[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,

[[Page 1544]]

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

[[Page 1545]]

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

[[Page 1546]]

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.