would fund grants to cities and States to help finance medical and support services for individuals infected with the HIV virus; to community-based clinics to provide HIV early intervention services; to pediatric AIDS and HIV dental activities; and to HIV education and training programs for health care providers. The budget also includes $167 million dedicated to State AIDS drug assistance programs funded under Title II of the Ryan White Care act, to improve access to protease inhibitors and other life-extending AIDS medications. The budget also proposes $637 million for the Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) HIV prevention activities, $20 million more than in 1997. The increased funding will help prevent HIV among drug users, who face the greatest risk of HIV infection. • Reducing Tobacco Use Among Young People: Tobacco is linked to over 400,000 deaths a year from cancer, respiratory illness, heart disease, and other health problems. Each year, another million young people become regular smokers, and over 300,000 of them will die earlier as a result. Consequently, in August 1996, the Administration approved an FDA regulation that aims to cut tobacco use among young people by half over seven years; the budget includes $34 million to implement the regulation. The budget also provides $36 million for the CDC and $50 million for NIH for State grants and technical support for tobacco control and cancer prevention activities. • Enhancing Food Safety: Too many Americans get sick from preventable food-borne diseases. The Nation faces new challenges in this area as we enter the 21st Century. New pathogens are emerging and familiar pathogens have grown resistant to treatment. We consume record levels of imported foods, some of which moves across the globe overnight. The budget proposes $42 million for a new interagency food safety initiative to establish a national early warning system for food-borne illnesses Nation-wide, and to improve Federal-State coordination when food-borne disease outbreaks occur. The budget also proposes to continue implementing a new food safety system in the meat, poultry, and seafood industries. • Promoting Full Participation in Women, Infants, and Children (WIC): WIC reaches over seven million women, infants, and children a year, providing nutrition assistance, nutrition education and counseling, and health and immunization referrals. WIC provides prenatal care to those who would not otherwise get it, while reducing the incidence of premature birth and infant death. As a result, Medicaid saves significant sums that it would otherwise spend in the first 60 days after childbirth. Because of funding increases in the last four years, WIC participation has grown by over 25 percent. The budget proposes $4.1 billion to serve 7.5 million people by the end of 1998, fulfilling the President's goal of full participation in WIC. • Promoting Childhood Immunizations: The budget proposes $794 million for the Childhood Immunization Initiative, including the Vaccines for Children program and CDC's discretionary immunization program. The Nation is ahead of schedule to meet the Administration's goal of raising immunization rates to 90 percent for twoyear old children for each basic childhood vaccine. The incidence of vaccine-preventable diseases among children, such as diphtheria, tetanus, measles, and polio, are at all-time lows. The budget also includes $47 million to eradicate polio-preventable through immunizationsthroughout the world. • Improving Substance Abuse Treatment and Prevention: The budget proposes to increase support for the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's substance abuse treatment and prevention activities by $33 million, to $1.7 billion, enabling hundreds of thousands of pregnant women, high-risk youth, and other under-served Americans to get drug treatment and prevention services. The budget proposes a coordinated approach to combating substance abuse among youth with a comprehensive prevention initiative, focusing on State-level data documenting trends in drug use. The Administration again calls on Congress to enact Performance Partnerships, which would give States more flexibility to better target Federal resources to priorities. and • Enhancing Abstinence Education Family Planning: For each of the next five years, the budget includes $50 million in mandatory funding for States to conduct abstinence education projects to help reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies. The budget also includes a $5 million increase, to $203 million, to support voluntary family planning services. • Preventing and Containing Infectious Diseases: The budget includes $103 million, $15 million more than in 1997, for CDC's cooperative efforts with States to address infectious disease. It would support training and applied research, and the States' disease surveillance capability. All Americans face threats from infectious disease problems, such as drug resistant bacteria, and from emerging viruses, such as the hantavirus. CDC works with State health departments to monitor and prevent such problems and to contain outbreaks. • Promoting Better Health Care for Native Americans through Indian Health Service (IHS): The budget proposes $2.4 billion for the IHS, $70 million over 1997. IHS clinical services are often the only source of medical care on remote reservation lands, and this increase maintains our commitment to American Indians and Alaska Natives. • Caring for Veteran's Health Needs through Veterans Medical Care: Continuing its longstanding commitment to veterans programs, the Administration proposes $17.5 billion for the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) health system, $0.5 billion more than in 1997. The budget would enable the VA health system to retain, and spend for itself, all first- and thirdparty medical collections. In the past, these collections have gone to the Treasury; in 1998, they would support health services for veterans. The budget would enable the VA to implement eligibility reform legislation that the President signed in October 1996, and pursue ambitious plans to restructure the health system to better deliver care. 2. INVESTING IN EDUCATION AND TRAINING I want to build a bridge to the 21st Century in which we expand opportunity through edu cation, where computers are as much a part of the classroom as blackboards, where highlytrained teachers demand peak performance from our students, where every eight-year-old can point to a book and say, I can read it myself. Today's most successful workers are those with skills and a firm educational footing who continue to learn throughout their careers in order to compete successfully in this fast-changing economy. In recent years, education and wages have become increasingly intertwined. Generally, those with the best skills and