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Article 4393 of alt.politics.clinton:
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Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: RESPONSIBILITY/REBUILD AMERICA
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Date: Monday, 17 Aug 1992 16:39:27 CDT
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"The New Covenant:
Responsibility and Rebuilding the American Community"
Remarks of Gov. Bill Clinton
Georgetown University
October 23, 1991

Thank you all for being here today. You are living in revolutionary
times. When I was here, America sought to contain Communism,
not roll it back. Most respected academics held that once a country
"went Communist," the loss of freedom was permanent and
irreversible. Yet in the last three years, we've seen the Berlin Wall
come down, Germany reunified, all of Eastern Europe abandon
Communism, a coup in the Soviet Union fail and the Soviet Union
itself disintegrate, liberating the Baltics and other republics. Now the
Soviet Foreign Minister is trying to help our Secretary of State make
peace in the Middle East. And in the space of one year, Lech Walesa
and Vaclav Havel both came to this city to thank America for
supporting their quest for freedom. Nelson Mandela walked out of a
jail in South Africa he entered before I entered Georgetown in 1964.
He now wants a Bill of Rights like ours for his country.

We should be celebrating. All around the world, the American
Dream -- political freedom, market economics, national
independence -- is ascendant. Everything your parents and
grandparents stood for from World War II on has been rewarded.

Yet we're not celebrating. Why? Because our people fear that while
the American Dream reigns supreme abroad, it is dying here at
home. We're losing jobs and wasting opportunities. The very fiber of
our nation is breaking down: Families are coming apart, kids are
dropping out of school, drugs and crime dominate our streets. And
our leaders here in Washington are doing nothing to turn America
around. Our political system rotates between being the butt of jokes
and the object of scorn. Frustration produces calls for term limits
from voters who think they can't vote incumbents out, resentment
produces votes for David Duke -- not just from racists, but from
voters so desperate for change, they'll support the most anti-
establishment message, even from an ex-Klansman who was inspired
by Adolf Hitler. We've got to rebuild our political life together
before demagogues and racists and those who pander to the worst in
us bring this country down.

People once looked to our President and Congress to bring us
together, solve problems, and make progress. Now, in the face of
massive challenges, our government stands discredited, our people
disillusioned. There's a hole in our politics where a sense of common
purpose used to be.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public
obligations, special interests over the common good, wealth and
fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a gilded age of
greed, selfishness, irresponsibility, excess, and neglect.

S&L crooks stole billions of dollars in other people's money.
Pentagon contractors and HUD consultants stole from the taxpayers.
Many big corporate executives raised their own salaries when their
companies were losing money or their workers were losing their jobs.
Middle-class families worked longer hours for less money and spent
more on health care, housing, education, and taxes. Poverty rose.
Many inner-city streets were taken over by crime and drugs, welfare
and despair. Family responsibility became an oxymoron for deadbeat
fathers, who were more likely to make their car payments than pay
their child support.

And government, which should have been setting an example, was
even worse. Congress raised its pay and guarded its perks while most
Americans were working harder for less money. Two Republican
Presidents elected on a promise of fiscal responsibility advanced
budget policies that more than tripled the national debt. Congress
went along with that, too. Taxes were lowered on the wealthiest
people whose incomes rose, and raised on middle class people whose
incomes fell.

And through it all, millions of decent, ordinary people who worked
hard, played by the rules, and took responsibility for their own
actions were falling behind, living a life of struggle without reward or
security. For 12 years, the forgotten middle class watched their
economic interests ignored and their values run into the ground.
Nothing illustrates this more clearly, in the 1980s, than the fact that
charitable giving by middle-class families went up as their incomes
went down, while charitable giving by the wealthiest
Americans went down as their incomes went up. Responsibility went
unrewarded and so did hard work. It's no wonder so many kids
growing up on the street think it makes more sense to join a gang
and deal drugs than to stay in school and go to work. The fast buck
was glorified from Wall Street to Main Street to Mean Street.

To turn America around, we need a new approach founded on our
most sacred principles as a nation, with a vision for the future. We
need a New Covenant, a solemn agreement between the people and
their government, to provide opportunity for everybody, inspire
responsibility throughout our society, and restore a sense of
community to this great nation. A New Covenant to take
government back from the powerful interests and the bureaucracy,
and give this country back to ordinary people.

