[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[May 21, 1994]
[Pages 971-974]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Sacramento, California
May 21, 1994

    Thank you very, very much, Congressman Fazio, for those fine words 
and for your leadership. Thank you, Congressman Matsui, for your fine 
words and for your leadership, especially on areas of global trade and 
other things designed to help the people of northern California. I'd 
also like to recognize over here to my right the presence of another 
Member of your congressional delegation, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey. I'm 
glad to see you here, and thank you for coming. Senator Feinstein, thank 
you once again for making it clear that you have no ambivalence on the 
question of McClellan Air Force Base and its future. I'm glad to be here 
with Mayor Serna and to be working with him, and I appreciate his 
statements about our partnership. I appreciate the leadership that 
Secretary Widnall has shown in the Air Force, and I'm glad to be here 
with General Phillips and General Thompson. I thank them for welcoming 
me here for a second time to McClellan Air Force Base. I'd also like to 
recognize in the audience a good friend of mine and your State insurance 
commissioner, John Garamendi and Mrs. Garamendi. I'm glad to see them 
over there.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I had a wonderful trip to McClellan Air Force 
Base the first time I came to celebrate the work that you are doing not 
only to defend our Nation but to help us to convert to a post-cold-war 
era in which many of the fruits of defense progress and defense 
technology can be used to benefit a growing commercial economy in 
America. Today I come

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to celebrate the spirit of Sacramento and the spirit of McClellan as we 
honor the men and women who wear the uniforms of the American Armed 
Forces.
    In just 2 weeks it will be my proud duty to travel to Europe to 
represent our Nation as we commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 
liberation of Rome and the landing of the Allied forces in France on D-
Day. Sacrifice, planning, determination, and sheer bravery carried the 
day then, and it still counts today. We deeply appreciate what our 
forces did in the cause of freedom in World War II. Were it not for them 
and their efforts, we would, none of us, be here today. But I want to 
say we also appreciate very much what those of you who wear our Nation's 
uniforms do to keep us free and strong and to promote the cause of 
freedom around the world today. We honor your patriotism, your service, 
and your sacrifice. And we all recognize that that sacrifice often 
extends to your families as well, who have to endure long periods of 
separation and sometimes, still, the loss of life. Every day, all across 
our land and all around the world, people who wear the uniform of this 
country put their lives at risk. As we have seen in the last year and as 
we see every year, the simple work of maintaining preparedness and the 
training involved in it, often itself is life threatening.
    I'm especially glad to be here at McClellan to sign the proclamation 
for Armed Forces Day today because of the special role that McClellan is 
playing in America at the end of the cold war, the special role in 
helping us downsize our defense forces without becoming weaker, the 
special role in helping us convert so many of our resources from defense 
to domestic economic purposes.
    Beyond the building and maintenance of military equipment, McClellan 
has been a pioneer in high-tech fields from microelectronics to 
hydraulics. This is the only place in the United States where aircraft 
can be thoroughly inspected without dismantling, thanks to the 
nondestructive facility here.
    This base has also led the way in promoting partnerships with the 
private sector in technology transfer and what we now call dual-use of 
technology. These help with concerns like the environment, and they 
create jobs for our people. The work to develop a new low-emission metal 
casting process, for example, will help automakers comply with the Clean 
Air Act, making us all healthier and creating more jobs. I thank you for 
that.
    I think we all know that the important work of rebuilding our 
economy is also part of our national security. On that I can report to 
you confidently that our Nation is moving in the right direction.
    In the last 15 months our economy has produced 3 million new jobs. 
The deficit is going down. Interest rates are stable. The stock market 
is up. Consumer confidence is up. When the Congress passes the budget 
that I have presented before them, we'll have 3 years of declining 
deficits in the Federal budget for the first time since Harry Truman was 
President of the United States of America.
    Still the Congress is working with me to find ways to increase 
investments in areas where we need more investment, even as we eliminate 
over 100 Government programs and cut a couple of hundred others, 
building a system of lifetime education from the expansion of Head Start 
to lifetime learning to opportunities for young people who don't go on 
to 4-year colleges, to lower interest rates for college loans and better 
repayments terms, to national service payments for young people who want 
to pay their way through college by solving the problems of the country 
here at home.
    The Congress has provided more funds for technology reinvestment 
projects, like the ones you're participating in here. One-fourth of them 
have gone to the State of California to try to help those people who won 
the cold war for us not be left out in the cold as we enjoy the peace.
    When this budget is fully enacted over the next 5 years, the size of 
the civilian work force for the Federal Government will be the smallest 
it has been in over 30 years, and all the savings will be used to go 
into a trust fund to help make our streets safer, to pay for tougher 
punishment for violent criminals, prevention opportunities for young 
people to keep them out of trouble, and 100,000 more police officers on 
the streets of the cities of this country to help protect our young 
people.
    We are trying to adapt to the changes in this changing world. But 
let me say on this Armed Forces Day, while the size of our military must 
be adjusted, we must not adjust our attitude about quality or readiness. 
We must remain the world's best prepared, best trained, best equipped, 
highest morale fighting force. I

