[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.