[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 29 (Monday, July 20, 1998)]
[Page 1381]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services 
Appropriations Legislation

July 14, 1998

    Making strategic investments in our people, especially our children, 
has been a critical component of my economic strategy from the start. 
Last year we worked together on a bipartisan basis to open the doors of 
college, expanding Pell grants and creating $1,500 HOPE scholarships to 
advance the critical goal of making college universally available. This 
year I have proposed strategic investments to improve and reform K-12 
education by putting standards, accountability, and choice back into our 
public schools. My agenda reduces class size, modernizes schools, 
invests in technology, and puts an end to social promotion. These 
initiatives would help ensure that every 8-year-old can read, every 14-
year-old can sign onto the Internet, and every 18-year-old can be ready 
for college.
    That is why I am deeply concerned with the Labor/HHS appropriations 
bill that Congress is considering today. This legislation denies 
essential educational opportunities to young people across the country 
and important training and job opportunities for all Americans.
    On balance, this bill fails to provide young Americans with the 
schooling and training that will be essential to their success as 
working adults and to our success as a nation. The bill is fundamentally 
flawed. Overall, it cuts $2 billion from our request for education 
investment, short-changing initiatives on education reform, on raising 
educational achievement for our children, and on providing focused help 
for students who need it most. In addition, the bill fails to fund my 
childcare initiatives, eliminates current job training and other 
programs for low-income Americans, and has many other problems as well.
    By turning their backs on America's young in this bill, the House 
Republicans are taking a step backward. I urge the committee to provide 
the funds necessary for this bill to move America into the future, not 
backward. This bill shortchanges investments in education, and if it 
were sent to me in its current form, I would have no choice but to veto 
it.