Speech on Children in Poverty 
   
    Let me tell you a story that I tell everywhere I go. 

    A friend of mine knows a fourth grade teacher in a poor
    area of Minnesota who one day walked in his classroom
    and asked the children, "How many of you had a big
    breakfast today?" Ten of the 20 kids raised their hands.
    He then asked, "How many of you had any breakfast
    today?" Six more kids raised their hands. "What about
    you other four?" he inquired. Silence. Finally, one little
    girl raised her hand and said, "It wasn't my turn to eat
    today." 

    When the Founders of our republic said that life, liberty,
    and the pursuit of happiness were the unalienable right
    of all Americans, they didn't say anything about taking
    turns. 

    They didn't say that it was your turn today to have life and
    liberty, but not tomorrow. Or that it was your turn
    tomorrow to pursue happiness, but not today. 

    The whole point of the American idea is that opportunity
    is always present for all of us - not just to have the food
    and shelter we need, but to enjoy the fruits of our
    democracy. While our democracy can't guarantee
    happiness, it should absolutely guarantee every one an
    equal opportunity to pursue that happiness. 

    Therefore, I speak today for justice - which has been the
    grand theme of this country from the beginning - that
    justice which Madison described as the purpose of our
    government, the goal of our society. That justice which
    demands that opportunity accompany freedom - that
    every citizen be allowed to share in the promise of the
    land. 

    This principle is the heart of the American dream. It is,
    indeed the very meaning of America. It has often been
    threatened, and occasionally violated. Today, it is again
    under assault, not from without, but from within. It is
    attacked by the persistence of poverty amid wealth, the
    denial of opportunity to millions of American children in a
    land of abundant opportunity. 

    Abraham Lincoln said, "I do not believe in a law to
    prevent a man from getting rich, . . . we wish to allow the
    humblest man an equal chance to get rich with
    everybody else. . .I want every man to have a chance . .
    .in which he can better his condition." 

    It is the task of government, and thus of public leaders, to
    ensure that all should have a chance, with their own effort
    and abilities, to find a decent level of comfort and
    fulfillment for themselves and their families. 

    This principle is not a liberal principle or a conservative
    one. It does not belong to any political party. But is a
    consistent theme of two centuries of American life. Yet
    that chance is being denied to millions of working
    families who are trapped in an inherited imprisoning
    poverty. 

    What does it mean to be poor in America? There's no
    single description. For many, perhaps most, it means
    homes with peeling paint, inadequate heat, uncertain
    plumbing... 

    It often means a home where some go to bed hungry
    and malnutrition is a frequent visitor... 

    It means stacking your clothes in garbage bags in the
    closet because you can't afford a dresser... 

    It means keeping your kids inside all afternoon after
    school because you're afraid to let them roam the
    streets and there is no other place for them to go... 

    It means taking home $852 a month in salary, and
    having $836 in fixed costs every month... 

    It means that when your baby develops asthma or
    ingests lead paint - as the children of the poor so often
    do - you take three different buses to the doctor, lose a
    day's pay, ad then end up getting turned down because
    you don't have enough health insurance. 

    Being poor means that the most elementary
    components of the good life in America - a vacation with
    the kids, an evening out, a comfortable home - are but
    distant and unreachable dreams, more likely to be seen
    on TV than in the neighborhood. And for almost all of the
    poor - all thirty-five million of them - it means that life is a
    constant struggle to obtain the merest necessities of
    existence, these things that most of us take for granted. 

    Worst of all it means hopelessness for the children --
    children who are born into a poverty they did not choose
    or deserve. These are the children who don't get
    immunized against the simplest diseases; who are
    cared for by young sisters or neighbors or sit alone in
    ramshackle apartments. These are the kids who can't
    concentrate in school, who sometimes sell drugs by 12
    and carry a gun by 16. These are the children you see on
    street corners when you drive through any poor area of
    America. These children - our children - are not growing
    up with the tools to pursue happiness or with the
    foundation that will allow them to achieve their full
    potential. 

