    [Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 10 (Monday, March 10, 1997)]
    [Pages 290-299]
    [Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

    <R04>
    Remarks to a Joint Session of the Michigan Legislature in Lansing,
    Michigan

    March 6, 1997

        Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker, Governor. Thank you all
    for that wonderful welcome in this magnificent capitol. I'm delighted to
    be here today with so many of your State officials--Lieutenant Governor
    Binsfeld; your State board of education president, Kathleen Strauss. I
    don't know if Frank Kelley met Theodore Roosevelt, but he did meet me
    when I became attorney general. [Laughter] And some days I feel about
    that old. I want to thank the mayor of Lansing, Mayor Hollister, for
    meeting me at the airport, and all the other State officials and
    dignitaries who are here--Representative Sikkema, thank you, sir; and
    Senator Cherry and Senator Posthumus.
        I want to thank the Members of Congress and others who flew down
    here with me today--your former Governor, Jim Blanchard and his wife,
    Janet; Congressman Dingell; your Congresswoman from here, Congressman
    Debbie Stabenow; Representative Levin; Representative Kilpatrick;
    Representative Conyers; Representative Stupak; Representative Camp; and
    Representative Hoekstra and Representative Barcia. Did I get them all?
    [Laughter] Nine, we only had nine here. I could only muster nine, but
    that's a quorum--[laughter]--even in the State legislature--of the
    Michigan delegation. I thank them for coming down.
        Thank you, Wendell Anthony, for your invocation, and thank you for
    making me feel so welcome.
        When I came in, the Speaker and I were looking up at this
    magnificent ceiling, and I noticed that the seal of the State of
    Michigan was right next to the seal of my home State of Arkansas. And
    maybe one reason for that is that the Congress approved us coming into
    the Union at the same time.
        I was reading also the account of Theodore Roosevelt coming here 90
    years ago. I know you have partisan differences today. You might be
    interested to know that 90 years ago there were 32 Republicans and no
    Democrats in the Senate. [Laughter] If you clap too much, I've got a
    great closing line--Governor, you'll get mad at it. [Laughter] There
    were 95 Republicans and 5 Democrats in the House. And it was the
    aftermath of the Civil War.
        I say this because our two States have been entwined in an
    interesting way over the course of time. We were allowed together into
    the Union because Michigan was a free State and Arkansas was a Southern
    slave State, and Michigan became the party--adhering to the party of
    Abraham Lincoln, of freedom, and the party of Theodore Roosevelt, which
    the Governor explained. And most of us Democrats are pretty proud of
    those folks, too. They represent the best in America.
        Then, after the Great Depression, Michigan basically became the home
    of tens of thousands of people from my State who simply could not make a
    living anymore on the farm, and the factories of Michigan gave people
    from Arkansas, black and white together, the chance to come up here and
    build a decent middle class life and educate their children and be a
    part of what was then America's future. So anybody from my roots must be
    exceedingly grateful to the people of Michigan and the history and the
    heritage of Michigan.
        When Theodore Roosevelt was here, he was going to Michigan State to
    address the graduates there, just as I did a couple of years ago. And I
    might say the president of Michigan State is here, and I told him today
    that he gave me a picture of Theodore Roosevelt's address to the
    graduates at Michigan State, and it now hangs on my office wall at the
    White House at the entrance to my little private office off the Oval
    Office, and I look up there and see Teddy Roosevelt speaking every day
    that I go to work.
        Before that, he came here, and when he spoke here I suppose the
    place looked about like it does now, thanks to your magnificent
    renovation, and I applaud you for doing this. People all over America
    should remember it's worth investing a little money to protect your
    roots and your heritage, and the beauty and meaning of what we were, as
    well as what we hope to be.
