Q & A session with the president

Q & A session with the president

College reporters query Clinton about education

Last month 115 college journalists were invited to an all-day
press conference at the White House. Students heard presentations
from cabinet officials and White House staff, then questioned
President Clinton extensively on proposed Republican cuts in
education and his administration’s review of affirmative action
programs.

Daily Bruin staff writer Alisa Ulferts and wire editor James
Snyder attended the event and returned to complete a four-part
series on federal education issues.

Today and tomorrow: Q&A with President Bill Clinton

Wednesday: Affirmative action on Capitol Hill

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you very much. I’d like to now call on as
many of you as we possibly can. I’d like to ask you when I
recognize you, please, to say what your name is and what your
school is. And we’ll start here.

Q: Jeff Glasser, from Yale. How do you plan to stop Congress
from capping direct loans, or cutting Pell grants, or paying the
interest on loans taken out during college? Are you willing to veto
legislation if it comes across your desk?

A: Well, of course, I am in the areas of education, which are so
important to me. But let me say again what my first choice has been
all along ­ is to try to prevail in the debate in the
Congress. We are making progress. As I said, we ­ I signed a
bill yesterday that I strongly believe in ­ the unfunded
mandates bill ­ which limits the ability of Congress to pass
laws that require state and local governments to raise taxes or
otherwise pay for things that we require. We’re going to get the
line-item veto I hope and believe, which is a good way to cut out
unnecessary spending. So maybe we can make some progress here.

I don’t think there’s as much enthusiasm in the Senate among
Republicans, and I know the Democrats will oppose eliminating the
subsidies, cutting the Pell grants, eliminating the direct loan
program. So I hope we can prevail in the Congress. But the veto pen
is always there.

I wouldn’t be standing here today, no way in the world would I
be standing here today, if it hadn’t been for the opportunities
America gave me through education. When I was born in my state in
1946, the per capita income of my state was barely over half the
national average. And my whole generation owes everything we have
to the educational opportunities our country gave to us. And now
education is even more important to the general welfare of America
than it was when I was your age.

I cannot sit by and watch it go backward. We need to bear down
and do more, not ease up and go back.

Q: Francine Friedman, from Georgetown. As a fellow Hoya about to
graduate and start paying back my loans, I was wondering if you
could share with us how you financed your Georgetown education.

A: As I remember, it was a $500-a-year scholarship and a job. I
worked in the Congress for two years. And when I went to Yale to
law school I had a grant, a loan, a tuition postponement option,
which works like the direct loan does now ­ that is, I paid it
back as a percentage of my income. I had a national defense loan
and six jobs. But never more than three at once. (Laughter.)

Q: My name is Peter McKay. I’m a sophomore at Florida A&M
University. And my question deals with the White House review of
affirmative action that’s been going on for several weeks now. What
is the status of the review, and what conclusions have you reached
about affirmative action?

A: Well, first, the status is ongoing. I’ll talk a little about
where we are now, but I want to emphasize that the review is still
under way.

I know there must be a lot of discussion about this on college
campuses as it affects admissions policies. But I want to emphasize
to you, if you spark a debate about this it’s important to know
what people are talking about when they’re talking about
affirmative action. There are policies of the government and
policies in the private sector that affect admissions to colleges,
availability of financial aid to schools, admissions to workplaces
and promotional policies within the workplace, and access to
contracts in the public sector; and, sometimes, in the private
sector as well, like big companies contracting with smaller ones.
So you’re basically talking about a range of programs.

When there is evidence of past discrimination, as found in a
court, then there can be more strenuous rules and regulations.
Otherwise, there are actually a lot of strictures on how far
affirmative action can go in giving preferences to people based on
race or gender.

But let me back up a little bit and again talk about a little
history. When I was your age and I began to work in political
campaigns, which I know was a long time ago ­ almost 30 years
ago now, but it’s not so long in the life of the country ­
there were still courthouses on squares in county seats in my state
that had segregated restrooms ­ in my lifetime. When I was
your age, in the mid-’60s, there were still older African Americans
in my state who did not know that they could vote without buying a
poll tax, because it had only been abolished by the Supreme Court a
couple of years before. I can remember when there were no women in
any number of jobs now where we take it for granted that women will
be.

The point I want to make to you is that we have made a lot of
progress in this country. It has been inexact, it has been
imperfect, there are still problems. We have made a lot of progress
because we tried to take action to open up more opportunities to
people without regard to their race or gender. And all of us,
including white males, are better off because of that.

If you look at the countries around the world today that are
being absolutely ripped apart because of violence based on ethnic
or religious or racial disputes, and sometimes also related to the
role of women, if you look at the countries that are struggling to
become modern today where there’s still regularly violence against
women ­ the general point I want to make to you is that it is
in everyone’s interest to see that everybody gets the best chance
to live up to the fullest of their abilities.

