[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 7 (Monday, February 17, 1997)]
[Pages 165-175]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks to the Maryland General Assembly in Annapolis, Maryland

February 10, 1997

    Thank you all for that wonderful reception. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, 
for what you said. Thank you, Senator Miller, for that 10-year walk down 
memory lane. [Laughter] It is true that when I met his mother I fell in 
love with her, even before I found out she had 10 kids. [Laughter] It's 
not often you meet a person who can elect you if her family votes for 
you. [Laughter]
    Thank you, Governor Glendening, for your leadership here on so many 
issues. Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Attorney General 
Curran, Treasurer Dixon, my old friend Comptroller Louie Goldstein. I 
was in the first grade when he became comptroller. [Laughter] The 
walking argument against term limits, you know. It's amazing. [Laughter]
    I'd like to thank so many Members of your very distinguished 
congressional delegation for joining me today: Senator Sarbanes and 
Senator Mikulski; Representative Wayne Gilchrest, your Congressman; 
Representative Connie Morella; Representative Ben Cardin; Representative 
Al Wynn and Representative Elijah Cummings.
    Now, I know that Ben was formerly the speaker here and that Al and 
Elijah and Connie and Senator Sarbanes were all members of this body. It 
kind of makes you wonder how Senator Mikulski and Congressman Gilchrest 
got elected to Congress. [Laughter] It's obviously a good training 
program here. [Laughter]
    I'd like to thank the president of the Maryland State Board of 
Education, Christopher Cross, for being here. When he worked for 
President Bush, he and I stayed up all night one night writing the 
national education goals, which began the process which bring us to this 
point today. Thank you, sir, for being here. And I'd like to thank your 
State superintendent of education, Nancy Grasmick, for being here.
    Then there are two people who are not here, who are here with us in 
spirit, and I would like to ask that we all remember them today, our 
good friend Congressman Steny Hoyer and his late wife, Judy, who was one 
of the finest educators this State ever had. And I know we miss them 
today. Steny and his family are in our prayers, and we are grateful for 
the dedication of Judy Hoyer's life to the children and the people of 
Maryland.
    I would also like to say I'm very glad to be here with two members 
of my Cabinet, Secretary of Education Dick Riley and the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, Donna Shalala. They have served our 
administration and, more importantly, the American people exceptionally 
well, and I thank them for their presence here today. And when I finish 
talking, if you want anything else, call them. [Laughter]
    I should also say, since Senator Miller mentioned it, that my 
college roommate, who

[[Page 166]]

lived on the Eastern Shore, Tom Kaplan, is here. And he's still my 
friend after all these years, which is either a great tribute to his 
patience or to the roots and values of the people of Maryland. So I'm 
glad he's here.
    I wanted to come here today to talk in greater detail about the 
issues I discussed in the State of the Union that require us to prepare 
America for the 21st century. It is important that we gather here at 
this turning point in our history. It was, after all, in this statehouse 
that George Washington resigned his commission as General of the 
Continental Army. In fact, it was right down the hall in the Lieutenant 
Governor's office that Thomas Jefferson wrote George Washington's words 
of resignation. It was here that the Treaty of Paris was prepared and 
ratified, ending the Revolutionary War and beginning the greatest 
experiment in democracy and opportunity the world has ever known.
    Just think what began here in this building. What an experiment it 
has been, all the turmoil we have survived, the Civil War, the two World 
Wars, the cold war, the social upheaval, all the triumphs of our country 
in civil rights and women's rights, the environmental movement, workers' 
rights, bringing in all the immigrants, the explosion in science and 
technology, the political, the economic, the social achievements of this 
country. What an incredible experiment it has been since the events of 
so long ago when the treaty ending the Revolutionary War was signed and 
ratified here.
    At each step along the way, how did we keep growing, how did we 
overcome, how did we work through, how did we reach higher? We always 
had responsible citizens. We were always able to come together as one 
country. And we were always driven by a clear vision.
    I would argue to you that we are at another turning point today, and 
we need responsible citizens, a united country, and a clear vision. We 
face a moment of peace and prosperity, and it gives us an extraordinary 
opportunity to actually decide what kind of future we want for America 
in the 21st century and then go to work to build it. It is very 
important that we understand that such moments are extremely rare in our 
history.
    We have perhaps had only one before. After World War II, we 
dominated the world economically. We were the most powerful country in 
the world militarily. We had some ability to decide our future, and 
thank goodness we did the right thing with the Marshall plan and 
rebuilding Europe and Japan, our former friends and our former foes. But 
we were constrained by the cold war.
    At the beginning of this century probably is the time most like this 
one when we entered the industrial era as a powerful and wealthy country 
at peace. But never have we been quite like this, as the world's only 
superpower, just completing 4 years where we produced more new jobs than 
at any other 4-year period in our history, looking toward a world that 
is full of troubles, to be sure, but so full of explosive opportunities.
    We have an incredible responsibility--we in America and you in 
Maryland. Thanks to the leadership of your Governor and the work that 
all of you have done, unemployment's at a 6-year low. Things are going 
well for you here. Your family incomes have risen to fourth in the 
Nation. Your welfare rolls have dropped almost 25 percent since 1995. 
Student achievement has risen, and more schools are meeting the high 
standards you have set. We are well positioned.
    But it is a moment of choice. We cannot afford to squander this 
moment in complacency or division. That's normally what happens to 
people when they sort of get happy and satisfied. They get complacent, 
or they fall out over little things. And this is not a time for us to 
squander in petty bickering or small ambitions. This is a time for us to 
build a new century.
    We have to meet all the challenges we still have. There are still 
too many poor children in this country and too many lives of children 
being lost on the streets of America every day. There are still too many 
of our areas in our cities and isolated rural areas that have not felt 
the uplift of the economic recovery. We still have not balanced the 
budget. We still have not finished all the unfinished business of the 
cold war. Not everybody who works hard is feeling the opportunities that 
are available in America. We have unfinished business.

