[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 35, Number 29 (Monday, July 26, 1999)]
[Pages 1387-1391]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Remarks at Amos Hiatt Middle School in Des Moines, Iowa

July 16, 1999

    The President. You know, when Tom Harkin said that anybody with any 
sense would take their coat off--[laughter]--I didn't know whether that 
meant I didn't have any sense or he just gets hot under the collar 
quicker than I do. [Laughter] Actually, I think the answer is a lighter 
suit.
    I am delighted to be here, and I thank you all for your wonderful 
welcome. And I don't mind that it's a warm one. I always love coming to 
Iowa, coming back here to this wonderful city. I want to thank Ruth Ann 
Gaines for her dedication and her remarkable remarks this morning. I 
want to say that as long as young people like Catherine Swoboda are 
exhibit A for Iowa education, this country is going to do just fine. I 
thought she was terrific.
    I thank Secretary Riley for coming with me. Many of you in Iowa may 
not know it, but Dick Riley and I began our careers as Governors 
together 20 years ago this year, and we've been working at education for 
a long, long time. I think that history will record that he is the 
finest Secretary of Education this country has ever had. And I'm very 
grateful to him, and I thank him.
    I would like to thank Superintendent Witherspoon and your principal, 
Gary Eyerly, for welcoming us to this school. And I want to thank all 
the public officials who are here. I know in addition to the Governor we 
have Lieutenant Governor Pederson, Attorney General Miller, Secretary of 
State Culver, and State Treasurer Fitzgerald. They're all over there. I 
thank them for joining me today. And Senate Minority Leader Michael 
Gronstal, thank you all for being here.
    I'd like to say a special word of appreciation to my good friend 
Congressman 
Leonard Boswell, who is also a stout supporter of education. And I think 
it is appropriate that he's here because he's here with his wife, Dody, 
and I'd like to her to stand, because yesterday she retired as a teacher 
after 31 years. Thank you very much, bless you. Thank you. [Applause]
    And I want to acknowledge that Ruth 
Harkin is here with Tom today, and to tell you that for most of my 
administration she was a very valuable member of the Clinton-Gore team 
and played a major role in our economic programs. And I want to thank 
her.
    And finally, let me say that, as you can see, every time he talks, 
there is no one in the United States Senate who is more passionate about 
what he believes than Tom Harkin. And he believes in the education of 
our children. It's easy to understand why, from his own experience. Most 
of you probably know that his father was a coal miner who didn't finish 
the eighth grade; his mother was an immigrant with little formal 
education. Thanks to an ROTC scholarship, he put himself through 
college. Now he sits next to a Rockefeller in the United States Senate. 
[Laughter] It's America, and Tom Harkin is the best of America.
    You know, I must say, Jay Rockefeller always hates it when we do 
that to him. [Laughter] He is also a very good man. And you heard Tom 
Harkin say that because of his efforts, Iowa will receive another $10 
million this year to help renovate schools. But I want to do that for 
all our schools that need it.
    I want to thank some people who are involved in this issue who are 
not here today: Congressman Charles Rangel, the House sponsor of our 
school bill; the many members of the AFT, the NEA, the Council of Great 
City Schools; the building and construction trades who have fanned out 
to Philadelphia, New York, New Orleans, Buffalo, Houston, Chicago, and 
Miami today to roll up their sleeves and help communities begin to 
repair their neediest schools.

[[Page 1388]]