        In 1907 when Teddy Roosevelt came here we were at the dawn of the
    industrial era. This building had been wired for electricity

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    only 2 years before he showed up. And when President Roosevelt left here
    to go to the college campus, he got in a newfangled contraption called a
    Reo automobile. I read the newspaper article from your local paper from
    1907 this morning, and it said that it was something of a risk for him
    to get into the car, but it was probably the wave of the future, who
    knew what would turn out. [Laughter]
        Then, like a good politician, I read that when he was at Michigan
    State, at the campus, he learned that there were, in fact, two different
    car manufacturers competing with one another in Lansing, so he took the
    other one back. [Laughter] He took a Reo out and an Olds back.
        That was a rare moment. Just think what happened from that moment to
    this one. Think about the century that that moment and this one spans--
    all but 10 years of this century--and why it became the American
    Century, what a big part of it Michigan was. Building a great middle
    class, offering a haven to people from all over America and to
    immigrants who would come here from other lands to work, to make their
    way. Building an industrial power that could prevail in two World Wars
    and overcome a Great Depression. Building an ethical power that could
    live up to the meaning of its Constitution in the civil rights
    revolution and expanding opportunities to young people to vote and to
    women to fully participate in the life of America. Just think what has
    happened in the 20th century.
        When Roosevelt was here in 1907, it was a rare moment. We were
    moving on to the stage as a world power. Everyone recognized it. We had
    by then been a nation for more than 100 years, and everybody knew there
    was something unique about America, a free democracy where people could
    vote and decide and make their judgments. And it was growing and being
    nourished. We were exceedingly prosperous by the standards of the time.
        And Roosevelt knew that you had to make the most of peace and
    prosperity and leadership, and he did. And so did his successor, Woodrow
    Wilson. And because of them together and the work they did with like-
    minded members of both parties, we built an era that set the framework
    for America's leadership, growth, and prosperity, and the explosion of
    people into the middle class, which became the hallmark of Michigan's
    greatness.
        When I was a kid in Arkansas our per capita income was barely half
    the national average. We all knew if you could find your way up here and
    got a job, you could still make a good living. That all began at the
    beginning of this century. It is a very rare thing for a country to have
    peace and prosperity and the possibility of shaping its own future.
    Abraham Lincoln said in the Civil War, ``My policy is to have no policy.
    I'm controlled by events.'' If I said that, I would be ridiculed,
    rightly so. But he was controlled by events. He did have a policy; it
    was to keep the Union together and then to liberate us from the scourge
    of slavery. But he was controlled by events.
        When the Depression came on and President Roosevelt called for an
    era of bold experimentation, he was controlled by events to some extent.
    He couldn't say, the major issue in America is the climate or even
    education or anything else. He was controlled by events, and the war did
    that. And to some extent, the cold war did that for us. When Sputnik
    went up and we got into the space race and wound up winning it, we were
    almost forced into it. Now we have peace and prosperity on the edge of
    an era of unimaginable possibility.
        We just finished 4 years where our country, for the first time
    during one administration, has produced 11\1/2\ million jobs. Michigan,
    the unemployment rate has dropped, and the Governor said your welfare
    rolls are down 30 percent. You see this kind of progress, this energy,
    this movement, this possibility in America--dramatic new advances in
    science and technology occurring. This is a rare time.
        What happens to people, usually, when they are prosperous and
    unthreatened? Well, they usually get complacent, and then they normally
    find some reason to fall out with one another, usually over something
    incredibly petty, just in the nature of human events. And I come here to
    say to you today, we here in America and you here especially in Michigan
    who have done so much for so

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    long, we cannot afford to do that. We owe something better to our
    children. We have been given this unique opportunity, the same sort of
    opportunity we had when your predecessors were listening to Theodore
    Roosevelt here 90 years ago, except one on an even grander scale. And we
    have to make the most of it. We have to build America in the new
    century. And we also have to know that we have to do it as one America.
        I am gratified that Governor Engler said what he did about the
    education program today. I am gratified that this bipartisan State
    legislature has given me such a warm welcome, for we have to forge a new
    partnership for a new time.
        While the era of big Government is truly over--the Federal
    Government now has 285,000 fewer people working for it than it did on
    the day I took the oath of office--the era of big challenges for our
    Nation is not over. And now, we know that national leadership can and
    must point the way, but the real responsibility is one we all share.
