Bill Clinton: “Jim, it's President Clinton. I'd like to thank you for being there and thank Congresswoman Lofgren and my good friend…”

“Jim, it's President Clinton. I'd like to thank you for being there and thank Congresswoman Lofgren and my good friend Mayor Susan Hammer. I'd like to ask you to amplify just a moment on a point that John Doerr made when he was introducing you, when he pointed out that just the 240 companies who have endorsed this national standards movement today have created 130,000 jobs in the last 4 years and have thousands of job openings now waiting to be filled. We have tried very hard in this administration to create a climate and an environment and to pursue policies which would permit us to increase the number of high wage, good future jobs so that we could raise incomes, average incomes, in America again. I think it would be helpful if you would just state explicitly from your point of view what the relationship is in having citizens, young people educated according to high national standards and filling those jobs with young Americans and raising our average income, because I think that's one thing the American people haven't clearly focused on, the extent to which our ability to create high-wage jobs in the end depends upon our ability to produce people who can fill those jobs once they're created. And I wish you would talk about it just a little bit. [The discussion continued.]”