Remarks on signing the Higher Education Amendments of 1998

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Oct 12, 1998

Thank you very much. Just so Harold doesn't mistake all that applause for me, let's give him another hand. I thought he was - [applause]. That's what this is all about today.

I want to thank all the previous speakers - Secretary Riley for being the most dedicated, complete, and productive Secretary of Education in the history of this country. I'm very grateful to him. [Applause] We always salt the crowd with employees of the Education Department. [Laughter] We are very, very grateful to you, sir.

I want to thank Senator Jeffords and Senator Kennedy, Chairman Goodling and Congressman Clay, and as was mentioned previously, Congressman McKeon and Congressman Kildee, all the members of the education committees of the House and the Senate and the staff.

I'd like to also point out that there are Members who care deeply about education who aren't on those committees, and some of them are here. We have over 30 Members of the Congress from both parties here. I'd like to ask the Members of the Congress who are here who aren't on the education committees and, therefore, have not yet stood up, to please stand up. All of you who are here.

I notice Senator Kennedy already acknowledged Senator Specter, understanding how the Appropriations Committee works. [Laughter] But his presence here means he considers it to be an education committee, and we thank you for that.

I'd like to make one big point first. You've all heard about the details of this legislation. What I want us to all be very clear on is that the bill I will sign in a few moments will enhance the economic strength of America. It will strengthen the communities of America. It will improve the lives of the families of America. And it certainly will widen the circle of opportunity.

When I ran for President in 1992, one of the things I most wanted to do was to open the doors of college to all Americans who were willing to work for it. In the 1980's, the cost of a college education was the only really important thing to families that increased at a higher rate than the cost of health care.

And yet, in the world in which we live and certainly in the one in which Harold and his contemporaries will live, college is no longer a luxury for the well-to-do or even an opportunity for hard-working, middle class kids whose parents save. It is an economic necessity for every American and for our country as a whole.

That is why we worked so hard in the bipartisan, balanced budget agreement to create the $1,500 HOPE scholarships, the tax credits for the first 2 years of college, tax breaks for junior and senior year, for graduate school, for adults going back to school. That is why with bipartisan support we dramatically expanded the Pell grant program, created 300,000 more work-study positions, the education IRA's - the education grants for those serving in AmeriCorps now are nearly numbering 100,000 young Americans - student loans payable, or repayable, as a percentage of future incomes, so no one needed to fear borrowing the money and then being broke if they took a job that didn't pay a lot of money; the tax deductibility of the interest on student loans. And today, with this lowering of the interest rates, as has already been said, to the lowest rate in nearly two decades, we can really say that every high school graduate in America, regardless of income, can afford to go to college.

I asked the Congress to slash the interest rates on the student loans. As Chairman Goodling said, it was the lowest rate now in 17 years. Let me tell you what it means to a college student. It's a $700 tax cut to the average student borrowing for a college degree on the front end. And anybody who can remember what it was like back then knows that $700 to a college student is still real money.

I asked Congress to use technology to help all Americans, including those in the work force, to upgrade their skills any time, anywhere, and this bill does that. I asked them to help us recruit more and better-trained teachers, to improve teacher training, direct our best teachers to schools with the greatest needs. This bill does that.

Finally, I asked Congress to create a nationwide mentoring program; you heard Harold talk about it, the one that affected his life. All of us have at some level come in contact with the pioneer program, Eugene Lang's "I Have a Dream" program in New York City. Many of us have been involved at the State level, as I was, in creating scholarships for all our young people who achieved a certain level of academic excellence.

What this bill does is something more, and I think profoundly important. And again, like others, I want to thank Senator Jim Jeffords, I want to thank Gene Sperling of my staff who worked on this, and I especially want to thank Congressman Chaka Fattah of Philadelphia who pushed this so hard. And we thank you, sir.

This bill seeks to make national what Harold talked about affecting his life. It essentially seeks, first of all, to provide mentors to kids in their middle school years who need it, and then to give the mentors weapons. At a minimum, the mentors will be able to say, "Look, here's who you are. Here's where you come from. Here's how much money you have. And if this is what your income looks like when you got out of high school and you stay in school and you learn your lessons, we can tell you right now, this is how much money you can get to go to college." Now, it's already there, but they don't know it. So we're not only trying to open the doors of college to all Americans but to make sure all Americans know the doors are open. And those are two very different things.