    You know, it is ironic that we're here talking about this school 
issue, because we are in America in the last year of the 20th century, 
in this millennium, enjoying the longest peacetime economic expansion in 
our history, nearly 19 million new jobs in the last 6\1/2\ years, the 
lowest unemployment rate in 30 years, the lowest crime rate in 26 years, 
the lowest welfare rolls in 30 years, the lowest minority unemployment 
ever recorded, the highest homeownership in history.
    Here in Iowa, unemployment is a whopping 2.6 percent. Homeownership 
is almost at 75 percent. Wages are rising nationwide for the first time 
in 20 years for all classes of workers, and even faster here. I feel 
good about that. I feel good about the fact that compared to 6\1/2\ 
years ago the air and water are cleaner, the food is safer, and 90 
percent of our children are immunized against serious childhood diseases 
for the first time in the entire history of our country.
    I feel good about the 100,000 young people who have signed up to 
serve their communities in AmeriCorps and earn money to go to college. I 
am grateful, with the help of people like Tom Harkin and Leonard 
Boswell, that this administration has been able to preserve or set aside 
more land for the American people and our children's future, from the 
California redwoods to the Mojave Desert to the Florida Everglades than 
any administration in history, except those of Franklin and Theodore 
Roosevelt. I am grateful for all of that.
    But what I came here to ask you is, what are we going to do with our 
prosperity, and what are we going to do with our surplus? This is a time 
of confidence and pride. But, as many people have said, the time to fix 
the roof is when the Sun is shining. And that is literally true in the 
case of school construction.
    Are we going to develop some sort of collective amnesia and pretend 
that these times have always been here, always will be here, and we can 
do whatever we want to do that feels best in the moment, or seems most 
politically popular? Or are we going to think about the children here 
and the 21st century and what America will be like 10 years from now, 20 
years from now, 30 years from now, when they will have children in these 
schools?
    That is what I want to say. You know, you folks should be glad to 
see me in Iowa. I'm the only guy that's been here in weeks that's not 
running for anything. [Laughter] What I am doing is trying to think 
about everything we can possibly do in these last days of this century. 
The Clinton-Gore administration is not running out the clock, hoping the 
good times will last. We are trying to push the ball down the field. We 
are trying to think about what it takes to build that bridge to tomorrow 
that all our children can walk across, what it would take to give 
opportunity to all of our people, to build a community of all of our 
people, to maintain our Nation's leadership for peace and freedom and 
prosperity around the world, to look at the long-term challenges.
    I'll just mention three today, to get to the school construction 
issue. But you have to understand where the school construction issue 
is; you have to see it as a part of the big debate going on in 
Washington: What are we going to do with our prosperity? How should we 
handle this surplus, the one we have today and the one we're projected 
to have tomorrow? Otherwise, you couldn't begin to figure out why in the 
world we just don't do this. I mean, you must all be sitting out there 
thinking this is a no-brainer, just from what everybody else has already 
said before I got up here.
    I believe that when you look at where we were just 6\1/2\ years ago, 
we had quadrupled the national debt in 12 years. The deficit was $280 
billion. It was projected to go to 380 this year. Now we have the 
biggest surplus we've ever recorded, and we're projected to be able to 
maintain those surpluses into the future, indefinitely.
    Now, every farmer here knows that nobody can predict the future. 
That does not mean that every year we'll have exactly what is predicted. 
What it means is, if we have predictable economic performances, which is 
every so often we'll have a downturn, and then we'll have an upturn, 
then we'll have a downturn, then we'll have an upturn, on average, we 
will produce the surpluses we project to produce over the next 15 years. 
That's what it means. These projections are

[[Page 1389]]

