[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 25 (Monday, June 28, 1999)]
[Pages 1177-1184]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]
<R04>
Remarks to the Presidential Scholars
June 25, 1999
Thank you very much. Danielle, you did a fine job. Didn't she do a
good job? I thought she was great. Thank you.
I'd also like to thank my good friend Father O'Donovan for allowing
me to come back to my alma mater to make this speech and to be with you;
and Bruce Reed, for the superb use he has made of the Presidential
scholarship he got--he does a wonderful job in our office. I hope you
got the joke he made about how he looks younger than you. We all rag him
about how young he looks. Actually, when I was his age, I looked young,
too. And then it just overcame me. [Laughter]
I want to congratulate the Presidential scholars, the teachers,
parents who are here. I am delighted to have this chance to be with you.
Because I have been on an extended trip to Europe, I actually want to
take a few moments to give a serious talk about where we are in
Washington today and where we are in America and to talk to you a little
bit about the whole nature of our public life and politics.
Nearly 8 years ago, as Bruce said, I came to this hall, where I sat
many times as a student, to ask America to join me on a journey, to go
beyond what were then the competing ideas of the old political
establishment in Washington that dominated the entire decade of the
1980's. People, on the one hand, said Government was bad, and we should
get it out of everybody's life and leave people alone to fend for
themselves, or on the other hand, said Government was good and could
solve most of our problems if it were just free to do so.
I asked the American people instead to embrace a new way, something
I called a New Covenant between America and its Government; an agreement
with the citizens and their Government that we would jointly pursue
opportunity for all Americans, responsibility from all Americans, and a
community of all Americans. I believed it would bring America back to
prosperity.
Over the years since I became President, I have come back to this
hall several times to discuss in more specific terms the progress we
have made in building that New Covenant and the opportunities still to
be seized, the responsibilities still to be shouldered, the pillars of
community still to be built.
Washington is pretty far away from most American's lives most of the
time. It is tempting for people in public life here, who are so far away
from you, to fall into easy rhetoric in positioning themselves against
their opponents. But politics at its best is about values, ideas, and
action. When it is that, it becomes public service, and it is a noble
endeavor.
Let me give you some examples of the ideas we've had here. When I
came here, our administration believed we could balance the budget and
increase our investment in education, in technology, in research, in
training people for the future. Those ideas, turned into action, have
given us 18.6 million new jobs, the lowest unemployment in 30 years, the
highest homeownership ever, the longest peacetime expansion in history.
And along the way we have virtually opened the doors of college to all
Americans with the HOPE scholarship, the other tuition tax credit,
improvements in the student loan program, a million work-study
positions. We're well on our way to connecting every classroom in the
country to the Internet by the year 2000.
We believed that we could reform welfare and make it good for work
and for families. That idea, turned into action, has cut the welfare
rolls in half, while maintaining health and nutrition benefits for poor
children and increasing our investment in child care for lower income
workers.
We believed we could make our streets safer by putting more police
on the streets and taking guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't
have them. Those ideas, put into action, have given us a 25-year low in
the crime rate.
We believed we could grow the economy and improve the environment.
That idea, put into action, has given us cleaner air, cleaner water,
millions of acres of land set aside from
[[Page 1178]]
the California redwoods to the Florida Everglades. It has allowed us in
the field of public health to have safer food and, for the first time in
history, 90 percent of our children immunized against serious childhood
diseases. And the economy has gotten better, not worse, as we have taken
steps to advance the environment and public health.
We believed that young people in our country, if given the chance,
would serve in their communities and that they ought to be given a
chance to earn some education credit. That idea, put into practice,
produced AmeriCorps, our national service program, which in just 5 years
has already had over 100,000 young people working in communities all
across America, a milestone it took the Peace Corps 20 years to reach.
And we believed America could be the world's leading force for peace
and freedom and prosperity and security. Those ideas, turned into
action, have given us over 250 trade agreements, new partnerships for
America with Latin America and Africa, new initiatives against terrorism
and weapons of mass destruction, progress on peace in Northern Ireland
and the Middle East, a stand against ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and now
in Kosovo, where with our Allies we have said that when innocent
civilians are uprooted or slaughtered because of their race or their
religion, if we can stop it, we will do so.
