REMARKS BY GOVERNOR BILL CLINTON EDUCATION ADDRESS ROCKVILLE, MD SEPTEMBER 2, 1992 Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I ought to quit while I'm ahead, just rest on their speeches. I want to thank all of you for being here. I have enjoyed seeing the signs in the crowd, the report card over here. I like the "no more status quo, n-o-e-q-u-o-e" back there. And I pulled up, someone gave me a piece of paper explaining a new club, along with a button, a Hillary Clinton Fan Club button. I appreciate that. I want to thank you all for being here today. I want to thank the president and the chairman of the board of trustees and all the faculty and the students of this fine college for having me here, for all of you turning out, for your concern about our future. Yesterday, I talked about the differences between me and the President in the way we would handel the health care crisis and what his proposals will mean for the elderly of our country. Today I want to talk about the impact of this election on education, searching for ways to expand educational opportunity. I was at the East Los Angles Community College not very long ago, which is a big answer to what to do about the riots in Los Angeles--give those kids a chance to be part of that kind of two-year program that will guarantee them a better future. And there I found young people, mostly Hispanics, some African-Americans, some white, some Asian American, people you didn't read about after the riots, people who did riot, people who didn't burn, people who didn't loot, instead going to overcrowded makeshift classrooms bursting at the seams, dealing with all the cutbacks in student aid and programming and classes that all of you are experiencing here, struggling take the American dream real for themselves, struggling to rebuild their communities. The President has said many times that there is a fundamental difference between us in this election, and he is certainly right about that, especially on the issue of education. The economic philosophy of this administration is that you make the economy grow by putting more and more wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people at the top, getting government out of the way and trusting them to make the right decisions, to invest and to create jobs. I believe to the to make our economy grow is to invest in our people, our children's education, our worker's skills, our family's health care, our plant and equipment, our best ideas in research and development. They believe that you make an economy grow by putting money first. I believe you make an economy grow in a global economy by putting people first. You can chart the differences between us by seeing whose won and whose lost; whose been helped and whose gotten hurt, while this crowd has won our government over the last twelve years. For twelve years they have rewarded people who cut deals and cut corners; who make money by pushing paper instead of those who make money by investing in new plants, new equipment, new businesses; those who work hard, play by the rules and pay their taxes. And for the first time since the roaring twenty's, the top one percent of the American people now control more wealth than the bottom ninety percent. But while the rich have been winners, no American would have begrudged them that since we all want, in this free enterprise system to at least believe our children might grow up to be rich. No one would have begrudged that if the rest of us had been helped. But in 1980, we had the highest wages in the world, now we're thirteenth. The census document itself shows that most Americans are working longer work weeks for lower wages; paying higher taxes on lower income; paying a bigger percentage of their income for housing and for health care; and yes for education. Today, the United States Commerce Department issued its report on adjusted figures for 1991, in which it says that in 1991, there was a two percent real drop in the incomes of the American people. The first drop since 1982. The worst drop in over thirty years. I will say that again, inflation was four point four percent, incomes went up two point two percent, there was a two percent decline in the earnings of the American people, even though they worked more hours than the year before or the decade before. And the average family is actually spending more hours on the job than they were twenty years ago. Now, that is a record. I'm proud of the fact that my state, which has been at the bottom of America's per capita for a hundred and fifty years, ranked fourth in income growth in 1991 and first in job growth over the last year. I say that only because what I'm sure was an unintentional omission at the Republican Convention to put that fact before the American people. But I can tell you that I got into this race for president because most of my folks are working harder for less too. And unless we have a fundamentally different approach to what it takes for all of us to do better in America; to see the American dream, we will all fall further behind. If you look at what they propose for the future as to compared to what our competitors are doing, the differences are stark. For example, everybody in this audience, knows in general, not specifically, that the high-wage, high growth countries of the world--Germany and the rest of the European countries and northern European countries, countries like Denmark--which a group of international businessmen said earlier this year had a stronger economic performance than America, now. Or countries like, Japan, you know what they do, don't you? They invest more in education. They invest more in continuous training. They have closer partnership between government, business, labor and education. They continuously invest in modern plant and equipment and research and development. And everybody's on the same side, trying to figure out how to get the most out of every human being. Now, that is their strategy. That is my strategy for America. That is what we pioneered. If you contrast that to what we've been promised for the next four years, going back to the Houston Convention, what did they say? Give us four more years and on top of this four hundred billion dollar deficit, we'll give you another across the board tax cut, heavily weighed toward the wealthy. A short term capital gains tax cut for the rich, which makes no distention between investment and buying race horses and