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

Internet Message Format | 1993-06-12 | 32KB

From @lex-luthor.ai.mit.edu:[e-mail] Sat May  1 20:18:48 1993
Date: Sat, 1 May 1993 14:41-0400
From: The White House <[e-mail]>
Subject: President's Remarks on the National Service Initiative 4.30
To: [e-mail],

                         THE WHITE HOUSE

                  Office of the Press Secretary
                    (New Orleans, Louisiana)
_________________________________________________________________
For Immediate Release                              April 30, 1993

                    REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT
               IN ADDRESS TO THE COMMUNITY OF THE
                    UNIVERSITY OF NEW ORLEANS
          ON THE PRESIDENT'S NATIONAL SERVICE INITIATIVE

               Health and Physical Education Center
                      New Orleans, Louisiana

2:10 P.M. CDT

         THE PRESIDENT:  Thank you very much.  I ought to
quit while I'm ahead.  (Laughter.)  It is wonderful to be back in
New Orleans and in Louisiana and to have the first chance I've
had since the election to thank you for your support, your
electoral votes and the education you gave me on my many trips
here during the campaign last year.  I'm glad to be back on this
campus.  (Applause.)

         I want to thank your Student Body President, Robert
Styron.  And I thought he gave a good speech.  I think he's got a
future in politics, don't you?  (Applause.)  And Chancellor
O'Brien.  I want to thank Senator Breaux for his kind remarks and
for his leadership of the Democratic Leadership Council.  And I
want to acknowledge the presence here of Senator Johnston and
many members of the Louisiana House and many other members of the
United States Congress, along with many others who are here with
the Democratic Leadership Council, including my good friend and
former colleague, the Governor of New Mexico, Bruce King, who's
here.  (Applause.)  There are two members of my Cabinet here, the
Secretary of Education, Dick Riley, and the Secretary of
Agriculture Mike Espy, also a DLC Vice Chair.  (Applause.)

         I want to thank all the people who are here
representing volunteer organizations.  I met with some young
people just before I came in here who are scattered around near
me from Benjamin Franklin High School just across the way.
(Applause.)  Absolutely no enthusiasm in that place.  (Laughter.)
>From the Delta Service Corps.  (Applause.)  From VISTA, from
Summerbridge.  (Applause.)  From Teach for America.  (Applause.)
         We also have some students here apart from all of
you from UNO, we have some students here who have worked in
service projects at Xavier University -- (applause) -- and at
Tulane.  (Applause.)  We also have people here who have been
involved in service for a long time from ACTION, from the Older
Americans Volunteer Program, from the National Association of
Senior Companions and Foster Grandparents and the National
Association of Retired Senior Volunteers.  All these people I am
very grateful to.

         I'd like to just acknowledge in general who are here
from law enforcement organizations and firefighters'organizations
and public employees and teachers' groups who have helped us on
this national service project.  And I want to say a special word
of thanks to three other people.  First of all, General David
Jones, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who has
worked very hard, helping us put together this program who is
here.    General Jones, thank you for being here.  (Applause.)

         Secondly, a remarkable gentleman from New Jersey, an
immensely successful businessman who retired early and is
devoting his entire life to community service, to rebuild the
lives and the neighborhoods of the people in his community in New
Jersey, and now helping others around the country.  A founding
member of the Points of Light Foundation, Mr. Ray Chambers who is
here.  (Applause.)

         And I'd like to pay a little special attention to
two members of Congress who are not here and to one who is for
their long work on the whole idea of national service.  The two
in the Senate who are not here are Senator Harris Wofford from
Pennsylvania and Senator Sam Nunn from Georgia.  (Applause.)  And
then Representative Dave McCurdy from Oklahoma, thank you for all
of the work you've done on this over the years.  (Applause.)

         I am glad to be here.  You know, when I come down
here I always sort of relax.  I don't know why that is.
(Laughter.)  I timed it just in time for the Jazz Festival, but I
left my saxophone at the White House.  (Applause.)

