    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 12, 1995]
    [Pages 524-527]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Franklin D. Roosevelt 50th Anniversary Commemoration in
    Warm Springs, Georgia
    April 12, 1995

        Thank you very much. Governor Miller, President Carter, other
    distinguished honorees, Commissioner Tanner, Mr. Barrett, Anne
    Roosevelt, and members of your family: Thank you so much for your
    wonderful remarks. And Arthur Schlesinger, thank you for yours. After
    the last three speakers, I see I don't have to worry about whether what
    I am about to say would be considered too political on this occasion.
    [Laughter] I am delighted to be joined here by two Members of Congress,
    Congressman Collins and Congressman Bishop; many State officials; and
    appropriately for this day, the Social Security Administrator, Shirley
    Chater. I thank the Morehouse Glee Club. I couldn't help thinking when I
    walked up here and heard them singing that President Roosevelt would
    have been happy to have had the opportunity to walk down these lanes and
    hear those melodic voices.
        In the 50 years since Franklin Roosevelt died in this house behind
    me, many things have happened to our country. Many wonderful things have
    changed life forever for Americans and have enabled Americans to change
    life forever for people all across our planet. This is a time when we no
    longer think in the terms that people thought in then and perhaps a time
    when we cannot feel about each other or our leaders the way people felt
    then.
        But I think it's important just to take a moment to remember that
    even though Franklin Roosevelt was the architect of grand designs, he
    touched Americans, tens of millions of them, in a very personal way.
    They felt they knew him as their friend, their father, their uncle. They
    felt that he was doing all the things he was doing in Washington to help
    them. He wanted them to keep their farms and have their jobs, have the
    power line run out by the house. He wanted them to be able to have some
    security in their old age and see their children come home in peace from
    war.
        In my home State of Arkansas, the per capita income of the people
    was barely half the national average when Franklin Roosevelt began his
    work. And when he came there during the Depression, people were so poor
    that when they were preparing for him to come, there was literally not
    enough paint to paint the houses along his route. And so they all split
    the paint and painted the fronts of their homes so at least the
    President could see the effort they made. That's the way people felt.
        My grandfather, who helped to raise me, was a man with a grade
    school education in a tiny southern hamlet who worked as a dirt farmer,
    a small storekeeper, and for an icehouse back before we had
    refrigerators and there really were iceboxes. He really thought Franklin
    Roosevelt cared about whether he had a job. And I never will forget the
    story he told me during the Depression when he came home--the only time
    in his life when he was unable to buy my mother a new dress for Easter,
    and he wept because he did not have $2. He thought Franklin Roosevelt
    cared whether people like him could buy their children Easter outfits.
    That is the way people felt. And even into the 1960's, when as a young
    man I began to go from town to town working for other people who sought
    public office, there were people in the sixties who had pictures of
    President Roosevelt, in modest homes in tiny, remote towns, on their
    mantels or hanging on the wall because they thought he cared about them.
        Like our greatest Presidents, he showed us how to be a nation in
    time of great stress. He taught us again and again that our Government
    could be an instrument of democratic destiny, that it could help our
    children to do better. He taught us that patriotism was really about
    pulling together, working together, and bringing out the best in each
    other, not about looking down our nose at one another and claiming to be
    more patriotic than our fellow countrymen and women.
        Above all, he taught us about the human spirit. In the face of fear
    and doubt and weariness, he showed we could literally will ourselves to
    overcome, as he had done--and as has been already said so powerfully--in
    his own life. He led us from the depths of economic despair, through a
    depression, to victory in the war, to the threshold of the promise of
    the post-war America he unfortunately never lived to see.

    [[Page 525]]