vacation homes. And we'll tell you how we'll pay for it later. Give us until January and we'll come up with a budget cut. Now, that was their line. That was their line. That's what they said. And then when asked after Houston, well, how are you going to pay for it? We got a four hundred billion dollar deficit. How are you going to pay for more tax cuts. They said, "Spending cuts to be announced after January, trust us." Now, this is an administration that wants you to trust them about spending cuts with your future; That recently cared so much about protecting the wealthy that they asked the IRS to ease up on auditing the wealthy and spend more time auditing the middle class. This administration, last week, and this President accused me of being a fear monger. That's their word; because I want to crack down on tax evasion of foreign countries doing business in the United States. Now, let me tell, you this is not foreign bashing. I have actively sought foreign investment in my state. I welcome it as a way of integrating American into the global economy and providing jobs for Americans. And after, all that's where a lot of the money is today. Thanks to the policies of the last twelve years. But, here's what I ask for. You put yourself in my position. You got a four hundred billion dollar deficit. You have to figure out how to deal with that and increase investment at the same time. And here are the facts: In the last ten years, foreign corporations doing business in America have had their incomes go up, sixty-five percent. And their tax payments go down by fifteen percent. Now, if you're income goes up by sixty-five percent, will your taxes go down by fifteen percent? If you work for an American company, a small business here in Maryland, if your income goes up by sixty-five percent, will your tax liability go down by fifteen percent? No. So, just because you can't engage in some financial ledger domain and park some of your money, somewhere else. I think that everybody who does business here; makes money here; makes a good profit here, ought to be taxed on a fair basis. I don't think that's fear mongering. But the main point is, these people want us to buy the same old thing we've been buying for twelve years, times two. Right? Here we are with a four hundred billion dollar deficit and we cut our investment into the future, while we quadruple the deficit, and they want us to do it, just one more time. Yesterday, I talked about the specific recommendations that this administration had made to help veterans and the elderly instead of dealing with the fundamental causes of the health care crisis and the deficit. Today, I want to talk about what is going to happen in education, depending on the outcome of this election. And keep in mine, as Mr. Cornelius said, "its been a cutback, already, in the federal commitment to education. We're spending a thirty percent less of the federal budget on education, than we were in 1980. And every time I say this, the administration says we spend more on education than anybody in the world. Well, the truth is that there are nine or ten countries that spend a higher percent of their income on kindergarten through twelfth grade education than anybody on the world. We spend more on higher education than anybody in the world. But because of the way we spend it, the drop out rate from college is more than twice the high school drop out rate, because we have priced it out of range for so many Americans. And that's what we have to change. Look at the record of this administration in higher education. After a decade of which tuition cost were the only basis in the family's market basket of education needs, it went up faster than health care. This President tried to cut back on grants and loans that help millions of young people from poor and middle class families. If Congress had let him get a way with it, George Bush would have cut off Pell Grants for over four hundred thousand students, this year alone. He tried to change the law so that if you make ten thousand dollars a year, you're too rich for a college grant from the federal government. Even though if you make three hundred thousand, you still need a short term capital gains cut. He proposed to cut over four hundred thousand people off the Pell Grants Program. His ninety three budget cut college aid, seventy nine million dollars. And he vetoed a bill which would let people deduct the interest that they pay on their student loan, from their tax burden. And let them use their IRA savings for college costs. The bill, also, by the way, would have given new incentives for manufacturers to adopt new investments in plant and equipment; give a boost to small business; give a boost to research and development in a country that doesn't do enough of it. Why did he veto the bill? Because it paid for all those investments by asking the wealthiest two percent of Americans to pay slightly more and giving middle class families with kids a tax break. And so, the bill was vetoed. In his Mid Session Budget Review, which he embraced eagerly, just a few days ago, George Bush recommended that over three million students who received federal loans, pay over two thousand dollars more in interest on their college loans than they're paying under present law starting, even before they get their college diploma. And again, all of this is before they figure out how to pay for their across the board tax cuts, targeted to wealthiest. Senator Mikulski and Senator Sarbanes down here, nodding, they know where that money is coming from, its coming right out of your hide. If you do it. Look what this college has already faced as a result of budget cuts and a weak economy. You know, first hand, that as federal money to the states has dried up and states have had less money because of the weaken economy, because we have no national, economic strategy. Budgets have been stretched thinner and thinner. And in Maryland, when something had to give, one of the things was this college. You've seen class sizes increased, evening classes cut, staff reduced, and for the first time in history, you will have to limit enrollment. Now, let me tell you how important that is, not just for those of you who will be affected, but for the rest of us, Americans. All of you know that we have a shorter school year in public schools than any country except Belgium-- any advanced country. All other nations go to school longer. So, not