We still have a lot of work to finish the job in Kosovo. We still
have many challenges abroad, from peace in Northern Ireland and the
Middle East, to our continuing efforts to help relieve the debt burdens
of poor nations, to our efforts to stabilize the global economy. But I
came back to Washington after my trip to Europe with a renewed energy
for the domestic agenda. And I'd like to talk to you about it today,
about the things we can do here today that will affect your communities
today and very much affect your futures tomorrow.
With our present prosperity, we actually have a rare opportunity to
meet the remaining large challenges facing our country on the brink of a
new century. But to do it, both parties must work together. There will
be plenty of time for politics in the year and a half ahead, but this
summer must be a season of progress.
Just think how far we've come in the last decade. When I came here
to speak in 1991 America was drifting toward a new century without
direction. Now, our people, working with common purpose, have brought
the Nation back to a position of unprecedented strength, with greater
prosperity, greater safety, more social healing, more national
leadership for the United States around the world.
Our economy is perhaps the strongest in our history, and something
you may know more about than I do, it is increasingly clear that it is
being powered in large measure by a once-in-a-lifetime technological
revolution. For example, the high-tech sector accounts for only 8
percent of our economy but for fully one-third of the growth we've had
over the last 6\1/2\ years.
We are now seeing an explosion of technology--and productivity along
with it--from the Internet that links offices around the world to
computers used to track warehouse inventories. You will have the chance,
thanks to technology, to work in jobs that have not been created yet, in
industries that have not yet been imagined. But right now we are
benefiting immensely for it. Just this morning we learned that in the
last quarter, our economy grew at the brisk rate of 4.3 percent, with
virtually no inflation. If we can keep that going, that's very good for
your future.
I think that those of us who work here now will be judged, however,
primarily by whether we choose to seize this opportunity to ensure your
future, not just the short-term but the long-term, or will it be
squandered with petty arguments and animosities and special interest
politics.
I regret to say that the atmosphere in Washington has become
increasingly poisoned by bitter partisanship. I don't understand exactly
why, since we keep doing better and better and better in America. It may
be that some people believe they have the luxury of engaging in
shortsighted partisanship because the country is doing so well. I think
that is a bad misreading of reality.
[[Page 1179]]
Moreover, it is clear to me that in the last few weeks our Nation
has come together in an unprecedented consensus of conscience and common
sense on issues like gun violence, where the Congress, unfortunately,
buckled under to special interest pressure. Partisanship has even
paralyzed the basic work of writing our spending bills, something we
have to do here every year. Let me give you an example.
Not very long ago, I issued an order saying that the United States
Government would cut our greenhouse gas emissions coming out of our
buildings by 30 percent over the next few years to meet our
responsibility to deal with the challenge of global warming. Now, you
have to understand, this doesn't cost you anything. This saves you
money. We're going to reduce our energy use so that we reduce our
greenhouse gas emissions coming out of our facilities by 30 percent.
It's a no-brainer. It's no money, nothing. The only people that lose are
the people that won't be pumping electricity to us.
Unbelievably enough, just yesterday, a Senate committee voted to
largely block my executive action to cut the Government's emissions by
30 percent, an action that would save you $750 million a year.
Now, I think I can stop that. But it's an example of what happens
when adults with responsibility fall into small-time wrangling and even
want to stop things that are 100 percent good and not controversial.
I say again, the interesting thing to me is if you look at all the
surveys or just go out and talk to people or if we would sit down and
talk, you would see that across party lines, across regional lines,
across income lines, there is actually quite a remarkable consensus
emerging in America on a number of issues--outside Washington. But the
American people have to depend on those of us who work in Washington to
take the consensus ideas they have embraced and turn those ideas into
action.
Remember what I said at the beginning: Politics at its best involves
values, ideas, and action, and the balancing of all those things in ways
that change lives.