    To allow this kind of poverty to exist in America is simply
    unacceptable. 

    Some people say you cannot see the future but that is
    wrong. You can see the future in the faces of these
    children. For them we have failed to live up to our own
    conception of ourselves as a nation that is unique on
    God's earth. We have failed to live up to a promise that
    these children don't even know that we've made to them.
    And that is unconscionable. By failing the children we
    are also denying the nation the skills and energy they
    could contribute, the income they could earn, the wealth
    they could create. 

    We know poverty is not a genetic affliction. It is imposed
    on the young by the conditions of their life. If we are ever
    to break this cycle of poverty we must attack the
    conditions which nurture that cycle. 

    It is time for change. 

    The American Dream belongs to everyone - and to all
    our children most of all. We Americans can never say: It
    is not my turn to provide for you today. It is not my turn to
    educate you today or to make sure you're safe and have
    something to eat and a roof over your head. We must do
    all these things everyday for all of our children - every last
    one of them. 

    The task of presidential leadership is to challenge
    ourselves to do things we weren't sure we could do.
    Things that we know we want to do, things that deep
    down we know we need to do, but that we are not sure
    how to do. We set the goal, and then we figure out how
    to get there. That's what Americans do. 

    I think this is what Franklin Roosevelt had in mind when
    he looked out at America and saw that one-third of our
    nation was ill-clad, ill-fed, and ill-housed. Roosevelt said,
    "No, this is not acceptable in America. We have to
    change it." He wasn't sure exactly how to do it, he didn't
    know exactly how to put food on those tables, but he
    knew that we had to do it, and the first step was saying
    so. The first step was making the challenge. He
    challenged the nation and he followed through on that
    challenge. 

    I think this is what John Kennedy had in mind when he
    looked at our menacing competition with the old Soviet
    Union and vowed that America would put a man on the
    moon within a decade. No, he didn't know what kind of
    fuel should be used in that booster or what kind of suit
    the astronauts should wear. He just knew we had to do it,
    and the first step was saying so. He challenged us. And
    Americans followed through on that challenge. 

    Today, at a time of unparalleled prosperity, I look out
    over a nation and I see that nearly one-fifth of our
    children are ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-educated. At a time
    of peace, when America is not threatened from without, I
    see nearly 14 million of our children who are being
    denied their chance to live out the American dream. This
    is not acceptable. 

    I am issuing a simple challenge today. Let us eliminate
    child poverty as we know it in America by the end of the
    next decade and let us begin by raising 3 million children
    out of poverty by the end of the next presidential term. If
    we can achieve the kind of prosperity we have, if we can
    change the world through our ideas and inventions, if we
    can muster the will and create the technology to put a
    man on the moon in a decade - then surely, by all that we
    hold dear as Americans, we can eliminate child poverty
    as we know it. Unlike putting a man on the moon,
    eliminating child poverty is not a single, clear-cut
    achievement. Poverty is, to some extent, a relative
    measure. But there are specific aspects of poverty that
    we can use to make clear-cut, achievable goals, goals
    that we can accomplish together within the decade. 

    What I am proposing today will not by itself change the
    culture that has produced what is perhaps the most
    intractable American problem of this century. The
    programs outlined are just a start, a down payment on
    solving this problem. But we can solve it. Child poverty is
    not just a government problem; it is a national problem
    that will require a national solution. We must mobilize
    individuals and communities and businesses and places
    of worship - for government alone cannot solve this
    problem. Only we the people, all of us working together,
    can solve it. 

    Some have talked about how we have reduced child
    poverty by 3.8 percent in the past 6 years. I do not want
    to minimize that, and certainly, it is better than doing
    nothing. But even with these small advances, there are
    still 3 million more children in poverty today than in 1970,
    and we still have the highest percentage of children in
    poverty of any advanced industrial nation. Only in an
    indifferent moral universe can we feel satisfied with
    ourselves for lifting a small percentage of children out of
    poverty. When there is a great natural disaster, a
    hurricane or a flood, we don't talk about repairing a roof
    here and a window there, a house here and a bridge
    there. We talk about a wholesale rescue effort. We
    make an enormous investment in restoring things to the
    way they were before tragedy struck. 

