[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 33 (Monday, August 18, 1997)]
[Pages 1229-1231]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Midwest Technology Corporation of St. Louis in St. Louis, 
Missouri

August 12, 1997

    Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm glad to see you all 
here. I'm sorry it's so hot. I want to say to my longtime friend and 
former colleague as a Governor, Senator Kit Bond, that I was very glad 
to cross party lines and follow your lead to take my coat off. 
[Laughter] And now you owe me one, and I will call you next time there's 
a vote that's real important to me in Congress. [Laughter] Actually, you 
don't have to be suffering like this. The truth is this building is very 
well air-conditioned, but Barry Corona is such an entrepreneur, he 
thought there might be a market in St. Louis for a large sauna, and 
that's what we're testing out today. [Laughter]
    I'm delighted to be here. I want to, first of all, say my thanks to 
my good friend Governor Carnahan, to my friend, our minority leader, 
Dick Gephardt, to Kit Bond, and to Mayor Harmon, who have spoken here 
today. I thank the other State officials who are here. The Speaker of 
the House Steve Gaw is here. Senator Ehlmann, the senate minority 
leader, is here. Congressman Clay could not be here today, but we're 
glad Senator Clay is here with his most important possession. Thank you 
for coming. I thank State Treasurer Holden and Secretary of State Cooke 
for being here.
    I want to say a special word of thanks--and I'll say more about them 
later--to the CEO of Monsanto, Bob Shapiro, and to my good friend Eli 
Segal, the president of the Welfare to Work Partnership, and to all the 
others who are here. And thanks again to Mid Tec for hosting us.
    It's great to be back in St. Louis, even on a hot August day. This 
city is very much alive. You can see it in the revived area and your 
record job growth, your commitment to education reform, and now to 
welfare reform. And I want to talk about finishing the job of welfare 
reform, moving people from welfare to work.
    If we expect to be the country we want to be in the next century, we 
have to provide opportunity for everyone who's willing to work for it, 
we have to require responsibility from everyone who's capable of 
providing it, and we have to find a way to come together across all the 
lines that divide us to make one America.
    Fixing our broken welfare system is an important part of that 
because it means more opportunity, more responsibility, and a stronger, 
more united community. It's been a priority of my Presidency. You've 
heard others mention--I think the Governor talked about it--that shortly 
after I took office we began giving people waivers from Federal rules 
that undermined their reform experiments so they could try new and 
innovative ways that would work perhaps in one community but not 
another, perhaps in one State but not another, to facilitate the 
movement of people from welfare to work.
    Then a year ago next week, I signed the welfare reform legislation, 
which really did end welfare as we know it. It was designed to make 
welfare a second chance, not a way of life. It gave the States far more 
responsibilities and opportunities to create new programs to move people 
from welfare to work. It guaranteed children their nutritional and 
health care benefits and provided several billion dollars more money to 
pay for child care for parents who otherwise could not afford to take 
jobs at entry levels if those were the only jobs they could get.
    Now, a lot of people said that welfare reform would never work 
because the private economy wouldn't do its part or the Government 
wouldn't do its part or we couldn't figure out how to get people from 
welfare to work or--you know, I heard all the reasons that people said 
it wouldn't work. But a year later, I think it's fair to say the debate 
is over. We know now that welfare reform works.
    Today I am proud to announce that just since I signed the law a year 
ago, there are now 1.4 million fewer people on welfare in the last year 
alone. In the 4 years and 7 months or so, almost 8 now, since I took 
office, the welfare rolls have declined by 3.4

[[Page 1230]]