Now, some other people here really believe that because the
Presidential election season has already started, the battle for
Congress has already started, even though it's a year and however many
months away, that the best politics is just to run out the clock and
wait until the next election and hope that the country is doing so well
and we enjoy the lazy days of summer so much, nobody will notice. I
don't agree with that, either.
And I would like to say to you, as young people, there are an awful
lot of very good people in public life who don't think that way, who
want to get things done. And I hope someday many of you will be among
them. But you will find that all of your life one of the greatest
struggles you have to embrace is against being small, against being
defensive or angry or combative for the sake of it, or thinking about
some slight that someone imposed on you yesterday, instead of some good
thing you can do today and tomorrow.
And we have to break out of that now. This country has not had an
opportunity like this, with this level of prosperity and this level of
progress on social problems, in decades. And there actually is quite a
lot we can do.
For example, there are things, believe it or not, that both parties
agree on here. We should certainly act on them. [Laughter] And then
there are things on which we have honest disagreements. On those, we
should seek to find honorable compromise. The American people give us
these jobs to get things done. In the weeks and months ahead, I will do
all I can, working with Congress, taking executive action, summoning
citizens to deal with these challenges. But first let's start with what
we agree on. You might be surprised by the list.
To make sure that Americans should never have to choose between
going to work and paying their medical bills, we must pass the proposal
to let disabled Americans keep their Medicaid health insurance when they
take a job. Believe it or not, people who normally who get Medicaid lose
their insurance if they take a job. The problem is a lot of disabled
people can't get any other insurance. Their bills may be $40,000,
$50,000 a year. But all of us are better off if those folks can go to
work. They are more fulfilled. They are living their lives better. They
also become tax-paying citizens. And whatever their medical bills
[[Page 1180]]
are, they would be paid, regardless, by Medicaid.
So we now have a bill that solves a huge problem. And believe it or
not, almost everybody agrees on it, Republicans and Democrats alike. So
let's start with that, the easy one and a very good one, that will help
untold numbers of Americans and their families. Congress should pass it,
and I will sign it.
To honor work and strengthen our families, we should raise the
minimum wage. There are still too many people who work 40 hours a week
whose children are in poverty. Democrats and many, many Republicans
agree that we should do this. So Congress should pass it, and I will
sign it.
To renew our elections and stem the rising tide of campaign
spending, we must pass strong campaign finance reform. Finally, after
years, it appears that a majority of lawmakers in both parties, in both
the Senate and House, agree. But the leaders of the Republican majority
are blocking the bill. Instead, they ought to let the Congress vote--
everybody votes his or her conscience. But if it passes--and I believe
it would--I would certainly sign it.
To protect the interest of 160 million Americans who use managed
care, we should pass a strong, enforceable, and bipartisan Patients'
Bill of Rights. Now, you all probably know what the problems are here:
More and more Americans are going into managed care, and managed care
has done a lot of good in our country to slow the rise in health care
costs. But we should not ask people to sacrifice quality of care.
Our Patients' Bill of Rights would simply say that if you're in an
HMO or any other kind of health care plan, you wouldn't lose a right to
see your specialist, if you needed; you wouldn't give up the right to go
to the nearest emergency room if you were hurt in an accident--believe
it or not, some people do in their plan--you couldn't be forced to give
up your doctor in the middle of a treatment. For example, if you were 6
months pregnant and your employer changed health care providers, you
couldn't be required to change doctors, or if you were in the middle of
a chemotherapy treatment and your employer changed health care
providers, you wouldn't give it up. And you would have a right to
protect yourself to make sure these rights were enforceable.
Now, these problems have been evident now for the last few years.
Yesterday we learned that it had gotten so bad, that doctors are so
angry that the doctor-patient relationship is being breached by
insurance company accountants' meddling, that they're even organizing a
union to bargain with the HMO's.
Now, again, I've seen survey after survey after survey. There is no
partisan issue here. Republicans and Democrats and independents all get
sick. [Laughter] Right? I mean, they do. There's not a partisan issue
here. Most doctors are Republicans; most nurses are Democrats.
[Laughter] So what? This is not a big deal. This is not a partisan issue
anywhere in the whole country but Washington, DC.
