Bill Clinton: “Well, no, it's what we believed in. We got the entire education program except for three things. First of all, the huge…”

“Well, no, it's what we believed in. We got the entire education program except for three things. First of all, the huge funding increases for education--but they were properly targeted. This 100,000 teachers, this is truly historic. The United States--this is the educational equivalent of what we did when we put 100,000 police on the street. And I will remind you that we now have the lowest crime rate in 25 years. We have never done that before. And we had the same partisan argument then. We were told that it wouldn't work, that it was interference in local government, even though all the police chiefs of the country were screaming, ``Give it to us.'' Now we were told the same thing here. This is an historic commitment by the United States to put 100,000 teachers out there for smaller classes in the early grades. That, plus the historic commitment we made to after-school and summer school programs, plus the continued funding to hook up all the classrooms to the Internet by the year 2000--these things are truly historic. Now, I wish we had been able to persuade the Republican majority to give us the school construction and rehabilitation proposal, because we need modern facilities, and that proposal is a paid-for-tax cut in the balanced budget that would enable us to build or rehabilitate 5,000 schools. I think that's important. I still think we ought to be a nation which says we should have high standards, and I wish we had had an explicit proposal on that. And I believe in the empowerment educational opportunity zones to reward schools that end social promotion and fund more after-school and summer school programs. Now, those are three things that I would like to have. But we can debate those and work for those in the election. We have differences of opinions, and they have more Members than we do. They're against the Patients' Bill of Rights, and we're for it. They were against reforming--passing the tobacco reform legislation and against the campaign finance reform. But when you compare where we were for 8 months with where we are today, and how good this is for America, that the things that I talked about in the State of the Union in education, in the environment, in the international economy, and saving Social Security, these are huge victories for the American people. We did the best we could, and I think the best we did by staying together was very good, indeed. And I think the American people will believe so, too. Thank you.”