Bill Clinton: “Thank you for doing it. Another point. I just want to make one more point and then I'd like to go back and let anybody…”

“Thank you for doing it. Another point. I just want to make one more point and then I'd like to go back and let anybody else talk who wants to talk. For it is amazing to me how much some of these community programs can do on a modest budget. We're not talking about spending a fortune here. A lot of these community-based programs are so much less expensive than a lot of the more expensive things that happen later on. If the program Shane was in works and he never develops a serious drug habit, then it's a lot less expensive than treating somebody for a serious drug problem later on. That's just one example, you know. Whatever it costs for Tony to have somebody to check in twice a day with, gives him a chance to graduate from high school, maybe go on to college, get a good job, have a good, successful life. Whatever it costs will be a pittance of what we would all pay if his life took a different turn. And the same thing is true for every young person. So I want to say that I was so impressed when I read about these programs, and I have been almost obsessed with this juvenile crime problem, not only because it makes our people feel less safe but because of what's happening to all these kids we're losing. And I just also want to say one other thing, to urge you to support the Governor, and you've got your county commissioner and the mayor here; the two Senators are here. Just now coming into our schools there is another baby boom generation. A lot of people don't know this and haven't focused on this yet. I'm the oldest of the children born right after World War II, and we're the biggest--the people of my age and down, about 15 or 16 years younger than me, are the biggest group of Americans ever born into this country. There is now a group, just now starting into grade school, that when they get in their school years will be slightly bigger than we are as a generation. And if we don't turn this juvenile crime problem around by the time they're 13 to 16, you cannot imagine what we're going to be grappling with. These young people are actually in a group of Americans that aren't particularly numerous. Their parents were of a generation where people had relatively fewer children, and there weren't so many people in their child-bearing years. I don't want to use this--this will sound wrong, but these kids have, in a way, by going through this, have given us a chance to figure out for future generations how to rescue young people and support mothers like Joy. And we better take advantage of them and we better do it now, because if we wait another 5 or 6 years, the dimensions of the problem will be roughly 2 to 3 times greater than they are now. And it will be unmanageable. So I still--my own view is the right thing for the National Government to do is to provide the resources and the legal and other support necessary to let communities pick those programs that are most likely to work best for them, because not every program works the same in every place. And the truth is that every one of these programs, you've got to have some caring adult and some system that works, somebody who can stand up like this gentleman down here and get a round of applause because the kids relate to him or her, as the case may be. So I don't think that we should be prescribing what works. What we have tried to do in our administration is go around and find things that are working, and if people are having some trouble spreading it, like the uniform policy, the curfews, or whatever, we try to help them do that. And otherwise, we try to provide what money we could pass in the Congress to let the communities decide what works best. And that's what I think we should do. Senator Harry Reid. Mr. President.”