         This is the 100th day of my administration.  In
Washington, some say it marks a milestone.  But in many ways,
it's just another day at the office for what we're trying to do
in changing America.

         In the last 99 days, we have worked relentlessly to
address the pressing and long-ignored needs of the American
people, and to bring to the government something it has not seen
in a long time:  an acknowledgement that bold action is needed,
and needed now to secure and enlarge America's future, and that
in order to do it we not only have to change programs, we have to
change the way the government works and engage the energies of
the American people in the process.

         In the last 100 days, I think we have begun to
change the direction in which our country has been going for a
long time, and to go toward a new direction, more like the one
the American people demanded last November.  We've also started
an unprecedented debate in our nation's capital about big ideas
and better lives across our nation -- ideas that in many cases
were shaped and nurtured by some of the people who are here
today, as Senator Breaux said earlier, the members of the
Democratic Leadership Council, of which I am proud to be a
founding member.

         The DLC has -- (applause) -- unlike most
organizations, the DLC has done more than just talk about the
problems in our country, it has made an honest effort to develop
real ideas about how to restore the American economy and make the
government work and rebuild the confidence and the link that
exists between the American people and their government when
things are at their best here.  And it's been a laboratory for
experimentation and solutions.

         During my years with the DLC, we really tried to
refine our philosophy of what it would mean to take not only the
Democratic Party, but the United States of America in a new
direction; to make our country work again; and to reward work and
family; to encourage education and enterprise; to establish what
I have often called a new covenant with the American people,
creating opportunity but demanding responsibility from all so
that once again we could be a true American community where we
know and believe and live as if we're all in this together.
(Applause.)

         This group has conceived many of the ideas that I've
advocated since I've been in Washington, from setting a limit on
welfare and putting people to work, to police reform and
community policing, to rewarding work of low income working
people by having an earned income tax credit that would lift the
working poor with children out of poverty.  So we could say if
you work 40 hours a week in this country, you have a child in the
house, you ought not to be poor.  (Applause.)  These are the
kinds of things that this organization has done.  (Applause.)

         They helped to develop the idea I want to talk to
you today about that has so much to do with the future of the
young people here and throughout our country  -- national
service.  This is an organization about ideas.

         Now, in Washington, as you might imagine, we don't
always agree with one another.  And that is good; that's why
we've got a system where the government's divided up and we have
two parties and we have people fighting all the time, as long as
it's about ideas.  But too often we've seen that the debate over
big ideas gets mired in petty politics.

         I know one thing:  The American people are tired of
gridlock and petty politics.  If we're going to fight, they want
us to fight over ideas and the future of this country.
(Applause.)

         In the past 99 days, we tried to address the
problems the American people told me they wanted to be addressed.
We focused more than anything else on the economy -- passing the
outline of a budget that will reduce the deficit by more than
$500 billion; increase investment in education and technologies
and the things that will create the economy of the 21st century
that all of you need, so that you'll have good and decent jobs
and a decent future; laying the groundwork for a more prosperous
tomorrow.

         Just in 100 days we've announced a policy to help to
convert the defense cutbacks and the economic opportunities for
people who are losing their jobs because of the military
cutbacks; to take a new direction in technology to create more
opportunities for our people; to be more aggressive in preserving
the environment, but do it in a way that creates jobs, not a way
that costs jobs; to have a trade policy that will really reflect
our common interest with other nations and expanding jobs and
opportunities everywhere.

         We've begun the long-overdue renovation of the
American economic base.  The question now, unlike 100 days ago,
the question is now not whether we're going to reduce the
deficit, but how and how much.  The question now is not whether
the government will have a new partnership with the private
sector to shape the economy, but exactly what the details will be
and how much our part will be.

