Remarks to the Montgomery County community in Norristown, Pennsylvania

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 25, 1999

These are the kinds of things we have to do. It means reconciling work and family. One of the best things that the Gores have done is, for the last 7 years, they have had a conference in Tennessee every year on the challenges modern families face. And most all of them relate somehow or other to the need to balance work and family, a challenge that faces Americans in all income groups. I'll bet there is not a family here that has not at some point in the last couple of years faced some sort of challenge of balancing your responsibilities to your children to your responsibilities to your work.

That's why we want a child care plan that includes help for stay-at-home parents when the children are very young but real help for working people that can't afford quality child care on their own, because in America, when I look at all of you, I want you to be free and confident, when you start your families, that you can do what you want in your work life, but you know that your first responsibility is to raise your children, and you're going to be able to succeed at that responsibility.

The Vice President told you that rather gripping story about the HMO's. The truth is we have to manage the health care system; it's like any other system. We have to keep the costs as low as possible. But the quality of our people's health counts most. That's why we say you ought to be able to see a specialist if you need one. You ought to be able to go to the nearest emergency room. You ought to be able to have your medical records private and all of the other things in our Patients' Bill of Rights, because we've got to balance the need to save money with the fundamental necessity of providing quality health care to all Americans.

And I'd just like to say one other thing. We've said a lot about education tonight, but I would like to say something about the very first subject I talked about last night in the State of the Union, and that is the aging of America. And again I want to say this is an issue that should be of primary importance, not to today's retirees but to tomorrow's retirees, their children, and their grandchildren yet unborn. Because when the baby boomers retire - and that includes the parents of just about all of the students here; people between the ages of 34 and 52 were the people born in the generation after World War II, the largest group of people in history in America, young people, until the present class of students, which numbers over 53 million - now, when we retire, we're going to double the number of seniors by the year 2030. There will be two people working for every one person drawing Social Security. And what we've got - and the average life expectancy is already 76 years old plus; for the young people here, it's probably about 83 years. This is a high-class problem. The older you get, the more you'll be glad that that's going up. [Laughter] This is a high-class problem. But we do not want to get into a position where our retirement is a financial burden to our children and undermines our children's ability to raise our grandchildren.