CLINTON SPEECH: RESPONSIBILITY/REBUILD AMERICA

 

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Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: RESPONSIBILITY/REBUILD AMERICA

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"The New Covenant:

Responsibility and Rebuilding the American Community"

Remarks of Gov. Bill Clinton

Georgetown University

October 23, 1991

Thank you all for being here today. You are living in revolutionary

times. When I was here, America sought to contain Communism,

not roll it back. Most respected academics held that once a country

"went Communist," the loss of freedom was permanent and

irreversible. Yet in the last three years, we've seen the Berlin Wall

come down, Germany reunified, all of Eastern Europe abandon

Communism, a coup in the Soviet Union fail and the Soviet Union

itself disintegrate, liberating the Baltics and other republics. Now the

Soviet Foreign Minister is trying to help our Secretary of State make

peace in the Middle East. And in the space of one year, Lech Walesa

and Vaclav Havel both came to this city to thank America for

supporting their quest for freedom. Nelson Mandela walked out of a

jail in South Africa he entered before I entered Georgetown in 1964.

He now wants a Bill of Rights like ours for his country.

We should be celebrating. All around the world, the American

Dream -- political freedom, market economics, national

independence -- is ascendant. Everything your parents and

grandparents stood for from World War II on has been rewarded.

Yet we're not celebrating. Why? Because our people fear that while

the American Dream reigns supreme abroad, it is dying here at

home. We're losing jobs and wasting opportunities. The very fiber of

our nation is breaking down: Families are coming apart, kids are

dropping out of school, drugs and crime dominate our streets. And

our leaders here in Washington are doing nothing to turn America

around. Our political system rotates between being the butt of jokes

and the object of scorn. Frustration produces calls for term limits

from voters who think they can't vote incumbents out, resentment

produces votes for David Duke -- not just from racists, but from

voters so desperate for change, they'll support the most anti-

establishment message, even from an ex-Klansman who was inspired

by Adolf Hitler. We've got to rebuild our political life together

before demagogues and racists and those who pander to the worst in

us bring this country down.

People once looked to our President and Congress to bring us

together, solve problems, and make progress. Now, in the face of

massive challenges, our government stands discredited, our people

disillusioned. There's a hole in our politics where a sense of common

purpose used to be.

The Reagan-Bush years have exalted private gain over public

obligations, special interests over the common good, wealth and

fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a gilded age of

greed, selfishness, irresponsibility, excess, and neglect.

S&L crooks stole billions of dollars in other people's money.

Pentagon contractors and HUD consultants stole from the taxpayers.

Many big corporate executives raised their own salaries when their

companies were losing money or their workers were losing their jobs.

Middle-class families worked longer hours for less money and spent

more on health care, housing, education, and taxes. Poverty rose.

Many inner-city streets were taken over by crime and drugs, welfare

and despair. Family responsibility became an oxymoron for deadbeat

fathers, who were more likely to make their car payments than pay

their child support.

And government, which should have been setting an example, was

even worse. Congress raised its pay and guarded its perks while most

Americans were working harder for less money. Two Republican

Presidents elected on a promise of fiscal responsibility advanced

budget policies that more than tripled the national debt. Congress

went along with that, too. Taxes were lowered on the wealthiest

people whose incomes rose, and raised on middle class people whose

incomes fell.

And through it all, millions of decent, ordinary people who worked

hard, played by the rules, and took responsibility for their own

actions were falling behind, living a life of struggle without reward or

security. For 12 years, the forgotten middle class watched their

economic interests ignored and their values run into the ground.

Nothing illustrates this more clearly, in the 1980s, than the fact that

charitable giving by middle-class families went up as their incomes

went down, while charitable giving by the wealthiest

Americans went down as their incomes went up. Responsibility went

unrewarded and so did hard work. It's no wonder so many kids

growing up on the street think it makes more sense to join a gang

and deal drugs than to stay in school and go to work. The fast buck

was glorified from Wall Street to Main Street to Mean Street.

To turn America around, we need a new approach founded on our

most sacred principles as a nation, with a vision for the future. We

need a New Covenant, a solemn agreement between the people and

their government, to provide opportunity for everybody, inspire

responsibility throughout our society, and restore a sense of

community to this great nation. A New Covenant to take

government back from the powerful interests and the bureaucracy,

and give this country back to ordinary people.