[[Page 167]]

    Then we have new challenges that we have to face. We have to prepare 
for the aging of the baby boomers. I know I'm the oldest one; that's a 
self-interest plea here, I think. [Laughter] We have to prepare for the 
aging of the baby boomers. We have to make sure that we're ready for 
this new worldwide competition. We have to meet the new security threats 
of the 21st century, in terrorism and ethnic and religious and racial 
conflicts. We have to meet the new environmental challenges of the 21st 
century, most of which will be global in nature.
    So there are challenges out there. But the most important thing is, 
there are staggering opportunities. More people will have more chances 
to live out their dreams than any people who ever lived in the history 
of the Earth if we do the right things--if we do the right things.
    We have worked for the last 4 years essentially to try to make sure 
America works again, that we are functioning at a reasonable level of 
proficiency so that we can have the freedom to do that, to shape our 
future. And we have changed the economic course of this country away 
from supply-side economics to investment economics, to move toward a 
balanced budget, to reduce the deficits, the interest rates, to expand 
our trade around the world and to invest in our people. And the results 
have been good.
    We've tried to move the debate over social policy in Washington away 
from rhetoric to reality, centered on families and communities. You've 
got now 5 years of declining crime. You've got the biggest drop in 
welfare rolls in history. You've got real efforts being made through the 
family leave law and other things to help people succeed in raising 
their children and in the workplace. We're in a position now to know 
what works and to know that we can have confidence that if we work 
together, we can make a difference in assaulting our most profound 
challenges here at home.
    We've tried to define the role of Government away from the old fight 
that's dominated America almost ever since World War II, to say 
Government is not the problem; Government is not the solution. 
Government's job is to create the conditions and give people the tools 
to solve their problems and make the most of their own lives.
    So now we have this chance. And it's hard when you're not threatened 
by a foreign enemy to whip people up to a fever pitch of common, 
intense, sustained, disciplined endeavor. But that is what we must do, 
my fellow Americans. That is what we must do.
    We are strong enough to shape a future that will take advantage of 
all this life-enhancing technology, of these new economic opportunities, 
of the new opportunities we have to build a structure of peace around 
the world, of the new opportunities we have to put the information age 
at the fingertips of the poorest as well as the wealthiest children in 
our country. And we had better do this. Our children and our 
grandchildren will never forgive us if we blow this chance to make their 
future the best future in the history of this country.
    It is obvious that to prepare our people for the 21st century we 
will need a new, more far-reaching, deeper partnership in America. The 
era of big Government is over, both because we can't go on running 
national deficits till the end of time and because the nature of our 
problems requires a different approach. But the era of big national 
challenges is far from over. It will never be over. And the ones we face 
are very big indeed.
    National leadership can point the way. It can move barriers out of 
the way that have prevented our States, our cities, and our people from 
solving their own problems. But the real responsibilities of building 
this future are ones we all must bear together. I will do my part. I 
will do what I can to see that the National Government does its part. 
But in turn, you must work with me and with others to make sure that we 
seize this opportunity while we stand strong enough to do so.
    Today I want to talk about two critical areas, giving our children 
the best education and finishing the job of welfare reform, breaking the 
cycle of dependency, moving millions of more people from welfare to 
work. Taken together, these issues really are at the core of our 
national mission to prepare America for the 21st century.
    Everyone must have the tools to succeed in the knowledge economy. 
That means education and training. Everyone willing to work

