CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: FAMILY VALUES

 

Article 4425 of alt.politics.clinton:

Path: bilver!tous!peora!masscomp!usenet.coe.montana.edu!caen!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!news.acns.nwu.edu!uicvm.uic.edu!u45301

Organization: University of Illinois at Chicago

Date: Monday, 17 Aug 1992 22:41:58 CDT

From: Mary Jacobs <U45301@uicvm.uic.edu>

Message-ID: <92230.224158U45301@uicvm.uic.edu>

Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton

Subject: CLINTON SPEECH TEXT: FAMILY VALUES

Lines: 483

SEND COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS REGARDING THIS INFORMATION TO THE

CLINTON/GORE CAMPAIGN AT 75300.3115@COMPUSERVE.COM

(This information is posted for public education purposes.  It does

not necessarily represent the views of The University.)

========================================================================

Family Values Address

Governor Bill Clinton

Cleveland City Club

Cleveland, Ohio

May 21, 1992

         Thank you. Thank you very much. It certainly was a unique

         introduction and it was partly true. Maybe you ought to run for

         President.

         I have really looked forward to coming here today, and I thank you

         for the opportunity to appear. As has already been said, I want to

         depart from the standard message I normally give talking about my

         eleven years as governor and the work I've done to generate jobs

         and educate children and balance budgets and bring people together

         and try to ignore traditional Democratic and Republican solutions

         to problems when they are plainly out of date.

         For several weeks, I have planned to come here to discuss what

         stands at the heart of America's Dream, and as much of the core of

         the disappearance of the American Dream: the American family and

         its problems.

         But this topic has acquired, as all of you know now, quite a bit

         more currency because of the recent speeches that the President

         gave at the Notre Dame commencement and the speech that the Vice

         President gave at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco the other

         day.

         The President's speech extolled the virtues of family life,

         lamented the breakdown of the family, said family life had more to

         do with what happens in America than what goes on in Washington --

         that's probably true, and thank goodness. But it offered no real

         action agenda for improving the plight of our most troubled

         families.

         The Vice President's speech has become known by its reference to

         the television show "Murphy Brown" -- and you've all probably had

         your laughs about that -- but the fact is that the Vice

         President's speech had more substance than the President's.

         While the President urged Notre Dame graduates to help solve our

         nation's social and family crisis, it typically offered no agenda

         and assumed no responsibility. Vice President Quayle, while

         repeating the sad statistics of teen pregnancy and divorce and

         out-of-wedlock birth in America, reiterated the empowerment agenda

         that is most closely identified, among Republicans, with HUD

         Secretary Jack Kemp, and among Democrats with the Democratic

         Leadership Council -- a group that I chaired when we came here to

         Cleveland and met in national convention last year -- more home

         ownership for poor people, urban enterprise zones, and welfare

         reform designed to encourage work and independence.

         Unfortunately, the Vice President's speech also is, in my view,

         cynical election-year politics in that it ignores the relationship

         of our family problems to our national economic decline, holds out

         Murphy Brown as a bigger problem than TV's crass commercialism and

         glorification of selfishness and violence, and denies the

         Administration's responsibility to face the full range of

         America's staggering family problems.

         I want to talk about these issues today because family questions

         are terribly important to our nation and to me personally. As a

         public official, I have worked on family issues harder and longer

         than anybody else running for president this year. And I do

         believe that they are at the heart of our national discontent.

         And as well as anyone, I know the importance of family values to

         personal growth. In 1946, I was born to a widowed mother. My

         father died in a car wreck three months before I was born. Shortly

         after I was born, my mother went back to nursing school to learn

         skills that would enable her to support me. Until I was four, I

         was fortunate enough to be was raised by loving grandparents of

         modest means but great determination -- who began teaching me to

         count and read when I was two.

         My mother's extended family included great-grandparents and great-

         uncles and aunts, all of whom were poor or nearly so, but they

         were wonderful, old-fashioned country people who brought love and

         joy and values to my life.

