[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book I)]
[July 4, 1993]
[Pages 1007-1008]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Departure From Moline, Illinois
July 4, 1993

    I want to thank you all for coming out here and for waiting on the 
Fourth of July. What a wonderful gift it was for me to come back and see 
all of you here. I couldn't believe it.
    As you know, I've been here reviewing the flood damage, meeting the 
families from both Illinois and Iowa. And I just wanted to tell you 
first of all, as someone who had grown up in a farming area and has seen 
this kind of flooding before, I know what it means. I know how hard it 
is. And we're determined to do everything we possible can to help the 
farmers in this area and the communities get through it. And when I get 
back from my trip to Asia, we'll be pursuing further legislation in the 
Congress to get some more aid to your farmers and your communities so 
that we can recover from this and go on. And I'm really appreciative of 
all the time that the people in this area gave me today to make sure 
that I understood what was going on.
    The second thing I'd like to say to you is that for all the problems 
this Nation has on the Fourth of July, and we've still got a lot of 
them--there are an awful lot of people who are worried about their jobs, 
the security of their health care, the education of their children, the 
safety of their streets--I'm about to leave to go to a meeting of the 
world's richest countries where they think we're doing pretty well 
because our unemployment rate is lower than every country in Europe, we 
had a million more jobs coming into our economy since the first of the 
year, and we're finally doing something to bring our terrible Government 
deficit down and to prepare for our future. And I want you to know that 
tomorrow when I leave and get on that plane to go to Japan, I'm going to 
be over there working for things that I think will help to provide jobs 
and incomes and opportunity and hope for the American people.
    These are very difficult and challenging times for our country. A 
lot of the problems we face are very complicated, and we could argue all 
day about what the right decisions are. But I promise you this: Every 
day when I go to work and I fight for our economic plan, which I think 
is fair and which I know will work, every decision I make I ask myself, 
is it going to help Americans to have more jobs, better incomes, more 
security, and a brighter future for their children? And if we could at 
least ask that ques-


[[Page 1008]]

tion--we can have all of the debates in the world--we'll keep our 
country going on the right track.
    Don't forget this is still the greatest country in the world. And 
the next 20 years can be the best we ever had, if we have the courage to 
make the changes we've got to make to deal with all these challenges 
before us. I think we do. And after spending some time sitting on a bale 
of hay with a bunch of Iowa farm families tonight, I feel a lot better 
than I did when I got up this morning on this wonderful Independence 
Day.
    Thank you all, and God bless you. And thank you for coming out.

Note: The President spoke at 10:36 p.m. at the Quad Cities Airport. A 
tape was not available for verification of the content of these remarks.