Remarks in Tampa, Florida

Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, Nov 11, 1996

We're seeing a deeper sense of community - trying to preserve our natural environment for our children and our grandchildren. I thank Governor Chiles for the work he has done on the Everglades. Every person in Florida, in the farthest northern corner of Florida has a stake in that. Every person in the farthest northwest corner of America has a stake in saving our common heritage.

We see it in so many other ways. We have been moved by the enormous upswelling of American conviction in the aftermath of Oklahoma City, the reaction to the church burnings being so negative. Our common sense, whenever it prevails to bring us together as a community, makes us stronger. And I really believe we're on the verge of the most exciting period in human history. But we can't forget what brought us here, because it will take us home. So the trick for us is to find out with God's wisdom how to seize all these fabulous opportunities that are out there in a way that enables us to move closer to our values.

It is really true that none of us live by bread alone. I don't know any serious person who's lived long enough who believes that with all the bread in the world you can be really happy. [Laughter] On the other hand, it's important not to be too self-righteous. I always say one of my rules of politics is whenever you hear a person standing on a corner screaming, "This is not a money problem," sure as the world he's talking about somebody else's problem, not his. [Laughter]

So we need to be a little humble about this. But we have work to do. If you think about what our children can do, if we could put every child in America, from the poorest inner cities to the most remote rural areas, in a classroom with a computer that was hooked up to the entire information superhighway, then for the first time ever every child in America would have access to the same learning in the same way at the same time. That would revolutionize what our children could do, all of our children.

If we could put a million citizens with 100,000 more police and walk the blocks together, we could have not 4 years but 8 years of declining crime and all of our children could feel safe on their streets and in their schools and in their neighborhoods. We can reclaim our streets. Four years ago millions of people did not believe we could ever do anything about rising crime. Now we have no excuse. We know we can bring it down for 4 years, but we know we have to have about 4 more years before it will be tolerable to live in still a lot of our places. But we can make our streets safe again, we know that. But we'll have to do that together. And we can do that in the future.

We know that we're breaking down the frontiers of ignorance in so many ways that will help us to cure cancer, that will help us to find ways to grow our economy while we improve our environment, that will help us to find ways to create jobs for people who have never been able to get them before. But we have work to do. I signed a law that says that everybody on welfare who's able-bodied will keep getting health care and food and child care if they go to work, but if they're able-bodied, they've got to trade the welfare check for a paycheck in 2 years. That's the law. But now we have figured out something we haven't really been able to figure out for a long time, which is how to give jobs to people. You can't tell people they have to go to work unless there's work for them to find. So we've got work to do.