         When I was four, my mother remarried. And though their marriage

         was not free of difficulty -- some of which has been reported in

         the press -- my brother and I benefited from the love of my step-

         father and his extended family. They enriched my life and my sense

         of what I could do with it. My mother has been widowed in her life

         three times, but luckily is married to a wonderful man who has

         also been a friend and inspiration to me.

         Every year I ask all the relatives from all my extended families,

         and my wife's family, to gather at Christmas time. It's an amazing

         celebration of the different threads of family, a broad fabric of

         love and support that raised a child from modest means to a

         rewarding career in public service and a serious campaign for the

         presidency of the United States. I know the value of family.

         Over 20 years ago, I met and fell in love with a wonderful woman

         in law school who would become my wife and a lot of my life. It

         was Hillary who, in 1971, was already concerned about the problems

         of poor children and their parents, and who began to teach me

         about them then.

         In 1975, we married. In 1977, after I became Attorney General in

         my state, my wife founded a remarkable organization called the

         Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children. In that year, long

         before it was the national rage, she organized the conference

         called Parenting is Primary.

         In 1979, when I first became governor, with my wife's help, we

         began to try and build a pro-family policy for our state. In 1980,

         our one and only child Chelsea was born. She's been the great joy

         of our life, and watching her grow and flourish has given me a

         greater sense of urgency about the task of helping all of our

         children and their parents to do better.

         Over the last 12 years, those efforts have evolved into

         initiatives to lower the infant mortality rate through expanded

         material and child health services. To reduce teen pregnancy

         through aggressive and often controversial but value-based sex

         education efforts. To enhance child care for working families

         through an innovative voucher system. To reduce long-term welfare

         dependence by aggressively promoting more education, and training,

         and child care, and medical coverage for the children of welfare

         families, then requiring parents to take available work. To

         increase pre-school programs for poor children with a special

         emphasis on involving parents as their children's first teachers

         through a remarkable program we borrowed from the nation of Israel

         called HIPPY -- Home Instruction Program for Pre-School Youngsters

         -- a program in which even illiterate parents are taught to spend

         20 minutes a day, five days a week, 30 weeks a year preparing

         their children to learn.

         And finally, we've worked to increase child support enforcement

         through innovative efforts like reporting every delinquent parent

         who owes more than a $1,000 to every major credit agency in our

         state.

         The thrust of all these efforts is to find, what I would call, a

         third way to approach the American family -- beyond the

         traditional politics of both parties, beyond the Administration's

         cheerleading for family values on the one hand, and on the other

         hand, the old big-government notion that there's a program for

         every social problem.

         There is a third way, a common-sense path that offers more

         opportunity to families in return for more personal responsibility

         and the assumption of more family values. Family values alone

         can't feed a hungry child.  And material security alone cannot

         provide a moral compass.  We must have both.

         There is a way to embrace family values and enhance the value of

         America's families at the same time. A president should do both.

         President Bush is right to lament the high rate of teen pregnancy,

         yet he does not bring value-based sex education and health clinics

         into our schools to prevent pregnancies in the first place.

         He is right to decry the high divorce rate, yet he has no national

         economic plans to help families under economic strains.

         The President is right to speak out on the violence that stalks

         our children. And I believe he's been wrong to cut back the funds

         that cities like Cleveland can use to hire more policemen for

         their streets -- and he is wrong to oppose the Brady Bill that

         your Congressman sponsored and even President Ronald Reagan

         supports to require a waiting period before people can purchase

         handguns so that their criminal and mental health history and

         their ages can be checked.

         Like any parent, I'm troubled by the gratuitous violence and sex

         and mixed moral signals we see on television. The same tough value

         questions for America's children and parents run from the affluent

         suburbs on New England to the poorest blocks of South Central Los

         Angeles -- and they reach into our own family too, with Hillary as

         a working mother and our daughter Chelsea, who's about to become a

         teenager.

