Bill Clinton: “Thank you very much. Welcome to the White House. Thank you very much, Kathy Carliner, for your remarkable statement. And…”

“Thank you very much. Welcome to the White House. Thank you very much, Kathy Carliner, for your remarkable statement. And I thought you were very good in the film. Rob Reiner wants to give you a screen test. [Laughter] I am so happy to see all of you here. There are many people here who might well be introduced, but I think I must start with the people who are terribly important to whether we will be able to fully achieve our part of the great agenda we are going to lay out today, the Members of Congress who are here. And I'd like to call their names and then, when I finish, ask them all to stand. Senator Herb Kohl, who sponsored legislation on child care; Senator Jack Reed; Congressman Bill Clay; Congressman Sandy Levin; Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro; Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey; Congresswoman Sue Kelly; Congresswoman Maxine Waters; Congressman Xavier Becerra; and Congressman Nick Lampson. Would the Members of Congress who are here please stand? Thank you for coming. I'd also like to thank my longtime friend--Hillary and I have been friends of Governor Jim Hunt and his wife, Carolyn, who are here, for almost 20 years now. And I think Governor Romer is here or on his way. Mayor Cleaver, we're glad to see you. And John Sweeney, the head of the AFL-CIO, and others who have come to be with us today, I thank you very much. This is a happy day at the White House, first, for all the people in the administration and all those who have worked with them for months and months and months to help this day come to pass. And second, and even more important from my point of view, this is a happy day because I have been listening to the First Lady talk about this for more than 25 years now--[laughter]--and it may be that I will finally be able to participate in at least a small fraction of what I have been told for a long time I should be doing. And I say that in good humor but also with great seriousness. This is an anniversary of sorts for me. It was 6 years ago today, as a newly announced candidate for President, that I went back to my alma mater at Georgetown and began a series of three speeches outlining what I thought America ought to look like in the 21st century and what I thought we would have to do to create a country in which everyone had an opportunity, everyone was expected to be a responsible citizen, and where we came together, across all the lines that divide us, into one community. There are many things that are necessary for that to be done, but clearly two of them are, first, people in this country have to be able to succeed at work and at home in raising their children. And if we put people in the position of essentially having to choose one over the other, our country is going to be profoundly weakened. Obviously, if people are worried sick about their children and they fail at work, it's not just individual firms, it's the economic fabric and strength of the country that is weakened. Far more important, if people fail at home, they have failed in our most important job and our most solemn responsibility. Second, we'll never be the kind of country we ought to be unless we believe that every child counts and that every child ought to have a chance to make the most of his or her God-given abilities. That's why we're here today, to examine where we are and what we still have to do. And what we still have to do is quite a lot, to make sure we live by what we believe when we say that all parents should be able to succeed at home and at work and that every child counts. No parent should ever have to choose between work and family, between earning a decent wage and caring for a child. Especially in this day and age when most parents work, nothing is more important, as you have just heard Kathy Carliner say, than finding child care that is affordable, accessible, and safe. It is America's next great frontier in strengthening our families and our future. As the Catholic Conference has noted, no government can love a child and no policy can substitute for a family's care. But there is much that we can do to help parents do their duty to their children. From my days as Governor of Arkansas to my service as President, strengthening families has been a central goal of what I have worked on. I'm very proud that the first bill I had the opportunity to sign into law as President was the Family and Medical Leave Act, so that no parent has to choose between caring for a child or keeping a job when a family member is ill. The expanded earned-income tax credit helps to ensure that parents who work don't have to raise their children in poverty. No one who is out there working full-time with children should have to worry about that. Expanded Head Start programs are serving more families than ever before. We've collected record sums of child support enforcement. The historic balanced budget I signed this summer provides a $500-per-child tax credit and helps parents to pay for their children's college education through IRA's, expanded loans and Pell grants, the HOPE scholarship, and other tax credits. The Congress has before it now a program of Secretary Riley's called 21st Century Community Schools, in which we ask for funds to help our States keep our schools open after classroom hours for children who have no place else to go and need that environment. We've also made some progress on child care. Since 1993, child care assistance has increased by 70 percent to help families pay for nearly a million children. Last year in