surprisingly, as the census documents prove, the only American workers, younger workers who are really competitive in terms of global economy and who get good wages are those that not only graduate from high school but get at least two years of further training. The census proves that if you get two years of further training, you're likely to get a job with an income that goes up. And if you don't you're likely to get a job with an income that goes down. So, all of America's economic future, our total productivity growth; our ability to generate wealth; our ability to support one another, depends on now in this global economy, our capacity to offer one hundred percent of our high school graduates and our older workers coming back, the opportunity to come to a place like this. And we're cutting it off. And its a mistake. I want everyone of you to just think in your minds, if you had the chance with a four hundred billion dollar deficit, with your country's economy growing much more slowly than many other nations, to decide the course for your country. That included another across the board tax cut or an investment that would teach every adult with a job to read within the next five years; give everybody a chance to get a community college diploma--at least two years. And give everybody the chance to go to college and not drop out for financial reasons, which course would you choose? Anybody who understands the world would choose the course of education. Anybody. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as Shayla indicated in her introduction, if we were really to talk about everything I think ought to be done in education, we would be here until tomorrow at this time. And I won't do that to you. Let me talk about two things that could affect this college and every school in America and most importantly, the people of this country. I have recommended a number of educational advances, starting with fully funding for Headstart and going into new technologies and new opportunities in our public schools. I want to talk about what we should do for those who are out of high school. And I just want to ask you to focus on one or two things. Number one, we ought to set up a system where the federal government goes into partnership with the states in the private sector, both business and labor; in which everybody who graduates from high school who does not want to go to a four year college at least has access to two years of further education and training --either in a community college, in a vocational program or on the job. And we should share the cost. One hundred percent of the people need to do that. Everybody who is at work today, who is willing to go back to school, should have the opportunity to be a part of this. You think of what would happen to America's per capita income if everybody with a job today was taught to read at the high school level and had access to a program at this college, here. Think what would happen. And it wouldn't be very expensive. Number two, I have proposed a program that the President has criticized roundly---although, I don't think that they understand it. I saw a special on one of the television networks last night when I got to Baltimore to my hotel room-- talking about the need to constantly retrain the work force. And the fact that American workers spend about two percent of their time in retraining as compared with ten percent for the Germans and the Japanese. Now, here is my proposal, a modest one compared to what our competitors are doing. The average American company spends one to one and a half percent of payroll on retraining. But in America, most of that money, seventy percent to be exact is concentrated on the top ten percent of the workforce in any company. In our competing countries, what they do is to push that money down to the frontline workers because they know that's where the money's made to productivity improvement at the frontline. So, my proposal is take the money you're spending anyway and spread it across your workforce and we will help you by making sure you've got access to good training programs, good community colleges, making the linkages that we need. But if you don't want to do that, you can pay that amount of your payroll into a trust fund so that when your workers are unemployed, we can retrain them. Now, we have an exemption for small business in the thing. So keep in mind, we're asking people just to spend money, they're spending anyway in ways that are good for the company, good for the workers, and good for the country. We might not raise a penny out of this. Nothing would make me happier, if we did not collect one red cent because everybody retrains their own workers, making their own partnerships, supervising their own changes. That's what ought to be done. But its a good idea. And it ought to be done in this country. The final thing I recommend is just simply using the federal government to create a trust fund that would remove any barrier, financial barrier, for people going to school and staying in school. I want to see us continue to increase our scholarship programs and our Workstudy programs. But I want to change the student loan program. It does not work. It costs too much money. It is too burdensome. It helps too few people. It costs you four billion dollars a years, now as taxpayers; a billion dollars in bank transaction fees and three billion dollars in busted loans, mostly from people who borrow the money to go to these make shifts operations that aren't training them to do things they ought to be doing. And everybody's picking up the tab. So, here's our idea. The campaign's idea that I've been nurturing this for years now. Its one of the things I talked about on the day I announced. I want to take the best of two of the greatest things we ever did, the GI Bill, after World War II and the Peace Corp under Kennedy and create a national trust fund. A national trust fund out of which any American without regard to income, could borrow the money to finance an education at either a two year or a four year school. And then pay it back in one of two ways. Either after you go to work as a limited percentage of your income, so you would never be discouraged from taking a job as a teacher, for example, just because of the size of the loan. Because what you pay back, would be limited to a percentage of your income. Or even better, if you borrow the maximum amount for every two years, you could