         We've also taken on the issue of health care,
something millions of Americans cried out for last year.  I am so
tired of seeing people -- I got a letter today from a young woman
I shook hands with whose -- literally, her life is on the line
and she cannot get health insurance.  It is wrong that in this
nation we are the only advanced country in the world with 34
million people without health insurance.  It is wrong that
millions of Americans cannot change their jobs without losing
their health insurance, because they or a child or a spouse has
been sick.  It is wrong that the price of health care goes up 2.5
times the rate of inflation every year.  And it is wrong that we
spend 30 percent more of our income than any other country on
Earth on health care and have less to show for it.

         But it is also wrong to assume that there is some
magic, quick answer.  That's why we've been working with a task
force headed by The First Lady, and over 400 people from all
aspects of health care to do something about this.  (Applause.)

         But now, for the American people the issue is no
longer whether we're going to address the health care crisis,
whether we're going to provide security to hard-working, middle
class Americans, whether we're going to cover the people who
aren't covered, whether we're going to control costs, but how are
we going to do it and how fast, and when are we going to begin.
I hope the answer is soon.  And not too soon is soon enough for
me.  (Applause.)

         We used to debate -- there was a lot of discussion
last year about how bad the government was, and it didn't work,
and it was bloated, it needed a change.  Look at the last 100
days.  I've tried to set an example by offering a budget to
reduce the White House staff by 25 percent, by putting the lid on
and reducing the federal bureaucratic expenses, the
administrative expenses of the federal government by over $10
billion.  By moving dramatically to reduce the influence of
special interest on Executive Branch appointments by having the
toughest ethics laws and restrictions on people becoming
lobbyists for other interests when they leave the payroll of the
President of the United States.  (Applause.)  By asking the Vice
President to share the most sweeping review of the way the
federal government works in a generation, with a promise of real
reform and reinventing government -- something else this
organization has long believed in.

         We are moving.  And the Congress is moving to join.
The Congress has voted to cut the administrative costs of running
the Congress, something many of you never thought you would see
happen.  They did that.  The Congress -- the House of
Representatives voted yesterday to give the President of the
United States a modified line-item veto; and I hope the Senate
will follow their lead.  (Applause.)

         I hope soon they will send to my desk the motor
voter bill which will make it easier for young people and other
people to vote and participate in their country's political
process.  (Applause.)  And there will be campaign finance reform
and lobby reform legislation, and a crime bill that will put more
police on the street and give us the capacity we need to take our
communities back.  These things are going on.  The question is no
longer whether we're going to reform the way government works,
but how fast and how much and how well.  And those are the right
questions, my fellow Americans -- good questions to ask.
(Applause.)

         And now, I come to the last, and in many ways the
most important issue that we have tried to address -- the
economy, yes; health care, yes; reform in the way the government
works, yes.  But also what about the American people.  How can
each American make a contribution?  How can each American do the
work that all Americans must, taking responsibility for himself
or herself and growing up into a vibrant community?  We have
tried to address those issues as well.

         The buzz word now people use is empowerment.  I used
to call it responsibility.  I often have said, and I want to
reiterate today, the United States government cannot create an
opportunity for anyone who will not be responsible enough to
seize it.  Opportunity is a two-way street and requires
responsibility.  (Applause.)  That is the only we'll every
rebuild the American community.  (Applause.)

         In the days and months ahead, you will see the
Secretary of Education talk about his remarkable education
program to provide tougher national standards in education, but
also to give people at the grassroots level more flexibility in
making public education work.  You will see the Secretary of
Agriculture and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
talk about how we can empower even the poorest Americans to start
their own businesses, save their own money and take control of
their own future.  You will see other people talking about how we
can reform the welfare system.

         All of these things are at the core of the notion
that we ought to make it possible for every American to live up
to the fullest of his or her God-given ability.  And that is what
in the end national service is all about -- helping ourselves and
helping each other at the same time.  (Applause.)

