable health insurance to working people with limited 
incomes. Your vote will decide, and whether you vote will decide.
    We passed a historic welfare reform bill. And I want to applaud 
Governor Chiles on being one of the first three States in the country to 
submit a plan to actually move people from welfare to work, not to 
abandon poor families and poor children. Thank you, Governor.
    Now, we moved 2 million people from welfare to work. The new law 
says every State and every community has 2 years for every able-bodied 
family to turn that welfare check into a paycheck. Meanwhile, we'll 
guarantee health care; we'll guarantee food on the table; we'll spend 
more for child care if you go to work. But if you can work, within 2 
years, you've got to turn the paycheck--the welfare check into a 
paycheck. That sounds good. But to do it, there has to be a paycheck. 
I've got a plan to create a million more jobs for people on welfare in 
partnership with the private sector. Your vote will decide whether we 
walk away from those people or create those jobs so they, too, can be 
part of the American dream.

[[Page 2147]]

    We have made our streets safer with 100,000 more police on the books 
but not all on the streets. We've only funded about half of them. And 
our friends on the other side--just as Jerry said with the budget--they 
fought us every step of the way with the crime bill. But we have saved 
that, and that's why the crime rate's gone down for 4 years in a row.
    But it's still not safe enough on Florida's streets. And we don't 
want to just catch criminals; we also want to prevent crime in the first 
place. That means you need people out there working with the kids, being 
strong role models, and preventing things from happening in the 
neighborhoods and on the streets. You need to help us finish the job of 
putting the rest of those police officers on the street. And your vote 
will decide whether we do that or go back. It is up to you. Will you 
help us do that? [Applause]
    We have taken more chemical pollutants out of the air. We have made 
our drinking water safer. We have raised the standards for food. We have 
done more to protect national parks and to expand national parks. We 
have begun the work, but not finished the work, of protecting the 
Everglades.
    You will decide. You will decide whether we will keep up this work 
and finish the job on the Everglades. You will decide whether we will 
clean up 500 more toxic waste dumps because there are still 10 million 
American children growing up within 4 miles of a toxic waste site. That 
is wrong. I want them growing up next to parks, not poison. You will 
decide. Will you help us do that? [Applause]
    But most important of all, you will decide whether we build an 
America in which we have a world-class education system open to all 
Americans. I have worked hard, from expanding opportunities for Head 
Start, to giving our schools more tools for the kids to meet higher 
standards, to creating the national service program, AmeriCorps--some of 
the people are here--that have allowed people to work in their 
communities and earn their way to college, to the biggest increase in 
Pell grants in 20 years, to the direct student loan program.
    And thank you, President Padron, and others for supporting that. We 
are saving the average college student on the direct loan program about 
$200 a year. But more important, we're saying to every student who 
borrows money in that way, you don't have to worry about your college 
loans anymore because you can pay it back as a percentage of your 
income. No one can ever make you go bankrupt because you borrowed the 
money to go to college. That is a good thing.
    Every step along the way, we had to fight our opponents on the other 
side. They tried to kill the student loan program improvements. They 
tried to cut back on Head Start. They tried to kill the national service 
program. Now they even have promised to eliminate the Department of 
Education.
    Audience members. Boo-o-o!
    The President. Your vote will decide, and whether you vote will 
decide. That's their program: go into the 21st century with not a single 
soul in the President's Cabinet speaking for the education of our 
children. Is that the future you want?
    Audience members. No-o-o!
    The President. Well, you have another alternative. Jerry talked 
about it, but I want to say again, I want to emphasize four things to 
you that I want to do in education, all important to Florida.
    Number one, 40 percent of the 8-year-olds in America cannot read a 
book on their own today. Part of that is because we're a nation of 
immigrants, we have a lot of young kids whose first language is not 
English. But everyone needs to be able to read in order to keep 
learning. I want to mobilize 30,000 people, the AmeriCorps volunteers, 
trained reading tutors, and others, to get a million volunteers across 
America to go into the schools, to work with the parents so that in 4 
years we can say every 8-year-old in America can pick up a book and say, 
``I can read this all by myself.''
    I was in Tampa the other day at a school which was so crowded they 
had folks meeting in trailers next to the school, a beautiful old 
school. We have the largest number of schoolchildren in America today 
ever in history, almost 52 million. The United States Government has 
never helped schools with their building problems. But children cannot 
learn if they're in impossible, rundown, beat-up, substandard conditions 
without adequate equipment. So I have a program to lower