do one year of work at a reduced pay or for four years of loan at the maximum amount, two years of work at reduced pay,here at home. Rebuilding America, being teachers or police officers, work in housing program, work with elderly people, work with children. You think about it. We could change the whole face of Americans with the brightest of Americans, giving two years of their lives to building their country. We need more police officers on the streets. You want to know one reason why the crime rate is going up is because there is now three crimes for every policemen. There used to be three policemen for every crime, thirty years ago. Go back to community policing. Put people on the streets, walking the streets. You'll lower the crime rate. And by the way, don't take my word for that. Look what happened in Houston, where they hired the equivalent of six hundred and fifty-five more police officers, fifteen percent dropped in the crime rate. They went to community policing in New York City, first time in thirty-six years, they had a drop in the crime rate, even while the national rates going up. If you do that, you can prevent crime. If you do that. But the cities can't afford it. I say we help them in this way. The same thing is true with children. There are clear studies, now demonstrating, if you get down to really small classes for disadvantaged kids in the early grades, their learning curve will improve. Not only in the early grade, but forever. But the schools can't afford it. Put the teachers in the schools. Educate America. And put the teachers in the school. Now, let me say against all of this, I still think we have to bring down the deficit. And I have offered a way to do it. It doesn't take it out of education and the necessary investments to grow this economy. The first thing we have to do is to bring health costs in line with inflation. And unless we do that, the deficit can not be brought under control. But the way, to do not simply cut off benefits to the elderly under Medicare or reduce the payment to hospitals and doctors below the cost. Because, then those costs just get passed on to all of you who have private insurance and your premiums go up. Then more and more businesses stop insuring their employees and they get put on to some doe that they have paid for and their cost are passed along. What we have to do is to look at the areas in which American health care is totally out of line with any other advanced countries in the world. Insurance, paperwork, regulations, regular drugs, steeper service no matter what and the absence of primary, preventive health care in the inner cities and in rural America. If we dealt with those things, we could bring health cost in line with inflation. The second thing we ought to do is to recognize while the middle class has their incomes go down and their taxes go up in the 1980's, the richest two percent Americans had their income go up and their taxes go down so that if 1980 tax rates were in affect, they would be paying seventy-six billion dollars more a year. Now, what I have recommended is not that kind of tax increase. I want to leave the tax rates lower than they were in 1980, but I do think the upper two percent should pay their fair share, should make a major contribution to meeting our deficit needs. I think we can improve the productivity of the federal government. We have a turnover of six hundred thousand a year. We have a higher percent of federal employees for our population than countries do that don't relay as much as we do on state and local government. So we can reduce the federal workforce; but I want to it by attrition not by putting people in the street, by a hundred thousand in the next three years. I think we can save money. And let me say this. This won't affect this community college very much but I also think, while proposing billions more for schools and colleges and funding, we ought to cut the overhead cost that the federal government now gives to universities for federally sponsored research. The abuses are unbelievable. We have examples where federal administrative dollars that ought to be spent in the laboratory for research and develop to revitalize this country are being spent on parties; on civil services; on all kinds of administrative things; having nothing to do with economic growth. Those things ought to be cut out. You would spend the money better here. And we shouldn't keep spending the money on that. And let me say one final thing, I want to set a good example. I've called for cutting the White House staff by twenty-five percent and my opponent who talks about how frugal he is, you need to know this. Between 1990 and 1991, when they were cutting everything else, like education, they increased the budget of the White House staff, now get this, by twenty-three percent in one year, ten times the amount of revenue growth. But they want you to believe that they are really tightening the belt up there. So, I say to you, there are things we can do to bring this deficit down. And don't let anybody kid you, it is a major issue. When George Bush gave his speech in Houston and said, "I'll give you one more tax break", the stock market fell and the American dollar fell again the German mark. Even the conservatives of the world, knew it was a nutty idea. Everybody knew it was wrong. But what I want to say to you is in the nine weeks that remain in this election, we have to decide what we believe about our country. Do we want to stay with trickle-down economics for four more years? Or do we believe that there is nothing wrong with the American dream. It hasn't failed but these policies have. And we got to change them. We got to put the American people first, again. I very much want this election to be about the education of our children and our adults. I wake up every day thinking about things I don't think crossed this administration's mind except at election time. One of the things I think about, is that the average eighteen year old will have to change the nature of work eight times in a life time. That most of our workers in the twenty-first century will be people who come from backgrounds--both racial and 1 socio-economic backgrounds that we used to call disadvantaged. That I believe all people can learn. And I don't think that there is anything wrong with this country of ours except that we're undereducated, underorganized, underinvested, and underled. Thank you very much.