Software Vault: The Gold Collection/Software Vault - The Gold Collection (American Databankers) (1993).ISO/cdr11/wh930501.zip/5-1A.TXT

Internet Message Format | 1993-06-12 | 7KB

From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail] Sat May  1 15:35:59 1993
Date: Sat, 1 May 1993 14:39-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
Subject: President's Radio Address May 1, 1993
To: [e-mail]

                           THE WHITE HOUSE

                    Office of the Press Secretary

______________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                                May 1, 1993

                      REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
                 DURING RADIO ADDRESS TO THE NATION

                          The Oval Office

10:06 A.M. EDT


         THE PRESIDENT:   Good morning.  It's the first day of
May, and for many of our high school seniors it's time to begin
thinking about their last final exams, packing up their rooms and
setting out on the adventures that will come in the next stage of
their lives.  Whether they are heading to college or looking for
their first jobs, these students are getting ready to cross a
threshold that will shape them and their futures as people and
citizens.

         All of us have a big stake in whether these young people
have opportunities for success.  The great promise of American life
has always been expanding opportunities for each succeeding
generation -- opportunities for education, for employment, for home
ownership, for good health care -- for all those willing to work hard
and play by the rules.  I am determined that we won't ever lose that
promise of American life.

         I sought this office because the dreams of working
Americans were in deep danger.  And I promised all of you that I
would work my heart out to restore them.  All the work we do in this
administration springs from that determination and is rooted in our
values, the values that have strengthened our families and given
generations of Americans brighter futures than their parents, values
that have made this nation without peer, those of opportunity,
responsibility and community.  With them, we propose putting
government back on the side of America's hard pressed families.

         In the first 100 days of this administration we've tried
to do that.  We've worked hard to cut the big government deficit and
interest rates are down, enabling millions of Americans to refinance
their homes and get interest rates lower in business and consumer
loans.  We've made a long-term commitment to invest in jobs and
education and technology.  We've begun to reform the government by
cutting unnecessary spending and having tougher lobbying rules and
moving to reinvent the whole way government operates.  And, of
course, we're facing the big crisis of health care, trying to
guarantee security to all Americans and control costs so that we can
move forward with the kind of basic health care that other people in
other countries take for granted, but that threatens to bankrupt
America.

         In addition to that, I am determined to open the doors
of college education and to give American students the opportunity to
pay for it through a program of national service.  In the last
several years, the cost of a college education has become more
important than ever before.  And yet, those costs have gone up more
than any other basic in American life, including health care.  We've
simply got to do something for all these high school seniors and all
those coming along behind them to open the doors of college education
and to help those now in college to stay in and to succeed.

         As a first step, I will ask Congress to approve
legislation changing the terms of college loans.  By giving our
students a new way to finance college, we will be able to ensure that
many more go and stay.  This new method will be called an Excel
Account.  With it, students will be able to repay the loans on a
schedule based on a percentage of their future earnings, and not just
on the amount the borrow, as is the case today.  This will be nothing
less than liberating for many students who drop out of college
because of financial strains, or who graduate with big debts and then
feel driven into careers with higher pay, but lower satisfaction.  A
student torn between pursuing a career in teaching or corporate law,
for example, will be able to make a career choice based on what he or
she wants to do, not how much he or she can earn to pay off college
debt.

         Another problem with the current student loan system is
that far too many students default on their loans, costing taxpayers
billions of dollars a year and adding to our deficit.  Giving
students the chance to pay their loans back as a small percentage of
their incomes will reduce the default rate by making it possible for
more students to repay.  But we're also going to make it tougher for
those who can repay the loans to avoid doing it by involving the IRS
in the collection process so that those who work and pay taxes must
also repay their loans.  With this new opportunity must come new
responsibility.

         But these Excel Accounts are just the beginning.  I also
want to give tens of thousands of young people the chance to pay for
part of their college education or advanced job training through a
program of national service.  With national service, we can open a
new world to a new generation, one where higher learning goes hand-
in-hand with a higher purpose of addressing our nation's unmet needs
-- educational, social, and environmental.  Things that will secure
the future, we will all share together.

         Americans, without regard to age, will be able to earn
credit against college costs before, during, or after college by
working as tutors for children, volunteers at hospitals, as public
safety officers, or in countless other grassroots community efforts
that are working all across America today, but need more help.

         College graduates can repay a portion of their loans by
working as teachers or police officers in underserved areas.
National service will mark the start of a new era for America, one in
which every citizen can become an agent of change, armed with the
knowledge and experience that a college education brings, and ready
to transform the world in which we live, city by city, community by
community, block by block, person by person.  National service will
operate at the level Americans know best -- the grassroots.  Its
programs will be locally driven, because we trust communities to know
what works.  And this program is designed and will succeed without a
traditional Washington bureaucracy.  And, believe me, no one will
miss that.

         Expanding opportunity, restoring responsibility,
reviving our sense of community.  These are the values that have
always made our country strong.  America has always succeeded when
we've understood that we're all in this together.  With national
service, Americans can help themselves by helping each other.  It's
the best investment we could ever make in our future.

         Thank you.


                                 END10:13 A.M. EDT