         On this 100th day of my administration, I want to
recommit myself and those who work with me to the values that
have made our nation without peer in all human history, those of
opportunity, responsibility, community and respect for one
another.

         Today I want to propose applying those values to a
revolution of opportunity for our hard-pressed families and for
those who have been left out.  As a first step we're going to
ease the terms of college loans, helping students from middle and
lower-middle income families to clear a major path to the
American Dream, the path of higher education.  In return we'll
demand responsibility from young people.  We'll make it easier to
borrow money and much easier to pay it off, but this time you
have to pay it off.  You can't just default on the loan.
(Applause.)  And we will also offer the young people of America
the opportunity of paying their loans back by serving their
communities in a new program of national service.

         In just a few days I will send to the Congress two
bills containing our proposals, first to strengthen college
opportunity and to establish national service.  Together they
will revive America's commitment to community and make affordable
the cost of a college education for every American.  It's no
secret that over the last 10 or 12 years the cost of a college
education is about the only essential thing that's gone up even
more rapidly than health care costs.

         And middle class parents, and even upper middle
class parents, not to mention lower income people, have borne the
burden, paying now about five percent of median income just to
put one child through a four year in-state public college.  It
costs an average of over $5,200 a year for that education.  That
means families are depleting savings and many students are faced
with cutting back to a part-time course load or having to drop
out simply because of the cost of a college education.  A college
dropout is now more than twice the high school dropout rate.  We
cannot afford that, and we can do better.  (Applause.)

         I propose a new way to finance college for millions
of students who seek loans every year.  We call it an Excel
Account.  With it, students can repay the loans they take out not
with a percentage of the loan they borrowed, but with a
percentage of their actual earnings.  Now, think about that.  For
students driven into debt -- driven by debt into careers with
high pay and low satisfaction, this can be very liberating.  Take
a student torn, for example, between pursuing a career in
teaching and corporate law.  This student now can at least make
the career choice based on what he or she wants to do, and not
the size of the outstanding student loan; because we propose to
let everybody have the option of paying the student loan back
based on how much they earn, not just how much they owe.  That is
an incredible incentive.  (Applause.)

         However, under the current system, as many of you
know, students faced with big bills or just inconvenient
responsibilities have too often taken the irresponsible route and
defaulted on their loans, or have been found in default because
they couldn't find a job.  Often times there's no serious effort
to collect the loan, because the government guarantees 90 percent
of it.  So if the bank makes the loan, it costs more than 10
percent to go collect it. What's the result?  The taxpayers every
year pay about $3 billion on other people's loans -- money that
could be spent on your education, on the schools here, on the
future of the children here just for bad loans.  It isn't right.
(Applause.)

         Under our system, the Department of Education would
engage the Internal Revenue Service.  We would have the payroll
records.  And you wouldn't be able to beat the bill because you
would have to pay the loan back as a percentage of your income,
if you choose, but you'd have to pay it because you pay taxes and
because we have your records and because you won't be able to get
out of it.  And that is the right thing to do.  (Applause.)

         But these Excel Accounts are just the beginning.  We
hope they will lead more and more Americans not only to seize the
opportunity of a college education, and to exert a stronger sense
of responsibility, but also to seek to serve their communities
through a program of national service.  It was Thomas Jefferson
who first told the American people in essence that the more you
know, the more you owe.  In his words -- and I quote -- "A debt
of service is due from every man to his country proportioned to
the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him."
This statement reminds us that values never go out of fashion,
that civic responsibility is as good for democracy today as it
was when Thomas Jefferson said that, and that if you really want
to be the best citizen of your country, you have to give
something back to your country.  (Applause.)

         With national service, we can literally open a new
world to a new generation of Americans, where higher learning
goes hand-in-hand with the higher purpose of addressing our unmet
needs -- our educational, our social, our environmental needs, to
secure the future that we all will share.  National service will
mark the start of a new era for America in which every citizen,
every one of you, 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.  I say to you, we need
you.