not based on everything will be hunky-dory every day of the next 15 
years. So they're not unrealistic.
    But we have to decide--since we haven't been in it--did you ever 
think when I was here running in '92 we would be back here having a 
debate about what to do with the surplus? [Laughter] This is a high-
class problem. But it's just as important to get the answer to a high-
class problem right as it is to one that you wish you didn't have to 
deal with. It's not like going to the dentist. But if we don't handle it 
right, we'll be going to the dentist and nobody will give us a shot to 
deaden the pain. We have got to deal with this issue in the proper way.
    Let me just mention three things. We have to deal with the aging of 
America. Iowa has got a high percentage of people over 65. The number of 
people over 65 will double in 30 years. The older we get the more people 
that will be drawing Social Security and Medicare and the fewer people 
will be paying into it. This is not rocket science; this is basic math.
    I believe before we pass a big tax cut we should save Social 
Security and Medicare and add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare 
for the 21st century so that--[applause]--why? That's going to save 
everybody a lot more money in the long run than a tax cut. What's going 
to happen? What's going to happen if we don't? This is not just about 
the elderly. I'm not just looking out for the baby boomers that are 
going to retire in a few years. You know what will happen.
    How many family stories do you know right now where parents with 
little children are also taking care of their parents, because it's the 
right thing to do? But we have Social Security and Medicare so that we 
can balance the responsibilities of the generations and so that families 
can take of their own needs and look to their children as they go along. 
So this is not just about the elderly. This is about the children and 
grandchildren of the baby boom generation.
    The second thing we ought to do is take care of the economy. And I 
would like to mention just two things, one of which you know very well. 
One is, there is still a lot of places in this country that aren't 
participating in the economic recovery. The big problem on the farm is 
we've had 4 years in a row of worldwide record harvests for the first 
time in history and an economic collapse in 1997 in Asia, so markets 
shrink, the products go, prices collapse.
    Audience member. Freedom to farm----
    The President. Exactly right. As Senator Harkin and I warned--
Congressman Boswell and I, we were all three laughing about it--we said, 
you know, the people who put in that ``Freedom to Farm Act'' acted like 
there never would be a bad year on the farm. And now last year we dealt 
with it. Today I'm going to meet with some of your farmers, and we're 
working on it. The Vice President called me after he had a chance to 
meet with some farmers here this week, and we talked about it.
    But the point I want to make is, you have farmers; you have people 
in Appalachia; you have people in the Mississippi Delta; you have people 
who live on the Indian reservations; you have people who live in the 
inner cities; and even though we're doing better than we've ever done, 
there's still a lot of people who aren't part of this train. And there 
are ways to give everybody a chance who's willing to work to be a part 
of it. That ought to be something we do with our prosperity. We ought to 
give everybody who's willing to work a chance to be a part of that 
prosperity. And I think it's very important.
    One thing we can do that will help the economy more than anything 
else is, if we adopt the plan I put out to save the majority of the 
surplus for Social Security and Medicare, since it's not needed now--
while we save it we can pay the debt down so much that by 2015, in 16 
years, for the first time since 1835, this country can be out of debt.
    If you're a middle class person, why should you worry about that? 
Because if we're out of debt it means lower interest rates; higher 
investment; more jobs; higher wages; lower college loan, credit card, 
car payment, and home mortgage rates. It means a more stable world 
economy over the long run. It means a better environment for farmers and 
manufacturers and everybody else. It is a good thing to do.
    Now, what I want to tell you is, we can do all that and still have a 
tax cut and still invest in education. But we cannot pretend that there 
are no consequences to proposing

[[Page 1390]]

a tax cut that will cut education and prevent us from saving Social 
Security and Medicare and mean we can't pay off the debt and we can't do 
these other things. There are choices to be made, and we should be 
thinking about the children and the future. And as we have proved the 
last 6\1/2\ years, when you do things that are right for the long run, 
often they turn out to be right for the short run, as well.
    And so I say to you, this school issue is a part of this debate, 
this school construction issue. We propose a tax cut to help people save 
for retirement, take care of long-term care needs of their family, take 
care of their child care needs, and also to induce people to invest in 
more school construction with a big tax break. It is very, very 
important.
    And you've already heard about Iowa's needs. You've heard Secretary 
Riley talk about America's needs. In spite of all--what you have to 
understand is, the school enrollments, as big as they are, are fixing to 
explode. And we've got to do some things about it. We've got to do what 
Governor Vilsack wants to do everywhere in America. Hardly anybody has 
done as well as he has. We've got to hook up all the classrooms in the 
country to the Internet. And we've got to have teachers to go into the 
classrooms--2.1 million are going to retire over the next few years. 
Dody is the beginning of a wave in America. And we've got to find young 
people to go in there and take their places. And we've got to have good 
facilities for people to visit, to learn in.
    You know, I can still remember every schoolroom that I ever was in 
in my life. And a lot of old schools can be modernized, but when you've 
got kids--I've been to school districts, literally, literally, with one 
elementary school with 12 housetrailers out behind it. Not one or two. 
Twelve!
    So we have to deal with this. And there are serious consequences to 
not dealing with it. Now, if our school construction initiative passes 
as a part of our tax cut proposal and our education program, it will 
help communities have $25 billion over the next 2 years for school 
construction. That's enough to build or modernize 6,000 schools.
    Now, if you compare that to the Republican proposal you will see 
that their plan is 644 schools. Ours is nearly 10 to 1. So somebody can 
say, well, we have a school construction proposal--6,000 is better than 
644.
    We're having the same discussion about teachers. Last year I was 
thrilled--in the teeth of an election year, we had a bipartisan 
agreement to put 100,000 teachers in our schools, because the classes 
are getting bigger and it would allow us to lower class size in the 
early grades to an average of 18. We just had another national study 
come out the other day about how important that can be and how the 
learning gains can be permanent. And just 2 weeks ago Secretary Riley 
and I announced $1.2 billion to help States and local school districts 
hire the first 30,000 of those 100,000.
    But now the majority in Congress wants to back off from that. They 
have other ways to spend the money. They want to give the money out and 
not guarantee that it will go to hire new teachers. I feel that if you 
make a promise in an election year, you ought to keep it the next year, 
too. If it was a good idea last year, it's still a good idea.
    So I say to you, these are two things that we ought to do. We need 
to do this school construction program. We need to finish the work of 
hiring 100,000 teachers. We need to finish the work that Governor 
Vilsack has done so much on here of wiring all of our schools. We need 
to finish these things. It all comes down to this: What do you want to 
do with this moment of prosperity?
    And let me say one thing--you know, Washington tends to be a more 
partisan place than most places in America--maybe than anyplace in 
America. I've done what I could to try to unify this country. Most 
Americans, whether they're Republicans or Democrats or independents, 
that have kids in the schools want them to go to good schools.
    I'll bet you there are a lot of school elections in Iowa where 
Republicans and Democrats vote the same way for school bond issues or on 
educational proposals. This is not always an ideological issue. This 
should be an issue that brings America together. But issues that unify 
people in the country have a way of dividing people in Washington. We 
had the same thing happen with the Patients' Bill of Rights; you 
probably saw that.
    We had this crazy idea, we Democrats did, that everybody in a 
managed care plan in

