Remarks at the Faces of Hope reunion luncheon

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, June 12, 1995

Because of a lot of folks like you, we have managed so far, even in these difficult budgetary times when we have reduced the size of the Government by 100,000, and we have shrunk the deficit, and we're going to have more cuts, we have increased our investment in education, medical research, and particularly, we have emphasized research and treatment for AIDS. And I'm not sure we would have been able to fight off all of those budget cuts if I hadn't actually met a lot of you and gotten to know you. Because of some of you here, when we passed the crime bill, we were able to say, "Okay, you put more police on the street and have more punishment, but put some money into giving these kinds something to say yes to."

There were two former gang members here from L.A. who spend their lives trying to keep peace on the streets of Los Angeles. Better we should support them; also cheaper for you.

These are the kinds of things that we have tried to do. Because of you, we fought for the family leave law, and we've tried to fight for programs that would not only protect the environment but would also help to provide for economic transition where people are dislocated. When we had to cut back on defense, we provided for economic transition so we wouldn't forget about the people who lost their jobs because we won the cold war and we had to cut back on defense--because of you and people like you. And that's very, very important.

We're having two big debates here in Washington today, and you put the lie to both of them. And so I want to talk about it. You'll hear it when we talk about what we're going to do to the budget. Debate, you know, number one is, whether all of our problems are primarily personal and cultural, that is, if we'd all just behave and do the right thing, there wouldn't be any problems, which is at one level, plainly true, right; or, whether our problems are political and economic, that is, we have an obligation to help each other make the most of our own lives and overcome our problems.

You put the lie to that debate. That is a bogus debate. Nothing I can do here in Washington will really solve your problems if you're not doing your part. On the other hand, if we don't do our part here, a lot of you still won't be able to do what you can do to make the most of your lives and the people you're trying to help. So I hope that when people look at you and think about people like you, they will say, the answer to that is both. I'll do my part, but you guys do yours.

The second big debate is whether, even though we have to do things together, the Government is so clumsy, inefficient, and inept, we ought to throw it away and just tell everybody to behave right in their private charities, "Do good. Go forth and do good."

My answer to that is, that is also a bogus debate. It's interesting to me that all of the people who work in charitable work say they'd like the Government to be a partner, that we need more charitable contributions, we want people to give more, but we need to have a partnership.