Remarks to the Community at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 11, 1995

The other thing I hope they will do is to recognize that adults need education, too. I have urged the Congress to create a fund which would give to every person who loses a job in the United States the right to get a $2,600 voucher for a year for 2 years to take to the nearest community college, junior college, or other educational institution to get retrained if they lose their jobs and they need a brighter future.

One other thing I'd like to say: I want to thank the young people who were in that class with me today practicing citizenship asking me tough questions, some of which I had never been asked before by anyone. I want to thank them for being an example of what I want for all of our young people.

One of the things that I feel very strongly about is that our schools have to teach good citizenship and good basic character and values: fairness and honesty, respect for self and others, responsibility. Those things are too often absent in our schools today.

And I'm proud to announce that, through our Department of Education, we have been supporting the spread of character education, basic principles of citizenship and personal character all across America. And today we are releasing four grants to four States, including the State of California, to make sure that we do everything we can to help our principals, our teachers, and our parents inculcate the values and character of good citizenship into our young people throughout this country.

So I ask you, my fellow Americans, without regard to your political party or your philosophy, to stand firm on this central principle. Tell the Congress and the President you want the budget balanced, but you want us to invest in education and the future. We don't want to be penny-wise and pound-foolish. We don't want to weaken our economy by balancing the budget. We want to strengthen our children's future by getting the burden of debt off of them. There is a plan that balances the budget and increases investment in education, and that's what we should do.

We don't need--we don't need--to take 45,000 children out of the Head Start program. We don't need to deny every State in the country the right to benefit from smaller classes and more technology and educational excellence in the Goals 2000 program. We sure don't need to stop helping the schools who need it with the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program. We don't need to stop helping people who want to go on to good jobs with higher skills but aren't going to higher education and 4-year schools. We need the School-to-Work program. And we sure don't need to make college loans and college scholarships less available.

Look what's happened in California. We need more college scholarships. We need more college loans. We need more affordable education and higher education.

I have promised the Congress that I would never disagree with them without offering an alternative. I have given a balanced budget plan which increases investment in education. And on Thursday, I will talk more about how we can save even more money in this budget to put into reducing the deficit, balancing the budget, and investing in education.