        Especially, there are two areas I want to discuss today--educational
    excellence, high standards for all students; and welfare reform,
    breaking the cycle of dependency for everyone capable of independence in
    America--for these issues are at the core of what it means to prepare
    America for the 21st century, giving all Americans not only the
    opportunity but the tools they need to make the most of their own lives
    in this new global knowledge economy.
        The Governor referred to this in his remarks. When I gave the State
    of the Union Address, I said that during the cold war, because our
    national security was threatened by communism, politics stopped at the
    water's edge. Today, our national security depends upon our ability to
    develop the capacities of all of our people, so politics should stop at
    the schoolhouse door.
        Between 1992 and 2000--think of this--89 percent of the new jobs
    created in this economy will require more than high school levels of
    literacy and math skills. But only half the people entering the work
    force are prepared for these high-paying jobs, even though about 80
    percent of them are high school graduates. Our schools are still turning
    out millions of young people who simply are not equipped for the new
    world of work. That is why our number one priority must be to make our
    system of public education the best in the world, and you must believe
    we can do this.
        A few years ago, almost 8 years ago now, I had the honor of joining
    the other Governors then serving with President Bush at the University
    of Virginia to write the national education goals. I still think they're
    pretty good goals. If you ask me what the consequences would be if they
    were implemented, we could say bluntly that it would mean that every 8-
    year-old would be able to read independently, every 12-year-old could
    now log on to the Internet, every 18-year-old could go to college, and
    every adult American could keep on learning for a lifetime. That is what
    I want to be the reality in this country.
        In the State of the Union Address, I laid out a 10-point plan, a
    call to action for American education that describes the steps I believe
    we must all take, beginning with the youngest children, expanding and
    improving early childhood learning. The First Lady and I will be having
    a conference on early childhood learning and the brain to try to deal
    with these enormously significant new findings over the last couple of
    years, what we know about not only when children learn but how they
    learn and what happens if we don't do for them what they should do.
        An enormous percentage of the capacity of the brain to absorb
    information to operate is developed in the first 4 years. I'll just give
    you one statistic: The average child that grows up in a family with two
    parents caring for that child, even if they both work, that have
    reasonably good educations and deal with the basic developmental tasks,
    will give that child 700,000 positive interactions in the first 4 years.
    The average child being raised by a single parent with low self-esteem
    and low self-confidence and no training in parenting will get 150,000
    positive interactions and spend roughly 7 times as much time before a
    television doing nothing, in the first 4 years. This has enormous
    consequences for the way we become. So we're going to talk about that.
        We have to open the doors of college wider than ever. If 90 percent
    of the jobs

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    require more than a high school education and the 1990 census shows that
    the only group of younger workers whose incomes went up instead of down
    after you adjust for inflation were those that had at least 2 years of
    some kind of training after high school, we ought to make the 13th and
    14th years of education just as universal by the year 2000 as a high
    school education is today.
        I know that for years Michigan has been in the forefront of that,
    helping people to save for college. I have a proposal to provide tax
    credits for the cost of a typical community college for 2 years, and tax
    deductions up to $10,000 a year for the tuition cost in any post-high
    school education, and an expanded IRA that can be used for the same
    purpose. We have to do this.
        We also have to give more of our workers the ability to keep on
    learning for a lifetime. For 4 years, through a Democratic Congress and
    a Republican Congress, I have been given equal opportunity to fail to
    pass the ``GI bill'' for American workers. But it seems to me to be a
    simple idea. I just want to take the 70-odd programs that were developed
    with the best of intentions over the years, for this training program,
    that training program, and the other one, put them in a big fund, and
    when a worker becomes eligible for help through unemployment or
    underemployment, send them a skills grant and let them take it to the
    local community college or the nearest education institution. They can
    find out for themselves what they need to do to improve their education.