Over 200 medical and consumer organizations have endorsed this
Patients' Bill of Rights, and one has opposed it, the health insurance
companies. Now, if we get a vote on this--because out in America,
doctors, nurses, and patients agree, and Democrats and Republicans will
agree--it will fly like a hot knife through butter. But again, the
leadership of the Congress is trying to find a way to block the bill.
It's not right. So I say again, just let everybody vote his or her
conscience. And if they send it to me--and they will--I will sign it.
Now, these are measures awaiting action that could be enacted
quickly. And if America will send a signal to Congress that they want
action, we can pass them.
There are some, however, broader, more fundamental and, frankly,
more difficult issues that I hope we can resolve this year. First, I
believe, as I said in my State of the Union Address, that we have a duty
to you to use the bulk of this surplus over the next 15 years to solve
the long-term challenges of Social Security and Medicare and to do it in
a way that pays down our national debt.
Now, why? Because that means that future generations will have
guaranteed income and health care in their retirement years. And it
means as we pay down the debt, we will keep interest rates low,
investment high, and guarantee when you get out of college there will be
lots of good jobs available because we'll have a stronger and stronger
and stronger
[[Page 1181]]
economy. We can actually get rid of America's debt over the next 18
years if we will do this.
So I hope, even though we have honest, here, honest philosophical
differences about what the best way to reform Medicare is, what the best
way to reform Social Security is, the point is we ought to be able to
proceed in a spirit of honorable compromise because the goals are so
important and the stakes are so high and because, frankly, the choices
are a lot easier when you have a surplus than when you have a big
deficit.
Next week I will propose a detailed plan to strengthen Medicare, to
cut its costs, to modernize its operations, to use competition and
innovation, to strengthen the core guarantee of quality care for all
Americans who are elderly and eligible. I will also, for the first time,
propose a way to help senior citizens with their greatest growing need,
affordable prescription drugs. It is a huge issue out there for seniors.
Now, finding agreement on Social Security and Medicare will be hard.
Finding agreement on tax cuts will be hard, although I hope the Congress
will at least adopt targeted tax credits for long-term care and child
care that I proposed. But we can do it. Now, regardless, Congress has to
pass a budget this year. We must decide on how to use the surplus. So I
hope we can work together to make progress on these goals.
Second, we ought to continue to advance our economy by doing more
for the education of our people. As we have balanced the budget and cut
the size of the Federal Government--listen to this--we have cut the size
of the Federal Government to the same size it was when I was your age.
The Federal Government now is the same size it was in 1962. That was a
long time ago. [Laughter] Anyway, as we have done that, we have nearly
doubled our investment in education and training. Why? Because, as was
said in my introduction, the information age will be the education age.
Last year, at my urging, with school populations in our country at
record highs, Congress passed a budget that began to hire 100,000 new
teachers to reduce class size in the early years. Unbelievably to me, in
the budget the majority is now writing, they repeal their pledge to
finish the job of hiring those teachers. I just want Congress to keep
its word. I think when you tell people something in an election year,
you ought to still be for it the next year when there is no election.
I have also sent Congress an ambitious education reform plan because
this is a year, as we do every 5 years, we have to reauthorize the
general program under which we give money to schools all over America.
And I believe we should dramatically change it to hold schools and
school districts and States more accountable for results and to give
them more funds for after-school, summer school programs, and to target
and turn around failing schools.
It is controversial. But it is based on what is working in the
States that are having success in lifting all their schools in student
achievement. Again I say, there may be those who disagree with me
philosophically; we ought to have an open debate about this and come to
an honorable compromise. We do not have to continue to spend money in
the same old way when we know we can spend it more effectively based on
what we have seen in our schools.
Third, let me say something that I hope will be important to all of
you and has, doubtless, been experienced by some of you. We've got the
strongest economy on record, all right, but there are still too many
poor neighborhoods and rural communities where prosperity is something
you read about, not experience. And I believe we should be committed to
going into this new century leaving no one behind. This is not only a
good thing to do ethically; it is also good economics.
