Remarks at American University

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 15, 1997

Thank you very much. First, thank all of you for that wonderful welcome. I told President Ladner that after you gave me such a buoyant welcome, I really didn't want to speak. I thought I should quit while I was ahead. [Laughter]

I appreciate the president's welcome and his profound words. I thank Neal Sharma for his introduction and for his leadership here among the students. To Chairman Jacobs and Professor Mintz, Secretary and Mrs. Dalton, City Councilman Thomas; to all the trustees and alumni and faculty and staff and students who are here, and the friends of American University who are here.

There are many people in our administration who graduated from AU or who otherwise have affiliation with it, including your former president, Joe Duffey. And one of the most important is here with me today, former professor Judy Winston, who is the Executive Director of my race initiative, about which I want to talk a little. But I'd like for Judy to stand, wherever she is. She's here somewhere. Thank you, Judy. There she is.

At the start of a new school year, this is a time when students are going back to work, and when those of us here in Washington are going back to work after the August recess of Congress. It is a time of genuine hope and earned optimism for America, and I can hear it in your spirited voices here today. I think it's a good time for me to talk to you and to our country about what we have to do in the remaining months of this year to make the most of this moment in preparing our country for the 21st century.

It is now, hard for me to believe, almost 6 years since I first announced my candidacy for President. Then, in late 1991, America seemed to be moving toward the new century with uncertain steps. Dramatic changes in the way we live and work and relate to each other and the rest of the world threatened the values by which we live our lives. We were in danger of becoming a more divided nation at the very moment when we needed to be moving forward resolutely together.

On the day I declared my candidacy, I said that our mission as a people must be to keep the American dream alive for all who would work for it; to keep America the world's strongest force for peace and freedom and prosperity; and to bring our own people together across all the lines that divide us into one America. America's oldest and most enduring values - opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a community of all - these things had to remain strong and vibrant in a new and different time, which required a new course of action.

Our Nation has remained young and strong now for over 220 years by always meeting new challenges in ways that renew our oldest values. That is the wellspring of our greatness. Our Nation was not founded on religion or race or geography but on a set of incandescent ideals, which have been reiterated and reaffirmed and reembraced at every critical moment in our history: Lincoln at Gettysburg; the Progressives forging a new freedom for an industrial age; Franklin Roosevelt rescuing America from the abyss in the name of our oldest ideals; Dr. King challenging America to live out the true meaning of our creed. At every single moment of challenge and change, we Americans have found a way to keep these old ideals, not musty words scratched on parchment but instead living guideposts for a new era.

For 4 1/2 years now, Americans have worked to make this a time of change for our generation. We set a bold new economic course, reducing the deficit by over 80 percent even before the recent balanced budget agreement, expanding exports through over 200 trade agreements, and investing in our people and their future. We set about establishing America's credibility in the post-cold-war world, forging new alliances and standing up for our values from Bosnia to Haiti. And we addressed a generation's accumulation of profound social problems, bringing work and responsibility and community action to bear on the challenges of crime and welfare and poverty. And we began to build a new Government, not intent on doing everything but not content to do nothing; instead, a progressive Government committed to giving people the tools they need to make the most of their own lives.

Today we see the results: Unemployment remains below 5 percent; nearly 13 million new jobs since 1993; inflation remaining low and stable; investment growth and consumer confidence at their highest levels in a generation; after decades when they remained flat, finally, family incomes beginning to rise again; violent crime has dropped dramatically for years now; we have seen the largest drop in welfare rolls in history; and many of our poorest urban and rural communities are in a springtime of renewal.

In late July, America reached a new milestone when I signed into law the first balanced budget in a generation. This was about more than numbers on a ledger. It embodies the single largest increase in aid to education since 1965. It includes the biggest increase in aid to help people go on to college and to community colleges and to graduate schools. The biggest increase since the GI bill was passed 50 years ago, and it will literally open the doors to college education to every person who is willing to work for it. It includes the largest single investment in health care since the passage of Medicaid in 1965, largely designed to insure up to 5 million children who don't have health insurance today. It restores just benefits for legal immigrants, and billions of dollars are provided to help move people even more from welfare to work.