More than two hundred years ago, the founders outlined our first

social compact between government and the people, not just

between lords and kings. More than a century ago, Abraham Lincoln

gave his life to maintain the Union the compact created. Sixty years

ago, Franklin Roosevelt renewed that promise with a New Deal that

offered opportunity in return for hard work.

Today we need to forge a New Covenant that will repair the

damaged bond between the people and their government and restore

our basic values -- the notion that our country has a responsibility to

help people get ahead, that citizens have not only the right but a

responsibility to rise as far and as high as their talents and

determination can take them, and that we're all in this together. We

must make good on the words of Thomas Jefferson, who said, "A

debt of service is due from every man to his country proportional to

the bounties which nature and fortune have measured to him."

Make no mistake -- this New Covenant means change -- change in

our party, change in our national leadership, and change in our

country. Far away from Washington, in your hometowns and mine,

people have lost faith in the ability of government to change their

lives for the better. Out there, you can hear the quiet, troubled voice

of the forgotten middle class, lamenting that government no longer

looks out for their interests or honors their values -- like individual

responsibility, hard work, family, community.  They think their

government takes more from them than it gives back, and looks the

other way when special interests only take from this country and give

nothing back. And they're right.  This New Covenant can't be

between the politicians and the established interests. It can't be

another backroom deal between the people in power and the people

who keep them there. This New Covenant can only be ratified in the

people in the 1992 election. And that's why I'm running for

President.

Some people think it's old-fashioned to talk like this. Some people

even think I am naive to suggest that we can restore the American

Dream through a covenant between people and their government.

But I believe with all my heart after 11 years of work as Governor,

working every day to create opportunity and jobs and improve

education and deal with all the problems that we all know so much

about -- I believe that the only way we can hold this country

together, and move boldly forward into the future, is to do it

together with a New Covenant.

Over 25 years ago, Professor Carroll Quigley taught in his Western

Civilization class here at Georgetown that the defining idea of our

culture in general and our country in particular is "future

preference," the idea that the future can be better than the present,

and that each of us has a personal, moral responsibility to make it so.

I hope they still teach that lesson here, and I hope you believe it,

because I don't think we can save America without it.

In the weeks to come, I will come back to Georgetown and outline

my plans to rebuild our economy, regain our competitive leadership

in the world, restore the forgotten middle class, and reclaim the

future for the next generation. I will put forth my views on how to

promote our national security and foreign policy interests after the

Cold War. And I will tell you in clear terms what I believe the

President and the Congress owe the people in this New Covenant for

change.

But I can tell you, based on my long experience in public life, there

will never be a government program for every problem. Much of

what holds us together and moves us ahead is the daily assumption

of personal responsibility by millions of Americans from all walks of

life. I can promise to do a hundred different things for you as

President. But none of them will make any difference unless we all

do more as citizens. And, today, I want to talk about the

responsibilities we owe to ourselves, to one another, and to our

nation.

It's been 30 years since a Democrat ran for President and asked

something of all the American people. I intend to challenge you to

do more and to do better.

We must go beyond the competing ideas of the old political

establishment: beyond every man for himself on the one hand and

the right to something for nothing on the other.

We need a New Covenant that will challenge all our citizens to be

responsible. The New Covenant will say to our corporate leaders at

the top of the ladder: We'll promote economic growth and the free

market, but we're not going to help you diminish the middle class

and weaken the economy. We'll support your efforts to increase

profits and jobs through quality products and services, but we're

going to hold you responsible to be good corporate citizens, too.

The New Covenant will say to people on welfare: We're going to

provide the training and education and health care you need, but if

you can work, you've got to go to work, because you can no longer

stay on welfare forever.

The New Covenant will say to the hard-working middle class and

those who aspire to it: We're going to guarantee you access to a

college education, but if you get that help, you've got to give

something back to your country.

And the New Covenant will challenge all of us in public service: We

have a solemn responsibility to honor the values and promote the

interests of the people who elected us, and if we don't, we don't

belong in government anymore.