         And if those questions are hard for us, with all the privileges

         that God has given us, think about how much tougher they are for

         most families who are working harder for less money these days,

         and how devastating they can be for those families confronted with

         layoffs, illnesses, alcohol and drug abuse, poverty, or a violent

         neighborhood.

         The question is not are family values important? Of course they

         are. It's not are they under fire? You bet they are. It's not is

         TV destructive of family values. All too often it is. The question

         is what are we going to do about it?

         It isn't enough for America's leaders to blame past social

         programs or current TV programs. It isn't enough for Americans to

         change channels. We need to change course.

         Family values can't simply be Washington code for Beltway

         Republicans who really mean, "you're on your own" -- or Beltway

         Democrats, who want to spend more of your tax money on programs

         that don't embody those values.

         If family values are going to mean something, we must offer a

         nation a third way. A nation that guarantees opportunity for every

         family, but a society that demands responsibility from every

         individual.

         Of course there's a values crisis in America. But there's an

         action gap as well. Addressing one without the other isn't a plan

         of action, it's posturing to distract from inaction.

         Today the dominant message from this Administration is, "You're on

         your own."

         Parents have to work two jobs and spend more hours at work and too

         little time with their kids because wages are declining in

         America, you're on your own. If parents without health care who

         live in deadly fear they won't be able to care for their children

         without going bankrupt, they're on their own. If poor, uneducated

         parents need pre-school for their children so they'll have a

         chance to do better than their parents, well, they're on their

         own.

         The problem is, nobody is on their own in this country, we're all

         in this together. The more we ignore these problems today, the

         more we'll all pay for them tomorrow in lost economic strength, in

         increased violence, in costlier jails, in poorer schools, and lost

         futures. As my friend Governor Ann Richards of Texas said of the

         looters and the shooters of the streets of Los Angeles: "These

         young hoodlums who burn and batter and turn our streets into

         killing fields were once our children -- small and helpless and

         needing our attention and our love, and we let them go --- tossed

         them aside like yesterday's news. Now they are making headlines

         that we don't want to read. God may forgive them but we can't

         condone their action or reclaim their lives. They are lost to us.

         This tragedy must end with this generation. It must stop now."

         A very great Republican President, Theodore Roosevelt, once called

         the Presidency a Bully Pulpit. Then President Kennedy said that

         the Presidency was the vital center of action. Both presidents

         were right. A president's words can move a nation, but talk must

         be backed up with action or we risk diminishing the Bully Pulpit

         into a Pulpit of Bull.

         When I was born in Hope, Arkansas, in 1946, our state's per-capita

         income was barely half the national average. Though my family and

         I later moved into a middle-class life, thanks to both my step-

         father and my mother working, in the beginning, like most people

         in my state, we were poor.

         But one of the values my family pounded into me was that if I

         worked hard and played by the rules, I'd be rewarded -- and I have

         been, beyond my wildest dreams. We were taught to take

         responsibility for ourselves and for each other. And we were

         taught that if we did, we would do better.

         I understand something about hard times and how hard things can

         get. My mother was widowed before I was born and I lived with my

         grandparents when I was little as I said. My most vivid memory of

         my mother and childhood was when I went to visit her at nursing

         school when I was three, and when my grandmother and I pulled out

         of the station, she knelt down by the side of the railroad tracks

         and cried. I remember that to this day. I remember how she bore

         her grief every day because she believed that, if she sacrificed

         in the short run, in the long run she could build a better life

         for me.

         Now there are millions of stories like that in America today.

         Remember, most poor people, those with and without jobs, did not

         loot and riot in Los Angeles, because their values kept them from

         doing so. They would not do wrong. Most Americans today do give

         their children love and discipline and respect for others and for

         the law.

         There is a great deal of love in the poorest welfare families in

         America today. But we have to face the hard truth that too many

         Americans are cut off from these values and the life that we want

         them to live, that reinforces those values. And too many Americans

         who live by their values are denied the progress they were

         promised -- the progress that was real for the poor of my

         generation.

