[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1993, Book II)]
[September 6, 1993]
[Pages 1441-1444]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Cutler Ridge, Florida
September 6, 1993

    The President. Thank you so much. I want to thank Marty Urra and my 
longtime friends Governor Chiles and Senator Graham, Secretary Reich and 
Secretary Cisneros, who have done such a fine job coordinating our 
National Government's response to Hurricane Andrew over the long run 
down here. I'd also like to introduce a few people even on this hot day. 
First of all, the First Lady's here; my wife, Hillary, is down there. 
There she is. In addition to Sen-


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ator Graham, we have four other members of your congressional delegation 
here: Representative Carrie Meek--five, five--Representative Peter 
Deutsch, Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, Representative Lincoln 
Diaz-Balart, and Representative Alcee Hastings. Let's get them all up 
here. Your Lieutenant Governor Buddy MacKay's been with me all day. I 
think he's back in the crowd again. We also have a large number of State 
legislators, Dade County commissioners, and other local leaders here. 
Let's give them all a hand, all the ones that are over here. [Applause] 
All the legislators and commissioners who want to come up, come on up. 
You've got some----
    Audience member. Where's Chelsea?
    The President. Chelsea's playing today. We have legislators and 
commissioners who lost their homes in the hurricane; they deserve to be 
up here, I think. Bring Larry Hawkins up here. He lost his house; he 
deserves to be here. That's good.
    Ladies and gentlemen, one year ago this week I came here to south 
Dade County to see what Hurricane Andrew had wrought. A year later I 
come back as President, honored to see much of the work done that I ran 
for President to do, honored to see that people here are working 
together to make Government work on the real problems of real people. I 
want to thank again Henry Cisneros for taking the lead in coordinating 
our response. And I want to thank Otis Pitts from Miami for representing 
the administration so well and helping people overcome the impact of the 
flood. [Applause] Thank you.
    You know, Dade County has done a lot for the Clinton administration. 
I got the EPA Director, Carol Browner, from Dade County. I got Jeff 
Watson, who used to work for the Mayor of Miami. There are a number of 
other people, but I guess the most famous Dade County citizen I now have 
is Janet Reno, your Attorney General. I want to tell you that you can be 
very proud of the work that she has done, and all the others. And you 
need to know that about three times a day, when Janet Reno says 
something that makes real good sense, she says that she learned it from 
the people of Dade County that she represented for so long.
    One of the things that I wanted very much to do as President was to 
reestablish a partnership among business and labor and Government. I 
thought we had been divided for too long. I think in order to rebuild 
America, we have got to reunite America. We've got to reach across the 
barriers of race and region and income and party, and we've got to prove 
that we can work together on the things that we all have to deal with, 
if we're going to make this country what it ought to be.
    I am proud of the work that has been done by the Department of 
Housing and Urban Development and the AFL-CIO in creating a partnership 
to invest in our communities. Now, you heard Secretary Cisneros mention 
it, but I want to talk a little bit more about that.
    This new partnership between Government and labor will make possible 
the building of 102 moderate and low income housing units here in Cutler 
Ridge. And let me tell you how this is going to work. We'll also make it 
possible for a lot of people to be trained to learn the jobs of today 
and tomorrow, because the Labor Department is going to give the AFL-CIO 
some money to subsidize apprenticeship programs at this site so that we 
can give skill training and meaningful jobs to people who live here and 
need work, too.
    All across the country, the AFL-CIO, supported by two Government 
Agencies with the funny names that many of you probably never heard of 
before of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, are going to establish a housing 
investment trust fund that will provide an additional $600 million to 
rebuild and create affordable housing across this country, with a 
significant percentage of that money going to regions like this one 
which have been struck by hurricanes or the middle western communities 
devastated by the floods.
    This is the kind of thing that we ought to be doing together. The 
Government can guarantee the security of the pension funds. The unions 
can put up those pension funds to invest in houses. The Labor Department 
can help to provide the funds to train people. We'll have more houses, 
more investment, more jobs, and a better America starting right here in 
this community. That's the sort of thing we ought to be doing.
    You know, this is a day of rest and relaxation for most Americans, 
looking forward to going back to work tomorrow, and many of our young 
people are going back to school. Well, tomorrow when you return to work, 
you can know that in this year over one million jobs have been added to 
our economy. That's about as many as were added during the previous 4 
years in

