Remarks to the Community at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 11, 1995

September 5, 1995

Thank you very much. It is wonderful to be here today. I want to thank Cal Dooley for his kind remarks and for his remarkable leadership in the Congress. He does a terrific job for all of you. I thank Delaine Eastin for her commitment to education and for being here with me today. I want to thank your school principal, Lucile King, who on next-to-no notice allowed me to come in here and share some time with some of your students. I thank Eleanor Brown who did a fine job speaking here. I said, "Eleanor"--before she came up, I said, "Eleanor, are you having a good time or are you nervous?" She said, "I'm a little nervous." So I said, "Well, just pretend you're talking to a few people." And she did a fine job, didn't she? Let's give her another hand. [Applause] I thought she did a great job. I also want thank the Selma High Marine Corps ROTC, who posted the colors, the high school choir, and the Black Bear Brigade Band, who played very well when I came up here today, I thought.

I'd also like to thank the mayor and the members of the City Council and the school board who met me. One of the school board members gave me this "Save the Children" tie to wear in the speech. And the mayor told me, as the sign said, that this is the "raisin capital of the world." And I said, "Well, the only thing I can say is, I don't know about raising them, but I have probably consumed more raisins than any President who ever held this office. And I've enjoyed every one of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, and to all the young people who are here, I want to talk about education today. This is back-to-school day. But before I do, I have to say just a few words about the situation in Bosnia. You may know that this morning our pilots and crews and their NATO allies resumed the bombing of Bosnian Serb military positions. I support that; it's appropriate; its necessary, because the Bosnian Serbs failed to comply with the conditions set over the weekend to withdraw their heavy weapons from Sarajevo. We have to follow through on our commitment to protect Sarajevo and those other safe areas. We cannot allow more innocent civilians and children to die there. This war has to end by negotiation, not on the battlefield.

I'm glad to be here in the number one agricultural region in our Nation. The Central Valley's orange groves and pistachio trees and the acres of vineyards and cotton and corn and the people who grow the raisins are critical not only to your State's economy but to our Nation's economy.

I wanted to come here to this community today because I think that all of you symbolize, in what you're doing here, what we have to do as a country. We've got to take responsibility for ourselves and our children. We've got to work together, and we've got to work for the future.

All of you know that education for individual Americans has always been the key to the American dream. I have a simple message today: At the end of the cold war, at the beginning of this period of global economy, of the information age, the technology age, education is more important today to individual Americans, to families, to communities, and to our future than it has ever been in the entire history of the United States, and we have to act on that fundamental truth as a people.

Thirty months ago, I set out to change the economic direction of our country, to bring the economy of America back and to help the economy of California recover. Thirty months later, we have over 7 million more jobs, 2 1/2 million more homeowners, over 1 1/2 million more small businesses. The jobs you lost in the difficult 4 years before I took office have been replaced, and you're beginning to come back in California.

But there is one fundamental problem left in America economically, and that is for the last 15 years more than half of the hourly wage earners in America are working a longer work week for the same or lower wages. And there is a simple, clear reason for that. In the global economy, no matter how hard people work, if you don't have the skills that will command high incomes, it is difficult to earn those incomes. We have simply got to make a commitment as a nation to revolutionizing the availability and quality of education starting with the youngest preschoolers and going through adults who need it to get better jobs or when they're unemployed. And we have to do it together. It is the fundamental fact of our time.

When Congress comes back from its recession--excuse me, recession-whatever that--recess--[laughter]--school--it's a school day--the recess. When Congress comes back from their recess tomorrow, we will have 90 days of decisions about the budget--90 days to choose what direction we're going to take. There's some good news for these children in the audience about decisions that have already been made. For the first time in over a dozen years, we now have a bipartisan commitment to balance the Federal budget and remove the burden of debt from our children and our grandchildren. That is a very good thing to do.