pd07mr94 Checklist of White House Press Releases...

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    And the good news is that right now, under the system we have now, 
you might or might not get health care, it just depends on the accident 
of whether your employer provides it. Under our plan, everybody will get 
it for the first time in the history of the country, and no one will 
lose it, even if somebody in their family has been sick. That's the 
biggest problem now: almost everybody in America is at risk of losing 
their health insurance if something happens to somebody in their family.

Law Enforcement Careers

    Q. I'm a junior. And I'd like to know if I was interested in 
becoming a CIA or FBI or national security agent, what would I have to 
do as far as education? What would I still have to do to get there?
    The President. That's a good question. I think one of my Secret 
Service agents should talk to you when this is over. You come down here 
when this is over. I'll introduce you to one of the Secret Service 
agents and they can tell you about it, okay? What do you think? 
[Applause]
    But wait, wait, I'm going to answer the question. The answer to your 
first question is, though, as an absolute minimum you have to go to 
college and finish a 4-year college degree. And a lot of the--
particularly in the FBI, depending on what they're doing, have further 
education over that. And a lot of people in Secret Service were once in 
other kinds of law enforcement. But it's not nec- 

[[Page 392]]

essary for you to have a particular degree in law enforcement. A lot of 
them have done different things. But what I would suggest you do is to 
literally talk to one of my agents after it's over. But what I suggest 
you do: go to college, get the best education you can, do well, and keep 
up with what the requirements for joining these various Federal law 
enforcement agencies are, so that as you move toward the end of your 
college career, you can do what it takes to qualify. And if you have to 
do something else for a year or two before you get in, then that's all 
right as well.
    But it's important that you keep up because, for example, suppose 
you decide to go do some other kind of law enforcement work first--under 
our national service proposal, you might be able to start when you're a 
junior in college working with law enforcement in the summertime, so you 
get a little leg up on that.

Funding for Education

    Q. I'm a junior here at Hillcrest High School. And I would like to 
know, Mr. President, why is the Government cutting the cost for a 
college education?
    The President. Wait a minute. Why are we--why aren't we cutting the 
cost, or why are we----
    Q. Why are you cutting the funding?
    The President. Well, we're not. You may be doing it in Illinois, and 
at the national level--I don't know that you are. I'm not accusing 
anybody or anything. [Laughter] But let me tell you this: For several 
years student aid levels were frozen at the national level, so that, in 
effect, they were being cut because inflation meant that the money 
didn't go as far anymore.
    This year I have asked the Congress to put more money into the Pell 
Grant program, which is the college scholarship program for low-income 
kids that comes out of the Federal Government and also--did you give up 
on your question? And also, also, we have reorganized the college loan 
program. This is very important. I want you all to listen to this. We 
have reorganized the college loan program so that now you can borrow 
money at lower interest rates, and you can pay it back, no matter how 
much you borrow, as a percentage of what you earn after you go to work. 
Now, a lot of people quit, drop out of school because they worry about 
the cost of it and they worry about the burden of paying the loans back. 
So now we are giving everybody who wants it an option. You can pay your 
loan back basically on a regular loan repayment schedule. But suppose 
you want to do something that doesn't pay a lot of money, at least when 
you begin. Suppose you want to become a schoolteacher in the beginning, 
and you know you're not going to be a millionaire. You could pay your 
loans back, but you can't pay a whole lot at once. Under our new 
proposal, you can borrow the money at lower interest rates and you can 
pay it back over a longer period of time, a smaller amount every year 
based on your income.
    So there will never be a reason not to go to college. In addition to 
that, this year 20,000 young Americans, and 3 years from now, 100,000 
young Americans will be able to earn several thousand dollars in 
scholarship money by participating in our community service program. So 
I am trying to make it easier for people to go to college, because it 
makes a huge difference, as I just quoted to you the numbers, in your 
employability and your income.
    Go ahead.

Public Housing

    Q. Hi, I'm a senior here at Hillcrest. My question is, besides 
giving money to the city of Country Club Hills, in the future do you 
foresee giving money to the less fortunate communities in the city of 
Chicago, such as Cabrini Green, so that they as well can fight against 
drugs and gang activities?
    The President. Yes----
    Q. And if so, how do you go about completing----
    The President. Yes----
    Q. ----so that we as people can work together instead of working 
against one another?
    The President. Give her a hand. [Applause] First of all, in this 
last round of grants for law enforcement, where this small community got 
$238,000, Chicago got $4 million to hire more police officers.
    But let me just tell you, there are two or three things that are 
quite important here.