    We don't need all that stuff in the middle of them, between them and the
    money. Send them the money, let them get the education. I hope you will
    help me pass that in the Congress. I think it is a good thing.
        I want to help for the very first time through an innovative program
    to use Federal funds to lower the interest rates on local bond issues to
    help schools with enormous building problems to repair their broken
    infrastructure or build new facilities when they are doing their part.
    This is a very important thing.
        We have the largest number of schoolchildren--as Secretary Riley
    never lets me forget--we have the largest number of schoolchildren in
    history in our schools this year, the first time we've ever had a bigger
    group than the baby boom generation. I have been to schools where the
    buildings were falling down. My wife was in a school this week where
    some of the floors were closed, and the kids were going to school on
    some floors and couldn't go into other floors or other rooms because
    they didn't comply with the building codes. I have been into other
    schools with beautiful old school buildings surrounded by temporary
    facilities to hold the children.
        So I think it's an appropriate thing for us to do, not to try to
    take over this function and not to try to substitute for people assuming
    responsibility, but when there's a terrible problem and people are doing
    their own work, if we can, by a prudent and limited investment, lower
    the cost of that so that more people can afford to do more construction
    and repair, I think we should.
        I'm also strongly committed--the Vice President and I have been
    working on this very hard--to getting every classroom and every library
    in the country hooked up to the Internet by the year 2000. And I want to
    thank your Congresswoman, Debbie Stabenow, for the work that she's done
    in supporting that.
        Secretary Riley has awarded Michigan a grant of $8.6 million for the
    technology literacy challenge to help your classrooms move into the 21st
    century, and I ask all of you to support that. There is enormous
    willingness in the private sector to help us get this done, and it can
    revolutionize--just think of it--if we can hook up every classroom and
    every library to the Internet by the year 2000, for the first time in
    the history of the country ever--ever--children in the poorest district,
    the richest districts, the middle class districts, all of them will have
    access to the same learning in the same way in the same time.
        And those of you who have children or know children who are already
    proficient in using the Internet, it's a stunning thing. The other day,
    my daughter picked a topic to do a research paper on, and she said,
    ``Dad, can you get me a couple of books on this out of the library?'' I
    came home with four books, and she had eight citations she had gotten
    off the Internet--eight articles and things.

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    So my labors were one-third of her research project.
        This is an incredible thing. If we make this available to all
    children, it will change in a breathtaking way what people can become,
    what our children can imagine themselves becoming. And I ask you to help
    us do that.
        I thank you, Governor, for what you said about our support for
    greater discipline and safety and character education in the schools. I
    have proposed funding 1,000 new community school programs across the
    country to help our schools stay open after school, on the weekends, in
    the summertime, to try to give those children who need some positive
    place to go, some support, some help to stay out of trouble, a place to
    do that.
        I have studied very carefully this problem of rising juvenile crime
    when overall crime has been going down dramatically in America. And the
    communities that are reversing that trend, that had juvenile crime going
    down are the places that make sure that all those kids have something
    positive to say yes to, even as they're being told to say no to the
    wrong things. So I want the schools to be able to do that in every
    community where it's needed in the United States.
        We have to make sure that we do everything we can to help our
    classroom teachers be the best they can be. For years, educators worked
    to establish nationally accepted credentials for excellence in teaching
    through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, which is
    headquartered here in Detroit, Michigan.
        Now, Michigan has the third highest number of board-certified master
    teachers in the country, and that's a good thing. But there are still
    only a few hundred who have been board-certified. My new budget will
    enable 100,000 teachers all across America to seek certification as
    master teachers. And our goal should be to have one certified master
    teacher in every single school in America. That will make more master
    teachers we need for those schools, and I hope we can do it.
        As has already been said today, I do believe that we need a strong
    system of public education that gives parents and communities more
    freedom and flexibility. I think we should work together to give parents
    more choices for what public schools their children attend all across
    America. I think we should help teachers, parents, museums, and others
    to create new public charter schools.