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America. We've still got a long way to go, but it's a pretty good 
beginning, and it's something we can build on.
    President Harry Truman, who came from a State that neighbors mine, 
in Missouri, once said this: If the working people of our country are 
well off, whether they work in factories or on the farms, in offices or 
in stores, this country will get along all right. The reverse is also 
true. When the working people of our country are not all right, the rest 
of the country is in deep trouble.
    We have got to make sure that we have policies in this Government 
that reward work and family for hard-working middle class people that 
are doing everything they can to raise their kids and make this country 
a better place. Since you gave me this job, that's what I've tried to 
do. You heard someone mention earlier the Family and Medical Leave Act. 
What that means is that for a change--since that law became in effect, 
now if somebody has a baby born or a sick parent or a child gets sick, 
you can take a little time off from your job without losing it. It's 
high time we provided for that sort of protection in America.
    In the economic program that Congress just passed, we see not only 
the biggest reduction in the Federal deficit in the history of this 
country, something that will lift a burden off the children in this 
audience and the grandchildren, something that will make us freer to 
invest in our future and take control of our destiny, something that has 
brought us the lowest interest rates in 25 years, that is enabling young 
people all across America for the first time to even think about buying 
a home. That economic program also actually did something that, from 
your point of view, may be more important. It lifted the working poor 
out of poverty by saying: If you work 40 hours a week and you have 
children in the home, we will not tax you into poverty; we will use the 
tax system to lift you out of poverty even if it requires a refund. I 
haven't looked at all the figures, but I can tell you that in Carrie 
Meek's congressional district, for example, that means over one-third of 
the working families in that congressional district will be eligible for 
a tax reduction under the economic program that the Congress passed to 
promote work and family.
    Over 90 percent of the small businesses in the entire United States 
of America are eligible for a tax cut to encourage them to hire more 
people, because most of the new jobs are being created by small business 
people. That is pro-work; it is pro-family; it is not bureaucratic. It 
is the sort of thing that we need to be doing in this country.
    Now, my fellow Americans, on this Labor Day I want to ask you, as we 
move ahead to other challenges, to recognize that this is a new and 
different world. We have here in this county people from all over the 
world coming here to live, trying to make a new life for themselves in 
an America trying to move into the 21st century. We are doing it against 
a backdrop where all the wealthy countries in the world are having 
trouble creating new jobs and raising people's incomes and giving people 
security. We have a lot of things we have to do, and I can tell you one 
thing: We will never get there unless we ask ourselves not just ``What's 
in it for me?'' but ``What's in it for us?'' How can we move together to 
make this country what it ought to be for everybody who's willing to 
work hard and play by the rules. That's what I saw today in Florida City 
and Homestead, people who said, ``What's in it for us?'', who worked 
together to rebuild our communities and put the lives of families back 
together. That is what we have to do as a nation.
    In the next few weeks you're going to see the Congress deal with an 
enormous number of issues, but they all have one thing in common: We've 
got to deal with them to pull our country together and move our country 
forward. If we don't control health care costs and provide affordable 
health care to every American family, we'll never be the nation we ought 
to be.
    If we don't open the doors of college education to all Americans and 
give all Americans who don't go to college the chance to get good 
training programs so they can get good jobs, we'll never be the nation 
we ought to be.
    If we don't open new avenues of trade so that we can sell our 
products around the world and reinvest in this country, where the bases 
have been closed and the defense plants have been shut down, in putting 
those people back to work, we will never be the nation we ought to be.
    And finally, if we don't decide once and for all we are going to 
have secure, strong, safe communities, free of violence and guns, where 
we promote independence and work, not welfare, and where everybody has a 
chance to raise their children in a decent, secure, safe environ-


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ment, we will never be the nation we ought to be.
    On Labor Day, you are doing your part by working for America. And I 
pledge to you that our administration will do its part by working for 
these goals to make this country what it ought to be.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:50 p.m. at the Caribbean West Apartments. 
In his remarks, he referred to Marty Urra, president, South Florida AFL-
CIO, and Jeffrey H. Watson, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy 
Director of Intergovernmental Affairs.