the welfare reform debate, we fought and won the battle to expand child care assistance by $4 billion over the next 6 years, giving States an unprecedented opportunity to lead, to innovate in efforts to make child care more affordable. But we have to do more. With more families required to rely on two incomes to make ends meet, with more single-parent families then ever, more young children are left in the care of others even in their earliest years. And as the First Lady said, we learned at our Conference on Early Childhood and the Brain, that's when children develop or fail to develop capacities that will shape the entire rest of their lives. It's also true that more and more schoolchildren are returning to empty homes after school. The first thing we have to do is to make it possible for parents to spend time with their children whenever possible. That's why I hope the Congress will vote to expand the family and medical leave law so that parents at least can take some time off for their children's medical appointments, teacher conferences, and other basic duties. And I support flextime laws that will allow workers to choose between receiving overtime in pay or in time off with their families. But during those times when children can't be with their parents, they must get care that keeps them safe and that helps them to learn and grow. As we all know, too often that isn't the case. Too often child care is unaffordable, inaccessible, and sometimes even unsafe. The cost, as Hillary said, strains millions of family budgets. And government assistance meets just about a quarter of the need. Even for those who can afford it, sometimes good care is hard to find, as Kathy said in her remarks. Waiting lists sometimes takes months or years to move, forcing many parents to cobble together unstable arrangements. The shortage of care puts older children at risk, as well. Five million of them between the ages of 5 and 14 are left to fend for themselves after school. And as they get older, that increases the chances that they'll be exposed to drugs, tobacco, and crime. Finally, studies have shown that too many child care facilities are literally unsafe. The tragedies that have befallen families who depended on child care continue to make headlines all across our nation. This conference is an important step forward in addressing all these issues. What we learn today should spur us on to find ways to help parents, all parents, afford safe, affordable, high quality child care, whether it's at home, a child care center, or a neighbor's house. In the coming months, our administration will develop a plan, to be unveiled at the next State of the Union, to improve access and affordability and to help to assure the safety of child care in America. In the meantime, I want to announce four specific things we can do right now. First, I'm asking Congress to establish a new scholarship fund for child care providers. Too many caregivers don't have the training they need to provide the best possible care. Those who do have training are rarely compensated with higher wages. The scholarship program I propose will help students earn their degrees as long as they remain in the child care field for at least a year, and it will ensure that caregivers who complete their training will receive a bonus or a raise. Second, we have to weed out the people who have no business taking care of our children in the first place. I am transmitting to Congress the ``National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact,'' which will make background checks on child care providers easier and more effective by eliminating State barriers to sharing criminal histories for this specific purpose. I urge Congress to pass and States to ratify this legislation. Third, I've asked Secretary Rubin to oversee a working group on child care, composed primarily of business leaders working with labor and community representatives, to find ways more businesses can provide child care or help their employees afford high quality child care. And again, I thank John Sweeney for his important support of this initiative. In some ways, the most gripping part of that film we saw was the father talking about how he was just consumed with worry at work. No parent should ever have to go through that. Finally, we must use community service to strengthen and expand access to after-school programs. Today, the Corporation for National Service through its To Learn and Grow Initiative will pledge to help after-school programs all across our country to use volunteers to provide better care to children. It is releasing a how-to manual for groups who want to incorporate community service into after-school programs. And I think that, Secretary Riley, if we can win in our little budget battle here on the 21st Century Community Schools, then together, we can do some real good out there on this issue. My friends, for centuries--over two now--the American dream has represented a compact that those who work hard and play by the rules should be able to build better lives for themselves and for their children. In this time and even more into the future, child care that is too expensive, unsafe, or unavailable will be a very stubborn obstacle to realizing that dream. So let us commit ourselves to clearing the obstacle, to helping parents fulfill their most sacred duty, to keeping the American dream alive for them and, most important, for their children. Thank you very much. [At this point, the First Lady opened the panel discussion. Ellen Galinsky, president and cofounder, Families and Work Institute, discussed the need to provide better quality child care as a choice for parents.]”