        I have proposed to double the budget of the program so that we can
    increase by tenfold the number of charter schools we have by the year
    2000, to create--[applause]--and I think it's important to emphasize
    what we want. We want high standards, schools that are open to all
    children regardless of their backgrounds. We want an example of
    accountability which will then spread to all other public schools. But
    we want to say to them, you can stay open only as long as you do a good
    job. That's what the charter means; that's what a charter is.
        Ultimately, what we want to do is to prove that we have a model here
    that can be used everywhere else. It is simply not true that if you have
    a few public schools that all the rest of them can't be good, if some of
    them are good that they all can't be good. That is not true. It is not
    true that because it's a public institution we can't achieve excellence
    everywhere. If that were true, we'd have some good Army units and some
    bad Army units. And we'd be afraid to go to war, and you wouldn't sleep
    well at night. Isn't that right?
        So you do not have to accept the feeling that you know this
    wonderful principal, and if only everybody else could be that way. That
    is simply not true. Leadership can be taught, leadership can be trained,
    and 90 percent of the children in this country plus--99 percent of
    them--can learn what they need to know to succeed and triumph in the
    modern world. They can do it, and we have to do it. [Applause]
        Now that you've clapped, I will say they are capable of it, but they
    don't know it today. Let's face the fact. The truth is that 40 percent
    of the fourth graders in this country still cannot read a book on their
    own. In Germany or Singapore, students learn 15 to 20 math subjects in
    depth every year. Typically in the United States, we run over 30 or 35
    every year in a superficial way. Then we have these comparative tests.
    They normally win, especially since they stay in school longer than we
    do, day-in and day-out, year-in and year-out.

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        But without these skills, children will not be able to develop the
    capacity to think and to reason and to analyze complex problems. All
    these skills will be essential to succeeding in the world of the 21st
    century in jobs that have not been invented or even imagined yet.
        Now, what do we have to have? We have got to have high standards,
    high expectations, and high levels of accountability. That is why I have
    challenged our Nation to meet these national standards in the basics,
    not Federal Government standards but national standards, representing
    what every child, wherever he or she lives, however poor, rich, or
    middle class he or she is, must know to do well in the world of the 21st
    century. And I think we should begin by having every State test every
    fourth grader in reading and every eighth grader in math by 1999 to make
    sure these basic standards are met.
        We already have widely accepted rigorous standards in both reading
    and math and widely used tests that are based on these standards.
    They're just not given to everyone or designed to be given to everyone.
    Michigan and more than 40 other States have participated in a test
    called the National Assessment of Education Progress. The education
    committee members in the audience call it the NAEP test. It measures a
    State's overall performance against a high national standard of
    excellence.
        Just last week we released the annual assessment of math performance
    and it shows, across the country, that our 4th-, 8th-, and 12th-graders
    are doing better. And as the Governor said, Michigan's score is among
    the most improved in the Nation.
        Tens of thousands of students across the country have also taken the
    Third International Math and Science Survey, a test that reflects world-
    class standards our children must meet in math and science. The
    headquarters for that test is just down the road at Michigan State. And
    I want to thank Dr. William Schmidt at Michigan State for his leadership
    of this important study. I think he's here with us today. Where are you,
    Dr. Schmidt? He's here somewhere. Thank you very much, sir.
        If you saw the State of the Union Address, you know there are a
    group of children in northern Illinois that took this test in 20 school
    districts north of Chicago, and they finished tied for first in science
    and tied for second in math, I think. Very impressive.
        Unfortunately, these tests also don't provide scores for
    individuals, they simply measure how an entire area or group of people
    are doing. What we need are exams that will literally measure the
    performance of each and every student in each and every school. That
    way, parents and teachers will know how every child is doing compared to
    other students in other schools, other States, and other countries. And
    most important of all, they will know how the child is doing compared to
    what you need to know to go forward.
        And I want to make it clear what the difference is. It doesn't
    matter if your child makes the highest grade in the class if nobody gets
    over the standards bar. Conversely, in this sense it doesn't matter if
    your child makes the lowest grade in the class if everybody gets over
    the standards bar. That's the difference. We have a lot of these
    standardized tests. We need tests that test to the standards, that say
    whether you have crossed the threshold of what you must know to do well
    in the world of tomorrow.