I keep thinking every day, now, how can we continue to grow this
economy? How can we drive unemployment even lower, create even more
jobs, without having inflation? One way is to find new investment in
America. So I say to you, we've spent a lot of time seeking new markets
abroad, but our most important new markets are right here at home.
Two weeks from now, for 4 days, I will lead an unprecedented trip
across America so our country can see the places I'm talking about. I'll
go to the hills and hollows of Kentucky, to the Mississippi Delta, to a
poor
[[Page 1182]]
community in the Midwest, to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South
Dakota, to Phoenix, to inner-city Los Angeles. I'll be joined by
distinguished corporate leaders and political leaders of both parties.
Again, this is something that should not be a political issue at all. We
want to shine a spotlight on the pockets of poverty that remain in
America and on the potential they have for new investment, new jobs, new
hope, new opportunity.
I will ask Congress to do its part by passing my new markets
initiative. It provides for tax incentives and loan guarantees for
people to invest in these areas, the same kind of incentives we give
people today to invest in emerging economies abroad. I think that
whatever we encourage people to do abroad, we ought to give the same
encouragement to do at home, to give our people those kinds of chances.
Finally, I think we ought to do more to protect our young people
from violence, to redeem the awful sacrifice of the children of
Littleton, of the other school shootings, of the 13 American children we
lose every single day to gun violence.
After Littleton, our whole Nation came together in grief and
determination. We know there are many causes of youth violence, and
therefore, there must be many solutions. Hillary and I are launching a
national campaign against youth violence to bring all kinds of people
from all sectors of our communities together. We have done this before,
like Mothers and Students Against Drunk Driving dramatically reduced
drunk driving in America, just for one example. And we can do that.
Of course, more must be done at home. Young people can have a
greater influence on each other--schools, houses of worship, other
places where children gather can do better. The entertainment community
must do more to stop marketing violence to children. I'm proud that
theater owners have agreed--[applause]--I wonder if that's coming more
from the adults or the young people. [Laughter]
I feel very strongly about this. I'm proud that theater owners
agreed that from now on, young people will be carded for R and
PG-13 movies. I'm glad, thanks to the Vice President and Mrs. Gore, that
next year TV's will have the V-chip in half of all new TV's sold and
that Internet and video game companies are helping with ratings and
blocking technologies. We have our differences with various sectors of
the entertainment community from time to time, but they have actually
done quite a lot with the TV rating systems, the video game rating
systems, the blocking technologies in the last few years, and they
deserve credit for what they have done, as well as urging to do more.
But we have to face the fact that if you have more children spending
more time alone--and let me say that one big difference between the time
when I was your age, or even Bruce was your age, and today, in America
as a whole: The average--average--young person spends 22 hours per week
less with his or her parents than 30 years ago. From birth through age
18, that's over 2 years less time that the average young person spends
with his or her parents--over 2 years. You don't notice it so much; it's
just a few hours a day.
Why is that? More single parents, more working parents, more people
living in suburbs spending more time going to and from work. Everybody
is busy, busy, busy. And most of you are turning out just fine, and most
of your parents are doing the best they can and doing a fine job. But we
shouldn't minimize the fact that when this happens, the most vulnerable
children among us will be even more vulnerable.
And that is why this whole entertainment culture counts--not because
of you but because there are among us always vulnerable people. And
there will be more of them, and they will be more vulnerable. And that's
why the access to guns matters.
I've heard this--I got a letter the other day from a really nice
person that I admire, saying, ``Mr. President, we've got all these laws
on the books, and if somebody wants a gun they can get it.'' Now, if you
say that, it seems self-evident, since there's way over 220 million guns
in the country. It seems self-evident. But let's look at the facts here.
Since we passed the Brady law, over the strenuous objections of the
gun lobby, who then said that no criminal ever gets a gun from a gun
store--just since we passed the
[[Page 1183]]
Brady law in 1993, we have put a stop to some 400,000 illegal gun sales,
without stopping one legitimate sports man or woman from buying a gun.
