    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
    [April 17, 1993]
    [Pages 450-453]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 450]]

    Remarks to the Community in Pittsburgh
    April 17, 1993

        Thank you so much, Senator Wofford, Governor Casey, Commissioner
    Foerster--happy birthday--and Commissioner Flaherty. I am so glad to be
    back in Pittsburgh, in Allegheny County.
        Now, where's the band who played for us, up there? The Richland High
    Marching Band, thank you very much.
        I want to say, Mayor, it's always good to be with you and be in your
    city. I want to also acknowledge the presence here today of Congressmen
    Coyne, Klink, Murphy, and Murtha, all of whom have supported this
    economic program to get our country moving again, and a person who has
    made some decisions that are very good for Pittsburgh and USAir and, I
    think, for the future of the country, the Transportation Secretary,
    Federico Pena, who is here with us.
        I want to say a lot of things about the economic program, but before
    I do, let me say what--since all of you heard the radio address and the
    interview, you know that this morning the jury in Los Angeles handed
    down a verdict in the Rodney King case. You don't know that? I thought
    you heard it. Well, let me say that they did. The jury found two of the
    defendants guilty and two of the defendants not guilty. The jury
    convicted the officer, Officer Powell, who was shown on the film, who
    did most of the beating, and the sergeant who was in charge of the group
    of police officers who were there. The jury acquitted two of the other
    officers, including the one who was a rookie and the one who was on the
    film and, in part, trying to deflect some blows from Rodney King.
        Now, I want to say just a few words about that, because I think,
    frankly, our attitude about each other may have as much to do with the
    progress we need to make in the future as any specific law we can pass.
    This verdict was a tribute to the work and the judgment of the jury and
    the efforts of the Federal Government in putting the case together. It
    was, once again, a reminder that our courts are the proper forum for the
    resolution of even our deepest legal disputes. And it did establish what
    a lot of people have felt in their hearts for 2 years, that the civil
    rights of Rodney King were violated.
        But I ask you to think about the deeper meaning of this whole issue.
    All across the world today people are fighting with each other and
    killing each other because of their racial and religious differences. In
    eastern Bosnia, in the town of Srebrenica, Muslims and Serbs that lived
    together for centuries, and tens of thousands of the Muslims are now
    about to be forced from their homes through a process called ethnic
    cleansing and because the Serbs had decided that they just can't live
    unless they can live alone and without others who are different from
    them.
        Our country has always been about something different from that. We
    see these kinds of racial and ethnic conflicts on every continent all
    across the globe. But we've always been about something different from
    that. I once gave a speech to a university in Los Angeles County where
    there were students from 122 different countries. There are now people
    from 150 different racial and ethnic groups in that county alone. And I
    say to you, my fellow Americans, unless we really do believe that
    underneath the differences of race and religion and ethnicity,
    underneath the differences of political party and political opinion,
    there is a core in each one of us, given us by God, in which we share in
    common, which obliges us to respect one another and to wish to live
    together in harmony and peace, none of the other things I came to talk
    to you about today can come to pass.
        For the people of Los Angeles and the people of this country, all
    around the country, who need more opportunity, the time has come to go
    forward, to rededicate ourselves to the civil rights of all Americans,
    to rededicate ourselves to the fight against crime and drugs and
    violence, to put 100,000 more police officers on the street, to pass the
    Brady bill and try to reduce the vulnerability to violence and crimes by
    people, to commit ourselves to a new agenda of expanding opportunity and
    empowerment. But in the beginning must be the willingness of every
    American to assume a personal responsibility to respect the differences
    of his or her fellow Americans and rejoice in what unites us as human
    beings. Surely the lasting legacy of the Rodney King trial ought to be
    that, a determination to reaffirm our common humanity and

