Remarks to the Iowa state legislature in Des Moines, Iowa

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, May 1, 1995

Thank you very much, Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Governor Branstad, Mr. Chief Justice and members of the Supreme Court, distinguished Iowa State officials. And former Congressman Neal Smith, my good friend, and Mrs. Smith, thank you for being here. To all of you who are members of the Iowa legislature, House and Senate, Republican and Democrat, it is a great honor for me to be here today.

I feel that I'm back home again. When I met the legislative leadership on the way in and we shared a few words and then they left to come in here, and I was standing around with my crowd, I said, "You know, I really miss State government." [Laughter] I'll say more about why in a moment.

I'd like to, if I might, recognize one of your members to thank him for agreeing to join my team - Representative Richard Running will now be the Secretary of Labor's representative. Would you stand up, please. Thank you. [Applause] Representative Running is going to be the representative of the Secretary of Labor for region 7, Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas. And if you will finish your business here pretty soon, he can actually go to Kansas City and get to work - [laughter] - which I would appreciate.

I'm delighted to be back in Iowa. I had a wonderful day here, and it was good to be here when it was dry - [laughter] - although a little rain doesn't do any harm.

We had a wonderful meeting today at Iowa State University with which I'm sure all of you are, familiar, this National Rural Conference we had, designed to lay the groundwork for a strategy for rural America to include not only the farm bill but also a rural development strategy and a strategy generally to deal with the problems of rural America, with the income disparities with the rest of America, the age disparities with the rest of America, and the problems of getting services and maintaining the quality of life in rural America.

I want to thank Governor Branstad for his outstanding presentation and the information he gave us about the efforts being made in Iowa in developing your fiber optic network and developing the health care reform initiatives for rural Iowans and many other areas. I want to thank Senator Harkin for his presentation, particularly involving the development of alternative agricultural products as a way to boost income in rural America. And I want to say a special word of thanks to the people at Iowa State. They did a magnificent job there, and I know you are all very proud of that institution. And you would have been very, very proud of them today, for the way they performed.

I'm also just glad to be back here in the setting of State government. You know, Governor Branstad and I were once the youngest Governors in America, but time took care of it. [Laughter] And now that he's been reelected, he will actually serve more years than I did. I ran for a fifth term as Governor. We used to have 2-year terms, and then we switched to 4-year terms. And only one person in the history of our State had ever served more than 8 years, and only one person had ever served more than - two people had served more than two terms, but those were 2-year terms - in the whole history of the State. So I was - I had served 10 years. I'd served three 2-year terms and one 4-year term, and I was attempting to be reelected. And I had a high job approval rating, but people were reluctant to vote for me, because in my State people are very suspicious of too much political power, you know. And I thought I was still pretty young and healthy, but half of them wanted to give me a gold watch, you know, and send me home. [Laughter] And I never will forget one day when I was running for my fifth term, I was out at the State fair doing Governor's day at the State fair, which I always did, and I would just sit there and anybody that wanted to talk to me could up and say whatever was on their mind, which was, for me, a hazardous undertaking from time to time - [laughter] - since they invariably would do exactly that. And I stayed there all day long, and I talked about everything under the Moon and Sun with the people who came up. And, long about the end of the day, this elderly fellow in overalls came up to me, and he said, "Bill, you going to run for Governor, again?" And I hadn't announced yet. I said, "I don't know. If I do, will you vote for me?" He said, "Yes, I always have. I guess I will again." And I said, "Well, aren't you sick of me after all these years?" He said, "No, but everybody else I know is." [Laughter]

But he went on to say - and that's the point I want to make about State government - he said, "People get tired of it because all you do is nag us. You nag us to modernize the economy; you nag us to improve the schools; you just nag, nag, nag." But he said, "I think it's beginning to work." And what I have seen in State after State after State over the last 15 years as we have gone through these wrenching economic and social changes in America and as we face challenge after challenge after challenge, is people able consistently to come together to overcome their differences, to focus on what it will take to build a State and to move forward. And we need more of that in America.