And you cannot convince any reasonable person in law enforcement that
those 400,000 stops didn't have something to do with the fact that we
have a 25-year low in the crime rate and an even bigger plummet in many
areas of gun-related violent crime.
Now, in the wake of the shootings after Littleton, I asked the
Senate to pass a commonsense measure to help prevent youth violence by
doing more in this vein to keep guns out the hands of criminals and
children. For one thing, we should close the loophole that lets a
criminal turned away from a gun dealer go to a gun show or a flea market
in a city and buy a gun without a background check. The technology is
there now for these background checks to be done without great burden to
people who run gun shows and flea markets. But today they can buy a gun
there, no questions asked.
Now, the same people who said in 1993 that no criminals buy their
guns at gun stores, they buy them other places, say that we should not
have background checks at the other places. I think we should. I think
we should require that safety locks be sold with every handgun. We
should ban the importation of large-capacity ammunition clips. We should
say violent juveniles should not own guns when they become adults.
It took a pivotal vote by Vice President Gore to break a tie in the
Senate so that the Senate did the right thing in closing the gun show
loophole. Unfortunately, as most of you probably know, 2 weeks ago, the
Republicans in the House of Representatives, with some Democrats but not
many, shot down America's best hope for commonsense gun control--in the
face of strong public demand, clear public need, and again I say, out in
the country, no partisanship.
The House filled the proposal full of high-caliber loopholes. And
now they say they want to watch it die. The majority even pushed
measures to weaken current law, for example, letting criminals store
their guns at pawnshops, even if the reason they need to store it is
because they're taking a sabbatical in prison. [Laughter] They say if
they come back to get the gun, there shouldn't be a background check.
[Laughter] We've had a pawnshop background check for a good while now.
They want to get rid of that, as if that is somehow terribly burdensome
to people.
Well, I think we can do better than that. But I don't know how we
can expect you to stand up to youth violence if the Congress won't stand
up to the gun lobby. We have got to--[applause].
So again, I say, it's not too late. The House and the Senate will
now appoint conferees on this bill, because they have passed two
different bills. Those people can put the provisions the Senate passed
into the bill, send it to the House and the Senate, pass it, and I'll
sign it. It's important that we strengthen, not weaken, our laws that
make it easier for criminals to get and keep guns.
Okay, so let's go back and review the bidding here. We have a raft
of bipartisan bills: health care for the disabled; the minimum wage;
campaign finance reform; the Patients' Bill of Rights. We have big
issues on which there are disagreements but where honorable compromise
is possible: long-term reform of Social Security and Medicare; paying
down the debt. We have a clear case where Republicans and Democrats
should join together to mobilize private capital to give new life to our
poorest communities: legislation to hire more teachers and to raise
educational standards; sensible but vital steps to protect our children
from violence.
These are big things. These are things worthy of a great nation and
its elected representatives. I will work day and night to achieve this
agenda. I hope you will support it, again, without regard to party. And
I hope you will believe that good citizenship and public service are
worth your time and effort.
Many times when I have come here, and many times around the country,
I have referred to a professor I had here, who I talked about in 1991,
who taught Western Civilization. He said, our civilization was unique in
the belief of what he called ``future preference.'' That is, the idea
that the future can be better than the past, and that every individual
has a duty to make it so.
Now, you obviously believe that or you wouldn't be here. I'm about
to give you all your medal, and we're going to take pictures.
[[Page 1184]]
And it's a whole monument to years and years and years of your effort
believing in tomorrow, right? It is. You wouldn't be here if you didn't.
And that belief has had a lot to do with your Nation's success over the
last 220-plus years. It has driven my public life. And it was validated
again a few days ago by the pain and the hope I saw in the faces of the
children of Kosovo.
The more we think about tomorrow, the more energy, determination,
and wisdom we have for the challenges of today.
I believe in your future. I believe America's best days lie in the
new millennium. I ask Congress to help me make it so.
Thank you very much.
Note: The President spoke at 10:58 a.m. in Gaston Hall at Georgetown
University. In his remarks, he referred to Presidential scholar Danielle
Huff, who introduced the President; and Father Leo J. O'Donovan,
president, Georgetown University.