[[Page 168]]

hard with those tools must have a chance to do so. That means finishing 
the job of welfare reform. Education and welfare reform are about 
bringing all Americans to the starting line of the economy, then making 
sure all of them are ready to run the race. Our number one priority must 
be to ensure that America has the best education in the world.
    I cannot add much to the statement we made so long ago in the 
national education goals, 7 years ago now--almost 8 years ago. But my 
shorthand statement is every 8-year-old has to be able to read, every 
12-year-old should be able to log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old 
should be able to go to college, and every adult American should be able 
to keep on learning for an entire lifetime. That should be our goal.
    Because our future was at stake in the cold war, we had a bipartisan 
foreign policy. Politics stopped at the water's edge. Well, now our 
future is at stake, in large measure depending upon whether we can give 
all of our people world-class education. Therefore, we must have a 
nonpartisan commitment to education, and politics should stop at the 
schoolhouse door in the 21st century.
    It is not enough for Members of Congress and members of the State 
legislatures and elected executives to embrace this commitment. Our 
businesses, our educators, our parents, all our citizens must make the 
same commitment. I'm gratified that you have a number of Maryland 
parents and teachers and business people committed to education here 
today. I thank them for being here, and I thank you for inviting them.
    In my State of the Union Address, I laid out a 10-point call to 
action for American education, which is embodied in this booklet. And I 
want to say just a few words about a number of issues today and then 
focus on one in particular. And I want to thank the State of Maryland 
for taking the lead in doing so many of the right things. A lot of you 
have worked with me, going back long years in the past when I was a 
Governor, on these educational issues, and I thank you for what you've 
done.
    First, every child has to be able to read independently by the third 
grade. I'm pleased that the University of Maryland at College Park has 
already pledged more than 2,300 of its students to work as reading 
tutors over the next 5 years. That is a great thing. We're going to use 
35,000 of our AmeriCorps volunteers to help to try to mobilize a million 
of these students. We think we can get at least 100,000 out of the new 
work-study students approved by Congress in the last budget. Then all 
the schools have to make use of volunteers once they are trained. But we 
have to do this.
    You just think about it. If 40 percent of our children can't read at 
grade level, how in the wide world do we expect them to learn algebra, 
trigonometry, calculus, physics, biology, chemistry. It is very 
important. Unless we get this done, the rest cannot happen. And it is 
going to take a national effort of monumental proportions to do it. But 
we can do it, because the children can do it. The children can do it. 
They just need for us to do our job, and they then will do the rest. So 
I want you to help us to finish that job.
    We must expand public school choice. And Baltimore City has done 
that through its charter schools. We must rebuild crumbling schools. And 
you heard the Governor say that's a priority for him as well. We must 
make it possible for all of our children to have access, the same 
access, in the same time, to the same knowledge. That's what hooking up 
all these classrooms to the Internet is all about. And I thank Maryland 
for its commitment to that objective.
    In the last 4 years, we have opened the doors of college wider than 
ever before through the direct college loan program and expanded Pell 
grants, 200,000 more work-study positions, and the AmeriCorps program. 
But we have to do more. And I am very pleased, Governor, that you have 
proposed these State HOPE scholarships to open the doors of college.
    I just came back from Georgia--Secretary Riley and I went to 
Augusta--230,000 people in the State of Georgia who maintained a B 
average have had their tuition and their schoolbooks paid for by the 
State HOPE scholarship program. In a representative crowd there, I had 
person after person after person of all ages telling me, ``I was a HOPE 
scholar; I had a chance to go to college; I never could have done it 
otherwise; I wouldn't have made it otherwise.''

