Clinton urges improvements in education, welfare

Tuesday, July 29, 1997 | 10:50 a.m.

President Clinton told the nation's governors that the country is moving forward economically but more must be done to reduce welfare rolls and improve elementary and secondary education.

His 38-minute speech Monday before the National Governors' Association conference at The Mirage hotel-casino was relatively subdued compared with the rousing partisan responses of a State of the Union address or campaign appearance.

That wasn't totally unexpected. After all, Clinton is a Democrat while nearly two-thirds of the governors are Republican. The speech was interrupted three times by applause. The loudest was for his proclamation that the country has its lowest percentage of people on welfare since 1970, for which Republicans have claimed the lion's share of credit.

"The country is in good shape," Clinton said. "We've got to finish the job of balancing the budget, follow through on welfare, put education on the front burner, and learn to work and live together. If we do that, then all of us together will leave our grandchildren an America that will be greater than it is today."

Clinton waxed nostalgic when referring to the governors' association, which he chaired as Arkansas' governor a decade ago. It was a not-too-subtle reminder that he has been in their shoes.

He urged them to help develop a "new way of thinking," such as what he experienced at the Nevada-California Lake Tahoe summit last weekend. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore pledged $50 million in federal support over the next two years to help clean up the lake.

"At Lake Tahoe I saw the most conservative business people sitting with the most active environmentalists on the same page," Clinton said. "You couldn't tell after a point who was in what group because they all concluded that they could not preserve their economy and grow it without also preserving their environment."

The president trumpeted his accomplishments since taking office in January 1993, including "the strongest economy in a generation," 300,000 fewer federal employees, and a five-year decline in the nation's crime rate. He also noted that the next federal budget agreement is in the final stages of negotiations with the GOP-led Congress.

"We know now that the deficit this year when it comes in will be over 80 percent less than it was in 1992," Clinton said. "One of the things that keeps the economy going is the confidence that we're serious about fiscal responsibility."

He sounded upbeat about the pending budget package, noting that it includes the largest increase in education spending and child health-care support since 1965, while protecting the environment. His proposal includes $24 billion for children's health care funded in part through increased cigarette taxes, and $1,500 in tax credits for the first two years of college.

"We have an opportunity to give the American people a tax cut that is modest in the context of the overall economy but still will provide much-needed relief to middle-class families," Clinton said.

He vowed the budget would give states more flexibility to administer Medicaid and other federal programs, which translates to added responsibilities for the governors. Clinton noted that during his tenure, 43 states have been granted federal waivers to launch their own welfare reform experiments.

"There are now 3 million fewer people on welfare than the day I took office, and 1.2 million fewer people since I signed the welfare reform bill just a year ago," he said. "The good economy has taken some people from welfare to work. There's a 50 percent increase in child support collections, and that's helped. The minimum wage and Earned Income Tax Credit to make work more attractive, that's helped."

Clinton, however, also said the states have played a major role in the reduced welfare rolls through their own initiatives. He urged the governors to back his proposals for an additional $1.5 billion in food stamps and $600 million in transportation expenditures to help move people from welfare to work.

"If we can't do this now, when our unemployment is 5 percent nationwide and when prosperity is virtually uniform across the country but there are pockets of people who are still unemployed, when can we do it?" Clinton said.

The president encouraged the states to forge partnerships with private employers to encourage hiring of welfare recipients. He said $3 billion will go to states to help create work opportunities in areas where it is difficult for the private sector to do so.

"The MGM Grand hotel here has hired over a thousand welfare recipients during the past few years, and the state of Nevada has set a goal for new casinos to set aside 10 percent of all their positions for former welfare recipients," Clinton said. "We thank you for that."

Clinton noted that the White House will host its first-ever conference on child care Oct. 23. He reminded the governors that his administration supported the addition of $4 billion to the states for increased child-care assistance as part of its welfare reform effort.

"We all agree that raising children will be our most important job," he said. "We can't have people with young children moving into the work force unless they know that their children are going to be well cared for, safe and secure in a nourishing environment while they're at work."

The governors also were encouraged again by Clinton to adopt national testing standards for fourth-graders in reading and eighth-graders in math by 1999. However, only six states -- North Carolina, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Kentucky and West Virginia -- have heeded the president's advice.

He conceded that some states are reluctant to participate because they're concerned with how the national standards would fit with their current testing. But he said the government will work with those states, while trying to assure them that "this is not a federal government power grab."

"I do not believe that we will be the leading economy in the world 50 years from now unless we can do a more uniform job of getting people out of high school with excellent world-class education," Clinton said. "We've got the finest system of higher education in the world that continues to carry us a long way. But we simply have to do a better job in K (kindergarten) through 12."