million, 24 percent, the biggest decline in history. We now have the 
smallest percentage of Americans living on public assistance we have had 
since 1970. We can make this work if we all work together.
    I come here to St. Louis and to this fine place and to these 
programs--and let me again thank all of you who are part of all these 
programs--to say that the job is not over. And the law requires us to do 
more, because the law says that able-bodied people, people who are able 
physically and mentally to do work, should be on welfare continuously no 
more than 2 years and no more than 5 years in a lifetime. Now, if you 
say that to someone and you don't want to be cruel to them or their 
children, then you must acknowledge that we, the rest of us, have a 
moral obligation to make sure there is a job there and that if they need 
training, that they have the training they need for the job.
    The National Government is determined to do its part. Last week when 
I signed the first balanced budget law in a generation into law, we--
[applause]--thank you--we had two provisions that I want to especially 
emphasize: one, $3 billion in a welfare-to-work challenge fund to help 
communities with higher unemployment rates move long-term welfare 
recipients into the work force; and two, an expanded and carefully 
targeted work opportunity tax credit which gives a significant incentive 
to private employers, including small-business people who need to be 
brought into this equation, to move people from welfare to work.
    And in that connection, let me say that we are committed to doing 
everything we can. As evidence of that, I would like to acknowledge the 
presence here today of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna 
Shalala; the Secretary of Labor, Alexis Herman; the Administrator of the 
Small Business Administration, Aida Alvarez. They're here working with 
St. Louis, working with Missouri. We're going to do this with every 
major community in every State in our community. We want to do our part 
to help you meet the goals of the welfare reform law. And I thank you 
all for being here.
    I have also asked the Vice President to head two other initiatives 
for me: One, to bring civic and business groups together to mentor new 
employees. I had a friend from the Midwest call me the other day, and he 
said, ``You know, I just want you to know I really am trying to do what 
you asked me to do. I run a small business''--and we've been friends for 
many years--and he said, ``I'm trying to hire people from welfare to 
work, but because the economy is going so well, most of the people who 
can easily move into the work force already have. And the people I'm 
trying to hire, they're really having a hard time because they've 
actually never had to do this before. They've never even had to show up 
before at the same time. They don't understand how to find--how to 
handle conflict in the work force. If they run up against something they 
can't do, they're uncomfortable asking how to do it.''
    We forget that if we're going to go all the way, we have a lot of 
work to do to make some of these folks believe in their own capacities 
and understand them and understand that, hey, we all mess up at work. 
You know that. Read my polls, right? [Laughter] I mean, sometimes we all 
mess up at work. And we've got a lot of work to do to get people in the 
right frame of mind to understand that having a job and keeping a job is 
a continuous learning and growth experience. So we know we need to do 
that. We're trying to do our part with that.
    And finally, the Vice President is leading our effort to have the 
Federal Government, even in a time when we've downsized the overall 
Government, fill as many new openings as possible with welfare 
recipients until we hire 10,000 welfare recipients on our part over the 
next couple of years.
    Now, we know that the States, the communities, the private sector 
also have to do an awful lot. Believe it or not, 48 of the 50 States 
have seen their caseloads decline dramatically. Missouri has done better 
than the national average, at 27 percent decline in the last 4 years. 
Thirty-five States have now followed Missouri's lead. Missouri asked for 
one of these welfare waivers, so that in certain parts of the State you 
could authorize employers to receive the welfare check as a hiring and 
training supplement for a period of time--which I thought was a great 
idea, a legitimate idea, particularly with people who are harder to 
place--to give employers a pre

[[Page 1231]]

mium to really work with those employees and train them and help them 
become full-time volunteers.
    Since I came here, first in 1994 to Missouri to announce welfare 
reform efforts, then in 1996 to talk about getting the private sector 
involved, you might be interested to know that now 35 other States have 
allowed Missouri to show them that this is a good reform, and they are 
also doing it. I hope all the rest of them will, too.
    The most important thing we can do is get the private sector to hire 
people. That's why Barry and Chairman Shapiro are so important to us, 
because we've got to have the private sector hiring people. That's why 
the AmeriCorps project that I just visited downstairs, training young 
people for private sector jobs, is so important.
    And last year when I came to Missouri, we announced that there would 
be a national effort involving in the beginning a number of Missouri 
corporations, and five corporations nationally to organize businesses of 
all sizes to commit to hire people from welfare to work. Since Monsanto 
and Sprint and Burger King and UPS and United Airlines agreed to start 
that effort, the Welfare to Work Partnership, which was founded by my 
good friend Eli Segal, who also, by the way, was the first head of our 
national service program, AmeriCorps, which has done a fabulous job, I 
believe, for young people in our country--but since we started, we now 
have over 800 companies of all sizes signed up to promise to hire people 
from welfare to work. What you should be proud of is that 300 of them 
have locations here in St. Louis. And you should be very proud of that.
    Now, I want to challenge every employer in America to join this 
crusade. And we have a toll-free number, it's 1-888-USA-JOB1--1-888-USA-
JOB1. I want the employers in this country who get this number to call 
it and help a welfare recipient find a job. And again, I'd like to thank 
Sprint for donating this number. This is quite a considerable financial 
investment to help people move from welfare to work, and I appreciate 
they're doing it. Remember that. I feel like I'm hawking something on 
one of those channels on television--[laughter]--1-888-USA-JOB1--I can 
do this.
    Let me close by putting a personal face on this. There's a woman on 
stage with us today who is an example of what someone who once was on 
welfare with serious obstacles to overcome can do to become a valuable 
and successful employee. Felicia Booker's success took courage, 
responsibility, and a dream that she could make a better life for her 
young children, ages 2 and 6. It also took an employer, A.G. Edwards, 
willing to take a chance on her, and people along the way who wanted to 
help her realize that dream. Felicia Booker has been working at A.G. 
Edwards for nearly a year and a half now. She's a computer programmer, 
and she's already been promoted once. I'd like for her to stand and be 
recognized. Felicia? [Applause]
    Again let me say, if this is really going to be a country where 
everyone has an opportunity, then we have to prove that the young women 
I just met in that job-training program downstairs are going to be given 
the opportunity to make the most of their own lives. Ultimately, that's 
what welfare reform is about. It's not primarily about saving the 
Government money. We're going to balance the budget regardless. It's 
about empowering every single person in this country to be a part of 
this country in a new century, in a new era.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 11:25 a.m. on the factory floor. In his 
remarks, he referred to Barry Corona, chairman of the board, Midwest 
Technology Corporation of St. Louis (Mid Tec); Gov. Mel Carnahan of 
Missouri; Mayor Clarence Harmon of St. Louis; State Representative Steve 
Gaw, speaker of the house, and State Senator Steve Ehlmann, senate 
minority leader, Missouri General Assembly; State Senator William Clay, 
father of U.S. Representative William Clay, Jr.; State Treasurer Bob 
Holden; and Missouri Secretary of State Bekki Cooke.