This New Covenant must begin here in Washington. The New

Covenant will literally revolutionize government and fundamentally

change its relationship to people. People don't want some top-down

bureaucracy telling them what to do anymore. That's one reason

they tore down the Berlin Wall and threw out the Communist

regimes in Eastern Europe and Russia.

Now, the New Covenant will challenge our government to change

its way of doing business, too. The American people need a

government that works at a price they can afford. The Republicans

have been in charge of the government for 12 years. They've

brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy.  Democrats who

want the government to do more -- and I'm one of them -- have a

heavy responsibility to show that we're going to spend the taxpayer's

money wisely and with discipline.

I want to make government more efficient and more effective by

eliminating unnecessary layers of bureaucracy and cutting

administrative costs, and by giving people more choices in the

services they get, and empowering them to make those choices.

That's what we've tried to do in Arkansas -- balancing our budget

every year, improving services, and treating taxpayers like our

customers and our bosses, giving them more choices in public

schools, child care centers, and services for the elderly.     The New

Covenant must challenge Congress to act responsibly. And here

again, Democrats must lead the way. Because they want to use

government to help people, Democrats have to put Congress in

order: Congress should live by the laws it applies to other

workplaces. No more midnight pay raises. Congressional pay

shouldn't go up while the pay of working Americans is going down.

Let's clamp down on campaign spending and open the airwaves to

encourage real political debate instead of paid political assassination.

No more bounced checks. No more bad restaurant debts. No more

fixed tickets.  Service in Congress is privilege enough.

We can't go on like this. We have to honor, reward and reflect the

work ethic, not the power grab. Responsibility is for everybody, and

it begins here in the nation's capital.

The New Covenant will also challenge the private sector. The most

irresponsible people in the 1980s were those in business who abused

their position at the top of the totem pole. This is my message to

the business community: As President, I'm going to do everything I

can to make it easier for your company to compete in the world,

with a better trained workforce, cooperation between labor and

management, fair and strong trade policies, and incentives to invest

in America's economic growth. But I want the jetsetters and the

feather bedders of corporate America to know that if you sell your

companies and your workers and your country down the river, you'll

get called on the carpet. That's what the President's bully pulpit is

for.

All of you who are going into business, it is a noble endeavor. It is

the thing that makes this country run. The private sector creates

jobs, not the public sector. But you have to know that the people

with the responsibility in the private sector should think it's simply

not enough to obey the letter of the law and make as much money

as you can. It's wrong for executives to do what so many did in the

'80s. The biggeset companies raised their pay by four times the

percentage their workers' pay went up and three times the

percentage their profits went up. It's wrong to drive a company into

the ground and have the chief executive bail out with a golden

parachute to a cushy life.

The average CEO at a major American corporation is paid about 100

times as much as the average worker - - compare that to two

countries doing much better than we are in the world economy. In

Germany it's 23 to 1, and in Japan, which just completed 58

months of untrammeled economic growth, it's 17 to 1. And our

government today rewards that excess with a tax break for executive

pay, no matter how high it is. That's wrong.  If a company wants to

overpay its executives and underinvest in the future, it shouldn't get

any special treatment from Uncle Sam. If a company wants to

transfer jobs abroad and cut the security of working people, it

shouldn't get special treatment from the Treasury. In the 1980s, we

didn't do enough to help our companies to compete and win in a

global economy. We did too much to transfer wealth away from

hard-working middle-class people to the rich without good reason.

That's got to stop.  There should be no more deductibility for

irresponsibility.

The New Covenant will also challenge the hard-working middle-class

families of America.  Their challenge centers around work and

education. I know Americans worry about the quality of education

in this country and want the best for their children. The Clinton

Administration will set high national standards based on international

competition for what everybody ought to know, and a national

examination system to measure whether they're learning it. It's not

enough to put money into schools. We need to challenge the

schools to produce and we've got to insist on results.

I just came from Thomas Jefferson Junior High School here in

Washington, and the principal of that school, Vera White, I think is

here with me today. I've been to that school three times in the last

five years. That school is in a building that was built when Grant was

President. They have the plaster models of the Jefferson Memorial in

the school auditorium. But every time I've been in that school, you

could eat lunch off every floor in the school. There is a spirit of

learning that pervades the atmosphere. Almost everyone in the

school comes from an ordinary family in Washington--it's almost 100

percent minority.  But in several years that school has won the

National Math Council's competition going all the way to the finals

for junior high school performance in math. And every time I go

there I'm just overwhelmed by the spirit that exists from a teacher's

and principal's point of view, because they know that they're going

to produce, and they don't make excuses for the problems that the

kids bring to the classroom; they open those kids to a brighter

world. We need more of that.

