country; and implementing new authority to waive certain Federal legal and regulatory requirements in order to help States and local communities make changes to the job training system.

Comprehensive reform still requires legislation. The President will again seek legislation that reflects the principles of his G.I. Bill. Because enactment would not occur before the fiscal 1998 appropriations process begins in Congress, the budget presents funding proposals under the current program structure.

Youth Programs

The President is deeply committed to helping States and communities help young people make a successful transition to the world of work and family responsibility. As discussed earlier in this chapter, the budget includes major new proposals to eliminate financial barriers to postsecondary education and training for all youth. In addition, the budget continues to support the goal by helping States develop and implement their schoolto-work systems. And it proposes additional resources to aid disadvantaged youth who have left school, or are on the verge of doing so, and have entered the labor force.

School-to-Work: This initiative, which the Education and Labor Departments fund and administer jointly, gives States and communities competitive grants to build comprehensive systems to help young people move from high school to careers or postsecondary training and education. School-to-Work supports reforms to the education system and its links to employers, so that young people can better prepare for high-skill, high-wage careers; receive top-quality academic and occupational training; and pursue more postsecondary education or training. Businesses get the trained workers they need to stay globally competitive. By 1996, 37 States and 133 local partnerships had already received grants to implement School-to-Work systems. The budget proposes $400 million, maintaining the 1997 level, in accord with the strategy of phasing in Schoolto-Work in all States by early in the next decade.

After-School Program: Young people need access to after-school activities that keep them

off the streets and out of trouble. The Presidential initiative will provide $50 million to keep public schools open during non-school hours, giving students access to after-school tutoring and other educational and recreational activities in a crime-free environment within their own communities.

Youth Opportunity Areas Program: Recognizing the special problems of out-of-school youth, especially those in inner-city neighborhoods where jobless rates can exceed 50 percent, the budget proposes $250 million for new competitive grants to selected high-poverty urban and rural areas with major youth unemployment problems. The Labor Department would award funds to high-poverty areas, including designated Empowerment Zones or Enterprise Communities, based on the quality of the local applications-that is, those that show the best chance of substantially increasing employment among youth. These "seed" funds would leverage State, local, and private resources to sustain public-private efforts to train and employ youth in private sector jobs. (For more information on Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, see Chapter 6.)

Summer Youth Employment and Training Program: The summer jobs program gives many urban and rural disadvantaged students their first work experiences, and localities may include an academic component that re-enforces the skills they have learned during the school year. The budget provides $871 million to finance 530,000 job opportunities for the summer of 1998, assuming that localities spend this flexible funding entirely on summer jobs.

Disadvantaged Youth Year-Round Program: The year-round program helps low-income youth who have dropped out of school, are at risk of dropping out, or are in families on public assistance. The Administration will expand upon ongoing efforts to refocus this program to stress local programs of proven effectiveness. Local service delivery areas that receive these funds under the Job Training Partnership Act can shift resources between the summer and year-round programs, as local needs dictate. The budget proposes $130 million for the year-round program.

Job Corps: The Job Corps provides intensive, work-related vocational skills training, academic and social education, and support services to severely disadvantaged young people in a structured residential setting. The budget proposes $1.2 billion to fund opportunities for 70,000 young people.

Adult Programs

Most adults change jobs and get new skills by themselves or through their employers. But, many others-particularly welfare recipients and those permanently laid off from jobs-need help to get the services and information they need to successfully manage their careers. The budget proposes sizable new support for grants to States and localities to finance a training and employment system that adequately serves these adults, and helps build the job skills of American workers and job seekers into the 21st Century. These activities are the core of the adult portion of the G.I. Bill for America's Workers.

Dislocated Workers and and Low-Income Adult Training: The budget proposes $2.4 billion for Job Training Partnership Act programs that provide training, job search assistance, and related services to laid-off workers and economically disadvantaged adults, a $233 million increase over 1997. The dislocated worker program provides readjustment services, job search assistance, training, and other services to help dislocated workers find new jobs as quickly as possible. The program for disadvantaged adults helps welfare recipients and other low-income adults, giving them the skills and support to become employed. States and localities likely will continue to use a sizable portion of these resources to supplement training for welfare recipients under the new

Transitional Assistance to Needy Families block grant. (For more information on this new block grant, and on the related Welfare-toWork Challenge Fund and tax credit, see Chapter 7.)

Adult Education: The Adult Education program helps educationally disadvantaged adults develop basic skills (including literacy), achieve certification of high school equivalency, and learn English. In 1993-94, the program served over 3.75 million adult learners-over 1.4 million enrollments in adult basic education programs, about 1.1 million in adult secondary education programs, and over 1.2 million in English-as-a-second-language programs. The budget proposes $394 million, nine percent more than in 1997 (and over 50 percent more than in 1996), to meet the demand for literacy training that the new welfare and immigration laws have stimulated.