[[Page 169]]

    There is no better expenditure of our money. It will raise the per 
capita income of this State more quickly. It will get over inequalities 
in income groups more quickly, and it will bring people together for a 
stronger future more quickly than anything else.
    So I applaud the proposal you have put before the legislature here, 
and I also tell you I will do my best to pass our national version of 
the HOPE scholarship to give a tax credit of $1,500 for 2 years--that's 
the typical cost of community college tuition--and a tax deduction of up 
to $10,000 a year for the cost of tuition for any education after high 
school. This will make a difference.
    We also propose making the IRA available to more savers and then let 
people withdraw from their IRA tax-free if the money is used to pay for 
education--and the biggest increase in Pell grant scholarships for needy 
students in 20 years. And our ``GI bill'' for America's workers would 
take the 70 different Federal programs for job training, put them in one 
big block, and send a skill grant to an unemployed or an underemployed 
worker and say, ``Here, you take it to the nearest institution of 
education and get the training you need.'' Nearly every American lives 
within driving distance of a community college or another community-
based university or educational institution that can provide the 
training today that all people know they need to have a better future. 
So we need to do these things together, and they will make a big 
difference.
    I also believe we have to teach our children to be good citizens as 
well as good students. And I'd like to thank the Lieutenant Governor for 
supporting the statewide program of character education you have here, 
to have a statewide code of discipline, to remove disruptive students 
from the classroom, to promote community curfews. And again, I thank you 
for being the only State in America to require community service to 
graduate from high school. You have the first class of seniors 
graduating today. That's a good thing. That's a good thing.
    To give you some idea how long it takes for some of these things to 
catch on, 10 years ago, in 1987, the then-Republican Governor of New 
Jersey and now the president of Drew University, Tom Kean, and I co-
chaired a Carnegie Commission study on middle school. And one of our 
recommendations was that national service should be a requirement for 
public school students. People should learn that they are connected to 
others in their community and make it a positive, good, wholesome thing. 
Only Maryland has done it so far. But I certainly hope--perhaps my 
presence here will help--I hope other States will follow your lead. This 
is an important part of building a common future for America.
    Let me say the most important thing we can do in education is to 
hold our students to high standards. Children will grow according to the 
expectations we have of them. They cannot be expected to know what it is 
they should know or even how high they can soar until we give them the 
right set of expectations. When 40 percent of our third graders are not 
reading as well as they should or, to put it in plain language, when 40 
percent of 8-year-olds cannot read a book on their own that they ought 
to be able to read, we have a lot to do.
    When students in Germany or Singapore learn 15 to 20 math subjects 
in depth each year, while our students typically race through 30 to 35 
without learning any in depth in a given year, we aren't doing what we 
should be doing to prepare them for a knowledge economy that demands 
that they be able to think and reason and analyze, in short, demands 
that they be able to learn for a lifetime of working in ways that have 
not yet been invented, perhaps not yet even imagined. This is impossible 
without a good foundation in the basics.
    Maryland is making a good start. You've developed clear standards 
for what children should learn by the third, fifth, and eighth grades, 
in particular, in reading and math, and clear tests to measure them 
school district by school district and school by school. You're holding 
schools accountable for making the grade, rewarding excellence, 
intervening in schools that aren't performing. Because you have set high 
standards, you have seen 5 years of steady, sustained progress toward 
meeting those standards.
    But Maryland and all other States must do more. To compete and win 
in the 21st century, we must have a high standard of ex

[[Page 170]]