More than two hundred years ago, the founders outlined our first
social compact between government and the people, not just
between lords and kings. More than a century ago, Abraham Lincoln
gave his life to maintain the Union the compact created. Sixty years
ago, Franklin Roosevelt renewed that promise with a New Deal that
offered opportunity in return for hard work.

Today we need to forge a New Covenant that will repair the
damaged bond between the people and their government and restore
our basic values -- the notion that our country has a responsibility to
help people get ahead, that citizens have not only the right but a
responsibility to rise as far and as high as their talents and
determination can take them, and that we're all in this together. We
must make good on the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, "A
debt of service is due from every man to his country proportional to
the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him."

Make no mistake -- this New Covenant means change -- change in
our party, change in our national leadership, and change in our
country. Far away from Washington, in your hometowns and mine,
people have lost faith in the ability of government to change their
lives for the better. Out there, you can hear the quiet, troubled voice
of the forgotten middle class, lamenting that government no longer
looks out for their interests or honors their values -- like individual
responsibility, hard work, family, community.  They think their
government takes more from them than it gives back, and looks the
other way when special interests only take from this country and give
nothing back. And they're right.  This New Covenant can't be
between the politicians and the established interests. It can't be
another backroom deal between the people in power and the people
who keep them there. This New Covenant can only be ratified in the
people in the 1992 election. And that's why I'm running for
President.

Some people think it's old-fashioned to talk like this. Some people
even think I am naive to suggest that we can restore the American
Dream through a covenant between people and their government.
But I believe with all my heart after 11 years of work as Governor,
working every day to create opportunity and jobs and improve
education and deal with all the problems that we all know so much
about -- I believe that the only way we can hold this country
together, and move boldly forward into the future, is to do it
together with a New Covenant.

Over 25 years ago, Professor Carroll Quigley taught in his Western
Civilization class here at Georgetown that the defining idea of our
culture in general and our country in particular is "future
preference," the idea that the future can be better than the present,
and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.


I hope they still teach that lesson here, and I hope you believe it,
because I don't think we can save America without it.

In the weeks to come, I will come back to Georgetown and outline
my plans to rebuild our economy, regain our competitive leadership
in the world, restore the forgotten middle class, and reclaim the
future for the next generation. I will put forth my views on how to
promote our national security and foreign policy interests after the
Cold War. And I will tell you in clear terms what I believe the
President and the Congress owe the people in this New Covenant for
change.

But I can tell you, based on my long experience in public life, there
will never be a government program for every problem. Much of
what holds us together and moves us ahead is the daily assumption
of personal responsibility by millions of Americans from all walks of
life. I can promise to do a hundred different things for you as
President. But none of them will make any difference unless we all
do more as citizens. And, today, I want to talk about the
responsibilities we owe to ourselves, to one another, and to our
nation.

It's been 30 years since a Democrat ran for President and asked
something of all the American people. I intend to challenge you to
do more and to do better.

We must go beyond the competing ideas of the old political
establishment: beyond every man for himself on the one hand and
the right to something for nothing on the other.

We need a New Covenant that will challenge all our citizens to be
responsible. The New Covenant will say to our corporate leaders at
the top of the ladder: We'll promote economic growth and the free
market, but we're not going to help you diminish the middle class
and weaken the economy. We'll support your efforts to increase
profits and jobs through quality products and services, but we're
going to hold you responsible to be good corporate citizens, too.

The New Covenant will say to people on welfare: We're going to
provide the training and education and health care you need, but if
you can work, you've got to go to work, because you can no longer
stay on welfare forever.

The New Covenant will say to the hard-working middle class and
those who aspire to it: We're going to guarantee you access to a
college education, but if you get that help, you've got to give
something back to your country.

And the New Covenant will challenge all of us in public service: We
have a solemn responsibility to honor the values and promote the
interests of the people who elected us, and if we don't, we don't
belong in government anymore.

