[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[August 12, 1993]
[Pages 1365-1368]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Signing Flood Relief Legislation at a Tribute to Flood Heroes 
in St. Louis, Missouri
August 12, 1993

    Thank you very much. Please be seated, and good morning, to our 
distinguished host, Governor Carnahan; and majority leader of the United 
States House, Dick Gephardt; Secretary Espy; Secretary Shalala; James 
Lee Witt; the distinguished other Members of Congress who are here, 
Congressmen Jim Talent, Alan Wheat, Jerry Costello, Ike Skelton, and 
Bill Emerson. To the distinguished Governor of Kansas, Joan Finney, my 
good friend, welcome, and to all of you from all the States who were 
affected by this terrible flood.
    We're going to begin today by awarding 19 outstanding Americans 
Presidential Certificates of Commendation. These recipients are everyday 
people, but what they did was most extraordinary. Hillary and Chelsea 
and I just had the opportunity to meet them all and to talk with them a 
little bit about their experiences during the flood. Because of their 
efforts, lives were saved and larger disasters were averted. In some 
cases, they provided the support that kept all the other volunteers 
going, and that's what made the difference.
    In their communities, they are mothers and fathers, business owners, 
police officers, and neighbors. But in this time of crisis, they risked 
their lives to save children and parents, to pull people from troubled 
waters or trapped vehicles, to feed the hungry, to provide water to 
people who literally could not have had safe living conditions 
otherwise. And most importantly, a lot of them are committed to staying 
involved in this for the long haul. It is so easy to forget that much of 
the work is still to be done.
    Today we salute them and others like them. And to be sure, there are 
hundreds, indeed thousands of others that we might have just as well 
recognized today who took on the raging rivers to stick up for their 
friends and neighbors and total strangers.
    Now I'd like to ask the FEMA Director, James Lee Witt, to come here 
and present the commendations to the individuals as they are introduced 
and to thank him and all the State FEMA directors and all the local 
emergency management people for the wonderful work that they have done 
also in dealing with this flood.
    Mr. Witt.

[At this point, Director Witt presented the Presi-


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dential Certificates of Commendation. Gov. Mel Carnahan and 
Representative Richard Gephardt then made brief remarks.]

    Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. Please be seated. I want 
to thank my friend Congressman Gephardt for that generous introduction 
and Governor Carnahan for his fine remarks. I acknowledged Governor 
Finney here. I thank all the others from the other States who are here. 
We have the Lieutenant Governor of Nebraska, the heads of various 
States' National Guards and emergency management programs, representing 
all those who worked.
    I have been now to the Midwest four times since this flood began. 
The Secretary of Agriculture, who was up here with me, Mike Espy, has 
been here probably twice that many times, if not more. And I have 
charged him with being responsible for the long-term cleanup efforts, so 
I wanted him standing up here. So when you get frustrated with the 
Federal Government 30 days from now, call him--[laughter]--and harass 
him. He'll be good at it.
    I thank also the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Donna 
Shalala, who has come here with me today. Many members of my Cabinet 
have been here to the Midwest, and many of them have a role to play.
    We are here for two reasons. The first was to honor these fine 
people who have received their just recognition. The second is to sign 
the relief package which will permit the rebuilding to begin with a 
significant dose of support from the Federal Government.
    Throughout human history it has been the way of nature to visit us 
on occasion with disaster, without apparent cause, without explanation, 
often without mercy, always reminding us that we need to live our lives 
with a little more humility and always understanding that we are not in 
full control. How we face these misfortunes tells us a lot about 
ourselves and our friends. We know we cannot contain the fury of a 
river. But we can and we must allow our humanity to overflow as well, to 
help to reclaim the lives that are shattered. That is what I have seen 
happen here in the Midwest, from official responses and from individual 
responses.
    The other day I had a young girl from Wisconsin in the Oval Office. 
You may have seen her story written up. She's 13 years old, but she's 
only 4 feet tall. She weighs about 60 pounds. She was born with a rare 
bone disease which resulted in over two dozen bone-breakings in her body 
before she was born. Years ago she would never have been able to live 
any kind of life, but because of the medical miracles of the National 
Institutes of Health, which she has visited once every 3 months since 
she was an infant, she is able to function as a student. She is able to 
have a semblance of a normal life. She is a delightful young person. But 
she still can easily break major bones in her body. And yet, she 
implored her parents to let her leave Wisconsin--she lives in 
Milwaukee--and come to Iowa to help to fight the floods, knowing that 
she had an imminent risk just by carrying a can of water around.
    That is the sort of thing that I have seen happen. When people say 
to me, ``Well, FEMA really did a great job this time. The Federal 
Government was here all the way,'' I say, what else could we have done 
in the face of that kind of contribution by ordinary Americans?
    One of the reasons, frankly, that FEMA did such a good job, I think, 
is that the Director of FEMA has actually spent several years helping 
ordinary people fight disasters. He is a friend of mine. He was a county 
judge in a county where all the Clintons came from. But he was not a 
political appointment to FEMA, he was somebody who knew what it was like 
to see people there risking their lives, their businesses, their 
livelihoods, putting sandbags against a swollen river. We need more 
people like that in our National Government, people who are related at 
the grassroots level to the real concerns of people. And we're going to 
try to give you that.
    In this disaster, more than 45 lives were lost; 70,000 people had to 
be evacuated. But you all know it could have been a lot worse if it 
hadn't been for folks like you and the many tens of thousands who fought 
to make it as good as possible.
    In just a minute I will sign this disaster relief bill, $6.3 billion 
in Federal assistance to the victims of the flood here in the Midwest 
and other disasters. This is an extraordinary measure taken under 
extraordinary circumstances with real speed, moving through Congress 
with the help of suffering citizens from the Midwest and eloquent 
advocates for the Midwest. I would be remiss if I did not commend the 
legislators of both parties who put aside partisan differences and put 
the people of this area first in passing this bill: people who are not 
here,