But we also have to recognize that teachers can't do it all. We must

challenge all parents and children to believe all children can learn.

And here is the biggest challenge of all: Too many American parents

raise their kids to believe that how much they learn depends on the

IQ that God gave them and how much money their family makes.

Yet in the countries we are competing against for the future, children

are raised to believe that how much they learn depends on how hard

they work, and how much their parents encourage them to learn.

The New Covenant will challenge students of America to stay in

school. Students who drop out of school or fail to learn as much as

they can are not just letting down themselves and their families.

They're failing their communities, because from that point on,

chances are they're subtracting from society, not adding to it. In

Arkansas, we've tried to enhance responsibility for students by saying

that if they drop out for no good reason, they lose the privilege of a

driver's license.

The New Covenant means new challenges for every young person. I

want to establish a system of voluntary national service for all

Americans. In a Clinton Administration, we'll put forth a domestic

GI Bill that will say to the middle class as well as low-income people:

We want you to go to college, we'll pay for it, it will be the best

money we ever spent, but you've got to give something back to your

country in return. As President, I'll set up a trust fund out of which

any American can borrow money for a college education, so long as

they pay it back either as a small percentage of their income over

time or with a couple of years of national service as teachers, police

officers, child care workers -- doing work our country desperately

needs.

And education doesn't stop in school. Adults have a responsibility to

keep learning so they can stay ahead of the competition, too. All of

us are going to have to work smarter in the years to come, and that

will require new forms of cooperation in the workplace between

management and workers, and a continuing effort to move toward

high-performance work organizations.

There's a special challenge in the New Covenant for the young men

and women who live in America's most troubled urban

neighborhoods, the children like those I met in Chicago and Los

Angeles who live in fear of being forced to join a gang or getting

shot going to and from school.

Many of these young people believe this country has ignored them

for too long, and they're right. Many of them think America unfairly

blames them for every wrong in our society -- for drugs, crime,

poverty, the breakup of the family and the breakdown of the schools

-- and they're right. They worry that because their face is of a

different color, their only choice in life is jail or welfare or a dead-end

job, that being a minority in an inner city is a guarantee of failure.

But they're wrong -- and when I'm President, I'm going to do my

best to prove they're wrong.

I know these young people can overcome anything they set their

mind to. I believe America needs their strength, their intelligence,

and their humanity. And because I believe in them and what they

can contribute to our society, they must not be let off the hook. All

society can offer them is a chance to develop their God-given

abilities. They have to do the rest. Anybody who tells them

otherwise is lying -- and they know it.

As President, I'll see that they get the same deal as everyone else:

they've got to play by the rules, stay off drugs, stay in school and

keep out of the streets. They've got to stop having children if they're

not prepared to support them. Governments don't raise children.

People do.

And for those young people who do get into trouble, we'll give

them one chance to avoid prison, by setting up community boot

camps for first-time non-violent offenders -- where they can learn

discipline, get drug treatment if necessary, continue their education,

and do useful work for their community. A second chance to be a

first-rate citizen.

The New Covenant must be pro-work. That means people who

work shouldn't be poor. In a Clinton Administration, we'll do

everything we can to break the cycle of dependency and help the

poor climb out of poverty. First, we need to make work pay by

expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor,

creating savings accounts that make it easier for poor people even on

welfare to save, and supporting microenterprise grants for those who

want to start a small business. At the same time, we need to assure

all Americans that they'll have access to health care when they go to

work.

The New Covenant can break the cycle of welfare. Welfare should be

a second chance, not a way of life. In a Clinton Administration,

we're going to put an end to welfare as we know it. I want to erase

the stigma of welfare for good by restoring a simple, dignified

principle: no one who can work can stay on welfare forever.