    Child poverty is a kind of slow-motion national disaster.
    We don't see it because it is usually hidden and not
    concentrated in one place. But if all the poor children in
    America were gathered in one place, it would be a city
    bigger than all five boroughs of New York and you can
    be damn sure we would see it as a great national
    disaster. 

    As with those great floods and hurricanes, we cannot
    just talk about helping a few children here and there,
    bringing some boys out of poverty here and some girls
    out of poverty there. We must talk about remedying this
    disaster altogether. 

    At a time of great prosperity, I believe we have the
    wealth to eliminate child poverty as we know it. At a time
    of all sorts of new technologies, I believe we have the
    methods. The question is, do we have the will? That,
    more even than money or know-how, is the real issue.
    For to solve this problem we must decide that we want
    to truly solve it, that we will not rest or be diverted until we
    do so. And, we will not solve it only with policies and
    programs, but with our hearts and souls and wills. 

    The dictionary defines poverty very simply and starkly: a
    lack of money. But poverty is more than just a lack of
    money - it is so often a lack of hope as well. People in
    poverty often see no way out of it - they see nothing to
    grab onto, no daylight to run for, nothing to wish on but a
    lottery ticket. To lift people out of poverty, you must not
    only put money in their pockets, you must put hope in
    their hearts. 

    My proposals attempt to do both: to help parents give
    their children the necessities of life, which is a basic
    requirement of defeating poverty, and to put hope on
    their horizon, which is the star that they can steer by. The
    first set of my proposals mainly deals with parents; the
    second set with their children. 

    The foundation of our effort should be the guarantee that
    no one who works full time year round should have to live
    in poverty. The vast majority of the poor of working age
    have income from work. They are trying hard and still not
    making it. 

    To fulfill that commitment, I propose to increase the
    minimum wage by one dollar over two years, and to
    index future increases to average median income. This
    step will mean an extra $2,600 a year for 2 parents
    working at the minimum wage. In addition, I propose to
    expand the Earned Income Tax Credit to help the
    poorest of the poor, who are those with more children. I
    propose to subsidize child care for low-income families.
    And to make that child care even more affordable - I will
    give low-income families the same tax relief for
    childcare that middle-income families now receive. And
    finally, I will make sure that every child - every child in this
    nation - is covered by health insurance. 

    The next set of proposals will do something else: it will
    help children find a brighter and more hopeful future. It
    will reassure parents that their son or daughter will have
    opportunities that they themselves did not have. It will
    prepare them to fulfill the American dream. 

    We all want something better for our children, and no
    one wants that more so than parents who are poor.
    Middle-class parents worry that their children won't have
    the things they had; poor parents fear that their children
    will. There is no moral calculus by which we can blame
    poor children for having the misjudgment of not choosing
    wealthier parents. What we can do is to help them. To
    give them hope, we must give them an image of what to
    hope for. We must help prepare them to go to school,
    and then later we must help them make the transition
    from the years of school to the larger society. 

    Hope begins with the development of imagination at a
    young age. One of the best ways we know to do that is
    Head Start. I will fund head start so that every child who
    is eligible will be able to go. 

    Another way to stoke ambition and hope is through great
    teachers. Teachers teach not only through what they
    know, but what they do. For so many students, especially
    poor students, teachers can be a model of a way to live
    a life that they had never known before. To that end, I am
    proposing a program I call Teach to Reach, which will
    put 60,000 new teachers annually in urban and rural
    schools around America where they are desperately
    needed. 

    But great teachers don't fill the time between three and
    eight PM each day, during which 2/3 of juvenile crime
    takes place. For so many young people, it is not just
    empty time, but time that offers the temptations of easy
    drugs, and sex without meaning. 

