[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 41 (Monday, October 12, 1998)]
[Pages 2017-2018]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks Following a Meeting With Congressional Leaders

October 9, 1998

Legislative Agenda for Education

    Let me begin my thanking Senator Daschle and Congressman Gephardt 
and all their colleagues who are here for their leadership and their 
commitment on the issue of education. Let me also ask you to listen to 
what they said. We are less than 4 weeks away from an election. All 
public officials would like to go home, but they said that they and 
their colleagues would put the American people before their political 
interests and would put progress before partisanship and would stay here 
until we finally address the issue of our children's education.
    We had over 50 Members of Congress here just a few days ago to ask 
the Republican leadership to give us just one day, one day to pass a 
budget that honors our values and cares for our children's future in the 
area of education.
    We have the first balanced budget in 29 years. Our economy is 
prosperous amid global turmoil. We have the confidence that we can solve 
our problems, and the space--the emotional and the intellectual space--
to think about our future. Now, this budget is purely and simply a test 
of whether after 9 months of doing nothing, we are going to do the right 
thing about our children's future.
    Members of Congress should not go home until they pass a budget that 
will strengthen our public schools for the 21st century. I am

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determined that this budget will make a strong down payment on our drive 
to hire 100,000 new highly qualified teachers, to reduce class size in 
the early grades. Today there are a record number of children in our 
schools, and studies confirm what everyone knows: smaller classes and 
better-trained teachers make all the difference. We have a duty to 
provide them.
    Smaller classes and more teachers--well, you've got to have some 
place for the class to meet. All across America, children are being 
forced to learn in school buildings that are either too crowded or even 
crumbling or are not wired for the 21st century. I have asked the 
Republican majority repeatedly to act on an innovative plan to help 
communities modernize or build 5,000 schools. We can do this without a 
big new spending program. I thought they would like that. We can do it 
with targeted tax cuts, tax cuts that are paid for in the balanced 
budget that do not spend any of the surplus. I can't think of a better 
tax cut for our country's future than one that gives our children a 
modern, safe, adequately equipped place to learn.
    This balanced budget should also meet our other educational 
priorities. It should fully fund the after-school programs to bring 
discipline and learning into the lives of our young people and to give 
them a change to keep on learning and not be branded failures because 
they may be in a system that is failing them. It should bring cutting-
edge technology to the classroom. We ought to hook up all the classes of 
this country to the Internet by the year 2000. It should expand Head 
Start. It should provide funding for the childhood literacy programs so 
that every child can learn to read well and independently by the third 
grade. It should support our new monitoring drive to encourage young 
people to go to college. And finally, I believe it should move forward 
with voluntary national standards and voluntary national tests in the 
basics, administered by a bipartisan group.
    We should not retreat from our commitments to our children's future. 
Unfortunately, that commitment was not reflected when the education bill 
was finally--finally--brought to the House floor yesterday, 8 days into 
the new budget year. It met none of these challenges. I have instructed 
my budget team to return to Capitol Hill to make the strongest possible 
case for the educational priorities that all of us standing here before 
you today share.
    Now, what has happened in this Congress? What is the record to date 
of the majority? They have killed the bill to reform the way we treat 
tobacco and to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco. They 
killed campaign finance reform. They killed the minimum wage.
    Today, as Senator Daschle said, the Senate joined the House in 
putting an end to the Patients' Bill of Rights. That means no guarantees 
that people will go to the nearest emergency room when they're hurt, 
that they can see a specialist when they need to, that they won't lose 
their coverage in the middle of treatment, that their records will be 
kept private.
    They have tried to erode my commitment to saving Social Security 
first in the House of Representatives. But still it is not too late for 
us to go forward together on our children's future. Politics should stop 
at the classroom door. It is not too late.
    We are here not simply to state our strong conviction and our 
willingness--the willingness of these people who have to run--to defer 
their campaigns to take care of our children's future but to invite our 
Republican colleagues to join us and finally try to salvage some shred 
of positive accomplishment for the American people. I hope they'll do 
it. There is still time.
    Thank you very much.

Note: The President spoke at 3:41 p.m. at the South Portico at the White 
House. A tape was not available for verification of the content of these 
remarks.