We'll still help people who can't help themselves, and those who

need education and training and child care. But if people can work,

they'll have to do so. We'll give them all the help they need for up

to two years. But after that, if they're able to work, they'll have to

take a job in the private sector, or start earning their way through

community service. That way, we'll restore the covenant that welfare

was first meant to be: to give temporary help to people who've fallen

on hard times.

If the New Covenant is pro-work, it must also be pro-family. That

means we must demand the toughest possible child support

enforcement. We need an administration that will give state agencies

that collect child support full law enforcement authority, and find

new ways of catching deadbeats. In Arkansas, we passed a law this

year that says if you owe more than a thousand dollars in child

support, we're going to report you to every credit agency in the

state. People shouldn't be able to borrow money before they take

care of their children.

Finally, the President has the greatest responsibility of all -- to bring

us together, not drive us apart. For 12 years, this President and his

predecessor have divided us against each other -- pitting rich against

poor, black against white, women against men -- creating a country

where we no longer recognize that we're all in this together. They

have profited by fostering an atmosphere of blame and denial instead

of building an ethic of responsibility. They had a chance to bring out

the best in us and instead they appealed to the worst in us.

Nothing exemplifies this more clearly than the battle over the Civil

Rights Act of 1991. You know from what I've already said today

that I can't be for quotas. I'm for responsibility at every turn. That

bill is not a quota bill. When the Civil Rights Act was in place from

1964 to 1987, I never had a single employer in my state say "it's a

quota bill." We need rules of workplace fairness for the 70% of new

entrants in our workforce who will be women and minorities in the

decade of the '90s. That's what that bill is for.

Why does the President refuse to let a civil rights bill pass? Because

he knows that the people he is dependent on for his electoral

majority--white, working-class men and women, mostly men--have

had their incomes decline in the 1980s, and they may return to their

natural home, to someone who offers them real opportunity. And so

he is dredging up the same old tactic that the hard Right has

employed in my part of the country, in the South, since I was a

child. When everything gets tight, and you think you're going to

lose those people, you find the most economically insecure white

people, and you scare the living daylights out of them.

That is wrong. This President turned away John Danforth, who

shepherded Clarence Thomas' nomination through the Senate. John

Danforth begged him for a civil rights bill. He said no. He turned

away the Business Roundtable, an organization of corporate

executives, largely Republican, who said we need a civil rights bill.

He said no. And today, in the press it's reported that he turned

away his own minority leader in the United States Senate, Senator

Bob Dole, who wanted a civil rights bill.

This man does not want a bill. He wants an issue to drive a stake

into the heart of America and it's wrong. And I won't let him get

away with it.

I pledge to you that I'm not going to let the Republicans get away

with this cynical scam anymore. A New Covenant means it's my

responsibility and the responsibility of every American in this country

to fight back against the politics of division and bring this country

together.

After all, that is what's special about America. We want to be part of

a nation that's coming together, not coming apart. We want to be

part of a community where people look out for each other, not just

for themselves. We want to be part of a nation that brings out the

best in us, not the worst. And we believe that the only limit to what

we can do is what our leaders are willing to ask of us and what we

are willing to expect of ourselves.

Nearly sixty years ago, in a famous speech to the Commonwealth

Club in the final months of his 1932 campaign, Franklin Roosevelt

outlined a new compact that gave hope to a nation mired in the

Great Depression. The role of government, he said, was to promise

every American the right to make a living. The people's role was to

do their best to make the most of it. He said: "Faith in America

demands that we recognize the new terms of the old social contract.

In the strength of great hope we must all shoulder our common

load."

That's what our hope is today: A New Covenant to shoulder our

common load. When people assume responsibility and shoulder that

common load, they acquire a dignity they never knew before.  When

people go to work, they rediscover a pride that was lost. When

fathers pay their child support, they restore a connection they and

their children need. When students work harder, they find out they

all can learn and do as well as anyone else on Earth. When corporate

managers put their workers and their long-term profits ahead of their

own paychecks, their companies do well, and so do they. When the

privilege of serving is enough of a perk for people in Congress, and

the President finally assumes responsibility for America's problems,

we'll not only stop doing wrong, we'll begin to do what is right to

move America forward.

And that is what this election is really all about -- forging a New

Covenant of change that will honor middle- class values, restore the

public trust, create a new sense of community, and make America

work again.  Thank you.