This New Covenant must begin here in Washington. The New
Covenant will literally revolutionize government and fundamentally
change its relationship to people. People don't want some top-down
bureaucracy telling them what to do anymore. That's one reason
they tore down the Berlin Wall and threw out the Communist
regimes in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Now, the New Covenant will challenge our government to change
its way of doing business, too. The American people need a
government that works at a price they can afford. The Republicans
have been in charge of the government for 12 years. They've
brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.  Democrats who
want the government to do more -- and I'm one of them -- have a
heavy responsibility to show that we're going to spend the taxpayer's
money wisely and with discipline.

I want to make government more efficient and more effective by
eliminating unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and cutting
administrative costs, and by giving people more choices in the
services they get, and empowering them to make those choices.
That's what we've tried to do in Arkansas -- balancing our budget
every year, improving services, and treating taxpayers like our
customers and our bosses, giving them more choices in public
schools, child care centers, and services for the elderly.     The New
Covenant must challenge Congress to act responsibly. And here
again, Democrats must lead the way. Because they want to use
government to help people, Democrats have to put Congress in
order: Congress should live by the laws it applies to other
workplaces. No more midnight pay raises. Congressional pay
shouldn't go up while the pay of working Americans is going down.
Let's clamp down on campaign spending and open the airwaves to
encourage real political debate instead of paid political assassination.
No more bounced checks. No more bad restaurant debts. No more
fixed tickets.  Service in Congress is privilege enough.

We can't go on like this. We have to honor, reward and reflect the
work ethic, not the power grab. Responsibility is for everybody, and
it begins here in the nation's capital.

The New Covenant will also challenge the private sector. The most
irresponsible people in the 1980s were those in business who abused
their position at the top of the totem pole. This is my message to
the business community: As President, I'm going to do everything I
can to make it easier for your company to compete in the world,
with a better trained workforce, cooperation between labor and
management, fair and strong trade policies, and incentives to invest
in America's economic growth. But I want the jetsetters and the
feather bedders of corporate America to know that if you sell your
companies and your workers and your country down the river, you'll
get called on the carpet. That's what the President's bully pulpit is
for.

All of you who are going into business, it is a noble endeavor. It is
the thing that makes this country run. The private sector creates
jobs, not the public sector. But you have to know that the people
with the responsibility in the private sector should think it's simply
not enough to obey the letter of the law and make as much money
as you can. It's wrong for executives to do what so many did in the
'80s. The biggeset companies raised their pay by four times the
percentage their workers' pay went up and three times the
percentage their profits went up. It's wrong to drive a company into
the ground and have the chief executive bail out with a golden
parachute to a cushy life.

The average CEO at a major American corporation is paid about 100
times as much as the average worker - - compare that to two
countries doing much better than we are in the world economy. In
Germany it's 23 to 1, and in Japan, which just completed 58
months of untrammeled economic growth, it's 17 to 1. And our
government today rewards that excess with a tax break for executive
pay, no matter how high it is. That's wrong.  If a company wants to
overpay its executives and underinvest in the future, it shouldn't get
any special treatment from Uncle Sam. If a company wants to
transfer jobs abroad and cut the security of working people, it
shouldn't get special treatment from the Treasury. In the 1980s, we
didn't do enough to help our companies to compete and win in a
global economy. We did too much to transfer wealth away from
hard-working middle-class people to the rich without good reason.
That's got to stop.  There should be no more deductibility for
irresponsibility.

The New Covenant will also challenge the hard-working middle-class
families of America.  Their challenge centers around work and
education. I know Americans worry about the quality of education
in this country and want the best for their children. The Clinton
Administration will set high national standards based on international
competition for what everybody ought to know, and a national
examination system to measure whether they're learning it. It's not
enough to put money into schools. We need to challenge the
schools to produce and we've got to insist on results.

I just came from Thomas Jefferson Junior High School here in
Washington, and the principal of that school, Vera White, I think is
here with me today. I've been to that school three times in the last
five years. That school is in a building that was built when Grant was
President. They have the plaster models of the Jefferson Memorial in
the school auditorium. But every time I've been in that school, you
could eat lunch off every floor in the school. There is a spirit of
learning that pervades the atmosphere. Almost everyone in the
school comes from an ordinary family in Washington--it's almost 100
percent minority.  But in several years that school has won the
National Math Council's competition going all the way to the finals
for junior high school performance in math. And every time I go
there I'm just overwhelmed by the spirit that exists from a teacher's
and principal's point of view, because they know that they're going
to produce, and they don't make excuses for the problems that the
kids bring to the classroom; they open those kids to a brighter
world. We need more of that.