        That's why I'm presenting a plan to help the States meet and measure
    these standards. Over the next 2 years, the Department of Education will
    support the development of new tests for the fourth grade reading and
    the eighth grade math, to show how every student measures up to high and
    widely accepted standards. They'll be developed by independent experts
    in consultation with leading math and reading teachers. The Federal
    Government will not require them, but these tests will be made available
    to every State that chooses to administer them. That is the significance
    of the announcement that the Governor made. I want to create a climate
    in which no one can say no, in which it's voluntary but you are ashamed
    if you don't give your kids the chance to do this.
        Together, we are saying this. This is not a partisan issue. There is
    no Democratic or Republican way to teach. There is no Maryland or
    Michigan way to learn. Reading is reading; math is math. No school board
    or State legislature can rewrite the rules of algebra in Alaska to make
    them different than

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    they are in Arkansas. It cannot be done. Every State must put politics
    aside, work in a bipartisan fashion, test our children in the same
    rigorous way. Politics should stop at the schoolhouse door.
        This will not be easy. Some of our children won't do very well at
    first. We don't need to make them feel like failures; we need to make
    them understand we're doing this so we can know how to measure their
    success. If they don't do very well at first, it's probably more our
    fault than theirs. And a lot of it, I will say again, is because when we
    see people in difficult circumstances, sometimes out of the goodness of
    our heart, we exercise our compassion by expecting less of them. And we
    are selling their future right down the drain every time we do it.
        I can tell you, over the last several years--you know, I was a
    Governor a long time--I served with Governor Engler; I served with
    Governor Blanchard; I served with Governor Milliken. I have been all
    over this country to schools. I have seen schools in areas with high
    murder rates, where it was unsafe to get in the school, where there were
    no guns, no knives, no dope, no dropout, and test scores were above the
    State average. I could go through example after example after example.
    And every time I see one, I get more hopeful and more angry, because if
    you can have one good school where the kids are learning against all the
    odds and all the obstacles, then you know when you leave that school
    there is no excuse for that not happening everywhere. This will help
    that happen everywhere. This will help that happen everywhere.
        Let me make a comment now about one other part of this education
    program that I think is very important, and that's our America Reads
    program. We announced it here in Michigan last August in Wyandotte, when
    I was there on my train trip. And I did it with the help of two
    elementary school students, Justin Whitney and Elizabeth Schweyen. We
    announced the America Reads challenge. We set a goal mobilizing a
    million volunteer tutors to help every 8-year-old learn to read
    independently. We're going to use 11,000 of our AmeriCorps volunteers to
    mobilize and train the army, we're going to get at least 100,000 college
    students to help, and I might say in the last budget we added 200,000
    more work-study slots, and there's another 100,000 in this budget, so
    we'll go to a million kids on work-study, and I want 100,000 of that
    extra 300,000 to help teach our children to read. And I'm pleased that
    16 Michigan college presidents have already pledged to provide their
    fair share of those students.
        I don't know if you remember what we did that hot August day, but
    Elizabeth and Justin read ``The Little Engine That Could'' to me, and I
    said I want every child to be able to do this and say, ``Here's this
    book, and I can read this all by myself.''
        Today Elizabeth and Justin are here with us, and I would like to ask
    them to stand up. Where are they? They're out there. There they are.
    Thank you. I will do what I can to help your young people be ready to be
    tested. I am asking the Department of Education and the National Science
    Foundation to identify and coordinate resources throughout the Federal
    Government and through the nonprofit sector that can be used to help
    students to meet the math standards. I want to help young people learn
    more science as well and to make the Government a resource.
        The Federal Government has some of the world's most esteemed
    laboratories and research institutions. We ought to make sure every high
    school math and science teacher has easy access to the work of these
    laboratories and the experts there through the Internet, and we're going
    to do our best to set up that kind of system and make it available to
    all of your teachers so they can in turn make it available to your
    students. We can do this. We can do this.