        He did all these things and so many more to change America and the
    world, a lot of things we just take for granted today, that even today
    nobody's tried to do away with, like the Securities and Exchange
    Commission, which safeguards our financial markets, or the Tennessee
    Valley Authority or the very emblem of the New Deal, Social Security.
        He and his remarkable wife, Eleanor, whom we remembered together and
    who we must remember today, did a lot of things just to bring out both
    the problems and the potential of Americans. And he also changed America
    with a brilliant team. I saw here today Mr. Schlesinger, I was looking
    at Mr. Galbraith sitting out there, wondering how many of you were going
    back over your lives and remembering what you were doing then. I'm very
    honored to have as my Deputy Chief of Staff here Harold Ickes, whose
    father was President Roosevelt's Secretary of the Interior. Like me,
    this is his first visit to Warm Springs. But he has lived with the honor
    of that legacy for his entire life.
        I think it's also important that we remember today that President
    Roosevelt helped to found the March of Dimes, and today marks the 40th
    anniversary of Dr. Salk's discovery of the polio vaccine, developed
    because of the work of the March of Dimes, which continues to the
    present day.
        If I might pick up on something that Arthur Schlesinger and that
    Anne said, I think if President Roosevelt were here, he would be asking
    us, ``Well, this is all very nice, and I appreciate the honor, but what
    are you doing today? What are you doing today?''
        At the end of the war, he left us what may be his most enduring
    legacy, a generation prepared to meet the future--a vision most clearly
    embodied in the GI bill, which passed Congress in June of 1944 just a
    few days after D-Day but before the end of the war in Europe and in
    Asia. He wanted to give returning GI's a hand up. He really captured the
    essence of America's social compact. Those people that served, they had
    been responsible, and they were entitled to opportunity.
        The GI bill gave generations of veterans a chance to get an
    education, to build strong families and good lives, and to build the
    Nation's strongest economy ever, to change the face of America, and with
    it, to enable us to change the face of the world. The GI bill helped to
    unleash a prosperity never before known.
        In the fifties, the sixties, and the seventies, all kinds of
    Americans benefited from the economy educated veterans and their fellow
    Americans built. And we grew, and we grew together. Nothing like it had
    ever been seen before. Every income group in America, every racial
    group, all were improving their standing and growing together, not
    growing apart.
        Somewhere around 20 years ago, that began to change, not because of
    anything that was wrong with the GI bill or wrong with the institutions
    we had put in place but because the world changed. The economy became
    more global. Our financial markets became more global. There was an
    information and a technological revolution which exploded the unity of
    America's economic progress. And all of a sudden, we began to grow
    apart, not together, even when the economy was growing. We divided
    growth from equality for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt became
    President, and it has caused a terrible slew of troubles for the
    American people over the last 15 to 20 years.
        In the 1980's, our response--since Arthur Schlesinger said that
    President Roosevelt was for democratic capitalism, I think you could say
    that the response in the 1980's was conservative Keynesianism. That is,
    blame the Government and blame the past, but deficit spend under the
    title of tax cuts and tilt the tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans
    because it is their investment that creates jobs.
        Well, the massive deficits did spur growth, but it gave us the first
    permanent Government deficit in the entire history of the United States.
    And the inequality among working people did not go away; instead, it got
    worse. Meanwhile, our investment in our people--the thing Franklin
    Roosevelt believed most in--began to slow down, even in education and
    training, because we decided that there was something wrong with public
    activity.
        The result: We intensified the splits in our economy. We divided
    even the great American middle class as incomes stagnated, as people
    worked longer hours and slept less and spent less time with their
    children and still felt less secure. And at the same time, many good
    things were happening, but only to those who were prepared to seize the
    changes that we live with.
        It is amazing that in America we could have more than half the
    people today living on the same or lower incomes than they were enjoying
    15 years ago and still creating the largest num-