[[Page 393]]

If our crime bill passes, then a lot more money will come to Chicago not 
only for police officers but also for drug treatment and for alternative 
activities for young people. And in addition to that, the Secretary of 
the Department of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros, which 
has jurisdiction over the big public housing projects, has a major new 
initiative to try to work with the homeless, especially homeless young 
people, to try to deal with that on a more permanent basis and to try to 
improve security and reduce drugs in public housing projects.
    You know, you've had some remarkable success in Chicago, actually, 
cleaning out public housing projects and making them safe and providing 
jobs for people who live in the projects to work to help to keep them 
drug free and free of violence. And the truth is that we've not provided 
enough money nationwide to do in every housing project in the country 
what has been done in some housing projects here in Chicago.
    So in this new round of our budget, through those two areas, through 
the crime bill, and through the Housing and Urban Development 
Department, we're going to try to give the people of Chicago and in 
cities like that all across America the tools they need to do the job. 
And that was a good question, great question.

Somalia

    Q. Mr. President, before I begin with the question, I'd like to 
thank you for sending my brother, who was in Somalia, home. I'd like to 
thank you from my family.
    The President. Well, I'd like to thank him, and through him, through 
your family, for the work they did over there. We can't stay forever and 
solve all the problems of Somalia. We can't run the country. But what we 
did do was to save hundreds of thousands of people from starvation, to 
organize life again, and to give them at least a chance to work out 
their own problems. If they don't do it, they'll have to take 
responsibility for it. But at least we've given that country a chance to 
survive. And your brother can be proud of the service he rendered, and I 
appreciate that.

Education

    Q. Welcome, President Clinton. I would like to know--I'm a senior--I 
would like to know how do you plan to improve the public educational 
system so that it's equal throughout Illinois and throughout the States?
    The President. I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do and then 
I'm going to be honest with you on the front-end and tell you it's not 
enough, okay? Because let me say, most public education in America, over 
90 percent of it, is funded from State taxes and local taxes, so that 
the President and the Congress provide a very small percentage of the 
money that comes to this school district. That's the way it's always 
been.
    I don't know what the numbers are for Illinois, but if I were 
guessing, I would guess that probably 55 percent of the total cost of 
public education probably is paid for at the local level. Is that about 
right? Most of it comes from the State? No, most of it--well anyway, 
take my word for it--over 90 percent comes from the State and the local 
level in some relationship.
    Some States pay a big percentage of it. Hawaii, for example, pays 
almost all; there's almost no local taxes in Hawaii. Some States pay 
almost nothing, and it's all local property taxes. New Hampshire is the 
most extreme. All the other States--Illinois, New York, everybody else 
is somewhere in between.
    Whenever you use local property taxes to fund schools there will be 
unequal funding. Why? Because some school districts have more valuable 
property than others, right? So at any given tax rate--I mean, if you've 
got--you're going to have that. That is the fundamental problem with 
inequality in America.
    Now, at the national level, we have certain programs designed to 
help low-income districts and low-income kids or kids from disadvantaged 
backgrounds, like special education programs or Chapter I programs. What 
we are doing with our money this year is to put some more money into 
programs directed toward low-income children, like the Head Start 
program, and to change--I'm asking the Congress to change the way we 
give the money out to give more money to the poorer school districts so 
that we can equalize the funding.

[[Page 394]]

    But the reason I tell you it's not enough is, if you put up 90 cents 
and I put up a dime, I can redistribute my dime, but it still may not 
overcome your 90 cents. You see what I mean? So what that means is that, 
in Illinois, if you think it's a real problem and you think a lot of 
your schools are not being properly funded and it's unequal, you have to 
solve a lot of this problem at the State level with the State 
legislature in Springfield. We'll do as much as we can, and I have asked 
the Congress to do more, but there's a limit to how much we can do.