        We can also meet the challenge of welfare reform, and I can't leave
    here without talking to you about it for a couple of minutes, because I
    want to make it clear where we are now, and this is something else we've
    got to do together. In the last 4 years, the welfare rolls went down by
    2\1/2\ million people, the largest drop in the history of the country.
    Now, how did that happen? And Michigan had a reduction of 30 percent,
    above the national average. How did that happen?
        We know that about half the drop was the result of the economy
    producing 11\1/2\ million

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    jobs. We know about 30 percent to a third of it was the result of the
    fact that 43 of our States had vigorous welfare reform experiments, and
    the ones that were statewide, like yours, had better results. We know
    that there were some result from the fact that we increased child
    support collections, working together to get really tough within the
    States and across State lines. Child support collections went up by 50
    percent in the last 4 years, and we know that helped some people to get
    off welfare.
        Now we have a new law, and the new law says there should be time
    limits for how long a person could be on welfare; there should be time
    limits for how long a person could be on welfare consecutively--2 years
    before getting a job. There are tough work requirements. We leave the
    medical aid and food aid to poor children and their families in place.
    We increased the aid going in child care at the Federal level, and then
    we give the States the flexibility to decide how to design the program
    to move people from welfare to work and support them at an appropriate
    level in the meantime.
        Now, that's what it does. I signed the bill, and I thought it was
    the right thing to do. But I also want you to know that we have to do
    now something else; we have to make it work. That law was not the end of
    welfare reform; it was the beginning. It gave this problem to you. You
    remember what that old country musician Chet Atkins said: ``You got to
    be careful what you ask for in this old life, you might get it.'' And so
    now you have it.
        Now, we have been telling poor people they have to be more
    responsible. ``If you can work, you have to work. You've got to succeed
    at home as parents and in the work force.'' Now we have a
    responsibility. You're telling people they've got to go to work; we've
    got to make sure there's a job there for them if they go to work.
        Let me say precisely what this means, because I want to be precise.
    I think it's very important that since the States have responsibility
    here, every State needs to know exactly how many jobs have we got to
    create in Michigan only for people to move from welfare to work, how
    many jobs in Arkansas, how many jobs in Arizona, how many jobs. And how
    many jobs would that mean we'd have to do by county, and how are we
    going to do this.
        Basically, if you look at the law's requirements and the fact that
    it's phased in, the requirement for States to put a certain number of
    people at work, you will have to--as a nation, we will have to create
    about another million, a little bit less, maybe 900,000 jobs for welfare
    recipients only, and move approximately another 2\1/2\ million people
    off welfare in the next 4 years to meet the requirements of the law.
        Now, in the last 4 years, we did it with 43 of the 50 States having
    welfare reform experiments but only some of them were statewide. But we
    also had 11\1/2\ million jobs. We never had that many before. Maybe
    we'll do it again. I'd like that a lot, and I'll work on it hard. But no
    one can predict with any certainty what will happen.
        So you must imagine, how will we make it more attractive--and we
    don't have the money to have big public service employment. I do have
    some money in my budget to give to the urban areas especially and to
    isolated rural areas with high impact unemployment to help them do work
    that needs to be done anyway in their cities. But that won't get the job
    done. Most of this will have to be done by private employers.
        Our plan will give tax credits of up to 50 percent of the salary up
    to $10,000 a year for people that hire people right off the welfare roll
    and do not replace someone else, they hire them for a real new job. It
    will give other incentives for businesses to hire people off welfare,
    and incentives for job placement firms and for States to create more
    jobs for welfare recipients. You'll get more money if you create more
    jobs for them. And if your past is any indication, you'll be one of
    those that will be claiming the incentives, and that's a good thing. And
    it does provide more money for training and for child care and in our
    budget for the new transportation bill, more money for transportation,
    because that's a big issue in a lot of places for moving people from
    welfare to work.