         You know, there's a lot of talk in America today --
and I spend hours every week worrying about the effect that
automation and technology is having on employment.  Indeed, as we
see the productivity of American enterprises rise, their need for
workers goes down because they can do more with computers that
they used to do with people.  So people ask me all the time,
where will we find the jobs for this new generation of Americans?
How can we drive this unemployment rate down?  But if you look
around this country at all the human problems, all the homeless
people, all the environmental waste dumps in our cities and our
rural areas, all the problems that we've got in every community
in America; and see you all the kids that are in trouble -- 15
million of them at risk and needing somebody to pay attention to.
You know where the work needs to be.  (Applause.)

         Late last night when I was preparing to come down
here, I took a little time off at my desk and I read the letters
that my staff had given me.  And I got a letter from a woman who
grew up with me.  I've known her since we were in grade school.
And she said -- in this letter, she said, you know, someone asked
me a couple of days ago:  How are we going to save all these kids
in this country that are in trouble?  And she said, without even
thinking, I blurted out, the same way we lost them, one at a
time.  (Applause.)

         And so today, my fellow Americans, I issue a call to
national service, to Americans young and old, Democrats and
Republicans, white, black, Hispanic, Asian and you name it, all
of us that make up this great nation.  I call you to national
service because it is only that together we can advance a
tradition rooted in our people's history, helping our people to
help themselves.

         And with national service, we can rejoin the
citizens in communities of this country, bonding each to the
other with the glue of common purpose and real patriotism.

         We have many young people here today, students of
this place of higher learning where we're gathered.  In you, I
know I see the builders of tomorrow.  And I say to you, as good
as the education is here, and at the other great institutions
represented here today, and all across America, the power of
academic learning is incomplete unless every American can share
in it.  That is the only way we can lift our whole country up.
(Applause.)

         I say to you further that our country needs you.  We
need your knowledge and your initiative and your energy.  We need
you because you are still stripped and free of the cynicism that
has paralyzed too many of your parents and your grandparents, and
led us to spend too much time talking about what we can't do
instead of seizing what we can.  You are not afflicted by that,
and I pray you never will be.  (Applause.)

         We need to make sure that we can use your energies
and your talents.  One way is by making sure that the low wages
that public service often offers won't be a route to the
poorhouse for someone with college loans.  As I said, we're going
to make it easier for you to pay off your college loan.  But
also, if you engage in national service, we'll make it easier for
you to pay off a college debt or to earn credits toward it before
you got to college of while you're in college.

         For each term of service, one or two years,
participants in national service programs will receive benefits
that can be used toward past, present or future obligations,
whether for college or advanced job training.  You can get a
college education and, in addition, through service perhaps the
best experience of your life.  That's a pretty good investment.

         I've talked a lot about the students here.  And they
do play a large part in this plan, but they're not alone.  Here
in New Orleans many of you already know what it means to make a
difference in your community because you've just been doing that
for a long time.  And I'm very proud -- as I said, I'm going to
get another cheer about this, but one of the models that I had a
little something to do with is the Delta Service Corps, and I
appreciate what they're doing.  (Applause.)

         There are people here working to restore housing.
There are people here working in other ways.  I just want to
mention three.  Lawrence Williams, a team leader in the Corps who
has helped to restore housing for low-income people with the
local Habitat for Humanity Project.  Jane Sullivan, a retired
public schoolteacher and a former VISTA volunteer -- (applause)
-- who helps rural communities gain better access to health care,
housing and other assistance.  And a young person I met just a
few moments ago, Parris Moore-Brown, who works with parents in
housing programs for drug awareness outreach and now plans to
work with the physically challenged.  She says that she has no
tolerance for self-pity, and she lives what she preaches.  She
hasn't been slowed by what her birth dealt her -- a brittle bone
disorder that has left her as an adult, and by her own measure,
four feet, two and a quarter inches tall.  Where are you?
(Laughter and applause.)  Stand up -- so we can see you.
(Applause.)  After my meeting with her and the other young people
today, I'd say she stands about 10 feet tall in America today.
(Applause.)