         We simply cannot go on under these circumstances being the only

         major nation in the world without a family policy -- one that

         enshrines family values by placing a value on family. We've tried

         to develop one in Arkansas. And I outlined it to you a moment ago.

         And I think we need on in America.

         Here is a good beginning:

         First, we should reward work and family. Today millions of

         Americans work full time but don't make enough to lift their

         families out of poverty. That's wrong. No one who works full-time

         and has children at home should be poor in America.

         We should expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to guarantee a

         "working wage" to lift above the poverty line anyone with a family

         who's working full time. This initiative is not terribly

         expensive. It won't require us to spend one red cent for any

         public bureaucracy. Yet, it will reward work and lift one million

         working poor families and their children out of poverty.

         Second, we need to reform our welfare system so that it puts

         people back to work and ends permanent dependency. In Arkansas,

         under the Federal Family Support Act of 1988, which I helped to

         draft as the governor's representative, we've created a system of

         training, and vouchers for day care, and medical coverage for

         children so that welfare families can return to the dignity of a

         job once again. As a result, our welfare rolls have grown less

         than the national average in the last three years, even in spite

         of the recession and high unemployment.

         The truth is, most people on welfare don't like it any more than

         you do. A few years ago, I asked the woman in our welfare-to-work

         program in Arkansas what she liked best about her new job. And she

         said -- wasn't earning a paycheck -- it was knowing that when her

         son went to school and they asked him what your mother does for a

         living, he could give an answer. People want the dignity of work.

         We should give everyone the chance to have that kind of dignity.

         We should give everyone on welfare the education, training, child

         care and medical coverage for their children they need. But I

         think we should go beyond the present law. After two years, if

         people can't find private sector employment, I think they should

         be required to do public service work in return for the income.

         We can end welfare as we know it, not by punishing the poor, but

         by empowering them to take care of their children and to be role

         models.

         Third, we need to do more to protect America's children from the

         consequences of divorce and absent fathers -- and on some

         occasions, absent mothers. I was born to a single mother who was

         lucky enough to have the support of an extended family. Today, in

         the governor's office, I have old pictures of my grandfather and

         my great-grandfather. Unfortunately, too few children know who

         their great-grandparents were, and too many have parents who

         should pay for their upbringing but don't.

         We need to get tough on child support enforcement with a

         nationwide crackdown on deadbeat parents. In our state, if you

         fall more than a thousand dollars behind in your child support, we

         report you to every major credit agency in the state. People

         shouldn't be able to borrow money for other things before they

         take care of their children.

         Because of that and other efforts, like putting the name and

         social security number of a father on a birth certificate if a

         mother shows up to give birth without a father -- thus shifting

         the burden to the man to disprove his heritage -- we collected

         more than $41 million from "deadbeat parents" in 1991 -- money

         that we didn't have to pay in welfare or other public spending.

         These are the kinds of things that we ought to do. We have to do

         more of them.

         We must make the toughest possible child support enforcement

         efforts in this country.  We should enlist major credit agencies

         all across the country to follow the example that Arkansas and a

         few other states have. We ought to say to people everywhere, "Pay

         for your children first or you shouldn't get credit."  We ought to

         have a national system of child support collection utilizing the

         Internal Revenue Service and tax records.

         I'm tired of seeing custodial parents bear the whole burden for

         the problem of raising their children. Governments can't raise

         children -- people do -- and the people who bring children into

         this world should all bear a responsibility for raising them.

         Fourth, we need to help parents do the best possible job of

         rearing their kids. Government can't create good parents, but it

         can make it easier for them to tend to their children's needs.

         In 1988, George Bush promised to make sure, and I quote, "women

         don't have to worry about getting their jobs back after having a

         child or caring for a child during a serious illness." But when

         Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act, George Bush

         vetoed it. I would sign it. Other nations do the same thing.

         Millions of Americans are already caught in a squeeze between

         taking care of their parents and taking care of their children. We

         should not now make them choose between work and family -- not if

         we are going to be a pro-family country where most parents have to

         work.

