Bill Clinton: “Good afternoon. In the coming weeks, Congress will be making an awful lot of important decisions about how to best…”

“Good afternoon. In the coming weeks, Congress will be making an awful lot of important decisions about how to best prepare our children and our Nation for the 21st century. First, we have an historic opportunity to pass bipartisan legislation to protect our children from the dangers of tobacco. The legislation would put an end to the tobacco industry's calculated, multimillion-dollar media campaign to hook our children early to the deadly habit of smoking. For years, the cartoon character Joe Camel was the star of their efforts to create a new generation of customers for cigarettes, what the tobacco industry euphemistically called ``replacement smokers,'' what most of us call our children. Even as the executives denied they were targeting children, Joe Camel became as recognizable to them as Mickey Mouse. Now, some in Congress say that teen smoking has nothing to do with Joe Camel. Medical science and common sense makes it plain: Teen smoking has everything to do with Joe Camel, with unscrupulous marketing campaigns that prey on the insecurities and dreams of our children. Indeed, a recent study by the American Medical Association found that over a third of our young people who try cigarettes do so because of advertising and promotion and that Joe Camel was the overwhelming favorite among 12- to 15-year-olds. The industry has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on such marketing campaigns, plainly not designed to appeal to adults. It is time to end this story once and for all. So again I say to Congress, now is the time to pass strong bipartisan tobacco legislation. And again I say, I hope that both parties will work together for the benefit of our children. Today is an extremely important day for the future of public education in America. Soon the United States Senate will be faced with a clear choice: whether to modernize 5,000 schools and strengthen educational opportunity for all children or offer families about a $7 tax rebate that would barely cover the cost of schools supplies and, in the process, would weaken our national commitment to education. Above all, the information age is an education age. And the most important thing we can do to strengthen our country for the 21st century is to give our people the best education system in the world. In our balanced budget, I propose a plan that would help us to do that. It would help all Americans--teachers, parents, students, principals--bring a revolution of standards, accountability, and choice to our schools. I am committed to seeing that our students master the basics with national standards and an exam to measure those in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math; to reduce class sizes in the early grades to an average of 18; to encouraging public school choice, charter schools; and to ending social promotion. Making sure that every child in America has an opportunity to learn in a modern, safe, state-of-the-art school is also a centerpiece of our plan. The need is great. With the number of school-age children at a record high and growing, schools across the country already are at or beyond capacity. One-third of our schools need to be modernized. Nearly half don't have the wiring to support basic computer equipment. The Federal Government helps to build roads and bridges and other infrastructure projects because they are in the national interest. But none of that will matter if we do not see that our national interest in an adequate education infrastructure is also preserved. Today Senator Carol Moseley-Braun will offer an amendment that will help communities raise the funds to modernize 5,000 schools. If we want our children to be prepared for the 21st century, they ought to have 21st century schools. I urge Congress to adopt the amendment right away. Today the Senate will also vote on the wrong way--an ill-advised tax incentive for elementary and secondary expenses. The proposal is bad education policy and bad tax policy. It won't do anything to strengthen our schools and, in fact, would weaken public education by siphoning limited Federal resources away from public schools. The $1.6 billion proposal would do very little for average families, offering an average of $7 in tax relief for parents of the 90 percent of our children who are in public schools and $37 for the parents with children in private schools. It would disproportionately benefit highest income taxpayers; families who are struggling to make ends meet would never see a penny of it. It would short-change our children. The right way to fix the schools is to fix them not walk away from them. We have 600 days left before the turn of the century. We have to prepare our children for it. We should begin with protecting their health and giving them the best schools in the world. I'd like to ask the Vice President and Senator Daschle and Mr. Gephardt to make some remarks. Thank you. [At this point, Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle, and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt made brief remarks.] Cartoon Characters in Advertising”