cellence that all States agree on. That is why I called, in my State of 
the Union Address, for national standards of excellence in the basics, 
not Federal Government standards but national standards representing 
what all our students must know to succeed in a new century. I called 
upon every State to test every fourth grader in reading and every eighth 
grader in math by 1999, according to the national standards, to make 
sure they're being met.
    We already have widely accepted rigorous national standards in both 
reading and math and widely used tests based on those standards. In 
reading, Maryland and more than 40 other States have participated in a 
test called the National Assessment of Education Progress or, as all of 
us educational junkies call it, the NAEP test. It measures a State's 
overall performance against a high national standard of excellence. It's 
a good test. In math, tens of thousands of students across our Nation 
have already taken the Third International Math and Science Survey, 
called the TIMSS test, a test that reflects the world-class standards 
our children must meet for the new era.
    As I said in my State of the Union, last month Secretary Riley and I 
visited northern Illinois, where eighth grade students from 20 districts 
took the test and tied for first in the world for science and second in 
math. We know it is the world standard, and we know the world standard 
is the right standard to which we should all hold ourselves.
    Unfortunately, these current tests, both the Assessment of Education 
Progress for the fourth grade reading test and the Third International 
Survey in Math and Science for the eighth graders, do not provide 
individual scores; they only measure how an entire State is doing. What 
we need are tests that will measure the performance of each and every 
student, each and every school, each and every district, so that parents 
and teachers will know how every child is doing compared to other 
students in other schools, other States, and other countries, not just 
compared to them but, more importantly, compared against what they need 
to know.
    It is a false thing to compare all kids against one another unless 
all children are first held to a high standard. That's what we want to 
know. That's the only thing that really matters. That is why I'm 
presenting a plan to help all students in all States meet these 
standards and to measure them.
    Over the next 2 years, our Department of Education will support the 
development for new tests for fourth grade reading based on the National 
Assessment of Education Progress and eighth grade math based on the 
International Math and Science Survey, to show how every student 
measures up to existing, widely accepted standards. These tests will be 
developed by independent test experts in consultation with leading math 
and reading teachers. The Federal Government will not require them, but 
they will be available to every State and every school district that 
chooses to administer them. I believe every State must participate and 
that every parent has a right to honest, accurate information about how 
his or her child is doing based on real, meaningful national standards.
    Now, already in the last week I have heard some people saying, 
``Sounds like a Federal power grab to me.'' That's nonsense. We will not 
attempt to require them. They are not Federal Government standards. They 
are national standards. But we have been hiding behind a very small fig 
leaf for very long, and the results are not satisfactory. Anybody who 
says that a country as big and diverse as ours can't possibly have 
national standards in the basics--I say from Maryland to Michigan to 
Montana, reading is reading and math is math. No school board is in 
charge of algebra, and no State legislature can enact the laws of 
physics. And it is time we started acting the way we know we should.
    There's another thing that will be said now and that you will have 
to confront, because I know how much--I've been through a zillon State 
legislative sessions; everybody's got a new idea and everybody wants 
more money, and there's never enough to go around. And you will be 
told--and it is true--that we have lots of standardized tests. That's 
true, there are lots of standardized tests, but there is no national 
test testing the standards. That's a very different thing. There is no 
national exam given to all of our children that says, here's what a good 
fourth grader ought to learn.

[[Page 171]]

    Keep in mind, we don't want Johnny to make a better score than Mary 
on this test. We want 100 percent of our kids to pass this test. And 
then when a lot of them don't, we don't want to give them an F. We want 
to give them a hand up. We want to say, ``We haven't done what we 
should, and we're going to do this.''
    It is amazing, you know, we take it for granted we have the best 
military in the world. Think how silly it would be if everyplace in 
America where we do basic training, they said, ``Well, you know, 
Louisiana is a long way from Georgia. We couldn't have possibly have 
uniform standards for basic training in the military. Just sort of come 
up with whatever you think will be good, and we'll hope it works the 
next time we're in the Persian Gulf.'' [Laughter] You're laughing. 
That's what we do. And even if you do the very best you can, we don't 
know the truth. It's wrong for these children not to know the truth. 
This is not a put-down, now, this is a lift-up.
    We've got the most diverse democracy in the world. We have four 
school districts now where the children's first languages comprise over 
100 different languages, in four school districts in America. Who are we 
kidding that we're going to create the kind of country we want, where 
everybody's got a chance to make it, when we haven't even taken the 
first elemental step to say, here's how everyone should read by the 
fourth grade; here's the math everybody ought to know by the eighth 
grade?
    There is more to do after that, but let's start with something that 
really matters. We've never done it. This has nothing to do with local 
control of education. Secretary Riley has done more to get rid of 
Federal rules and regulations, to give States and local school districts 
more control without the rules and more flexibility than anybody has in 
a long time. But no matter how much flexibility you have, sooner or 
later your children are going to have to face the fact that they either 
can read or they can't, they either can do the math or they can't, they 
know algebra or they don't. And if we play around with all these games 
and hide-and-seek excuses, in the end the only people that are going to 
be hurt are those kids, and the rest of the country will pay the price 
from now on. And we've got to stop it. [Applause] Thank you.
    I want to give you two pieces of good news, one of which you can be 
especially proud of. You all know that the business community has been 
calling for this for a long time. Governor Glendening was recently with 
the other Governors last year at an education summit in New York with 
the business community, and they were saying we have to have standards. 
Today I'm proud to say that the national Business Roundtable is 
endorsing our call for national tests for fourth grade reading and 
eighth grade math. They will join our crusade to make American education 
the best in the world. And I want to thank especially Norm Augustine, 
who is the CEO of Lockheed Martin and the head of the Business 
Roundtable's education task force and who has done a lot to help you in 
Maryland with your schools.
    Just before the speech today, your State board of education 
chairman, Chris Cross, told me that the State board of education intends 
to incorporate these news tests of national standards into your State's 
program. And I thank you, sir, for that, and I thank you for that.
    Let me say that throughout my public career I have been very 
interested in this whole issue of education. There are lots of other 
things I'd like to talk to you about today. I hope you will support the 
work that we are doing with the National Board of Certification for 
Master Teachers, to certify teachers in educational excellence. Governor 
Hunt from North Carolina has been working on that for years, and we 
certified the last teachers--the first teachers in 1995 but only 500 
since 1995. We believe we need at least one master teacher in every 
school district, hopefully in every school in America, someone who has 
been through the special, rigorous program of training and evaluation 
here so that then that teacher can share what he or she has learned with 
all the other teachers in the school. Our budget contains enough funds--
and it's a relatively low-cost program--to provide for another 100,000 
master teachers in the next 4 years. So I hope you will support that as 
well.