education have made steady progress, enjoying higher living standards. Those without the requisite skills and education have fallen behind. Tomorrow's workers face an even greater challenge. As the very nature of work changes with technological innovation, employers will demand even more highly-skilled and flexible workers. The best-paying jobs increasingly will go only to those with education and training beyond high school. For the most part, our Nation places responsibility for education and training on State and local governments, families and individuals, and the private sector. Nevertheless, the Federal Government plays a crucial, if limited, role in providing education for a lifetime-from pre-school to adult career train ing. The President's goals are to help families, communities and States ensure that every child is prepared to make the best use of education; that the education system enables every child to learn to his or her potential; that those who need resources to pay for postsecondary education and training can get them; that those who need a second chance at training and education or a chance to improve or learn new skills President Clinton August 29, 1996 use throughout their working lives can get those opportunities; and that States and communities that receive Federal funds can them more flexibly, with fewer regulations and less paperwork. Federal resources help States improve the quality of education and training for the disadvantaged and for people with disabilities; support State- and locally-designed elementary and secondary school reform; and help lowand middle-income families gain financial access to postsecondary education and skill training through loans and grants. To help States raise student achievement, the President has worked hard to make schools safer, improve teacher quality, move technology into the classroom as quickly as possible, raise academic standards, and better prepare students for college and the new workplace. The budget reaffirms the President's commitment to America's children by increasing the investment in Head Start and in Federal elementary and secondary education programs-focusing on innovation and technology-and launching a new effort to jumpstart needed school renovation and construction. In addition, the President has begun a national, volunteer-based challenge called America Reads, to ensure that all children. can read well and independently by the end of third grade. To ensure that all Americans have access to the high-skill training needed for today's workplace, the President proposes to make two years of postsecondary education universally available, through HOPE scholarship tax credits of up to $1,500 for two years. And to encourage lifelong learning, the budget proposes: tax deductions of up to $10,000 for tuition and fees for college, graduate school, or job training; a $300 increase in the maximum Pell Grant college scholarship (to $3,000), marking the largest increase in two decades and providing grants for at least 348,000 more students; lower student loan fees and interest rates for parents and students; the G.I. Bill for America's Workers so they can choose where to get the best job training available; and new resources to help move welfare recipients from welfare to work (see Table 2-1 and Chart 2-1). America Reads Many of our children are falling short of meeting standard educational levels-a failure that they often have trouble overcoming later. In 1994, for instance, two-fifths of fourth-graders failed to reach the "basic" reading level on the National Assessment of Educational Progress and only 30 percent attained the "proficient" level. In response, the President has launched the America Reads Challenge, a multi-part effort to help States and communities ensure that all children are reading well and independently by the end of the third grade. Business and academic leaders already have pledged their support, and the budget proposes the Federal funding component. The Administration will measure the success of this effort on a national basis through the biennial administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress fourth grade reading assessment. America's Reading Corps: One-on-one tutoring is one key to better reading. America's Reading Corps will provide individualized after-school and summer help for over three million children in grades K-3 who want and need it. A five-year, $2.45 billion investment, through the Education Department and the Corporation for National and Community Service, would help communities mobilize 30,000 reading specialists and volunteer coordinators to recruit and train over a million tutors, including 100,000 college work-study students. Parents as First Teachers: Nothing is more important to children's reading skills than the time parents spend reading to, and with, them. Research shows that the first three years of a child's life are crucial to his or her development. An early exposure to books, even for infants, is important to prepare children for pre-reading activities as toddlers. Reading to them for 20 minutes a day can make a big difference in their readiness for school. To give parents help and information in teaching their children, the Administration proposes a Parents as First Teachers Challenge Grant Fund of $300 million over five years, building on the current Even Start Family Literacy program to support effective, proven efforts that help parents help their children become successful readers. Head Start A healthy, caring family environment is the best preparation for school. For over 30 years, Head Start has helped low-income families create this environment by taking a comprehensive approach to child development-improving children's learning skills, health, nutrition, and social competency. Head Start involves parents in their children's learning, and links children and their families to a wide array of services in their communities. Over the last four years, the President has secured a 43-percent increase in funds for Head Start, enabling the program to serve 800,000 children in 1997. The budget proposes $4.3 billion for Head Start, $324 million more than in 1997, to enable 86,000 more children to participate than in 1996 and raising program quality (see Chart 2-2). With this funding, the Administration would be well on its way toward meeting the President's commitment of a million children in Head Start by 2002. In addition, the Early Start component of Head Start extends comprehensive early development services to infants aged 0 to 3 in a way that supports families, builds parenting skills, and extends a safe, nurturing, and stimulating environment to very young children. Elementary and Secondary Education The Administration has energized State and local efforts to raise student achievement by boosting funds for various programs that |