Spending Priorities

    Q. Hello. I'm a sophomore, and I was wondering, how do you justify 
millions of dollars being spent on space exploration when there are 
millions of homeless people in our country?
    The President. Well for me, it's not a hard justification, but it's 
a very good question. The way I justify it is this: I think it's 
important for us to continue our lead in space because I think it helps 
our national security to be out there first and to always be in a 
position to shape developments in space, because space has given us a 
way to cooperate after the cold war with the Russians, the Japanese, the 
Europeans, and the Canadians. We're all working on the space station 
together because it creates new high-tech jobs for scientists and for 
engineers, and they create a lot of wealth for the rest of us, and 
because in space technology, a lot of things are found out that may have 
a lot of benefits for us right here on Earth.
    I'll just give you just one example. I was down at the headquarters 
for the American space program in Houston, Texas, the other day, and I 
saw a motor that was used to pump water in space where it's gravity-
free, so the motor obviously has to be very powerful to pump water and 
make it move where there's no gravity. And they discovered that the 
exact same technology could be used as a heart pump here on Earth to 
keep people alive, and it's lighter and better and cheaper to produce 
than what had been the case here. I also saw cancer cultures growing in 
space in gravity-free environments where the cells will grow 
differently, in ways that will enable all kinds of medical research to 
be done that may keep a lot of us alive when they get cancer here on 
Earth.
    So I think a nation like ours has to take some of its money and 
invest it in the future, even though you know it may not work out, even 
though you can't justify every penny based on immediate benefit. It's 
like investing in education, in a way. If I invest in your education, I 
think you're going to come out better. It may be 7 or 8 years down the 
road, and yet every dollar I spend on education is a dollar we don't 
spend on the homeless or feeding the hungry or some other problem.
    So, I don't believe we're spending enough on the homeless, by the 
way. And under my budget we're going to spend more. So I can't defend 
that. But I think that if you were in my position, every one of you, one 
of the hardest decisions you would have to make is how much money am I 
going to spend taking care of problems today, and how much money am I 
going to spend investing in the future so we'll have fewer problems, 
more jobs, higher incomes, better opportunities? It's one of the hardest 
decisions I have to make. And like I said, I--by the way, a lot of 
people in Congress don't agree with me, a lot of people in Congress 
every year vote to cut the space program and put more money into 
problems just like you said. And if you were there, you might make the 
same decision. But as President, I always have to keep one eye on the 
future and one eye on the present and try to balance the needs in a 
proper way.
    That was a great question. Give him a hand. It was a good question. 
[Applause]
    Q. Hello. I'm a junior at Hillcrest High School. Mr. President, I 
would like to know why is it that the U.S. gives and helps other 
countries while we have our own people starving, nowhere to live, crime, 
no jobs, people on welfare, and gangs? Why don't we start helping our 
own country and not others? And how is it that you're going to change 
this around, where we'll become a more industrial country and not where 
Taiwan and Korea and Japan are beating us in industrial ways?
    The President. Good question. Good question. First of all--that's a 
real good question, don't you think? Good question. First

[[Page 395]]

of all, that's exactly what I ran for President to do, to get us to take 
care of our problems at home first, because my belief is, if you're not 
strong at home you can't be strong abroad. So I believe that, okay?
    Now, I believe that. And as a result of that, in the last year, we 
have changed the economic course of the country, we're bringing our 
deficit down; we're seeing more investment and more jobs coming into 
this economy; we're opening up opportunities to sell American products 
around the world so we can compete with these other countries.
    But you need to know that last year, our economy grew more rapidly 
than the economy of Europe and the economy of Japan, and that we are 
starting to come back. We are creating more jobs than they are, and we 
are beginning to really compete again. And that is my first and most 
important job and the overwhelming priority that we have.
    Now, let me say also, though, we spend a smaller percentage of our 
income on foreign aid than the Europeans or the Japanese do, the 
Japanese give more money in foreign aid than we do now. The foreign aid 
is not a big problem; indeed, even though we're the strongest country in 
the world, we haven't even--I haven't been able to persuade Congress yet 
to appropriate the money we owe just to pay our past-due bills to the 
United Nations.
    And we have to spend--it's like the question this young man asked me 
about the space program. It's hard to--there is no easy dividing line 
here between at home and abroad in the sense that now a big percentage 
of our income depends on our ability to sell products and services 
overseas because we live in a global economy.
    The next time you go in a store, just pay attention to everything 
you buy. The next time you buy some clothes, for example, just see where 
all it's made, and you just see what a global economy we live in.
    So if the United States wants to be able to lead the world and 
preserve the peace and avoid a war and not have a lot of people like the 
lady with the microphone's brother going all over the world getting--to 
fight major wars, we have to maintain some leadership in the world. And 
that requires us to invest some money. And I think we should invest some 
money. But the overwhelming priority should be on the problems here at 
home, and that's what I'm trying to do. But we can't run away from our 
responsibilities abroad. We just have to put the folks at home first.
    And I totally agree with you that we have not invested enough in 
education and jobs and curing the problems of the homeless, especially 
in the distressed inner city areas. If we had the same policy on getting 
foreign investment into inner city America that we have in getting 
American investment overseas, we could cure a lot of these problems. And 
that's what I'm trying to do as President.
    I'll take--we've got to quit. They're trying to get me to quit. Two 
more.
    Q. I'm a junior here at Hillcrest. I was informed that the money 
that was granted to us was to use for gun control. Now, if we could use 
that money for education, to educate the people to give them a choice, 
not to go into gun control, why can't we do that? Not to go to gangs or 
to drugs.
    The President. You mean the money that you got--that the city got to 

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