[[Page 172]]

    But let me say--I guess you can tell I feel strongly about this, but 
I have spent a lot of time in our schools, a lot of time listening to 
teachers, a lot of time listening to parents. I've worked harder on this 
issue over the course of my public life than anything else because it 
has a unique role in our history and an even more powerful role in our 
future. It is, of course, the key to individual opportunity. It is also 
the key to responsible citizenship. I am convinced it is the key to 
giving us the understanding we need to live together as one nation in 
the midst of all of our diversity. It is also the key to maintaining our 
world leadership for peace and freedom and prosperity. Only if every 
American has the full use of his or her mind can our country move 
forward together.
    So I hope that all of you will keep this in mind. I hope that you 
will push this, and I hope you will lead the way. I want to be able to 
take this crusade across the country and tell people if they don't 
believe we can do it, call Maryland. You've had the courage to do it. 
Stand up. [Applause]
    Now, let me just say a couple of words about welfare reform, because 
that's very important. For years and years and years, all the 
Governors--I was one of them--said we want more control over the State's 
welfare system; we want to do that. We could reform the welfare system. 
We could make it work. We could end the culture of poverty and 
dependency. Well, you got it. [Laughter] And this has got to be a focus 
of your efforts now, because this is very, very important.
    We ended the old welfare system basically in two steps. First of 
all, in the last 4 years, Secretary Shalala and I worked with 43 of the 
50 States to launch welfare reform experiments which, along with a 
growing economy and a 50 percent increase in child support collection--
something I'm very proud of--helped to reduce the welfare rolls by 2\1/
4\ million. That's the biggest drop in welfare rolls in the history of 
the country, an 18 percent drop. You can be proud of that and proud of 
what you did. Here in Maryland you did better than the national average. 
You used your waiver to move 51,000 people off the welfare rolls, and 
you had about a 25 percent drop. And you can be proud of that.
    You also answered my call to revoke the driver's licenses of people 
who deliberately--who can and don't pay their child support. And I think 
that's a good thing. We're going to do more to collect child support. We 
can move 800,000 more people off welfare tomorrow if people just paid 
the child support they owe and that they are capable of paying. So I 
thank you for that.
    Now we come to the hard part. The new law, supported by the 
Governors and all State associations, says that every able-bodied person 
on welfare must move to work within 2 years, that the States can have a 
little cushion fund to support those who can't move into the work force 
either because they're disabled or because the economy is not so hot.
    But now, think of this challenge. In the last 4 years, 2\1/4\ 
million people moved from welfare to work in an economy that produced 
11.5 million jobs. That's a record for any 4-year administration. We 
have to do at least that well in the next 4 years. That reduced the 
welfare rolls by about 20 percent, 18 to 20 percent.
    So you've got about 10 million people left and about--maybe a little 
more than 10 million--and about 4\1/2\ million of them are adults and 
about 4 million, anyway, are going to be able-bodied and able enough to 
physically work. And then there will be some moving in and out of the 
work force as there always is, as people retire and all. But through 
deliberate efforts we're going to have to create at least 2 million 
jobs. And if we don't do it, what will happen?
    Keep in mind, this welfare reform bill has this ringing declaration: 
Everybody who can work, everybody who's able to work has to take 
responsibility for their own lives, no more permanent dependency full of 
moral precepts. Well, the morality shoe is now on the other foot. Those 
of us who supported that, we now have a moral obligation to say, 
everybody we told, ``You have to go to work'' actually is able to work. 
Because if we are not able to do that, then the law's consequence will 
not be to liberate people from dependency but to make people who are 
dying to go to work even worse off just because they couldn't find a 
job.