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say that because as we enter the next few weeks of budget negotiations, 
Congress must work to get our deficit down while keeping our guard up.
    I have to say, too, to you my friends, since it has been mentioned 
by others, that the biggest long-term threat to deficit reduction is 
also perhaps the biggest long-term threat to defense readiness, that is 
the soaring cost of health care. Because while your Federal spending is 
going down in defense and down in domestic spending for the first time 
since 1969, the cost of Federal health care programs are going up at 2 
and 3 times the rate of inflation. And still there are 37 million 
Americans without any health insurance.
    We spend, as a nation, 40 percent more of our income on health care 
than any other nation, and we don't cover everyone. We have small 
business people, hundreds of thousands of them, who don't provide any 
coverage or provide some coverage and wish they could do more. But they 
must pay rates 35 to 40 percent higher than those of us who are in 
Government or are insured by big businesses do. We have 81 million 
Americans out of a nation of 255 million who live in families where 
someone has been sick, and so they're insured with what are called 
preexisting conditions, which is a fine way of saying they pay too much 
for their insurance or they can't get insurance or they can never change 
jobs because if they try to change, their future employers won't be able 
to insure them.
    I say to you, my fellow Americans, this is unacceptable. It is a 
threat to the deficit, it is a threat to the defense, it is a threat to 
the national security of the United States to leave our people in this 
fix.
    I do not pretend that this is an easy issue. If it were it would 
have been solved a long time ago. I do ask the Congress to act and to 
act now, this year, to guarantee private health insurance to all 
Americans; to provide a choice of doctors and plans to American 
citizens; to allow, as California is now doing, small business people, 
farmers, and self-employed people to join in big co-ops and to buy 
insurance on the same competitive basis that big business and Government 
folks can do so that they can afford to purchase health care without 
going broke.
    I thank the California Medical Association for their endorsement of 
these principles as well as the notion that we should not discriminate 
against people because someone in their family has been sick.
    These are things that we ought to do. We can do it without 
interfering with Medicare for the elderly. We can do it while phasing in 
prescription drug and long-term care benefits to the elderly and 
disabled, but we must act this year. I believe that you hire people to 
serve in the Presidency and in the Congress to make the same tough 
decisions that our military leaders have to make when called upon to do 
it. There are not always easy answers, but usually there are answers to 
problems when they have to be faced. There are answers to this problem, 
and we owe it to you to face it. In the future our deficit reduction 
depends on it, our defense readiness depends on it, the health and 
strength of our Nation depends on it, and we should act this year.
    Finally, let me say one special word. Behind me sits what I have 
been told is the only fully restored and flyable B-24 Liberator in use 
today. It had a storied career of service since it rolled off the 
assembly line in Fort Worth, Texas, in August of 1944. It's 2 years 
older than I am. [Laughter] It was part of the massive homefront 
production during World War II. The All-American, as she's known, is 
named in honor of the 15th Air Force B-24 that set a record for downing 
14 enemy fighters in a single raid over Germany on July 25th, 1944. But 
her name also signifies the all-American builders who produced the 
plane, the flyers who manned the missions, the crews that kept them in 
the air. This plan stands for the all-American team to help to win the 
war that we will honor when I go to the D-Day celebration.
    This is a time when every American of every generation should pause 
to remember and honor the sacrifices of the airmen, soldiers, and 
sailors of D-Day, who through their individual acts of glory and valor 
and their common efforts changed the course of history.
    One aircraft of World War II stands behind me today, but we should 
be mindful that exactly 50 years ago the largest air attack ever staged 
was being readied to support the allied landings on Normandy. Over one 
million American airmen were stationed in England during World War II. 
On D-Day the allies sent 3,467 heavy bombers, 1,645 medium bombers, 
5,409 fighters into the skies above the English Channel and the coast of 
France. They gave General Eisenhower and the planners of Operation 
Overlord

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virtual allied supremacy for the landings. On that day, 113 aircraft did 
not make it back.
    Two weeks from today at the American cemetery outside Cambridge, 
England, I will stand with crew members of other B-24's and B-26's, B-
17's, P-38's and P-47's, the veteran airmen of D-Day. Thirty-nine 
hundred and twelve Americans, many of them aviators, are buried there in 
Cambridge, their graves aligned in a gentle arc on a sloping English 
pasture. They rest in peace far from home, as do thousands of other 
Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice during World War II, buried in 
American soil overseas with names like Nettuno and Colleville. But in 
every city, in every neighborhood, in every living room where we cherish 
the fruits of freedom and democracy, they are with us still.
    They would be very proud of the men and women who wear our uniforms 
today. They would be proud that nuclear weapons in Russia and the United 
States are no longer pointed at each other for the first time since the 
advent of the nuclear age. They would be proud of the contributions of 
Americans to peace in the Middle East and democracy in South Africa. 
They would be proud that the power of our example has helped to 
encourage people in Central and Latin America, all over the hemisphere, 
to embrace democracy. Now all but two nations to our south, all but two, 
are today governed by democratically elected leaders.
    So I say to you, my fellow Americans, today as we cherish the 
memories of those who fought in World War II and as we salute today's 
men and women of the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marine Corps, 
the Coast Guard, the sentinels of our peace and freedom, let us cherish 
our memory but also remember our mission: to meet the challenges of 
today at home and abroad, to keep America forever strong and forever 
young.
    Thank you very much, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 3:40 p.m. at McClellan Air Force Base. In 
his remarks, he referred to Mayor Joe Serna of Sacramento; Secretary of 
the Air Force Sheila Widnall; Maj. Gen. John Phillips, commander, 
McClellan Air Force Base; and Lt. Gen. Dale W. Thompson, Jr., vice 
commander, Air Force Materiel Command, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, 
OH. The Armed Forces Day proclamation is listed in Appendix D at the end 
of this volume.