Remarks to employees at the Chrysler jeep plant in Toledo

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Sept 2, 1996

That's another thing. All that Government can do - and this is the role of the Government - the role of the Government is to create the conditions and give you the tools to make the most of your own life. Not a guarantee, but a chance. There are no guarantees. That's what the communist system found out. That's why it collapsed. Not a guarantee, but a chance. You seized the chance. And the company deserves a lot of credit.

I have challenged other companies to follow this lead - 70 percent of you in continuing education courses, a generous bonus program, sharing the profits. Every company ought to share the fruits of its progress with the workers who make that progress possible.

And I honor that. I honor that. I want everyone in America today who works hard for a living to see the example of what happened in Toledo. Because if every company worked in partnership with its workers, if every company made it possible for its workers to continue their education and become more productive, if every company were committed to sharing a fair share of the profits with labor as well as management and shareholders - this country would be even stronger, we would be growing even faster, we would be going into the future in even better shape. I think that's what we have to do.

The last thing I want to say is, we have to face our common challenges together. Government can't solve a lot of these problems alone. We have had a remarkable partnership on the environment. I believe we can grow the economy and protect the environment. I think we've proved that. We've improved the quality of our drinking water, 50 million people are breathing cleaner air. We have cleaned up more toxic waste dumps in 3 years than were cleaned up in the previous 12. We've revolutionized the meat standards so you can have safer meat. We just decided - we just overhauled the standards for pesticides going into your food so your children will have safer food.

We can do things to grow the economy and protect the environment, and we have to work together. And we can find ways, actually, to create jobs. One of the things that Marcy Kaptur said today that struck home with me the most was that we deserve, our people deserve in these city areas, with their ethnic diversity, their religious diversity, all their diversity, where so much industry has moved out, they deserve the chance to make a living. And we have got to find ways to give them that chance.

As hard-working Americans, I want to leave you with two thoughts about that. Number one, if we do it right, the environment gives us a chance to do that. The biggest new investment in manufacturing in New York City in the last several years is a company making recycled paper products in the Bronx. What did we do for that company? The main thing we did was just - I signed an Executive order directing the Federal Government to buy a certain percentage of its products in recycled paper. Now a lot of those urban folks are working on a way to help the environment, and they've got manufacturing jobs. That's an important thing.