Bill Clinton: “Certainly. My feelings go back many years. As the Senator knows, children have been my passion for more than 30 years. I…”

“Certainly. My feelings go back many years. As the Senator knows, children have been my passion for more than 30 years. I have worked on improving and reforming education for nearly 20 years. I know how difficult it is, today, to try to help many of our children achieve educational competence. The reason for that is that we are not living in the same world in which the Senator and I grew up. It is harder to teach our children. Our children come to school with more problems and more stress. They are exposed to many more things than we ever faced. We have to understand that if we don't really provide the resources to reach the children as they are today, not as we wish they would be, not as we thought they were back when I was sitting there with my hands folded and listening to every word, but as they are today with all the other pressures that are on families and children, then we are not going to have the results and the kind of achievement to which the Senator from Minnesota is referring. But there is no reason we have to make this choice. It is not an either/or choice. We have the resources to assist our local districts so they do not have to reach any deeper. Many of the districts from my State can't afford to raise their property taxes any more.”