One-Stop Employment Service: The budget proposes $843 million for grants to the Employment Service-the Nation's public labor exchange-and $150 million to continue building One-Stop Career Center systems to streamline re-employment and career development service delivery. To date, 24 States have received grants to implement One-Stop systems and nine more States will receive grants in July 1997. The budget would permit OneStops to expand to all States in 1998. While the One-Stop grants provide seed money for systems-building and increased automation, Employment Service grants provide the core operating funds for the new system. They help States to match employers and job seekers, and to provide counseling and re-employment assistance to unemployment insurance claimants and others who need more help finding jobs.

President Clinton April 22, 1996

Nation

The President believes that the does not have to choose between a strong economy and a clean environment. In fact, while the President's policies have contributed greatly to four years of strong economic growth with low inflation, they also have produced a cleaner, healthier environment.

The Administration has helped ensure that the air is cleaner for tens of millions of people. It has protected Yellowstone, one of our national treasures and our first national park, from the ravages of nearby mining. It also has cleaned up more toxic waste sites in its first three years than the previous two administrations did in 12 years. Meanwhile, American industry has continued reducing toxic emissions, which have fallen 43 percent in the last decade.

While Americans want a Government that helps protect the environment and our natural resources, they do not want to burden business unduly, choke innovation, or waste taxpayer dollars. The Administration has reinvented the regulatory process, cutting excessive regulation and targeting investments in programs that will have the biggest impact on improving the environment, protecting public health, providing more opportunities for outdoor recreation, and enhancing natural resources. The President's strategy for environmental protection is reflected in not just the creative approaches the Administration is pursuing, but in the priorities that the budget proposes to fund.

New Approaches for Environmental
Success

Working with Congress on a bipartisan basis whenever possible, the Administration has pioneered ways to protect the environment that are cleaner, cheaper, and smarter, while preserving natural resources for current and future generations.

Reinventing Drinking Water Legislation: In August 1996, the President signed the Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments, fulfilling the goals he outlined in 1993-to reinvent the Nation's safe drinking water legislation to better protect public health, and to authorize the creation of new Drinking Water State Revolving Funds (SRFS) to help hundreds of communities protect their citizens from harmful contaminants.

In several respects, the new law is a model for regulatory reform. It gives the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) more flexibility to act on contaminants of greatest risk, and to analyze costs and benefits while maintaining public health as the paramount concern. It institutes a cost-effective, community-based approach for ensuring safe drinking water. Further, it affirms the right of all Americans to know the quality of their drinking water and the potential threats to its safety, and it authorizes resources to address Federal mandates under the law.

Reforming Food Quality Protection: Also in August, based on his proposal of 1993, the President signed legislation to revolutionize

the way our food supply is protected from harmful pesticides. The law overhauls the system that kept harmful pesticides on the market too long and safer alternatives off the market, and it will ensure that families have the safest possible food on the dinner table. Specifically, the law replaces conflicting and outdated pesticide residue standards with a single, health-based standard for all food. It provides incentives for swift approval of safe, new pesticide alternatives for farmers. And, it includes provisions to better protect children from pesticide risks.

"Greening" America's Farm Programs: The 1996 Farm Bill, which the President signed in April 1996, was the most conservation-oriented farm legislation ever enacted. It created five new mandatory conservation programs, including the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) that consolidates four cost-sharing conservation programs into one and focuses cost-sharing and technical assistance on locally-identified conservation priority areas, and to areas where agricultural and natural resource management improvements will help meet water quality goals. The law provides $200 million in 1998 ($1.3 billion from 1996 to 2002) for EQIP, dedicating half of the funds to conservation associated with smaller livestock operations. It also authorizes the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program to help landowners improve wildlife habitat on private lands.

Enhancing the National Park System: Although the budget provides higher funding for parks, available resources can barely keep up with the system's new responsibilities and with ongoing needs to maintain an aging infrastructure. Consequently, the National Park Service is using creative new approaches to manage the parks, enabling it to protect our natural and cultural treasures with limited resources.

The 1996 Omnibus Parks and Public Lands Management Act includes several examples of these creative approaches. It will, for instance, establish the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas as a partnership with a private group that owns most of the land-at far less cost than establishing a traditional park. Also, at the Presidio in San Francisco, a government corporation

will be able to lease and manage hundreds of unused buildings in a manner consistent with park purposes, but which reduces the burden on taxpayers. In addition, the budget supports other partnership arrangements by including funds, matched by non-Federal sources, to implement newly authorized nonFederal heritage areas and to restore historic structures at historically black colleges and universities.