    Statistics offer a telling equation. If you are the child of a
    mother who didn't graduate from high school, has you
    before she is 20, and is not married you have a 78
    percent chance of ending up in poverty. On the other
    hand, if you are the child of a mother who finished high
    school, has you after she is 20, and is married you have
    a 9 percent chance of ending up in poverty. Reducing
    poverty implies reducing teen pregnancy. That begins
    with fathers realizing that having a child is a lifetime
    commitment. Another way to do that is through the
    creation of second chance homes where teenage
    mothers who don't have caring adults in their lives can
    come and live in a nurturing adult environment for the
    first year of their child's life. 

    But how does one generate hope more broadly, for
    hope is ultimately the best antidote for self-destructive
    behavior. I propose we do that by starting a national
    program of community centers modeled on the Beacon
    schools program here in New York City. Beacon
    Schools, which are run by designated non-profits give
    parents a place where they know their children will be in
    good hands. They are open six to seven days a week,
    and till 11 or 12 at night. They offer a range of services,
    from homework help to literacy counseling to health
    information to career advice. In Beacon Centers youth
    workers will help students with homework and run sports
    and recreation programs, which as a 1994 study
    showed reduce teen parentage and drug use. After
    work, parents will pick up their children and often stay to
    participate in support groups or attend family night
    dinners in the cafeteria. Older kids will participate in
    evening leadership programs and other activities like
    dance, drama, and computer classes. Here we will be
    able to supply two things the children are often missing:
    the family ties they are not always getting at home, and
    the individual attention that is impossible for the teacher
    to give them in a classroom of 30 children. 

    As a Midwestern manufacturer who hires high-risk kids
    says, "They come in here with their eyes on their shoes,
    but I teach them to put their eyes on the stars." 

    The American firmament is aglow with stars. If we equip
    our young people to see them and to reach for them, we
    will give them something to steer by. 

    Franklin Roosevelt once asked, "And what do we mean
    when we talk about the reduction of poverty. We mean
    the reduction of the causes of poverty." Today those
    causes will not yield to individual effort alone, but need
    the healing assistance of public leadership. Not just in
    obedience to the command of our own traditions, but
    also to a far older command: "They shall not harden their
    hearts to the needy... Thou shalt open thine hand wide
    unto thy brother, to thy poor, and to the needy, in thy
    land." 

    Eliminating child poverty as we know it is a big goal. I
    know that what I am proposing here today will not in and
    of itself accomplish that. But the first step is the
    commitment and I am making that here today. 

    To move toward this goal in our own time we need
    leadership willing to tell us what we ought to hear, not
    what they think we want to hear - leadership which is not
    guided by polls but by convictions and American values -
    and which understands it is hard for people to look up to
    a leader who has his finger to the wind. We do not need
    a poll to tell us what our values are. We do not need a
    poll to tell us what is right or that we must reach out to
    poor children. Our minds and our hearts tell us that. Our
    common sense tells us that. 

    The reason I entered politics in the first place was to
    ameliorate suffering and promote opportunity. I am
    running for President for the same reasons, but as
    President one has an even greater opportunity to do
    those things, to make this country whole, and reaffirm
    our connectedness. For ultimately we are not just one
    nation, but one family. We are many and we are
    different, but we are also one national family. And no
    family that I know of wants to neglect its children; no
    family can survive if it neglects its children. We must
    embrace and love and nurture all our children. This is our
    best self as a family; this is our best self as Americans. 

    For if we do not look to the future of our children, we
    have no vision. 

    If we do not look to raise the poorest children among us,
    we have no heart. 

    And if we do not nourish the spirit of our children, we
    have no soul. 

    For all the children hidden in pockets of poverty across
    this country, from the rural poor of South Dakota to the
    urban poor of Miami, from the asphalt streets of
    Brooklyn to the open Barrios of Los Angeles we must
    make the American Dream live again.