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    ber of new jobs and having the largest numbers of millionaires coming
    out of our economy than we have ever known, these two things existing
    side by side, the good and the bad.
        If President Roosevelt were here, what would he see today? He would
    see a country leading the world's economy, producing millions of jobs
    with people literally afraid that their lives are moving away from them.
    He would see a world of turbo-charged capitalism in which it is possible
    to succeed economically, but millions of Americans don't know if they
    can hold their families and their communities and the disciplined
    rhythms of life together. He would see people who are confused, saying,
    ``Well, if there is an economic recovery, why haven't I felt it? He
    would see people angry, saying, ``I've worked hard all my life; why was
    I let go at the age of 50, and how am I supposed to send my kids to
    college?''
        He would see people who are cynical, a luxury no one could afford
    when one in four Americans were out of work or when our very existence
    was at stake in the Second World War. Now we can afford the luxury, and
    we have it in abundance, saying, ``Well, it doesn't make any difference,
    nothing we do makes any difference. If I hear good news, I know they're
    lying.''
        He would see, indeed, a country encrusted with cynicism. He would
    see an insensitivity on the part of some people who say, ``Well, I made
    it, and why should I help anyone else? If you help someone, all you make
    is an ingrate.'' He would also see a profound sense of division in the
    American psyche, people who really do believe that if someone else does
    well, that's why I'm not doing so well, and in order for me to do well,
    someone else must not do that well. That was not Franklin Roosevelt. He
    was not cynical. He was not angry. He was not insensitive. He did not
    believe in division. And he certainly was not confused.
        He believed that we had to pull together and move forward. He
    believed we always had to keep the American dream alive. Langston Hughes
    once said, ``What happens to a dream deferred? Does it shrivel like a
    raisin in the sun, or does it explode?'' For Franklin Roosevelt, it was
    neither.
        My fellow Americans, there is a great debate going on today about
    the role of Government, and well there ought to be. F.D.R. would have
    loved this debate. He wouldn't be here defending everything he did 50
    years ago. He wouldn't be here denying the existence of the information
    age. Should we reexamine the role of Government? Of course we should. Do
    we need big, centralized bureaucracies in the computer age? Often we
    don't. Should we reassert the importance of the values of self-reliance
    and independence? You bet we should. He never meant for anybody,
    anybody, to become totally dependent on the Government when they could
    do things for themselves.
        But should we abandon the notion that everybody counts and that
    we're going up or down together? Should we abandon the idea that the
    best thing we can do is to give each other a hand up, not a handout?
    Should we walk away from the idea that America has important
    responsibilities at home and abroad and we walk away from them at our
    peril? The answer would be, from him, a resounding no.
        My fellow Americans, Franklin Roosevelt's first job was to put
    America back to work. Our big problem today is, Americans are back to
    work, but they feel insecure. They don't feel their work will be
    rewarded or valued. And we have to find a way to raise America's incomes
    by making Americans more productive and making this economy work in the
    way that President Roosevelt dreamed it would.
        Everybody knows we have a Government deficit. I'm proud of the fact
    that we brought it down 3 years in a row for the first time since Mr.
    Truman was President. Everybody knows that, but let's not forget that we
    also have an educational deficit. Education is the fault line in America
    today. Those who have it are doing well in the global economy; those who
    don't are not doing well. We cannot walk away from this fundamental
    fact. The American dream will succeed or fail in the 21st century in
    direct proportion to our commitment to educate every person in the
    United States of America.
        And so I believe if President Roosevelt were here, he would say,
    ``Let's have a great old-fashioned debate about the role of Government,
    and let's make it less bureaucratic and more flexible. And those people
    in Washington don't know everything that should be done in Warm
    Springs.'' And he would say, ``Let's put a sense of independence back
    into our welfare system.'' But he would also say, ``Let's not forget
    that what really works in life is when people get a hand up, not a
    handout, when Americans go up or down together.''

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        If you look at this great debate we're having in Washington with our
    twin deficits, the budget deficit and the education deficit, I say to
    you, we try to solve one without the other at our peril. We have brought
    the deficit down, and we will work to do it more. Congress and I, we
    will fight about what kinds of cuts we ought to have, but we'll get
    there and we'll bring it down some more. We already are running the
    first operating surplus in nearly 30 years, except for interest on the
    debt. And we will do better. But we cannot do it at the expense of
    education. We cannot do it at the expense of education.
        There's a lot of talk about tax cuts. I say this, we have to worry
    about how much and who gets it and what for. We should not do it if we
    have to cut education. We should not do it if we have to explode the
    deficit. And if we're going to have a tax cut, we should do it in ways
    that lift the American people's income over the long run as well as the
    short run. We have to have--we have to have a sense that our future
    depends upon the development of our people. That's why I say, if we're
    going to have a tax cut, we must give people some tax relief for the
    cost of education. That is the most important tax cut we can have, and I
    will insist upon it and will not support a legislative bill that does
    not have it.
        You know, everybody wants to have more disposable income, but what
    we don't want to have is disposable futures. So let us not sacrifice the
    future to the present. And let us not have a false choice between a
    budget deficit and an education deficit. We can have both.
        I wish President Roosevelt were here. I wish he were just sort of on
    our shoulder to deride those who are cynical, those who are skeptical,
    those who are negative, and most of all, those who seek to play on fears
    to divide us. This country did not get here by permitting itself to be
    divided at critical times by race, by religion, by region, by income,
    you name it.
        And just remember this: President Roosevelt died here, and they took
    his body on the train out, and America began to grieve. Imagine what the
    people looked like by the sides of the railroad track. Imagine the
    voices that were singing in the churches. They were all ages, men and
    women, rich and poor, black, white, Hispanic, and whoever else was
    living here then. And they were all doing it because they thought he
    cared about them and that their future mattered in common. They were
    Americans first. They were Americans first. That was his contract with
    America. Let it be ours.
        Thank you, and God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1:14 p.m. at the ``Remembering Franklin D.
    Roosevelt'' 50th anniversary commemorative service at the Little White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Gov. Zell Miller of Georgia; Joe
    Tanner, commissioner, Georgia Department of Natural Resources; Lonice C.
    Barrett, director, Georgia State Parks and Historic Sites; Anne
    Roosevelt, granddaughter of Franklin D. Roosevelt; Arthur M.
    Schlesinger, Roosevelt biographer; and John Kenneth Galbraith, author
    and economist.