        But you are going to have to get help. And the private employer
    community and the community nonprofits community and the

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    religious community, they're all going to have to help. You also have
    the option to do something else: You can, totally at your own
    discretion, let people take some or all of the welfare check and you can
    give it to the employer as an employment and training subsidy. And some
    States are going to have to do that because their training dollars are
    inadequate so they're going to have to depend on on-the-job training.
    Missouri is doing this now in the Kansas City area; Florida has adopted
    a version of it; a number of other States have. I urge you to look at
    that. I think it's a legitimate thing to give a private employer, for a
    limited period of time, a subsidy for training and for hiring people who
    are otherwise very hard to hire.
        That's another point I want to make. Keep in mind, about half the
    welfare caseload gets off on their own. It's the other half that we have
    to liberate from permanent dependency, and it's harder for them to get
    into the work force and harder for them to stay and harder for them to
    learn the basic things. And so we're going to have to go out to our
    employers and say, ``Hey, we want to help you.'' Or in the case of the
    churches and the nonprofits, the tax credit is not worth anything to
    them because they don't pay taxes anyway. But the wage subsidy would be
    worth something to them to get them to enlist.
        So, you know, I have really collected--how many employers are there
    in America with more than 100 employees? How many nonprofits are there?
    How many religious institutions are there with more than 100 members in
    the congregation or more than 200 members? Every State needs this
    information. Every community needs this information, and those folks
    need to be hit up to do their part, especially if you ever heard anybody
    in your local neighborhood cussing the welfare system who works people.
    Go back and say, ``Okay, we got rid of it. Now what are you going to do?
    What are you going to do? We need your help.''
        The last thing I wanted to say is--and this may be a moderate
    problem in Michigan, will be a huge problem in some States--I signed the
    welfare reform bill, but I said when I signed it I thought we made a
    mistake to eliminate all aid to legal immigrants. Now, when an immigrant
    comes to America, they say--they have to promise that they won't try to
    get on welfare, and they won't take any public money. That is true. But
    it's also true it takes 5 years to become a citizen; meanwhile you work
    and you pay taxes. And in a country like ours that lets in a significant
    number of immigrants--in your largest county now, you have people from
    over 140 different racial and ethnic groups--bad things are going to
    happen to good people just when they show up every day. There will be
    car wrecks; there will be serious illnesses; there will be crime
    victims; and I personally think it's wrong to either dump that problem
    on the door of the State legislature or, in the alternative, just tell
    them to do without. And this is a great nation of immigrants. I think
    this is unworthy of us, and I'm going to try to change it, and I hope
    that you will support that. It would be good for you if you do.
        Thank you for making me feel so welcome today. Let me say again, you
    ought to go back and get the local paper and read the article about
    Teddy Roosevelt. You ought to think about what happened in the
    intervening 90 years. You ought to realize that we have an even greater
    opportunity now, and with it a greater responsibility to forge a new
    partnership to deal with the new possibilities of this bright new era.
    And if we seize this responsibility of ours, there is no telling what
    can happen--good and wonderful and positive for America.
        So it is our duty, but it is our good fortune. You ought to go home
    tonight and thank God that you got a chance to serve the public at this
    moment in time. It is a rare time. And you ought to wake up tomorrow
    determined to do it with greater energy and enthusiasm and dedication
    than ever before.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:36 a.m. in the House of Representatives
    Chamber at the State Capitol. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. John
    Engler, Lt. Gov. Connie Binsfeld, Attorney General Frank J. Kelley, and
    former Gov. William Milliken of Michigan; Curtis Hertel, Speaker of the
    House; Mayor Dick Hollister of Lansing; House Majority Leader Ken
    Sikkema; Senate Minority Leader John Cherry; Senate Majority Leader Dick
    Posthumus; Rev. Wendell Anthony, Fellowship Chapel, Detroit, MI, who
    gave the invocation; William Schmidt, professor, Michigan State

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    University; and James J. Blanchard, Ambassador to Canada and former
    Governor of Michigan.