Remarks to the Community in Quincy, Illinois

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Feb 7, 2000

January 28, 2000

Thank you very much. I think I should begin by thanking you all for waiting in this cold weather all morning. Your welcome to me has been so warm, I don't care what it's doing outside; inside, it still feels like Florida to me here. I thank you very much.

I want to begin by thanking your mayor, who flew in here with me today; and your fine Congressman, Lane Evans; our two United States Senators, Senator Durbin and Senator Fitzgerald; Congressman Shimkus; Congressman Hulshof; thank you all for being here. Let's give them a big hand here today. [Applause] Didn't Kayt do a good job? [Applause] All I can tell you is that when I was her age, I could not have given a speech anywhere near that good; so she's well on her way.

I want to thank all the people that gave us our music: the Quincy High School Band, the Quincy Park Band, the Quincy Notre Dame Marching Band. Thank you all very much. I want to thank all the people who are here today who represent State and local government and the people of this community, the police officers, business leaders, day care providers, AmenCorps members, and other public servants, the students, the teachers, all represented up on this stage today. And, of course, "Mr. Quincy" there. Thank you very much, sir, for being here.

Ladies and gentlemen, last night when I gave the State of the Union Address, I was fulfilling a requirement of the United States Constitution that requires the President to report every year on the state of the Union. Then, I wanted to come out today to the heartland of America to say what that was all about. Maybe we ought to change the Constitution, Senators and Congressmen, to require the President to come to Quincy the day after the State of the Union Address every year.

You know, I never will forget the night I actually did talk to the mayor and Senator Paul Simon, who was not pretending to be me, and you were going through that horrible flood, and I monitored your progress, and this community became a symbol of hope and what people can do when they pull together. I loved hearing the mayor today again recount the rich heritage of your city, the Lincoln-Douglas debate, the Underground Railroad, the sanctuary offered so long ago to those fleeing religious persecution.

I loved driving here from the airport today and remembering the bus tour that Vice President Gore and Hillary and Tipper and I took in 1992 through so much of this part of America, and I saw so many of the same pictures all along the way: young children out with their signs; people saying, "My birthday's August the 19th, too"; some people like my dog; some people like my cat; some people like them and don't like the President very much. The whole day was wonderful. It was a wonderful thing.

And I think that what you show here today and every day is that when we join hands and join hearts, we can climb any mountain and turn back any tide. That is what our Nation has proved these last 7 years. And as I look out here on all of you, I see fresh evidence of what I said last night, folks: The state of our Union today is the strongest it has ever been, thanks to you.

If you saw the speech last night, you know that I quoted President Theodore Roosevelt, one of my favorite predecessors. He's the last sitting President to come to Quincy. I don't know what the others were thinking about. [Laughter] But Roosevelt had a great quote at the dawn of the last century, which was a time that has a lot of parallels to our present-day experience. He reminded us that "a growing nation with a future must always take the long look ahead." And what that means is, you know, when you folks were worried about the flood taking your town away, everybody concentrated and went to work. And then when you had all the problems and you needed the ferry and the mayor said the river was 6 miles wide, everybody concentrated and went to work. Sometimes people get in trouble not when times are tough, but when times seem to be so good people think they don't have to do anything, they don't have to worry, they don't have to work together.

And what I want to tell you is, never in my lifetime have we had the combination of economic prosperity and social progress with so little internal crisis or external threat, and I know from my experience that we should be using this time wisely to deal with the long-term challenges and seize the long-term opportunities that the children of Kayt's generation will have to deal with in the new century; and that's what I want the American people to support.

I want you to support us in saying we made a mistake to quadruple the debt of the country. Now we're paying off the debt; let's stay at the job until America is debt-free for the first time since 1835. The number of people over 65 is going to double in 30 years. I hope to be one of them. The baby boomers must not--we must not--impose the burden of our enormous numbers in retirement on our children. That means we need to take the interest savings from paying down the debt, put it in the Social Security Trust Fund, take it out to 2050, then the baby boomers' retirement will not impose a burden on our children and our children's ability to raise our grandchildren.