On the other hand, it is in no one’s interest to see that people
get positions if they’re completely unqualified to hold them. So
the question is: How do we now go forward? And let me tell you the
questions I’ve asked my folks to answer. I’ve said, first of all,
how do these programs work, and do they have a positive effect?
Secondly, even if they work, are they sometimes, at least, unfair
to others? Could you argue that in some cases there is reverse
discrimination, and if so, how? Thirdly, are there now others in
need who are not covered by affirmative action programs?

Keep in mind that’s really what’s fueling this whole thing.
You’ve got 20 years in this country where most hourly wage earners
have not kept up with inflation. Most Americans are working harder
for lower wages than they were making 20 years ago. If so, how are
we going to deal with them?

And, finally, let’s look at what clearly works, and I’ll give
you three examples. I don’t think anybody in America would like us
to suspend what we are doing in the military ­ the system that
produced not only General Powell, but countless other generals and
colonels who are not only African Americans and Hispanics and Asian
Americans, but also women, doing things that never were available
before. How does that system work? Why does nobody reject it?
Because nobody thinks anyone unqualified gets promoted.

What do they do? They work as hard as they can to develop the
capacities of everybody who signs up, they do their very best to
see that each level in the promotional pool, there is a mix of
people that reflect the population in the rank just below, and then
nobody ­ nobody gets promoted who is not qualified. But they
really work hard to give everybody a chance and develop everybody’s
capacities.

A second example ­ this is self-serving, but I’ll give it
to you, anyway ­ I have appointed at this point in my tenure,
more judges to the federal bench who were women or members of
racial minorities than my three predecessors combined, I believe.
But my judges have the highest ratings on average from the America
Bar Associations of any of the last four presidents. So no one
suggests that I am not promoting quality in the federal bench.

(Third) example: My Deputy Chief of Staff, Erskine Bowles was,
before he came to the White House, the head of the Small Business
Administration. And he spent 20 years helping people finance small
business. And I said, we’ve got to bring enterprise into the
depressed areas of this country, we have got to do it. So in one
year, there was a huge increase in the volume of loans given to
African Americans, Hispanics and women under the Small Business
Administration without, in any way, discriminating against
qualified white males, and every one of the loans was to a
qualified person. Now, I don’t believe any American would object to
those three things.

The last thing I want to say is, I have also asked where does
discrimination still exist among people who are not poor, or not
economically distressed, in the traditional definition, based on
race or gender. We just had the Glass Ceiling Report issued this
last week, which was originally initiated, I believe, by Senator
(Robert) Dole, which said that there is still evidence of
discrimination in promotional practices in large enterprises.

Q: My name is Shafeeq Qaasim. I’m from Los Angeles Trade
Technical College … I would like to know, considering we passed a
proposal of Proposition 187 in California, and it’s now somewhere
in the federal court system, what’s being done, and how can (Prop.
187 be implemented)?

A: Well, the voters voted for it, and then like any law, it’s
subject to court challenge, and it’s being challenged in the
courts. Let me tell you what we’ve tried to do in the meanwhile.
First of all, after I became president, I increased spending by 30
percent on programs designed to reduce the problem of illegal
aliens. We have increased the number of border guards on the
southern borders, assuming my next budget is adopted on this … by
about 60 percent in three years. We are turning more people
back.

We are also sending more people back home more quickly who come
in contact with the criminal justice system. We are working to
increase our ability to check workplaces for illegal immigrants,
and we’re trying to standardize identification so people can’t give
phony papers and stay in jobs. And we are trying to alleviate some
of the costs that states face. We’ve given California, for example,
more money to deal with their costs of imprisonment and health care
and other things. And I asked the Congress to do even more than
they voted to do, but I think as a matter of principle, no illegal
immigrant is entitled to the expenditure of American people’s tax
dollars.

I did not support 187 for a very different reason. I don’t think
it’s in the interest of the American people to have kids here and
have them not in school. I don’t think it’s in the interest of the
American people who have families here and not be able to get into
a health clinic and maybe have them get seriously ill and spread
whatever illness they have to the population at large. So my
problem with 187 was in the details.

We do not give welfare benefits, for example, to illegal
immigrants, and we should not be spending our money there, except
where it is in the interest of our larger sense of self-interest.
And I think schools and health care are. But we’ve got to do a lot
more to crack down on the borders, and we have to do a lot more to
go into these workplaces and send people away. And I would hope
again ­ this was a great wedge issue in the last election, but
I’d like to remind you of where this issue came from, in part.

A lot of the very same people that were out there for 187, just
a few years ago when the California economy was booming, weakened
the anti-illegal immigration legislation pending in Congress, so
they could get more illegal immigrations into workplaces in
California who would work for lower wages ­ for their
supporters. Now, that’s the truth.

And what we need to do is crack down in the workplace, crack
down at the borders, crack down in the criminal justice system, and
not spend any money that we don’t have to spend. And that’s our
policy and the one we’re going to pursue.