Bill Clinton: “I think I'll give everybody a chance to answer the question, Bruce, but let me first thank you for calling and thank you…”

“I think I'll give everybody a chance to answer the question, Bruce, but let me first thank you for calling and thank you for all the great work that you're doing in Austin. I've see some of it, and I've always been very impressed. First, with regard to the summer program, we hope we can structure it in a way that will enable us to continue the summer program and that will move a lot of these young people back into schools under circumstances that might allow them to do some work in the private sector, too. Secretary Reich is going to try to set up a system where we create a lot of private sector jobs to be matched with the public sector jobs this summer, and we're working on that. Secondly, in the program that I have presented to the Congress over the next 5 years, what we are attempting to do is to build in an amount of investment that's quite substantial for job training programs, for school-to-work programs, all of which give heavy, heavy weight to local community input--just the question you asked--but do provide some Federal investment dollars, which we hope you can put with local dollars to keep people working and being trained on a year-round basis. And I will say again, to echo what Secretary Reich said a moment ago, to try to break down the barrier between what is seen as work and what is seen as learning. An awful lot of young people actually have quite high IQ's, but actually learn so much better when they're doing than when they're reading or just listening. So we hope that the community involvement part of it will be permanent. And we hope that if the whole budget passes--and we do have 200 budget cuts, and more than 200, actually, in the budget and some revenue raisers and some new money for education and training--that we'll be able to do just what you seem to want based on your question. Bob, do you want to say anything? [Secretary Reich stressed the need for job creation as a prerequisite for the success of the program. Secretary Riley stated that the Goals 2000 program will involve individual State action plans. Dr. Harry Heinemann, special assistant to the president of LaGuardia Community College, Long Island City, NY, then asked a question via satellite about closer integration of school curricula with the transition to work.]”