Creating a New National Monument: The budget provides funds for start-up activities at the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, which the President created by proclamation in September 1996, in the pristine canyonlands of south-central Utah. The National Monument encompasses 1.7 million acres of public lands and will preserve for future generations hundreds of millions of years of geologic and cultural history. Over the next three years, the Bureau of Land Management will consult with State, local, and Tribal governments; the private sector; the public; and other Federal agencies in preparing a land use management plan for the Monument.

Reinventing Regulation: In March 1995, the President announced a comprehensive program to improve the regulatory system and move toward a better environmental management system for the 21st Century. One prominent element is Project XL (for Excellence and Leadership), which fulfills the President's challenge to EPA and industry to make it easier for businesses to better protect the environment. This national pilot program enables a limited number of regulated entities to adopt alternative strategies to current regulations, as long as they produce superior environmental results.

For example, Intel's new computer chip manufacturing plant in Chandler, Arizona— which recently signed a Project XL agreement with EPA-will adopt a five-year Environmental Management Plan that outlines specific steps to meet tough standards of superior environmental performance. The agreement will eliminate the red tape of the normal permit modification process, enabling Intel to quickly change its manufacturing operations and, in turn, better compete in its fastpaced industry.

Establishing Performance Partnerships: In April 1996, Congress enacted the President's proposal for EPA Performance Partnership Grants, allowing States or Tribes to combine several categorical grants-each of which addresses only air, water, hazardous waste, or similar programs-into a multimedia environmental grant. Twenty States used this approach in 1996, and 24 States have expressed interest for 1997. As more States recognize the benefits, we expect most, if not all, to participate. The grants build on the National Environmental Performance Partnership System, which EPA established with the States in 1995 to give them more leeway to achieve environmental results and emphasize less-intensive EPA oversight for States that show strong performance. Six States participated in 1996 and 28 more have expressed interest for 1997.

Restoring the Everglades: The budget supports the continued Federal, State, local, and Tribal efforts to implement the restoration project for the South Florida ecosystem, which the Administration began in 1993 and which Congress authorized in the 1996 Water Resources Development Act. During 1999, the Army Corps of Engineers will complete the Central and Southern Florida Comprehensive Review Study, providing long-term direction for restoration efforts.

Along with improved water management, the budget recognizes the need for more science and for land acquisition to restore the Everglades' hydrologic functions. The Administration is re-proposing a four-year, $100 million-a-year Everglades Restoration Fund to provide a steady source of funding, mainly for land acquisition. It is also re-proposing a one-cent per pound assessment on Floridaproduced sugar to help finance the Fund. The budget proposes $331 million, 163 percent more than Congress approved in 1997.

Making the Endangered Species Act Work: The Endangered Species Act (ESA) gives Federal, State, and local governments, and the private sector the flexibility to protect endangered species and conserve habitat, while allowing for development, by establishing Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs). From 1983 to 1992, such parties created only 14 HCPs. But the Administration recognized that, to reduce conflict between the needs of con

servation and development, it should more fully utilize HCPs. As a result, from 1993 to 1997, the number of HCPs issued or under development soared to 300-covering 8.4 million acres in the Pacific Northwest alone.

Creating Sustainable Fisheries: Last October, the President signed the Sustainable Fisheries Act, reinventing the way the Nation addresses the problems facing its commercial and recreational fisheries. The Act brings the Nation closer to achieving the vast long-term benefits of sustainable fisheries with new measures to prevent overfishing and to ensure that already depressed stocks are rebuilt to levels that produce maximum sustainable yields. The Act also establishes a new national standard to minimize the unintentional catch of non-target fish, and highlights the long-term importance of habitat to fish stocks by requiring fishery management plans to identify essential fish habitat.

Protecting the Northwest Forests: The President's Forest Plan-a balanced, sciencebased blueprint-is protecting natural resources and providing new economic opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. It represents the first region-wide application of ecosystem management on the part of Federal, State, and local agencies; Tribes; non-governmental organizations; and individuals. The Administration is offering sustainable volumes of timber sales, restoring thousands of acres of key habitat and watersheds, providing training and short-term jobs to displaced timber workers, spurring small business through grants and job training, and strengthening local economies. The Federal Government plans to spend $369 million in the region in 1997 through the coordinated efforts of 12 Federal agencies, and the budget proposes to increase this level of support to $408 million in 1998.

The recent expiration of the July 1995 timber "rider" to a 1995 spending bill restores public participation in the salvage timber program. As the timber program again faces the full range of environmental laws, the Administration will address the concerns that its 1996 Interagency Salvage Review Report identified. The budget modifies the use of the Forest Service Salvage Sale Fund, establishes a new Forest Ecosystem Management Fund, and provides more funding for wildlife