    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
    [September 21, 1993]
    [Pages 1543-1546]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Signing the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993
    September 21, 1993

        Thank you very much, Mr. Vice President. I always wanted to be
    introduced by the host of the David Letterman Show. [Laughter] I was
    thinking about what my top 10 list would be,

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    the best things about having Al Gore as Vice President. He educates me
    on things great and trivial, and that's 10. And numbers nine through one
    are, he has a vote in the United States Senate. He said, ``And I'm
    always on the winning side when I vote.'' [Laughter]
        I want to welcome you all to America's backyard, a fitting place to
    come to celebrate the opportunity to serve our neighbors and the
    opportunity to rebuild the American community. I have harbored this
    dream for years. It was stoked in me by so many thousands of
    experiences, I cannot even recall them all.
        When the Vice President and I went across this country last year, I
    was deeply moved by forces that were both good and bad that kept pushing
    me to believe that this was more important than so many other things
    that all of us do in public life. I saw the wreckage, the insanity, the
    lost human potential that you can find now not only in our biggest
    cities but in every community. And yet, I saw even in the most difficult
    circumstances the light in the eyes of so many young people, the
    courage, the hunger for life, the desire to do something to reach beyond
    themselves and to reach out to others and to make things better.
        I listened and learned from so many people. I saw the examples of
    the service programs that you have represented here on this stage. I
    watched people's dreams come to life. I watched the old and the young
    relate in ways they hadn't. I watched mean streets turn into safer and
    better and more humane places. I saw all these things happening, and I
    realized that there was no way any Government program could solve these
    problems, even if we had the money to spend on them, which we don't, but
    that the American people, if organized and directed and challenged and
    asked, would find a way.
        I am in debt to so many people, all of whom have been at least
    referred to. But I would like to say a particular word of thanks to
    those who sponsored previous legislation for a limited basis. I want to
    say a special word of thanks to the Republicans and the Democrats who
    joined together in the Congress to make sure that this would know no
    party and that we would somehow reach beyond the normal debate and
    dialog to unify this country, starting with the Congress. I thank the
    people who helped me before I became President to understand more about
    national service, the people who wrote books and articles, the people
    who worked with me in the DLC and other organizations. I thank all of
    you because all of you played a role in this day. But most of all, I
    want to thank the young people of this country who were so wonderfully
    represented by these three young people, Reshard and Derek and
    Priscilla. Weren't they terrific? Let's give them another hand.
    [Applause]
        I don't believe there was a stop on our bus tour across the country
    when the Vice President and I didn't mention our commitment to national
    service as a part of our drive to make college education affordable to
    all but also as part of our deeper desire to bring the American
    community back together.
        I have to say a special word of appreciation to Eli Segal. I have
    known him for about half my lifetime. I can still remember when we were
    young with the dreams and the enthusiasms that these young people on
    this stage have today. I could not have known when we first met in our
    attempt to do the best we could by our country so long ago, that someday
    we would be standing here on this stage to do this. But I know this:
    This national service bill and this project would not be in the form it
    is and we would not be here celebrating today in the way we are if it
    had not been for his brilliant, dedicated leadership. And I thank him
    for that. Relying on the ancient adage that if it ain't broke, don't fix
    it, I am today forwarding to Senator Kennedy and the United States
    Senate the nomination of Eli Segal to be the Chief Executive Officer of
    the Corporation for National and Community Service.
        I also want to acknowledge, as has already been referred to, the
    roots of our history in all this day and people who have contributed to
    this day because of what they did in their time. Twice before in this
    century Americans have been called to great adventures in civilian
    service. Sixty years ago in the depths of depression, Franklin Roosevelt
    created the CCC and gave Americans the chance not only to do meaningful
    work so that they could feed themselves and their families but so that
    they could build America for the future. And down to this day there is
    not a State in this country that is untouched by the continuing impact
    of the good work done by the people who labored in the CCC.
        Today we have two veterans of President Roosevelt's Civilian
    Conservation Corps, William Bailey and Owen Davis. Would they please

