Remarks and a question-and-answer session at Los Angeles Valley College in Van Nuys, California - Bill Clinton's speech, May 18, 1993

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 24, 1993

Now, I don't want to mislead you. There is not as much money here in the budget as a lot of people asked for from California. But there's a whole lot more; I mean, several hundred million dollars more than was previously given. And I just think it is imperative that we have to provide--if the Federal Government is going to have a policy, or lack of it, then the Federal Government ought to pay for the policy, or lack of it, so that the States can be free to spend their money on educating and training and finding jobs for the people who live within the State. That's what I think. So we're going to move toward that.

If I might just make one other comment on what you said earlier. I'm going to try to come back with various pieces of this jobs initiative. I hope we can still get some more money for summer jobs, because we've got the best summer jobs program this country has ever organized. We've worked in partnership with the private sector. We're going to require 90 hours of educational work for people who have summer jobs, hoping that we can actually help people to get full-time continuing jobs and to continue their education, something that's never been done with a Federal summer jobs program before. So we're going to try to get some more.

I also believe very strongly that we need to make a down payment now on the efforts that I'm making to put 100,000 more police officers on the streets so we can have more community-based policing, which means the best of both worlds if you've got the right kind of community policing. It means less crime, tougher law enforcement, and less abuse of authority because you have people working the neighborhoods, knowing their friends and neighbors, and less pressure.

So we're going to start with that and then try to move back toward these other issues.

Initiatives to Assist Students

Q. Mr. President, I transferred to a State university from here at Valley. I had to drop out of school this semester because I can't afford to go, and I don't qualify for financial aid. And there are other students that are in my situation. We really want to go back to school. We can't afford the fees. What are you going to do to help us, please tell us. |Applause~

The President. I have introduced into the Congress a bill that I do believe will pass with both Republican and Democratic support--two bills--designed to deal with your problem. And let me just talk a little bit about it because you could tell by the clapping that you're not the only person in your fix.

The college dropout rate is 2 1/2 times the high school dropout rate. And an awful lot of people quit because they can't afford to stay. Now, in California this previously was not as big a problem because so many of the institutions were free. But you've got all these economic problems now; that can't be the case anymore. And even if you don't have big tuition you have expensive other--other expenses are significant.

So here are the things we're trying to do. First of all, I've asked the Congress to adopt a national service program which would permit young people to earn up to $5,000 a year in credit either before, during, or after college to pay off loans for college expenses by doing important work in the community. It can be done before, during, or after college. Like after college, if someone agreed to be a teacher, for example, or a police officer in an underserved community, they could get $5,000 a year credit for that to pay off their loans. So that's, in effect, a scholarship program in return for national service.