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    to make a strength of our diversity. And if we can do that, then we can
    get on about the business of this great land.
        I want to, before I talk a little bit about the stimulus program,
    also say a special word about the gentleman who introduced me and those
    of you who sent him to the Senate. When Pennsylvania elected Harris
    Wofford against all the odds less than 2 years ago, you started a
    movement not just that led to a change in Presidents but that led to a
    change in America. I'm here to tell you today that Pennsylvania sent
    shock waves to the country by electing Harris Wofford because
    Pennsylvania was saying we expect our Government to solve the health
    care crisis, we expect our Government to solve the jobs crisis.
        I wonder how many people would have even taken seriously the
    campaign that I undertook to try to break the gridlock and change the
    whole way Washington works, to reduce the influence of special interests
    and put the American people, their jobs, their health care, their
    education first, to try to change the welfare system and start a system
    of national service so people could earn their way through college, I
    wonder if any of that could have happened if Pennsylvania hadn't said in
    a loud, screaming, clear voice by electing Harris Wofford, the time has
    come to change the direction of this country.
        I also want to ask you for your understanding and your patience.
    Senator Wofford has been working hard on this health care issue ever
    since he got to the Senate, but you can't change the health care system
    unless the White House and the Congress are in harness. And I, my wife,
    and our administration are working on this health care issue to put the
    White House and the Congress in harness to ensure affordable health care
    to all Americans.
        I also want to say, again, how much I appreciate USAir and the
    employees for giving us this wonderful terminal to meet in today.
        And now let me talk about what Governor Casey spoke about. When I
    became President, I promised a long-term economic plan, no short-term
    miracles but a real effort to turn this country around. And I presented
    that plan to the Congress. They have to vote on it twice, first in broad
    outlines and then in the details. They adopted the outlines, the so-
    called budget resolution, in record time. They have never moved so
    rapidly.
        It changes the whole way the Federal Government takes care of your
    money and has your priorities at stake. It emphasizes a dramatic
    reduction in the Federal deficit and, at the same time, increasing
    investment in jobs, in education and health care and communities and the
    things that will make the country grow over a 5-year period, not a one-
    shot deal, over 5 years. It does it by a combination of strict budget
    cuts and raising some more money. Seventy percent of it comes from
    people with incomes over $100,000 a year to try to restore some fairness
    to this Tax Code that has gotten so unfair in the last 12 years. This
    program is a good program. It is what I campaigned on.
        Then I asked the Congress to do something I didn't really campaign
    on but that I decided was important, to adopt a short-term jobs program
    to immediately create a half a million jobs in this economy. And I'll
    tell you why I did it, even though we never talked about it in these
    rallies when I came here. Because I looked around the world and I saw
    that every advanced economy in the world is having trouble creating
    jobs, every one. Then I looked at America, and I saw that the economists
    were saying that we have been in an economic recovery for a year, and
    the unemployment rate is higher now than it was when we were in the
    depths of the recession.
        So America is like a lot of these other countries. If you look at
    the overall figures--a lot of you are responsible for this, by the way--
    productivity, our output per working person, is up. Some profits of our
    corporations are up, stock market at record-high levels. Now interest
    rates are going down because we're committed to reducing the deficit.
    And a lot of you, as a result, have refinanced your homes or gotten a
    lower mortgage or interest rate on a car or other consumer interest
    rates. People have been able to get business loans or refinance them.
        That's all good. But where are the jobs? This is a sweeping,
    worldwide problem for wealthier countries. But it is your problem and
    your community's problem if you or your neighbors don't have one. And as
    a result of the incredible pressures on business today, we see that even
    in this so-called recovery, we're having no new jobs created and we're
    having 100,000 Americans a month lose their health insurance. I say we
    can do better. And we have to try to do better.
        So we came up with the idea of not having the Government create a
    job for everybody