         Fifth, we can also bolster the family's crucial role in education.

         We should fully fund the Head Start program and quit delaying it.

         But in doing it, we should put increased emphasis on enlisting

         parents, even illiterate parents, as their children's first

         teachers. As I said earlier, the HIPPY program in Arkansas trains

         welfare mothers to teach their pre-school children to read. The

         Head Start programs with the most long-lasting benefits for

         children are those in which the parents' role is greatest, no

         matter how limited the parents' own educational skills.

         Our schools should also reinforce these family values and parental

         involvement by bringing more parents in. Schools all over America

         can follow the example of the Beasley Academic Center, a public

         junior high school in Chicago. It's located in a neighborhood with

         the highest murder rate in all of Illinois. But every week, 75

         fathers and even more mothers regularly volunteer in the schools.

         Against the odds, this school ranks in the top 10% of test scores

         in the state, with no guns, no drugs, no dropouts -- in part

         because of a culture which includes a dress code, strong family

         values, and parental role models. Not just talk, action!

         Sixth and lastly, I want to ensure that American families and

         individuals make the best personal decisions with their life with

         a full sense of personal responsibility and concern for the

         consequences of their behavior. That means letting teens know that

         it is wrong for children to have children, and also providing them

         with the education about how to prevent that.

         In Arkansas, my nationally renowned health director, Dr. Joycelyn

         Elders and I, fought for school-based health clinics and sex

         education. It wasn't popular and it still isn't easy, but with

         teen pregnancy and AIDS claiming more and more of our young

         people, it is now a matter of life and death.

         There are many other issues that we have to face: restoring

         economic growth to our nation so we can restore economic strength

         to our families, providing affordable health care to all of our

         families and their children, giving poor people more say over

         their own lives through initiatives like community policing and

         tenant management of housing projects and preserving personal and

         family privacy -- including, in my view, not repealing Roe v.

         Wade.

         The President says he wants private school choice even if it means

         taking public money away from public schools that are already

         underfunded compared to many other nations. He's willing to make

         it a crime for a woman to exercise her right to make the most

         private choice of all. I don't understand those priorities.

         When my daughter was in her last month of sixth grade last year, I

         remember taking her to school one day -- as I do everyday when I'm

         home -- and seeing a very handsome man walking his child to

         school. He had two other little children with him. And one of

         these little children came running up to me, holding out his hands

         and jumping up into my arms. He held me very tight. Now, as you

         know, I'm a politician, so I love that -- I mean, the baby wanted

         to kiss me.

         But, if you know anything about child development -- this child

         was almost two years old -- it's not a very good sign for a two-

         year-old child still to be indiscriminately bestowing this sort of

         affection. So I asked this man, I said, "How many children do you

         have?" He said, "five." I said, "You mean you have the one that

         went in there, these two, and two others?" And he said, "Oh, no,

         no, these two are not mine." He said, "My wife and I had a

         daughter who died. And in honor of her memory, we decided that we

         would spend the rest of our lives, serving as foster parents for

         children in need. These two children I have are not mine, they

         were abandoned by their mother, alone at home, for two whole

         days." They were twenty months old.

         "So the state gave them to us to care for for a while and we're

         loving them and hoping that their mother can learn to love them

         and be a good parent and eventually to take them back."

         There are millions of children like that all over this country --

         hanging in the balance. They are part of our national family. Of

         course, we must exhort their parents to do a better job, and we

         must write into our social programs incentives for stronger family

         values. But we cannot ignore the plain need for a national policy

         to value families...to reconnect all Americans to our most

         cherished values and the idea of progress for those who live by

         those values.

         Ultimately, it is up to each of us to build the bridge across that

         gulf that stands wide today between what we are as a nation and

         what we are meant to be. We must believe that we once again can

         make a difference, that tomorrow will be better than today if we

         build that bridge and make it so. We have the tools. The question

         is do we have the vision and the will. This election will tell the

         tale.

         Thank you very much.