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like Senator Tom Harkin from Iowa and Senator Paul Wellstone of 
Minnesota; people who never seek the headlines, like Senator Jim Exon of 
Nebraska; people who are here represented, who quietly work for you day 
in and day out, again, without regard to party. We finally even found 
something that Senator Dole and I could agree on, in this bill. 
[Laughter]
    These funds will be used across a wide spectrum and delivered 
quickly. They'll help farmers who lost their crops. Secretary Espy will 
see to it that payments are made at the rate of 100 percent of approved 
1993 crop losses as defined by the 1990 farm bill. The funds will also 
be used to repair public facilities, bridges, highways, levees, and 
flood control networks; to provide for the health and social service 
needs of flood victims, and they will be significant. I hope we will 
have heroes who will be attending to those who will inevitably suffer 
from depression, from an undefinable and almost uncontainable sense of 
loss as they go back and see their life savings gone, the work of their 
lifetime washed away, even their family albums no longer available to 
them in times of sorrow. They'll be used to provide housing for the 
displaced; to help homeowners and businesses to clean up and rebuild; to 
help our dislocated workers to find new work, hopefully with even better 
skills.
    Two billion dollars will go to the Federal Emergency Management 
Agency, FEMA, for relief of the floods and other disasters and to 
provide for emergency cash relief for those who qualify for that. I'm 
proud to say that FEMA has enjoyed a new respect as a result of their 
efforts in this flood. I was especially heartened by the praise given 
FEMA by the Mayor of Quincy, Illinois, Chuck Scholz. His city's brave 
stand against the rising waters made all Americans proud. And they 
didn't win all their battles.
    All of the help in this relief package will come free of the bonds 
of redtape. Disasters provide enough grief without more coming from 
Washington, so we've worked as hard as we could to streamline the 
paperwork, to cut out unnecessary delays, to work on flexibility and 
fairness, to help in every way that we can.
    A good example of this flexibility and willingness to cut redtape is 
contained in another bill that I will also sign this morning, called 
Depository Institutions Relief Act. It doesn't mean a thing, does it? 
Washington language. But what the act will do is important. It will 
allow Federal regulators to waive certain legal requirements for 
financial institutions serving areas hard hit by flooding, by relaxing a 
few regulations in response to this emergency. We'll allow local banks 
to make local decisions on how best to speed up aid and credit to those 
who really need it.
    Just this week I signed into law the largest deficit reduction 
package in the history of America, almost $500 billion. There were a lot 
of things in that bill, which will become apparent over time, which 
really help ordinary Americans, including tax relief for people who work 
40 hours a week and have children in their homes and still are living 
below the poverty line. One part of that bill is especially important 
today. Under it, flood victims will have more time and flexibility in 
replacing their homes and personal property. At the same time, the IRS 
will ease tax collection requirements on those who now have to live on 
their insurance proceeds.
    You can be sure that we will continue to review the help needed by 
people in this region. We are in it for the long run. As I said, 
Secretary Espy is our designated leader on long-term Federal involvement 
in the rebuilding. And if there are further problems, we'll depend upon 
you, directly or through your elected representatives, to let us know.
    Will Rogers once said, ``We can't all be heroes because somebody has 
to sit on the curb and clap as everybody else goes by.'' [Laughter] 
Well, that may be true. And today we have applauded 19 heroes. But we 
have acknowledged also that they simply represent the best of what 
thousands of people demonstrated. I think that we can all be heroes if 
we learn something from this that we carry over into the rest of our 
lives.
    Think about Reverend Donna Harris and the people of Niota, 
Illinois--the spiritual nourishment and the groceries, meals, and fresh 
water that she provided in that tiny town of 200 for flood victims. Or 
Al Vogt in Glen Haven, Wisconsin, who risked his life to save a 
teenager, a boy being dragged by flood waters through the street when Al 
saw him and pulled him to safety. The town I grew up in had a flash 
flood once where waters 10 feet high rushed at 30 miles an hour down the 
main street of town. I saw people pull babies flying in that kind of 
water. It is a terrifying experience. He braved it. He could have been 
drowned; he could have been pulled away. Sheriff Ken White

