[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[July 28, 1994]
[Pages 1324-1327]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Anticrime Legislation at the Department of Justice
July 28, 1994

    Thank you very much, Chief Moose, for the introduction and for your 
lifetime of service to your community and for the wisdom of your words 
and your leadership. Thank you, Attorney General Reno, for the 
magnificent work that you and the others here at the Justice Department 
have done on the crime bill. Thank you, Lee Brown, for the work you did 
to make sure that we had enough funds in the crime bill for drug 
prevention and drug education programs and drug treatment programs. 
Thank you, Secretary Bentsen, for the law enforcement work you do and 
the comments you made today. And I want to thank all of the Members of 
Congress who are here. I thank Senator Metzenbaum for letting Joe Biden 
get even with me by calling you in the middle of the night. [Laughter] I 
thank you, Congressman Hughes. I thank you, Congressman Schumer, for on 
occasion being like a mad dog in dealing with these issues. I think you 
will be proud into a deep, old age for the work you have done on this 
crime bill, and I thank you, sir.
    And I cannot say enough about Chairman Brooks and Senator Biden. I 
like them both very much, and it's not hard to figure out why when you 
hear them up here talking. I ran completely out of my stash of donated 
cigars trying to get Jack Brooks to keep pushing ahead with every aspect 
of the crime bill. [Laughter] People always want to know, you know, what 
did the President give away to get this, that, or the other thing. All I 
gave away were mountains of crocodile tears and donated cigars because 
Jack Brooks wanted this country to have a crime bill. Joe Biden, I think 
you could see by the visible way that he is moved by this, how important 
it is to him. And I am profoundly grateful to him for that, and for what 
he said today. It is true that I called him at midnight, and that Joe 
asked him the next day if he remembered what the phone call was about. I 
wish I had asked him for a lot of other things, because I'm not sure he 
did. [Laughter] I could still make assertions about what we've talked 
about on that late night.
    I thank all of you here who have worked on this bill, all the 
representatives of law enforcement and others who care about having a 
safer America.
    Because the conference was finished just before we started this 
event, this is truly an historic day. On the verge we are of a major 
victory for our country. It's been a remarkable week

[[Page 1325]]

for America. I think all of us have joined in the elation we felt when 
Israel and Jordan's leaders came to this country and declared an end to 
their state of war and their intention to work together as friends, and 
took great pride in the role the United States played in bringing about 
that agreement. And then, less noticed but also important, the President 
of Russia made an announcement that by the end of August, for the first 
time since the end of World War II, all Russian troops would be gone 
from Germany and Central and Eastern Europe, and I'm proud of the role 
the United States has played in that endeavor. But I can't help thinking 
today it would be even more important if we could bring peace to the 
streets and the children of the United States.
    The Vice President patted me on the back earlier this week when we 
were just sort of swelled up with happiness over the progress of things 
with Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein and said, ``You know, this is 
one of the reasons that you ran for President.''
    But I can tell you, this is one of the reasons that I ran for 
President. Almost 20 years ago now I started my career in public life as 
attorney general of my State, being involved in the prosecution and the 
appeals of criminal cases, dealing with State police and defending them 
when we got sued over first one thing then another.
    When I became Governor, I found myself in charge of a large and 
growing prison system, an overtaxed but dedicated State police, with the 
responsibilities to do everything from trying to prevent crime to 
carrying out the death penalty. I have lived on a daily basis for most 
of my life in public service with law enforcement officials. I have been 
to the funerals and to the homes of people who have been killed in the 
line of duty, repeatedly.
    I have done everything I could over all these years to learn what it 
is we could do together to make it easier for people in law enforcement 
to do their job, and most importantly, to make it better for all of us 
to live in this country. Now, after nearly 6 years, congressional 
leaders and people in both parties have agreed on what will be the 
toughest, largest, and smartest Federal attack on crime in the history 
of the United States of America.
    You know, it puts more police on the street and takes more guns off 
the street and takes more children off the street. It puts violent 
criminals behind bars and gives others the chance to avoid a life behind 
bars. Senator Biden and Chairman Brooks assure me this bill will be on 
my desk within days, and I assure you I will sign it into law without 
delay.
    I want to ask you just for a moment, because most of what needs to 
be said about this bill has been said. But just for a moment, think 
about the meaning of this act today in terms of what all of you want for 
America, even those of you in uniform, what you want as citizens, as 
fathers and mothers and husbands and wives and children, and what you 
want for your children.
    I got into this job I'm in because I was very worried that our 
country was going in the wrong direction, that our deficit was going up 
and our economy was going down, that we were increasing burdens on 
middle class Americans and reducing investment in them and their 
children. And I was very worried that as we move toward the 21st 
century, after our Nation won the cold war, that we would not be able to 
keep the American dream alive. And it was obvious to me that to do that, 
we would have to rebuild our economy and rebuild our sense of community 
and our families and empower individuals to do a better job of taking 
responsibility for themselves.
    We tried to do that with a new economic policy to reduce the deficit 
and to give us the smallest Federal Government in 30 years and 3 years 
of deficit reduction in a row for the first time since Harry Truman was 
President and to increase investment in people and in trade, and it's 
working. We've got 3.5 million new jobs and a big drop in the 
unemployment rate. But if you think about it, even though the economy is 
going in the right direction, can we really hope--can we really hope to 
rebuild the economy, rebuild our sense of community, and empower 
individuals if we are frightened, if we are scared, if we are burdened 
by crime, if the highest rate of crime is now among people at their 
tenderest and most formative years, between the ages of 12 and 17 when 
we're trying to say, ``Do this; do the right thing. You will be 
rewarded. You can have a good life. You can be a responsible parent. You 
can be a successful citizen''?
    Look at the cost of crime to the economy. Look at the cost of crime 
to our sense of community and to the idea that we are an American 
family. Look at the cost of crime to our efforts to empower every 
individual, including all these

