Remarks to the Community in Tarboro, North Carolina

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 27, 1999

September 20, 1999

Thank you very much. Well, let me begin, ladies and gentlemen, by thanking Mayor Morris for welcoming me. And I thank Mayor Perkins, from Princeville. I flew over there and saw all the houses still buried underwater. I want to thank all the city officials, all the county officials, all the State officials for the magnificent job that they have done, the lives they've saved, and all the things they've done to try to ease your way.

I'd like to thank the Members of Congress who came with me today. Your Congresswoman, Eva Clayton, when she was speaking, I started to call her "Reverend Clayton," she did such a good job. [Laughter] She talks to me just like that in Washington all the time. If she wants something for you, she comes in the White House and talks to me just like she did today. And Congressman David Price, Congressman Bob Etheridge, I want to thank them, too.

I want to thank the members of my administration who came here, and I'd like to introduce them to you. This is Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater; Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera. They did a lot of work for us - he's back here behind me. I want to thank the military, the Administrator of the Small Business Administration - they'll be doing a lot of work up and down this street - Aida Alvarez. And I want to thank the people who have spoken before for their praise of the Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, James Lee Witt. Thank you.

I also want to thank my good friend Governor Jim Hunt. You know - I know all of you know this anyway, but he is in the process of completing a term, after which he will have served 16 years as Governor of North Carolina. And I served 12 years as Governor of my State - would have made 2 more if you hadn't been good enough to send me to Washington. [Laughter] And I can tell you, it will be - next January will be 21 years since I started working with Jim Hunt - 21 years. We didn't have so much gray hair back then. [Laughter] He is the finest Governor in this country, and a ferocious advocate. So I will do my best to do what he wants so that I will not have to put up with him camping out on the White House lawn to get help for you.

Let me say, if there's one thing I've learned visiting so many natural disasters, as the President and, before that, for a dozen years as a Governor, is that no matter how much television there is, it doesn't do it justice. Because it can't show what it feels like inside for people to lose a business they've put everything into; to people who lose their home when they have to take their kids to a shelter and not know where they're going to spend the night next week; for farmers to have labored for 4 years and see a crop totally destroyed by water or the Sun and not know whether they can keep their land or wonder if they can ever buy seed again.

And that's why we have organized all these emergency measures, because - Jim Hunt and I were laughing; you know, we worked so hard to build the economy and to improve education and to protect the environment and take care of the health care needs and all of that, but as all the pastors out here in the audience know, every once in a while something happens that proves to you no matter how hard you work, you are never completely in control. And we are not completely in control.

So that when things like this happen to some of us, we know they could happen to all of us. And our country - first of all, our thoughts and prayers are with you. And secondly, we know we have a responsibility as members of the American family to help you get back on your feet again, and we intend to do it.

Now, the Federal Government has already worked very hard with the Coast Guard and others. We've been involved with your local people. I believe we think we saved almost a thousand lives. Too many people have died here, and not everyone is accounted for. And Governor Hunt told me today, you're still rescuing people that had been accounted for. But there are a lot of people alive today; and with all the loss, we can thank God that there are people who are alive who might not otherwise have been because of the efforts people have made.

So we're going to do what we can to help. And I want to tell you some things we can do in the very short run. We have already authorized FEMA to provide for direct Federal assistance to clean up the 66 counties in North Carolina that have been hurt. Today the Department of Agriculture will approve a disaster food stamp program to help people who need help to get food for their families. And people who need it ought to take it. There's nothing to be ashamed of here; people who need it ought to take it.

Today the Department of Agriculture, all they can do for the farmers, and that's what - is to offer the low-interest loans. Some of the bigger farmers, that'll be enough. Some of the family farmers will be ruined, not just here but in other places. And I'm going to do what I can to see that the emergency farm bill, which was drawn up to deal with the drought and historic low grain prices overseas, includes the victims of the horrible drought and then the floods on the East Coast, from North Carolina all the way up the East Coast, where our farmers are.