         There are tens of thousands of people like Parris
and Jane and Lawrence and those of you who are here with these
service programs who are dying to be called to a new season of
service, and we want to do that.

         Another part of our plan is to build on the National
and Community Service Act that was passed in 1990, and the
already flourishing programs that are started and up and going in
every state in this country.

         National service is not going to be a federal
bureaucracy; it's going to operate at the grassroots with the
real problems of real people, and with the programs that work
today.  It will be locally driven, because I trust the
communities in this country to make decisions for themselves.
(Applause.)

         I also want to say that, while we want very much to
have young people in this program who are working toward earning
credits for college or paying their college loans off through
national service, we need so many other people in service
projects.  We need our older people who never will go back to
college, but have a lifetime of experience and energy to give to
the young people of this country.  (Applause.)  We need young
people who may not be old enough to drive a car or to qualify for
this program, but can have a dramatic impact on fellow students
by helping them learn better study habits or just keeping them
out of trouble.  (Applause.)
I've learned already that as the parent of a teenager, that the
peers can have a big impact on the shape and quality of a child's
life.  Even a child can serve in programs that now begin as early
as kindergarten.  We have no upper age limit in America, or lower
age limit for being a good public servant.

         To be successful, this national program will need
the broad-based support of all the American people -- parents and
children, churches and synagogues, colleges and universities, and
the potential providers and the beneficiaries of our services.
In this vision of national service, everyone is a partner.  And
that includes, of course, the business community in this country.
We need businesses to contribute to the effort, to match federal
money and local programs, and to contribute at the national
level, helping to make sure that the programs we choose are good
ones indeed.

         What will set this legislation apart from other
similar efforts in the past that rewarded service to our country
is that it will totally eliminate the federal government
bureaucracy.  And, believe me, no one will miss that.
(Applause.)

         We're going to set up a national service corporation
that will run like a big venture capital outfit, not like a
bureaucracy.  And communities, as I said, will have the
flexibility to make their own programs work.  I think that I've
seen enough today and I've heard enough of your applause to know
that the American people are hungry for a chance to serve their
country and to reap the rewards of civic pride and education in
the process.  In answering this call, our people are following a
proud history.  More than a century ago, President Abraham
Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, and the frontier of this
country was settled by countless families who took up the
challenge in exchange for 100 acres to call their own.

         In the 1930s, President Roosevelt enlisted millions
of young people to restore the environment through the Civilian
Conservation Corps.  FDR gave others a chance to support
themselves through the buildings made possible by the Works
Project Administration.  I was in the United States Justice
Department just yesterday, a building built in 1934 by people who
were giving service to their country, and it's still a beautiful
monument to the legacy of that kind of service.

         The parents of the baby boom had the GI Bill, which
was one of the best investments our government ever made.  A
generation ago, the young people of my generation saw suffering
in Latin America, Asia, and Africa, and many rushed to the
challenge laid down by President Kennedy when he created the
Peace Corps, which became our country's greatest ambassador --
building bridges of understanding to far off cultures.  And now,
three decades later, a challenge has been presented to all of
you.  A new challenge and an old one -- as old as America and as
new as your future.


         A year ago when the Democratic Leadership Council
met in New Orleans, I asked -- (gap) -- the following question:
I said, I want you to think about what kind of citizens you're
going to be -- (gap)  -- administration that this was the day the
American people were empowered to renew their nation and their
communities, to seize a better future for themselves, and to help
all of us to be what the -- (gap) -- out of helping our fellow
citizens and ourselves to become what we ought to be, this
country will be all right.  (Applause.)

         Thank you very much, and God bless you all.
(Applause.)

                                 END2:44 P.M. CDT