But we also have to recognize that teachers can't do it all. We must
challenge all parents and children to believe all children can learn.
And here is the biggest challenge of all: Too many American parents
raise their kids to believe that how much they learn depends on the
IQ that God gave them and how much money their family makes.
Yet in the countries we are competing against for the future, children
are raised to believe that how much they learn depends on how hard
they work, and how much their parents encourage them to learn.

The New Covenant will challenge students of America to stay in
school. Students who drop out of school or fail to learn as much as
they can are not just letting down themselves and their families.
They're failing their communities, because from that point on,
chances are they're subtracting from society, not adding to it. In
Arkansas, we've tried to enhance responsibility for students by saying
that if they drop out for no good reason, they lose the privilege of a
driver's license.

The New Covenant means new challenges for every young person. I
want to establish a system of voluntary national service for all
Americans. In a Clinton Administration, we'll put forth a domestic
GI Bill that will say to the middle class as well as low-income people:
We want you to go to college, we'll pay for it, it will be the best
money we ever spent, but you've got to give something back to your
country in return. As President, I'll set up a trust fund out of which
any American can borrow money for a college education, so long as
they pay it back either as a small percentage of their income over
time or with a couple of years of national service as teachers, police
officers, child care workers -- doing work our country desperately
needs.

And education doesn't stop in school. Adults have a responsibility to
keep learning so they can stay ahead of the competition, too. All of
us are going to have to work smarter in the years to come, and that
will require new forms of cooperation in the workplace between
management and workers, and a continuing effort to move toward
high-performance work organizations.

There's a special challenge in the New Covenant for the young men
and women who live in America's most troubled urban
neighborhoods, the children like those I met in Chicago and Los
Angeles who live in fear of being forced to join a gang or getting
shot going to and from school.

Many of these young people believe this country has ignored them
for too long, and they're right. Many of them think America unfairly
blames them for every wrong in our society -- for drugs, crime,
poverty, the breakup of the family and the breakdown of the schools
-- and they're right. They worry that because their face is of a
different color, their only choice in life is jail or welfare or a dead-end
job, that being a minority in an inner city is a guarantee of failure.
But they're wrong -- and when I'm President, I'm going to do my
best to prove they're wrong.

I know these young people can overcome anything they set their
mind to. I believe America needs their strength, their intelligence,
and their humanity. And because I believe in them and what they
can contribute to our society, they must not be let off the hook. All
society can offer them is a chance to develop their God-given
abilities. They have to do the rest. Anybody who tells them
otherwise is lying -- and they know it.

As President, I'll see that they get the same deal as everyone else:
they've got to play by the rules, stay off drugs, stay in school and
keep out of the streets. They've got to stop having children if they're
not prepared to support them. Governments don't raise children.
People do.

And for those young people who do get into trouble, we'll give
them one chance to avoid prison, by setting up community boot
camps for first-time non-violent offenders -- where they can learn
discipline, get drug treatment if necessary, continue their education,
and do useful work for their community. A second chance to be a
first-rate citizen.

The New Covenant must be pro-work. That means people who
work shouldn't be poor. In a Clinton Administration, we'll do
everything we can to break the cycle of dependency and help the
poor climb out of poverty. First, we need to make work pay by
expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor,
creating savings accounts that make it easier for poor people even on
welfare to save, and supporting microenterprise grants for those who
want to start a small business. At the same time, we need to assure
all Americans that they'll have access to health care when they go to
work.

The New Covenant can break the cycle of welfare. Welfare should be
a second chance, not a way of life. In a Clinton Administration,
we're going to put an end to welfare as we know it. I want to erase
the stigma of welfare for good by restoring a simple, dignified
principle: no one who can work can stay on welfare forever.