[[Page 173]]

    This is a serious, stiff challenge. And the challenge is primarily 
on you and the employer community, which is the way you said you wanted 
it. But it's there now. You know that great old country music star Chet 
Atkins used to say, ``You got to be careful what you ask for in this 
life. You might get it.'' So here it is. What are we going to do? Is 
there a way out? Yes, there is. Can we do this? You bet we can. You bet 
we can. We can to it, but we have to do it together. And we have to do 
it with discipline. And we need a plan. And it needs to go down to every 
community. And we're going to have to ask people to help. And you need 
to really closely follow your numbers and make sure you're doing what it 
takes to be done.
    How are we going to do it? First, we have to pass the Federal 
program that I recommended, which will give tax credits to private 
employers of up to 50 percent of a salary up to $10,000 to hire people, 
only if they hire people from welfare to work. And then we have to 
support the provisions of the welfare reform law which continue the 
health care, continue the nutrition, and provide much more money for 
child care than the previous law. That's the good news.
    This legislation also gives you the authority for the first time to 
take money that had been used on welfare checks and give it to private 
employers as a wage or training supplement. Now, this can be very 
important in convincing nonprofit employers who don't pay taxes anyway 
to hire people off welfare and make an extra effort. All the community 
nonprofits, every church or other religious organization in the State of 
Maryland of any size, without regard to their faith, they're all under 
an admonition to care for the poor. Now you can say, ``We'll give you a 
little money to help if you will do the rest.''
    Missouri had a program like this in Kansas City, where they gave the 
welfare check to private employers for more than a year--they could keep 
it for a couple years--as a wage and training premium if they would hire 
people off welfare. I met a man who had a data-processing storage 
company with 25 employees, and five of his employees he'd hired from the 
welfare rolls, and he loved it. And they loved it.
    And if we can do it, it is better to hire people in small groups or 
one-on-one, because you're trying to life people out of a culture of 
dependency into a mainstream culture of work. But this man was willing 
to do that. And they have to pay about $1.75 above the minimum wage to 
get the wage subsidy there and to give people a living income. But still 
it costs them less than the minimum wage to do it.
    Florida has just decided to follow suit. And I hope other States 
will follow that lead. You've got to--believe me--to meet these job 
targets, your employer community is going to need every last option you 
can give them. And somebody's got to have a plan, I mean a game plan, 
that challenges every sector and every community to do what has to be 
done. So I urge you to use the flexibility you have been given to do 
that.
    Secondly, I urge you to make sure that the money you have saved from 
welfare reform will be used to move even more people to work. I know 
Maryland has taken its considerable savings from welfare reform efforts 
and put them into a special rainy-day fund to create jobs and to move 
people from welfare to work. And that's something other States ought to 
copy, because if welfare reform is going to succeed in the beginning, 
all States are going to have use those savings on efforts like child 
care, wage subsidies, employment incentives, or other ways to create 
private sector jobs.
    Let me just say one other thing. I hope as you do this you will not 
forget a sort of a parallel population not on welfare, and those are 
young, single men who are unemployed who are eligible for food stamps 
but not welfare. Keep in mind, their loss to the work force is an 
enormous loss to our society. It leads to higher crime. It leads to 
fewer two-parent families. It leads to robbing them of the potential of 
what they might become. And a lot of places now are beginning to try 
to--instead of talking just about the welfare population--[inaudible]--
the young, unemployed population so that these young, single men can be 
treated in the right way, too.
    And in Missouri, what they did, we gave them a waiver, and they 
actually took the food stamp payments for the young, single men and gave 
them to employers with the

