Remarks and a question-and-answer session with the College Press Forum

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, March 27, 1995

The President. Thank you and welcome to the White House. This is, as I'm sure you agree, a fascinating time to be in our Nation's Capital. We are now having a great debate about how we can best assure the American dream for your generation and for your children well into the next century. The choices we make here will have a profound effect on all of your lives.

This is an historic era: We have the end of the cold war, the dawn of the information age, a globalized economy, an explosion of entrepreneurialism, an enormous amount of opportunity. At the same time, we have profound challenges. We have almost 20 years of stagnant incomes in the United States. We have growing inequality of incomes based primarily on educational differentials. We have deep strains within our society and still profound problems related to the breakdown of family and community and the rise of crime and violence. We have challenges abroad in terrorism, environmental destruction, population explosion, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The issue we are most debating around here now in many different ways is what is the proper role of the National Government in working with the American people to meet our challenges. The old view is that Government is inherently a positive force and that there is a one-size-fits-all, big Government solution for every big problem. The new view that's all the rage around here is that the Federal Government is the cause of every problem and if we just didn't have one we might not have any problems.

My view is different from both of these. I ran for President to advance that view, and I still believe it is the proper one. I believe Government does have a role to play as a partner in meeting the challenges of the future with all of the American people. I believe the role of Government is to increase opportunity as we shrink bureaucracy, to empower people to make the most of their own lives, and to enhance our security at home and abroad.

We have to work economically to expand the middle class and to shrink the under class. We have to work to promote mainstream values of work and family and future. We have to do it with a Government that is smaller and less bureaucratic but still effective. The key to our future is our ability to create more opportunity and, at the same time, the willingness of our citizens to assume more responsibility. That's what I have called the New Covenant.

I agree that we have to cut outmoded Government, and our administration has led the way. There are already more than 100,000 fewer people working here for the National Government than there were on the day I became President. We're on our way to the smallest Federal Establishment since President Kennedy worked here.

But I also believe that this Government should invest in your future and in your capacity to contribute and to live up to the fullest of your abilities. Therefore, I support more investments in education and technology and training and empowering people to make the most of their own lives.

I also believe that if you look at the end of 2 years, the evidence is pretty good that our approach is right. We have reduced the deficit 3 years in a row for the first time since Mr. Truman was here. We have 6.1 million new jobs, the lowest combined rates of unemployment and inflation in 25 years, the first time in 20 years the African-American unemployment rate has been under 10 percent. We have in 1993 the largest number of new businesses incorporated in any given year in American history. Finally, in 1994, we began to make some progress on the wage issue when we had more high-wage jobs coming into the economy than in the previous 5 years combined.

Notwithstanding that, the American people said they wanted a different sort of debate here in Washington last November, and so we are having it. Now, I believe that nothing will more clearly define the contours of this debate than what we decide to do in the area of education and training.

In the global economy into which we are moving, we can see what is happening to American jobs and incomes. Those who are able to grasp the high-wage jobs of the future are doing very well, indeed. We're going to have record numbers of millionaires created in this 4-year period. But we also see more and more and more Americans in the grip of insecurity as they work harder than they were working 20 years ago for wages that are the same or lower. And overwhelmingly, it is because technology and global economic competition have depressed wages in areas that are not high skilled, with the capacity to grew and learn for a lifetime.

Therefore, I do not agree that we should cut our investments in education and training, starting with the advances we made in Head Start, going through the school lunch program, all the way to the apprenticeship programs for young people who don't go to college, to college loans, to the subsidies for college loans for working young people - right the way through. I don't believe we should cut them, certainly not to pay for tax cuts and not even to reduce the deficit. We do not have to cut education to reduce the deficit.