Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I'm glad to be here with my friends Dick Riley and Bob Reich, also members of my…”

“Thank you very much, Mr. Secretary. I'm glad to be here with my friends Dick Riley and Bob Reich, also members of my Cabinet, at the headquarters of the Chamber of Commerce to support the effort that the chamber is making, along with its Center for Work Force Preparation, to help to examine tonight the whole critical question of how to move our young people from school to the workplace. I want to compliment the chamber on all their efforts, recognizing that without an educated work force we can't grow this economy or remain competitive and recognizing that we all have to work together, business and Government, labor and educators, to make things happen. This satellite town meeting is a good example of that kind of working together. And if you'll forgive me a little home State pride, I want to say a special word of thanks to the Wal-Mart Corporation, headquartered in Bentonville, Arkansas, for providing several hundred of the sites for this town meeting tonight. I appreciate that a lot, as well as the sites that are provided for all the rest of you. I have tried as hard as I could to move toward constructive change for this country. Secretary Riley talked about this being Thomas Jefferson's 250th birthday. If Thomas Jefferson believed in anything, he believed in these three things: first, in education; second, in real personal liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of the press; and third, in the absolute imperative of changing as times change. If you go to the Jefferson Memorial here in this beautiful city, which is now bedecked with all of its wonderful cherry blossoms, you will see Jefferson saying that we have to change with changing times. For us here in America that means reducing our deficit and increasing our investment and putting our people first so that we can compete in the world. We're here to talk about that tonight, about what we can do to educate and train our people better. Unless we do that, none of the efforts that all the rest of us make in Government, even to bring the budget into balance, even to increase our investment in other things which will grow jobs, will last in the long run. We also have to have people who can carry their load. And in a world where the average young person will change jobs seven or eight times in a lifetime, that begins with the education system and continues into the work force where education must go on for a lifetime. It's not just important what you know but what you can learn. And if I might, I'd like to close just by emphasizing we're doing our best to try to have the most innovative partnership between the Labor Department and the Education Department and the private sector to build a good school-to-work transition. And we're trying to get off to a good start this summer with a program that would create more than 700,000 new summer jobs, including many thousands that have a strong education component so our young people can be learning and working at the same time. Dick, I think I ought to stop there. That's a good place we can begin, I think, the discussion. [At this point, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley discussed the Summer Youth Challenge program and asked the President to explain the importance of educational enrichment in summer jobs.]”