[[Page 1391]]

America ought to be able to see a specialist if their doctor said they 
should see one. Or, if they lived in a big city and they got hurt in an 
accident, they ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room, not 
be driven halfway across town. Or, if their employer changed managed 
care providers while a woman employee was in the middle of a pregnancy 
or a man or a woman was in chemotherapy, they ought to be able to keep 
their doctor until the treatment was over.
    And if somebody hurts you with a bad decision, you ought to be able 
to get redress for it. Now those are rights that I enjoy under the 
Federal Health Care Plan and the Congress enjoys and every Federal 
employee enjoys. And the Congress--the Republican majority's own budget 
office said this would add at most $2 a month to a managed care premium. 
In the Federal system, it added less than $1 a month when I put them in.
    Now, I don't know, but I believe in Iowa when you go to the doctor's 
office, they don't ask you if you're a Republican or a Democrat. 
[Laughter] And I don't believe when the children come to school here 
they ask you if you're a Republican or a Democrat. These are things that 
should unify us. And so I ask you to please, please do what you can to 
talk to all the members of this congressional delegation, ask them to 
support us on 100,000 teachers, ask them--it's still not too late to 
pass the Patients' Bill of Rights that gives the rest of you the 
protections we have in Congress and the White House and the Federal 
Government. And ask them to make a part of any tax cut plan a school 
construction initiative that will build or modernize 6,000 schools.
    You think about this young woman who introduced me today. I have 
seen people like her all across America, marvelous kids in the poorest 
corners of this country--kids in schools that are 75 years old that 
haven't been fixed, where the kids walk up the steps and they see broken 
windows every day, where there are rooms, in some cases whole floors 
they can't even go on. They deserve better.
    How in the world can we say to them, we had the most prosperous time 
in American history; we had the biggest surplus in history; we dug 
ourselves out of debt; but all we thought of was ourselves and the next 
election; we didn't have the time or money or vision to think about you 
and your future? We are a better country than that. All of us are, 
without regard to party. Everywhere else but Washington, DC, you would 
never hear anybody discarding this argument. I implore you, help us to 
get this done this year. The children of American deserve 21st century 
schools.
    Thank you, and God bless you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:25 p.m. in the gymnasium. In his remarks, 
he referred to 1998 Iowa Teacher of the Year Ruth Ann Gaines, who 
introduced the President; incoming eighth grader Catherine Swoboda; Eric 
Witherspoon, superintendent, Des Moines Independent Public Schools; Gary 
L. Eyerly, principal, Amos Hiatt Middle School; Gov. Tom Vilsack, Lt. 
Gov. Sally Pederson, State Attorney General Tom Miller, Secretary of 
State Chester J. Culver, and State Treasurer Michael L. Fitzgerald and 
State Senator Michael Gronstal of Iowa; Representative Leonard L. 
Boswell's wife, Darlene (Dody); and Senator Tom Harkin's wife, Ruth, 
former President and Chief Executive Officer, Overseas Private 
Investment Corporation. The President also referred to the Federal 
Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996 (Public Law 104-127). 
This item was not received in time for publication in the appropriate 
issue.