Remarks to the American Legion Boys Nation - Bill Clinton speech - Transcript

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, August 2, 1993

We have a covenant with you which requires us to make some very tough choices. We have some of the same problems we had in 1963 but some very different ones as well. From the time we became a nation until 1980, we had amassed over that entire life of this country a national debt of only $1 trillion. As a percentage of our income, it seemed to be quite manageable, and we were still free to invest in those things we ought to invest in. In the last 12 years, partly because of misguided policies, partly because of gridlock, partly because of people trying to outbid one another, we have gone from $1 trillion to $4 trillion in national debt. The estimated annual deficit when I took office was well over $300 billion, although we've gotten it down some this year. And clearly, we have unmet needs that we don't have the money to invest in.

As compared with many other nations, just for example, we spend too little money on new technologies for the 21st century which will shape the jobs that you and your colleagues will have. We spend too little money on the continued education and training of our work force. We have all kinds of other challenges occasioned by the builddown of the reduction in defense spending. We owe it to the people who worked hard to help us win the cold war not to leave them out in the cold, and yet we don't have all the funds we need to spend on that. And yet, we have this enormous debt. It is a terrible dilemma for this country.

We have whole sections of America where unemployment is too high and poverty is too high and the major source of income is drugs and the major organizations that works in society are gangs. We have to change all that. But we have to also free ourselves economically of the paralysis that this enormous annual deficit and the accumulated debt impose. And so we are trying to do that here for you as well as for your parents and your grandparents.

In your lifetime, communism, the great threat of my childhood, has been defeated. I can still remember going to high school assemblies and junior high school assemblies and sitting there being given instructions about how to find the nearest bomb shelter and what we would do if a nuclear war occurred. I can still remember hearing people speak about what communism was like in the Soviet Union and how there would be a lifelong struggle between the forces of freedom and the forces of communism. Well, in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, it was a stunning reaffirmation of America's commitment to freedom and democracy and to free market economics and the right of individuals to seek their own way as long as they didn't hurt their communities. That is an incredible achievement. In all probability, you will be able to raise your children without any threat of the annihilation of this society or this globe on which we live.

On the other hand, as we have learned from every source of wisdom beginning with the Scriptures, there will never be an end to problems, never be an end to challenges. It is part of human nature that as new opportunities develop, new problems do, too. We have to do something about our debt here. We have to invest. We have to compete. We have to create opportunities for your future. We also have to recognize that the world remains a dangerous place, and there are people running governments who desperately want to develop weapons of mass destruction and have very little concern what is done in retaliation to their own citizens. That is a deeply troubling thing. We still face the threat of terrorism from people who honestly believe that the best way to achieve their political objectives is to kill, even if they kill innocent people. And we still have the terrible, terrible burden of knowing that in spite of all the progress we have made, there are millions of Americans who do not have the chance to grow up to live to their God-given potential. And until that happens, we will never be as secure, as strong, as full as we need to be.