[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 16 (Monday, April 21, 1997)]
[Pages 531-535]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at the Opening of the White House Conference on Early Childhood 
Development and Learning

April 17, 1997

    Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, and welcome to 
the White House. I was relieved to hear Hillary say that the brain is 
the last organ to fully develop. It may yet not be too late for me to 
learn how to walk down steps. [Laughter] Or maybe I was thinking it was 
because I was always hugged when I fell down as a child, I did this 
subconsciously on purpose. [Laughter]
    Let me begin by thanking the members of the Cabinet who are here. I 
see Secretary Riley and Secretary Glickman. I thank Governor Romer and 
Governor Chiles for being here. I think Governor Miller is coming. There 
are many others who are here. Congresswoman DeLauro is either here or 
coming. Thank you, Governor Miller. I see I was

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looking to the left there. [Laughter] He's from Nevada--he just went up 
five points in the polls when I said that. [Laughter]
    Let me say, first of all, the first time I met Hillary, she was not 
only a law student, she was working with the Yale Child Study Center, 
and she began my education in these issues. And for that, I am 
profoundly grateful. And I thank her for bringing the scientists, the 
doctors, the sociologists, the others whose work is the basis for our 
discussion today here. And I, too, want to thank the thousands of others 
who are joining us by satellite.
    This unique conference is a part of our constant effort to give our 
children the opportunity to make the most of their God-given potential 
and to help their parents lead the way and to remind everyone in America 
that this must always be part of the public's business because we all 
have a common interest in our children's future.
    We have begun the job here over the last 4 years by making education 
our top domestic priority, by passing the family leave act and now 
trying to expand it and enact a form of flex time which will give 
parents more options in how they take their overtime in pay or in time 
with their children, by the work we have done to expand the Family and 
Medical Leave Act and by the work we've tried to do to give parents more 
tools with the V-chip and the television rating system and the work we 
are still carrying on to try to stop the advertising and marketing and 
distribution of tobacco to our children and other work we've done in 
juvenile justice and trying to keep our kids away from the dangers of 
alcohol and drugs.
    All these are designed to help our parents succeed in doing their 
most important job. Now it seems to me maybe the most important thing we 
can actually do is to share with every parent in America the absolutely 
stunning things we are learning from new scientific research about how 
very young children learn and develop. In that regard, I'd like to thank 
Rob Reiner and others who are committed to distributing this 
information, and I'd like to thank the media here in our Nation's 
Capital and throughout the country for the genuine interest that they 
have shown in this conference.
    I think there is an instinctive understanding here that this is a 
very, very big issue that embraces all of us as Americans and that if we 
learn our lessons well and if we're patient in carrying them out, as 
Hillary said, knowing that there is no perfect way to raise a child, we 
are likely to have a very positive and profound impact on future 
generations in this country. So I want to thank, again, all of you for 
that.
    Let me say there are some public programs that bear directly on 
early childhood development: the Head Start program, which we've 
expanded by 43 percent over the last 4 years; the WIC program, which 
we've expanded by nearly 2 million participants. I have to say that I 
was a little disappointed--or a lot disappointed to see a congressional 
committee yesterday vote to underfund the WIC program. I hope that if 
nothing else happens out of this conference, the results of the 
conference will reach the members of that congressional committee and we 
can reverse that before the budget finally comes to my desk.
    I would also like to remind all of you that this conference is 
literally just a start. We have to look at the practical implications of 
this research for parents, for caregivers, for policymakers, but we also 
know that we're looking at years and years of work in order to make the 
findings of this conference real and positive in the lives of all of our 
children. But this is a very exciting and enormous undertaking.
    This research has opened a new frontier. Great exploration is, of 
course, not new to this country. We have gone across the land, we have 
gone across the globe, we have gone into the skies, and now we are going 
deep into ourselves and into our children. In some ways, this may be the 
most exciting and important exploration of all.
    I'm proud of the role that federally funded research has played in 
these findings in discovering that the earliest years of life are 
critical for developing intellectual, emotional, and social potential. 
We all know that every child needs proper nutrition and access to health 
care, a safe home, and an environment, and we know every child needs 
teaching and touching, reading and playing, singing and talking.

