Remarks to a Joint Session of the Arkansas State Legislature in Little Rock, Arkansas

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Jan 22, 2001

Everything that I have been able to do as President is, in no small measure, a result of the life I lived and the jobs I had in Arkansas. My conviction that politics requires a vision and a strategy based on sound ideas and a belief that you can make a difference--from education reform to economic policy, to welfare and health care, to building one America, those things were formed here.

I know that when a person gets ready to check out of an office, there's always a lot of retrospectives. And I have followed them in the local press: Did this administration make a difference for Arkansas? Did it make a difference for America? So I am going to do an unconventional thing; I think I will start with the facts.

First of all, when I came in, I think a lot of people thought, well, you know, we'd just move the whole Federal Government down here. But the problem is, we had a $290 billion deficit, and then the price of getting rid of the deficit turned out to be losing the Congress for our party. And so then the people that were in control had other ideas about where the money ought to go from time to time, when we finally had a little.

Notwithstanding that, look what happened this year. We funded the Delta Regional Authority, $20 million the first year. We got funds for the Great River Bridge and for the Highway 82 Bridge. We had 500--Rodney said--Rodney said in this year's transportation budget there's $592 million for Arkansas. That's more than your per capita share.

We worked very hard, especially with Senator Lincoln and Congressman Snyder, to save the mission of the Little Rock Air Force Base and to get the C-130J there. There is $25 million in the budget this year for a simulator and millions more for an operations and maintenance center. I think you're okay.

We got $18 million for a quality evaluation center at the Pine Bluff arsenal. And as we try to reduce the dangers of chemical and biological warfare, I think that arsenal can have a very important mission in America's future. I've talked to Representative Ross about it, and I hope, after I come down here, I can work with you to think about what it should be doing in the 21st century.

There were $38 million for seven water projects, an expansion of the Forrest City prisons, $5 million for research for the Arkansas Children's Hospital. We funded the Dale Bumpers Rice Research Center and the Agriculture Research Center. The Little Rock VA got some money for a research annex. I am very happy that we got $21/2 million for the Diane Blair Center at the University of Arkansas. And we finally got the upper payment limit for the medical center okayed, and that's worth $35 million, and I think it saved the medical center. At least that's what Dale Bumpers tells me it did.

Earlier, of course, there was over $40 million for the airport in northwest Arkansas. And when my library and center get built here, I expect it will be a project on the order of $200 million, something that I believe will make a big difference, not only to central Arkansas but to the whole State.