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    that's unemployed--you know we don't have enough money to do that with
    the deficit as high as it is--but of having a very carefully targeted
    jobs plan to create a half a million jobs and hope it would operate like
    striking a match, and then that would get the economy spurred, and other
    new jobs would be created. It was a disciplined, limited, targeted plan,
    clearly designed to get this economy going again in the short run. That
    is what I've asked the House and the Senate to adopt. The House adopted
    the plan right away. A majority of the Senate is for it. All the
    Republicans are filibustering it, which means they know it will pass, so
    they won't let it come to a vote.
        Now, let me tell you what it will do. It will give communities a
    lift by putting thousands of police officers on the street to try to
    make the streets safer. It will invest in roads and streets and bridges
    and cleaner water and sewer systems and put people to work in
    construction work. That is important. It will give cities and counties
    and States some discretionary money to support projects like this one.
    It will create 700,000 jobs for young people who otherwise wouldn't have
    any work this summer to get them off the streets.
        After trying for a long time to pass this program and getting no
    help from any of the Republican Senators--because we have to have at
    least three or four of them to help because it takes 60 people to shut
    off debate in the Senate, not a majority, 60 percent--I offered a
    compromise. Well, you've heard that old saying, it takes two to tango?
    It also takes two to untangle the gridlock in Washington. And I came
    here today asking you to ask Senator Specter to help me untangle this
    gridlock.
        The Republicans say, ``Well, maybe we ought to pay money to extend
    the unemployment benefits of people who are unemployed,'' but not a dime
    to create any jobs. We tried that for 12 years: Pay people to be
    unemployed; don't pay them to work. I say we should do both, take care
    of the unemployed but reduce the unemployed. Put people to work.
        There are those who say, ``Everything's fine. We don't need this.''
    Everybody who says that has got a job. [Laughter] Everybody who says
    that has got health insurance. Everybody who says that has a good
    education and is going to do fine almost no matter what happens. They
    can take care of themselves. The people who know how many vulnerable
    people there are in America know that we've got to try to do something
    to put the people to work. If it doesn't work, we'll do something else.
    But let's try this. It can work.
        Let me say, in fairness to my opponents--I want you to know what
    their argument is. They say if the Congress passes an emergency jobs
    bill, that adds to the deficit, and we shouldn't do anything to make the
    deficit bigger, nothing, except maybe unemployment benefits. Now, that
    has a lot of appeal. Here's what they don't tell you. We could pass
    every dollar I've asked for in this jobs plan and still be below the
    total spending targets that this Congress established before I ever
    became President, for how much money was going to be spent this year.
    Right, Congressmen? Number one.
        Number two, we have cut and cut and cut spending in this budget,
    over 200 specific spending cuts over the next 5 years that will blow
    away this extra spending. This spending is more than covered by budget
    cuts.
        And third, and the most important thing of all you need to know, is
    that before I became President, just in the last 4 years, a lot of these
    same people voted for the same kind of emergency spending, billions and
    billions and billions of dollars of it, a lot of it for overseas
    spending or other things that didn't have anything to do with putting
    the people of Pennsylvania to work. So they did this before. Let's do it
    for the American people this time.
        What's amazing to me, they also say, ``Well, you can't trust the
    cities and counties with the money. You give these community development
    block grants to the cities, you can't ever tell. Well, they'll fool
    around and build a swimming pool with it.'' [Laughter] I have a couple
    of things to say about that. First of all, it was the Republicans in
    Washington that once championed these community development grants. Your
    late Senator from this State, John Heinz, was a great champion of the
    very thing I'm trying to do, increasing community development block
    grants.
        Before I became President, I heard speech after speech out of the
    Republicans in Washington that I agreed with, saying that people at the
    local level have better sense than we do about how to spend this money.
    How many times did the Congress get that speech from the Republicans,
    ``Let the mayors, let the Governors, let the county officials spend this
    money. They know how to do it.'' Well, funny enough,

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    I propose to expand that program, and all of a sudden they said, ``Why,
    you can't trust those people. They'll squander the money. They might
    build a swimming pool.'' [Laughter]
        Let me tell you something. I don't know how you feel, but in a lot
    of these cities and small towns and country places, I'd a lot rather
    those kids be at swimming pools this summer than some of the places
    they're going to be. You go to Washington. The President's got a
    swimming pool. The Senate has a swimming pool. Why shouldn't the people
    have a swimming pool? And what about all those people who are going to
    work building those kinds of things in our cities? I'm telling you,
    folks, every argument they've got still comes back to gridlock.
        Now again, I'm going to tell you, this is not the end of the world,
    but we need to keep this country moving. And we need to create some jobs
    now. And we need to stop making excuses. We need to pull together. I
    have reached out the hand of compromise to the Republicans in the
    Senate. I did it all by myself. I didn't have any kind of deal from
    them. I just listened to them. I listened to all those speeches about
    how bad these programs were. So I said, ``Okay, here's a different deal,
    and by the way, how about spending $200 million more to put police on
    the street? Why don't you do that?'' Let's hear what their answer is.
    Why shouldn't we have police on the street where we need it in the
    cities, where we've have to cut back on law enforcement coverage? Why
    shouldn't we have more people working in this country?
        I want to ask you to help us put America back to work. I want to ask
    you to help keep the movement going. I have been very honest with you.
    We don't have any magic bullets. We know there won't be any overnight
    successes. But we know that this economy, like so many countries in the
    world, is not creating jobs. And if people were working, you just think
    about it, if everybody in this country who wanted a job had one, we
    wouldn't have half the problems we've got now. Let's try to put America
    back to work.
        By the end of this month, let me give you one more example, if we
    don't fund this program, the main loan program of the Small Business
    Administration will be shut down. The opposite party for years paraded
    as the champion of the small businesses of this country. That program
    can help start 25,000 small businesses. Small business is generating
    most of the new jobs in America today. That is the kind of thing we have
    done here.
        I ask you, please, not in a spirit of partisanship, not in an
    atmosphere of hostility, not with political rhetoric, just for the
    benefit of the people of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County and
    Pennsylvania and the United States of America, ask your Senator and the
    Senators in the United States Senate to give us a chance to put this
    country back to work, starting Monday.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:16 a.m. in the USAir terminal at
    Pittsburgh International Airport. In his remarks, he referred to Tom
    Foerster and Pete Flaherty, Allegheny County commissioners, and Sophie
    Masloff, Mayor of Pittsburgh.

      The Office of the Press Secretary also released a statement by the
    President on the jury verdict in the Rodney King case which was an
    excerpt from the President's remarks printed above.