President Clinton challenges America. Tomorrow and Sunday President Clinton will travel to Iowa, where he will highlight the challenges from his State of the Union address. He will focus on his challenge to schools, communities, states and lawmakers to help throw open the doors of college as never before, and ensure that all deserving students can afford to go to college.

We live in an age of possibility, but also a time of challenge and change. We must face those challenges together. The era of big government is over, but we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left on their own to deal with our common problems. In his State of the Union address, the President challenged all Americans to work together -- to strengthen families, increase educational opportunities, achieve economic security, reduce crime, safeguard our environment, maintain our leadership in the world and renew our democracy -- seizing the promise of our age of possibility.

" Our second challenge is to provide Americans with the educational opportunities we will all need for this new century. . . Higher education is more important today than ever before."
--President Clinton, State of the Union Address,
January 23, 1996

Meeting our challenge to expand college opportunity. Before speaking to students at Drake University, President Clinton will meet with a group of parents, students and employers in a roundtable discussion of work study and other ways he has proposed to expand access to higher education.

• Expansion of work study. In the State of the Union, the President called for a dramatic expansion of the College Work Study program, from 700,000 students to over one million over the next five years.
• Merit scholarships. The President called for the creation of the largest-ever merit-based scholarship program, rewarding the top five percent of high school graduates in every school -- over 125,000 students annually -- with $1,000 grants toward the cost of college.
• Tuition tax deduction. The President will renew his call for a tax deduction of up to $10,000 for the cost of tuition and training. Over 17 million students stand to benefit from this proposal for tax relief to working families.
• Expanding Pell Grants. President Clinton has called for increasing the number and maximum award of Pell Grant Scholarships, which would help 375,000 more students benefit from the grants in the year 2000.
• Direct lending. President Clinton has created a new student loan program that makes it easier to borrow and repay student loans, saving taxpayers almost $7 million, by allowing students to repay loans as a percentage of their income, cutting out the middle-man and eliminating red tape.
• 25,000 AmeriCorps volunteers. President Clinton's national service program lets volunteers earn college money by serving their local communities.

A growing economy in Iowa. The President's trip will also highlight the importance of the rural economy to America, and the success that Iowa has enjoyed over the past three years.

• Lower unemployment. The unemployment rate in Iowa has dropped from 4.2% to 3.3%.
• More new jobs. Iowa has 107,500 new jobs, including 17,400 in manufacturing alone, in the past 35 months, more than during the entire previous administration.
• Better student loans. 357,900 students and former students in Iowa will be able to benefit from student loan reforms.
• Tax Cuts. 15,439 small businesses are likely to get a tax cut this year alone, and 13 times more Iowa families will receive a tax cut than a tax increase.