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helped to rescue two people, in two separate operations, from drowning. 
Once he had to tie himself to a truck so he could save a woman hanging 
onto a telephone pole.
    Hearing these people, I'm reminded of what President Kennedy said of 
his own heroism in World War II. He said, ``It was involuntary; they 
sank my boat.'' [Laughter] To be sure, for all these people heroism was 
involuntary. Maybe that's why the courage of daily life, in a way, is 
all the more to be admired, when there is no life-threatening danger, 
when we just are required to get up every day and to go about our 
business and to try to face our challenges and seize our opportunities. 
That, in a way, is the enduring heroism of the American people.
    It's the heroism that I believe will be embodied when the Congress 
comes back to town next month and passes the national service corps bill 
to give young people a chance to serve their communities and earn some 
credit toward a college education, the heroism embodied in people like 
the local VISTA volunteers here in St. Louis. I want to single out 
Delores Despiwa. She's here somewhere. Please stand, Delores. Stand up 
there. Her home's under water, and she's still working for other people. 
I want to recognize the Iowa Conservation Corps. There are some members 
here from the Iowa Conservation Corps. Would they stand? I think they're 
here. Yes. Thank you.
    That is the sort of sustained service that all of us need to think 
about providing to our country, and the attitude of cooperation, the 
determination to bridge the gaps that divide us, gaps of party and 
religion and philosophy, to struggle for common values. In the face of a 
500-year flood, that's what millions of you did here in the Middle West. 
And you gave us an enduring vision of your courage.
    The best way for the United States to reward that courage is not 
only for me to sign this flood relief bill and to work with you for the 
long haul but for all of us to try to learn something that we can take 
into our daily lives from the example you set in this emergency.
    A couple of nights ago, Hillary and I had the incredible honor of 
hosting at the White House all the commanders in chiefs of all of our 
military commands all over the world, all the four-star generals and 
admirals that--someone said it was a 76-star dinner, but I don't think 
it was because I'm not sure you can divide 76 by 4 and get an even 
number. [Laughter]
    But at the dinner, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 
Admiral David Jeremiah, who's become quite a good friend of mine, came 
up to me and said, ``You know, you can't roll up your sleeves if you're 
wringing your hands.'' An interesting statement, isn't it? When the 
floods were coming no one had time to wring their hands, so they just 
automatically rolled up their sleeves. When the floods go away, we have 
time to wring our hands, so a lot of us don't roll up our sleeves. Let 
us honor the heroes here today by firm resolve to go back about the 
business of our daily lives as Americans, rolling up our sleeves and not 
wringing our hands.
    Thank you very much.
    I would like now to ask the Members of the United States Congress 
who are here to come up on the stage and join me as I sign this bill.

Note: The President spoke at 10:20 a.m. at the Henry VIII Hotel. H.R. 
2667, approved August 12, was assigned Public Law No. 103-75.