We'll still help people who can't help themselves, and those who
need education and training and child care. But if people can work,
they'll have to do so. We'll give them all the help they need for up
to two years. But after that, if they're able to work, they'll have to
take a job in the private sector, or start earning their way through
community service. That way, we'll restore the covenant that welfare
was first meant to be: to give temporary help to people who've fallen
on hard times.

If the New Covenant is pro-work, it must also be pro-family. That
means we must demand the toughest possible child support
enforcement. We need an administration that will give state agencies
that collect child support full law enforcement authority, and find
new ways of catching deadbeats. In Arkansas, we passed a law this
year that says if you owe more than a thousand dollars in child
support, we're going to report you to every credit agency in the
state. People shouldn't be able to borrow money before they take
care of their children.

Finally, the President has the greatest responsibility of all -- to bring
us together, not drive us apart. For 12 years, this President and his
predecessor have divided us against each other -- pitting rich against
poor, black against white, women against men -- creating a country
where we no longer recognize that we're all in this together. They
have profited by fostering an atmosphere of blame and denial instead
of building an ethic of responsibility. They had a chance to bring out
the best in us and instead they appealed to the worst in us.

Nothing exemplifies this more clearly than the battle over the Civil
Rights Act of 1991. You know from what I've already said today
that I can't be for quotas. I'm for responsibility at every turn. That
bill is not a quota bill. When the Civil Rights Act was in place from
1964 to 1987, I never had a single employer in my state say "it's a
quota bill." We need rules of workplace fairness for the 70% of new
entrants in our workforce who will be women and minorities in the
decade of the '90s. That's what that bill is for.

Why does the President refuse to let a civil rights bill pass? Because
he knows that the people he is dependent on for his electoral
majority--white, working-class men and women, mostly men--have
had their incomes decline in the 1980s, and they may return to their
natural home, to someone who offers them real opportunity. And so
he is dredging up the same old tactic that the hard Right has
employed in my part of the country, in the South, since I was a
child. When everything gets tight, and you think you're going to
lose those people, you find the most economically insecure white
people, and you scare the living daylights out of them.

That is wrong. This President turned away John Danforth, who
shepherded Clarence Thomas' nomination through the Senate. John
Danforth begged him for a civil rights bill. He said no. He turned
away the Business Roundtable, an organization of corporate
executives, largely Republican, who said we need a civil rights bill.
He said no. And today, in the press it's reported that he turned
away his own minority leader in the United States Senate, Senator
Bob Dole, who wanted a civil rights bill.

This man does not want a bill. He wants an issue to drive a stake
into the heart of America and it's wrong. And I won't let him get
away with it.

I pledge to you that I'm not going to let the Republicans get away
with this cynical scam anymore. A New Covenant means it's my
responsibility and the responsibility of every American in this country
to fight back against the politics of division and bring this country
together.

After all, that is what's special about America. We want to be part of
a nation that's coming together, not coming apart. We want to be
part of a community where people look out for each other, not just
for themselves. We want to be part of a nation that brings out the
best in us, not the worst. And we believe that the only limit to what
we can do is what our leaders are willing to ask of us and what we
are willing to expect of ourselves.

Nearly sixty years ago, in a famous speech to the Commonwealth
Club in the final months of his 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt
outlined a new compact that gave hope to a nation mired in the
Great Depression. The role of government, he said, was to promise
every American the right to make a living. The people's role was to
do their best to make the most of it. He said: "Faith in America
demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract.
In the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common
load."

That's what our hope is today: A New Covenant to shoulder our
common load. When people assume responsibility and shoulder that
common load, they acquire a dignity they never knew before.  When
people go to work, they rediscover a pride that was lost. When
fathers pay their child support, they restore a connection they and
their children need. When students work harder, they find out they
all can learn and do as well as anyone else on Earth. When corporate
managers put their workers and their long-term profits ahead of their
own paychecks, their companies do well, and so do they. When the
privilege of serving is enough of a perk for people in Congress, and
the President finally assumes responsibility for America's problems,
we'll not only stop doing wrong, we'll begin to do what is right to
move America forward.

And that is what this election is really all about -- forging a New
Covenant of change that will honor middle- class values, restore the
public trust, create a new sense of community, and make America
work again.  Thank you.