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young people that are growing up in terribly difficult circumstances.
    Remember just a few things that I have tried to tell the American 
people--the 9-year-old boy in New Orleans who said, ``I'm asking you 
nicely to do something about crime because I'm afraid I might be shot;'' 
and 9 days after he sent me the letter, he was shot dead because he just 
happened to be in the wrong place; the immigrant waiter in New York City 
who said he loved being in America, but he didn't like the fact that his 
son wasn't free, because he couldn't go to school without his daddy 
walking him to school and couldn't walk across the street and play in 
the park without somebody being there. And he asked me to make his son 
free.
    All the other goals we seek for ourselves, in our families, for our 
children, in our workplaces, and for our great Nation, depend at bottom 
on our being able to live together with certain clear assumptions that, 
even though we are very different, we are different by race, we are 
different by religion, we are different by politics, there are a few 
basic things that will always hold us together, beginning with the 
fundamental respect for law, order, and our fellow human beings. And it 
is vanishing in too many places today.
    Now, you have already heard this, but I have to say it again: For 
nearly 6 years this bill has been debated over and over again. Oh, the 
details have changed from time to time and when I was elected, I had 
some very specific ideas that I hoped would be in here, and you heard 
Senator Biden talk about his conviction about violence against women. 
And then in the 11th hour a few more good things were added. But for 6 
years, the Congress has been trying to fashion a response to crime.
    Most of the time the deliberation of Congress is a good thing, I 
suppose, but there are times in the history of a country when you just 
have to stop deliberating and act. And at a time like this when the 
world is changing so very fast, I think we really have to ask ourselves 
whether we can afford to take 6 years on a matter of this moment. Well, 
now it is done.
    The most important thing about this crime bill, besides its 
specifics, which are very important, is what the chief said. He used the 
word ``holistic.'' If you're a chief of police you can use that; if 
you're a politician they tell you it looks kind of funny to say a word 
like that because people aren't sure what it means. [Laughter] And if 
you're President, they tell you not to say it because you should never 
use a word that anybody's confused about. But what it means is to go 
beyond old ways of thinking and false choices. Are we going to be tough, 
or are we going to be compassionate? Are we going to go after criminals, 
or are we going to go after guns? These debates have divided us for too 
long while children died.
    And the real achievement of the Congress at this moment is that they 
are going beyond those old ways of thinking. They are reaching for a new 
consensus that reflects the world we are living in and that recognizes 
the absolutely horrendous conditions in which a lot of our younger 
people are living and the need to be very, very firm but very, very 
smart about the road ahead, its difficulties, and its challenges.
    We had to argue with a lot of people to get this bill. We had to 
fight with the NRA over the assault weapons ban, but we guaranteed over 
600 hunting and sporting weapons free from Government interference. I 
would argue that both things were the right thing to do. We had almost 
unanimous consent, finally, for the idea that children should not be in 
the possession of handguns unless they are under the supervision of an 
appropriate adult.
    We have a measure in here that we haven't talked much about to make 
our schools safer. If a child is not safe in school, how can the 
Republic go forward when we need education as the basis for our future? 
We had to fight with some of the folks in our party who thought that our 
approach on punishment was a little too tough. Then we had to fight with 
some folks in the other party who thought our approach on rehabilitation 
and prevention was a little too soft or too generous.
    I want to say this: The prevention money in this bill is there for 
one reason--and I want this on the public record now--not because the 
President wanted it, although I did; not because the Attorney General 
wanted it, although she did; not because the drug director or the 
chairman of the Senate committee or the chairman of the House committee 
wanted it, although they did. The prevention money is in this bill 
because the law enforcement officials of the United States said, ``We 
cannot jail our way out of this crisis. We've got to give our kids 
something to say yes to and a future.'' You told us to put it in there, 
and that is why it is in there.

[[Page 1327]]

    So we have had a lot of arguments--but that is the essence of 
democracy--and we have gone beyond these categories that kept this bill 
bottled up, fights over ideas, fights over interest. We put the people 
of this country first again, and we focused on what they needed. Now I 
say to you: Let's not forget that the bill is not law. It has been voted 
out of a conference committee. The House must vote a rule to permit it 
to come to the vote. Then the House and the Senate must pass it.
    It is urgent that we send the message out of this meeting that not 
only the law enforcement community but the American people want a 20 
percent increase in the police forces in this country, 100,000 police, 
that you want the tougher punishment, that you want the capacity for 
imprisonment, that you want the prevention funds, that you want the 
assault weapons ban, that you want the ban on teenagers owning guns, 
that you want the protection for women against violence, that you want 
the schools to be safer, that you believe it makes sense because it 
deals with the problem in a human, intelligent, and firm way. And it 
gives us a chance to come together again as a people. Let's go pass the 
bill.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at approximately 11:30 a.m. in the Great Hall. 
In his remarks, he referred to Charles Moose, chief of police, Seattle, 
WA.