[[Page 174]]

same sort of incentive as the welfare payments for young women going 
from welfare to work. So I urge you to think about that.
    Finally, let me say, what is our vision? I can tell you what my 
vision--why do we do all this? Here's my vision. Here's where I hope 
we'll be in a few years. I hope all over America in a few years, we will 
have a community-based, employment-family support system for people who 
are out of work and people will come into this system whether they come 
off the welfare rolls or off the employment rolls through the 
unemployment rolls and we won't make a distinction. It will just be good 
people with kids or without kids, depending, who are out of work who 
need to get back into the work force. And we'll have a system for moving 
them back in, and we'll have a system of subsidies for people at the 
margins so that employers will be encouraged to make that extra effort 
to restore people to the dignity of work. And meanwhile, we'll always be 
helping people support their children in fulfilling their first and most 
important job.
    Now, that's my vision. That's what I hope we would get out of this 
welfare reform effort. But the next 2 years are going to be critical, 
because about 2 years from now, people are going to start running out of 
their 2-year time limit, and then the spotlight will shift from all of 
them to all of us. And we will be asked, what did we do when the welfare 
reform bill passed? What did we do to make sure that those we told, 
``You have to go to work,'' had the chance to go to work? So I urge you 
to think about this.
    This is exciting, but it's bracing, because our society has never 
done anything like this before in ordinary times. And I do not believe 
that when the bill passed, people had really focused on the dimensions 
of the challenge. I had, and I was willing to make it. I'm willing to 
try to--to jump off this cliff, to hold up this high standard. I think 
we can do this. I think we can develop a work-based society that does 
not have people trapped in permanent dependence. But it's going to take 
everybody thinking about it, working on it, and doing things they had 
not done in the past. And so I ask you to do that.
    I just want to make one final point the Governor's already 
mentioned. I know Maryland is considering using its own money to 
continue providing some basic benefits for legal immigrants who have 
lost Federal aid now that the Federal bans have taken effect. That's the 
right thing to do, but you shouldn't have to do it all by yourself. 
That's why every State and every Governor, Republican or Democrat, I 
hope will join with us to try to persuade the Congress to restore just 
the basic health and disability benefits that used to be available until 
this new law passed when misfortune strikes them.
    The argument made by the majority when they passed this was, ``When 
an immigrant comes to America, you've got to sign a piece of paper that 
says you're not going to take public benefits.'' Now, that's an 
understandable policy. We shouldn't be inviting people to come here just 
to get on welfare or to get on Medicaid or Medicare. But we can solve 
that, and did, by simply saying that every immigrant has a sponsor and 
the sponsor's income will be deemed the immigrant's income until the 
immigrant becomes a citizen. That's the way to solve that.
    But if you have all these immigrants coming here, and even before 
they can become citizens--suppose an Indian from New Delhi comes to 
Maryland to develop computer software programs for one of your growing 
businesses, and stays here 3 years, and has a 1-year-old child and a 3-
year-old child. What does that person do if he or his spouse gets hit by 
a car or is the victim of a crime or one of the children is born with 
cerebral palsy, and they don't have regular health care that will take 
care of all these things?
    What do we say? ``Tough luck. You had misfortune. Yes, you've worked 
hard; yes, you've paid your taxes; yes, you've been perfectly legal; 
yes, you've complied with every provision of the law; yes, you didn't 
try to sneak in our country, you waited your turn just like everybody 
else, but I'm sorry. Yes, we took the benefit of your brain; you made us 
a richer, stronger country; we wanted you in here; you had skills we 
needed, but I'm sorry''? This is wrong, folks. This is unworthy of a 
great nation of immigrants, and we ought to fix it.
    When you get right down to it, all this business about education 
reform and welfare reform and what do we have to do to prepare

[[Page 175]]

our country for the 21st century and will we have the discipline, 
strength, and courage to take advantage of this unique moment in 
history--it really comes down to two questions: What does America mean, 
and what does it mean to be an American?
    America must always be a nation becoming. We're never there. We're 
always becoming: becoming a more perfect union, full of new promise for 
our own people and new hopes for the world. And what does it mean to be 
an American? We're the ones who have to make that happen.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 11:20 a.m. at the Maryland State House. In 
his remarks, he referred to Casper R. Taylor, Jr., speaker, Maryland 
House of Delegates, and Thomas V. Miller, Jr., president, Maryland State 
Senate; Gov. Parris N. Glendening, Attorney General J. Joseph Curran, 
Jr., Treasurer Thomas N. Dixon, and Comptroller Louis L. Goldstein of 
Maryland.