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CLINTON ON YOUTH
JUNE 11, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
A speech by President Clinton today at Glendale Community College in Glendale, California. The focus was the future for today's youth.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: One way to think about how we're all going to live five, ten, twenty years from now in this exciting global economy, with all the opportunities that are open to you, one way to think about it is to think about how we can create a country in which people can succeed at work and at home. That is what I want. The first thing we have to do obviously is go give people economic opportunity. I'm proud of the fact that in the last three and a half years we cut the deficit by more than 50 percent. It's wrong to leave you with a legacy of debt. We got interest rates down so we can grow the economy.
(applause)
I'm--I'm proud of the fact that we are now seeing an all time record in the products and services. We're exporting more than ever before to the Asian Pacific region here out of the West Coast. I'm proud of the fact that in each of the last three years we've had a record number of new small businesses, and that there have been 3.7 million more Americans move into their own homes in the last three and a half years.
(applause)
I am very proud of that. (applause) And I'm proud of the fact that when we passed our economic program by one vote in both Houses, the Vice President had to break the tie, and some of the people who were against it, said it would bring on a recession and crash the economy. We said it would bring 8 million jobs in four years. Well, they were wrong, but so were we. It brought 9.7 million jobs in three and a half years. (applause) And 600,000 of them in California and a lot more to come after four years of losing jobs. And so we're moving in the right direction, but it's not enough. We also have to think about what about all those working people, how are they going to succeed at home? We passed the Family and Medical Leave Law to say that if you have to take a little time off, you won't lose your job because your child is sick. And I think that's important.
(applause)
We strengthened child support enforcement--40 percent increase in three years in child support enforcement. (applause) We worked with states all over America to help people who were on welfare move into school, move into work. There are 1.3 million fewer families on welfare today than there were the day I became President. I'm proud of that. We've worked hard to reduce the welfare rolls. (applause) We also recognize what you recognize every day when you come to this community college, that we simply cannot create the kind of America we're working for until every single American has access to a higher level of education, and we cannot allow this country to become a more divided society. One of the most disturbing things that has happened in America in the last 15 years is that after spending almost 40 years after World War II in which we were growing together, in which the poorest Americans who were working were increasing their incomes at roughly the same rate as the wealthiest Americans, for the last 15 years we've become a more divided society. And about half of our people are working harder and harder without getting raises. Almost entirely, the division is due to the lack of skills that are marketable in the global economy. This community college and community colleges like it all around America can turn that around. That's why I said it is time to guarantee every single American not twelve but fourteen years of education. We should guarantee it for every American.
(applause)
I also think there are some more things that Washington has to do. This was not very popular when I started it and it's still unpopular in some places, when we became the first administration ever to ask the tobacco industry to accept, to undergo regulation in terms of the advertising targeted at children. We should not be spending hundreds of millions, maybe billions of dollars a year to advertise to children to do something that's illegal that's going to take a third of them out of this life sooner than they ought to leave. It is wrong.
(applause)
It is not right. (applause) One other thing I want to mention that I think affects a lot of parents who are particularly busy is that more and more of our children are spending more and more of their time in front of the television instead of with their parents or in other places. We got the Congress to pass something called the V-chip which will go into television sets which will enable parents to control that. And I think that's a positive thing. But there's one other issue that I want to mention, which is that I have been trying now for some time to get a few hours a week--and keep in mind, kids watch about four hours a day of television on average--I've been trying to get the Federal Communications Commission for a year to just say that three hours a week ought to be devoted to children's educational programming by every network in the country. I believe that.
(applause)
I think it would be a good thing. (applause) And today I want to formally re-issue an invitation to the people from the entertainment industry involved in television to come back to the White House before the end of July to discuss that. The best days of this country are still ahead of us if we can figure out how to make opportunity available to every person who will exercise the responsibility to seize it, and if we can figure out how to come together with all of our diversity, if we can respect each other and share the basic values of America, we're going to do fine. You're going to have a great, great future.
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