[[Page 2148]]

the interest rates and therefore cut the costs to the taxpayers in the 
school districts of building those facilities or repairing them. If 
local people are willing to make an extra effort to help their schools, 
the Federal Government should be a partner and lower the cost of doing 
it. And I want you to help me do that.
    The third thing I want to do--now, when Jerry said this, all the 
young people clapped, and I couldn't tell whether those of us who are 
older were or not. Let me tell you what it means to hook up every 
classroom and every library to the information superhighway by the year 
2000. It means for the first time in the history of America, children in 
the poorest school districts, children in the richest school districts, 
and children in all the school districts in between for the very first 
time will all have access to the same information in the same way at the 
same time. Will you help me do that? [Applause]
    Folks, this is a big deal. We can't turn our backs on learning. 
Learning is generating more jobs for us. More than half of these new 
jobs are high-wage jobs. That's the good news. The challenging news is 
if you want them, you have to know something and you have to be able to 
keep learning.
    Just in the last 4 years, learning has done the following things: We 
have more than doubled the life expectancy for people with HIV. We have 
discovered two genes that cause breast cancer, giving us hope that we 
can not only cure it earlier but actually someday prevent it. In the 
last 4 years, we have developed the first real treatment for people who 
have strokes--never any real medical treatment before. These are things 
that are happening.
    A lot of you heard Christopher Reeve talk at the Democratic 
Convention, and he talked about medical research, sitting there so 
bravely in his wheelchair. About the time he spoke, for the first time 
ever, a laboratory animal with its spine completely severed had movement 
in its lower limbs because of a nerve transfer to the spine from another 
part of the body. Learning is the answer to so many of our problems and 
the key to our future and to our prosperity and to our quality of life.
    We are working to build a supercomputer with IBM that will do more 
calculations in one second than you can do on your own calculator in 
30,000 years. That's how much learning is going forward.
    So I say to you, the last thing we have to do is open the doors of 
college education to every American of every age at any time who needs 
to go. And I want you to help me do it. I want you to be able to save in 
an IRA and withdraw from that IRA without any tax penalty at all if you 
use the money on a college education. I want you to be able to do just 
what Jerry says: I want every community college student in America to 
know that we have to make at least 2 years of education after high 
school as universal by the year 2000 as a high school education is 
today, and we're going to do it by letting you just take off your tax 
bill dollar-for-dollar the cost of a tuition at any community college in 
the country. That's what I want you to do. And I want you to help us do 
it.
    And finally, for people that go on to college, I think you ought to 
be able to deduct up to $10,000 a year for the cost of any college 
tuition, anywhere, at any level. And I want you to help me do that.
    Now, I say again, your vote will decide, and whether you vote will 
decide. This is not a small election. The world is changing too much. 
The best days of this country are ahead. You will have more opportunity 
than any generation of Americans before if you make the right decision. 
But you have to decide.
    And the last thing I leave you with is this: We will never be what 
we ought to be unless we prove that our diversity is a great asset, not 
a liability, unless we reject the religious, the racial, the tribal, the 
ethnic hatreds that are consuming people all around the world. Pick up 
the newspaper any day and you can see it.
    In America, that is not for us. We stand for freedom. We stand for 
equal opportunity. We stand for the responsibility of every citizen and 
the right of every citizen to be treated equally under the law.
    Will you help us build that bridge to the 21st century? [Applause] 
Will you be there on November 5th? [Applause] I need you.
    Thank you. God bless you. Thank you.

[[Page 2149]]

Note: The President spoke at 5:45 p.m. at the Miami-Dade Community 
College, North Campus. In his remarks, he referred to Jerry Sawyer, 
student body president, and Eduardo Padron, president, Miami-Dade 
Community College; and Gov. Lawton Chiles and Lt. Gov. Buddy MacKay of 
Florida.