Remarks at the employment initiative in Oakton, Virginia

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 1, 1999

January 28, 1999

Thank you. I would say this is a fairly high energy crowd here today. [Laughter] Thank you for making us all feel so welcome. Thank you, Cheryl Simms. She was nervous as a cat. [Laughter] And I said, "Look, Cheryl, that microphone, it will carry your voice. Just pretend you're talking to a friend or two." And I think she did a fine job, don't you? Let's give her a hand. [Applause]

I'd like to thank Mirian Graddick and Mary Jane McKeever for making us feel so welcome here today. I thank Secretary Herman and Secretary Riley for their wonderful work on the announcements I am about to make. I want to thank my longtime friend Senator Chuck Robb for being a terrific Senator for the State of Virginia and on education issues for all the United States.

And I'd like to recognize two Members of the House of Representatives who are here, who have been very, very active on these issues: Congressman Tim Roemer from Indiana, and Representative Dennis Kucinich from Cleveland, Ohio. Thank you for being here, both of you.

I also want to thank the Vice President for his interest in this. Not very long ago, just a couple of weeks ago, he convened a national meeting with business, education, labor, and government leaders to come up with proposals that will further our efforts to promote lifelong learning. I want to say one other thing: There is a member of my staff who worked very hard on this who is leaving the White House, but she had a lot to do with this announcement I'm making today. Her name is Cecilia Rouse, and she's going back to be a professor. But I wish she were staying with us. Thank you very much, Cecilia, for what you've done.

I wanted to come here because this is a picture - a picture I hope will be in newspapers all across America tomorrow. I hope this picture will be on some television stations tonight. I want Americans to be able to visualize the kind of continuing lifelong learning opportunities that you have that I want for all Americans.

I want to compliment AT&T, the CWA, the IBEW, and Lucent Technologies. This workers alliance, I was told, since its inception in the mid-eighties has given way over 100,000 people the chance to come through here and get education and training. That is profoundly important. And it's important not just for people who work for AT&T, who are in the communications business.

I recently learned about a man in my home State who was 50 years old, had an eighth grade education, ran a conveyor belt for a company that converted to a new computerized transport system. Since he only had an eighth grade education, he was computerphobic, to say the least, and he was afraid that he would lose his job. Instead, he enrolled in a training program, learned how to use computers, improved his reading and math skills so that he could master complex, technical manuals. And instead of losing his job, he got a raise.

Now, a lot of you have been through more than one training program since you've been employed. I just met a gentleman who said he spent over 300 hours in this program, in alliance programs. And if you think about how almost every form of work today is different from what it was just a few years ago and how rapidly the nature of work is changing, we are going to be challenged to change our whole conception of what education is.

You know, a lot of you came from families like mine. I mean, my grandfather had a grade-school education; my stepfather, who raised me, didn't finish high school; my mother went to nursing school, never went to college; my father's uncle, who served three terms in the legislature, dropped out of school after the eighth grade to support the family. They all did just fine. Now - and all you have to do is look at the census data; you don't just have to tell family stories - if you look at the census data, high school graduates are likely to get jobs where their incomes drop over time, not go up. People who have the equivalent of at least 2 years of college and can keep on learning for a lifetime are likely to get jobs where their incomes go up and, if they lose their jobs, to find jobs that are as good or better.

So what we have now is a situation in America where the income gap, that we all know widened over the previous 20 years or so, is largely a skills gap and that it applies across all kinds of industries. We have to close that skills gap.

In 1992, when I took office, I said we had two deficits. We had a budget deficit and an investment deficit in our people. Well, thanks to Senator Robb and the Members of the House that are here, we've closed the budget deficit; we've got a surplus. But we still have a deficit in investment in our people. We have got to find a way to create in America, not only world-class public schools and access to college education - and you may have heard me say in the State of the Union Address that, with the tax credits, the Pell grants, and the other things, no one should ever fail to go to college because of the cost, now - but we have to create a situation in America where people can keep on learning for a lifetime, without regard to where they live, what their job is, what their income is.