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    stand wherever they are? There they are. Thank you. It is with special
    pride that I will use President Franklin Roosevelt's pen set, with which
    he signed nearly every piece of legislation as President, to sign our
    bill here today.
        We also point with pride, as the Vice President said, to the
    enduring legacy and the continued vitality of John Kennedy's Peace
    Corps, created by legislation which President Kennedy signed 32 years
    ago tomorrow. I want to acknowledge, as the Vice President did, the
    wonderful work of Sargent Shriver not only as the first Director and
    guiding spirit of the Peace Corps but for what he did with the VISTA
    program. And I want to acknowledge--[applause]--thank you--and to say
    with some pride that it was my privilege, influenced by people like the
    Vice President whose sister served with such distinction in the Peace
    Corps, to appoint the first Peace Corps volunteer to actually direct the
    Peace Corps, Carol Bellamy. And I thank her for her leadership. Thanks
    to the generosity of Sargent Shriver, I will also use the pen President
    Kennedy used 30 years ago--32 years ago to sign the Peace Corps
    legislation, to create a new national service corps for America. We will
    call it AmeriCorps.
        When I asked our country's young people to give something back to
    our country through grassroots service, they responded by the thousands.
    You heard a couple of them here today. Eli's office was literally
    swamped with letters asking to serve. These two young people today
    represent 20,000 young people next year and 100,000 young people 3 years
    from now. And I hope, believe, and dream that national service will
    remain throughout the life of America not a series of promises but a
    series of challenges across all the generations and all walks of life to
    help us to rebuild our troubled but wonderful land. I hope that some day
    the success of this program will make it possible for every young
    American who wishes to serve and earn credit against a college education
    or other kinds of education and training, to do that. And I believe it
    will happen.
        This morning our Cabinet and the heads of our Federal Agencies were
    directed to redouble their efforts to use service, community grassroots
    service, to accomplish their fundamental missions. We want them to help
    reinvent our Government, to do more and cost less, by creating new ways
    for citizens to fulfill the mission of the public. We believe we can do
    that. Already departments have enlisted young people and not so young
    people to do everything from flood cleanup to housing rehabilitation,
    from being tour guides in our national parks to being teachers' aides in
    our schools. In the coming months we will also challenge States and
    nonprofit organizations to compete for AmeriCorps volunteers. We'll ask
    our friends in higher education and the foundation world and in business
    to continue their leadership in the growing movement of national
    service.
        But beyond the concrete achievements of AmeriCorps, beyond the
    expanded educational opportunities those achievements will earn,
    national service, I hope and pray, will help us to strengthen the cords
    that bind us together as a people, will help us to remember in the quiet
    of every night that what each of us can become is to some extent
    determined by whether all of us can become what God meant us to be.
        And I hope it will remind every American that there can be no
    opportunity without responsibility. The great English historian Edward
    Gibbon warned that when the Athenians finally wanted not to give to
    society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished
    for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free.
        My fellow Americans, there are streets and neighborhoods and
    communities today where people are not free. There are millions of
    Americans who are not really free today because they cannot reach down
    inside them and bring out what was put there by the Almighty. This
    national service corps should send a loud and clear message across this
    country that the young people of America will preserve the freedom of
    America for themselves and for all those of their generations by
    assuming the responsibility to rebuild the American family. That is the
    dream which drove this idea to the reality we find today.
        I am so proud of all of you who are a part of this. I am profoundly
    grateful to you. I ask you only now to remember that as we move toward
    the 21st century, the success of our great voyage--of this, the longest
    experiment in free society in human history--to remember that it is at
    the grassroots, in the heart of every citizen, that we will succeed or
    fail. Today we are taking a stand in this country for the proposition
    that if we challenge people to serve and we give them a chance to
    fulfill their abilities, more

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    and more and more we will all understand that we must go forward
    together. This is the profoundest lesson of this whole endeavor. And it
    will be the great legacy of the wonderful people who make it come alive.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:15 a.m. on the South Lawn at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Summer of Service participants
    Reshard Riggins, Derek Gottfried, and Priscilla Aponte. H.R. 2010,
    approved September 21, was assigned Public Law No. 103-82.