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    It is true that Chelsea is about to go off to college, but Hillary 
and I have been blessed by having two young nephews now--one is about 2, 
and one is about 3--and we're learning things all over again that, I 
must say, corroborate what the scientists are telling us.
    We are going to continue to work on this, and I know that you will 
help us, too. Let me just mention two or three things that we want to 
work on that we think are important. We've got to do a lot more to 
improve the quality, the availability, and the affordability of child 
care. Many experts consider our military's child care system to be the 
best in our country. I'm very proud of that, and not surprised.
    The man responsible for administering the Navy's child care system, 
Rear Admiral Larry Marsh, is here with us today. He leads a system that 
has high standards, including a high percentage of accredited centers; a 
strong enforcement system with unannounced inspections; parents have a 
toll-free number to call and report whatever concerns they may have; 
training is mandatory; and wages and benefits are good, so, staff tends 
to stay on.
    I am proud that the military places such importance on helping the 
families of the men and women who serve our country in uniform. But it's 
really rather elementary to know that they're going to do a lot better 
on the ships, in the skies, in faraway lands if they're not worried 
about how their children are faring while they're at work serving 
America.
    To extend that kind of quality beyond the military, I am issuing 
today an executive memorandum asking the Department of Defense to share 
its success. I want the military to partner with civilian child care 
centers to help them improve quality, to help them become accredited, to 
provide training to civilian child care providers, to share information 
on how to operate successfully, and to work with State and local 
governments to give on-the-job training and child care to people moving 
from welfare to work.
    I think this is especially important. Let me say in the welfare 
reform bill, we put another $4 billion in for child care. In addition to 
that, because the States are getting money for welfare reform based on 
the peak case load in welfare in 1994, and we've reduced the welfare 
rolls by 2.8 million since then, most States, for a period of time until 
an extra session comes along, will have some extra funds that they can 
put into more child care. This gives States the opportunity they have 
never had before to train more child care workers, to use funds to help 
even more people move from welfare to work, and perhaps even to provide 
more discounts to low- income workers to make child care affordable for 
them.
    This welfare reform effort, if focused on child care, can train lots 
of people on welfare to be accredited child care workers and expand the 
availability of welfare in most of the States of the country. It's not 
true for every State, because some of them have had smaller drops in the 
caseload and three have had no drops. But by and large, the welfare 
reform bill, because of the way it's structured, gives all of you who 
care about child care about a year or two to make strenuous efforts, 
State by State, to create a more comprehensive quality system of child 
care than we have ever had before. And I certainly hope that what we can 
do here, plus the support of the military, we'll see dramatic advances 
in that regard.
    I'd like to thank the people here who have done that work. And I'd 
like to say that we are going to hold a second conference; this one 
devoted exclusively to the child care issue here at the White House in 
Washington this fall. And I hope all of you who care about that will 
come back.
    The second thing we want to do is to extend health care coverage to 
uncovered children. The budget I have submitted will extend coverage to 
as many as 5 million children by the year 2000 with the children's 
health initiative in the budget proposal, to strengthen Medicaid for 
poor children and children with disabilities, to provide coverage for 
working families through innovative State programs, to continue health 
care coverage for children of workers who are between jobs. There is an 
enormous amount of interest in this issue in both parties, I'm happy to 
say, in the Congress in this session. And I am quite confident that if 
we'll all work together, we can get an impressive expansion in health 
care coverage for children in this congressional session.

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    I'm pleased that Dr. Jordan Cohen, the president and CEO of the 
Association of American Medical Colleges, is with us today to lend his 
association's strong support to these efforts. With the support of 
leaders in medicine, again I say, I am convinced we'll have a bipartisan 
consensus that will extend coverage to millions more uninsured children.
    The third thing we want to do is this. Because we know the great 
importance of early education, we're going to expand Early Head Start 
enrollment by at least one-third next year. Early Head Start was created 
in 1994. It's been a great success in bringing the nutritional, 
educational, and other services of Head Start to children aged 3 and 
younger and to pregnant women. It has been a real success, and we need 
to expand it.
    Today we are requesting new applications for Early Head Start 
programs to accomplish the expansion. And to help parents to teach the 
very young, we developed a toolkit called, ``Ready, Set, Read,'' part of 
our America Reads challenge, designed to make sure that every child can 
read independently by the third grade. This kit gives tips on activities 
for young children. It's going out to early childhood programs all 
across the country along with a hotline number for anyone else who wants 
the kit.
    The fourth thing we're going to do is to protect the safety of our 
children more. In particular, we have to help young children more who 
are exposed to abuse and violence.
    Let me tell you, as you might imagine, I get letters all the time 
from very young children. And my staff provides a significant number of 
them for me to read. The Secretary of Education not very long ago gave 
me a set of letters from children who were quite young--a couple of 
years ago gave me a set of letters from children who were in the third 
grade. But sometimes I get them from kindergarten children and first 
grade children, talking about what they want America to look like. And 
it is appalling the number of letters I get from 5- and 6-year-olds who 
simply want me to make their lives safe, who don't want to worry about 
being shot, who don't want any more violence in their homes, who want 
their schools and the streets they walk on to be free of terror.
    So today the Department of Justice is establishing a new initiative 
called Safe Start, based on efforts in New Haven, Connecticut, which you 
will hear about this afternoon. The program will train police officers, 
prosecutors, probation, and parole officers in child development so that 
they'll actually be equipped to handle situations involving young 
children. And I believe if we can put this initiative into effect all 
across America, it will make our children safer. And I'm glad we're 
announcing it today during Victims of Crime Week.
    We all know that it's going to take a partnership across America to 
help our children reach their full potential. But the toughest job will 
always belong to our parents, first teachers, main nurturers. Being a 
parent is a joy and a challenge. But it's not a job you can walk away 
from, take a vacation from, or even apply for family leave from. 
[Laughter] The world moves too fast, and today, parents have more 
worries than ever. Work does compete with family demands, and finding a 
balance is more difficult than before. That's why this must always be 
part of the public's business.
    Let me come now to the bottom line. The more we focus on early 
years, the more important they become. We know that these investments of 
time and money will yield us the highest return in healthier children, 
stronger families, and better communities.
    Now, let me say, finally, I know that none of us who are in 
politics, none of us who are just parents, will ever know as much as the 
experts we're about to hear from today. But what they're going to tell 
us is the most encouraging thing of all, which is, they have found out 
that we can all do the job. No matter how young, a child does understand 
a gentle touch or a smile or a loving voice. Babies understand more than 
we have understood about them. Now we can begin to close the gap and to 
make sure that all children in this country do have that chance to live 
up to the fullest of their God-given potential.
    Again, I thank you all for being here. I thank our experts. I thank 
the First Lady. And I'd like to ask Dr. David Hamburg to come up and sit 
there and take over the program.
    David?

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    Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 10:45 a.m. in the East Room at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Roy Romer of Colorado; Gov. 
Lawton Chiles of Florida; Gov. Bob Miller of Nevada; Rob Reiner, 
founder, I Am Your Child campaign; and David A. Hamburg, president, 
Carnegie Corporation of New York.