    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [June 9, 1995]
    [Pages 837-841]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks at the Faces of Hope Reunion Luncheon
    June 9, 1995

        Thank you very much. Congratulations, Leslie, that's a--[laughter]--
    Mr. Vice President, that may be your most memorable example of
    reinventing Government there. [Laughter] I promised you a personal
    service administration, and there's a living example of it.
        Let me say, it is wonderful to be here with all of you today. I want
    to thank the people who have worked so hard to keep this group together
    and in contact with us. I appreciate Sue Hazzard and Ann Walker and all
    the rest of you who worked on this. Let me thank you, because these are
    really very disparate people,

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    living very different lives all over the country and getting even
    further and further apart. One of you has since moved to Alaska since
    we've started--came back. I thank you for being here.
        Before we start, I'd like to just say that four of the people who
    were our Faces of Hope in 1992 have since passed away. Josh Cox, who was
    mentioned earlier; Sheri Kohlenberg, who came to see me with her husband
    and her son, Sammy--they're here. And Sammy left me something I thought
    was a dinosaur. He said it just looks like one, but anyway it's still in
    the White House over there. Sarah Weber, whose mother and sister are
    here; and Michael Quercio, whose partner is here. And Michael and I
    jogged together right before I became President, and I got to see him
    when I dedicated the new Kennedy Library. I miss them all very much; I
    know all of you do. And I'd like to ask if we could just have a moment
    of silence for them.

    [At this point, a moment of silence was observed.]

        Amen.
        You know, all of you, in various ways, inspired us in this--when we
    ran for President, but you have very different stories: Some of you
    struggled to overcome great personal adversity; some of you still
    struggle with it; some of you struggle with your children; some of you
    were people who led what looked on the outside to be ordinary lives, but
    performed extraordinary service for others; some of you achieved very
    great things in your own lives, but took time to do things for others.
    There are a lot of different kinds of stories here. But the one thing
    that struck me about all of you was that you fundamentally decided that
    you would take an affirmative view of your life and life in general,
    that you decided that you would try to look for what could be done
    tomorrow to make it better, instead of just wallowing in what didn't
    happen yesterday or things that were beyond your control. You decided
    that you would make a constructive contribution to your own life and to
    the lives of others. You lived with hope. And that is a very important
    thing. You had a lot of influence on this administration, as the Vice
    President said. I think of all of you every time when I go someplace out
    in the country and our national service AmeriCorps people are there,
    because that's what they do.
        I was in Texas the other day with people who are in the AmeriCorps
    program, all doing national service, earning money to go to college. One
    of them was a woman who retired from the military, said she never had a
    chance to go to college--she had the GI bill, but she wanted to do this
    service in her community before she went back to college; with two young
    people who had babies out of wedlock, as teenagers were on welfare, got
    themselves off welfare, got high school diplomas, and were then
    contributing to AmeriCorps before going to college so they could help
    other people avoid the kind of problems they've had; and with one young
    girl who was a college graduate, who was raised the child of a mother on
    welfare, who decided after getting out of college she still ought to do
    the national service program because she ought to help other people.
        Now, everything--and I kept asking myself today, you know, what has
    all this got--how does it tie together? And I think, for me, all of you
    represent people who try to make something good happen. You didn't just
    talk; you acted. You tried to get on the solution side of--what I call
    being on the solution side of whatever your problems or challenges were,
    whether it was in your own family or in your community.
        And one of the biggest problems we have in Washington and one of the
    reasons politics is such a turn-off to people today is that it comes
    across to the American people over the air waves as being nothing but
    rhetoric and conflict and not being on the solution side. No one would
    run a family, a business, a charitable enterprise the way it appears
    that things here are run often. It would just run right off the tracks.
    You know that. You remind me here every day of what we should be doing.
        And you had another influence that hasn't been mentioned yet that
    you ought to know. When I became President, I put a lot of time and
    effort into making sure we had good people who were well organized in
    our casework division, where we get letters from people just like you
    all over America just asking for help with a problem or advice. About
    once a week, I get letters that I personally sign from ordinary American
    citizens who wrote the White House and asked for some problem--
    everything is--you know, they have a sick child, they don't qualify for
    Government help, to ``My father was supposed to get a medal in World War
    II, and

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    he never got it,'' and all kinds of things in between. And I organized
    this because I made up my mind that I did not want to forget about
    people like you and the work that we do here.
        Because of a lot of folks like you, we have managed so far--even in
    these difficult budgetary times when we have reduced the size of the
    Government by 100,000 and we have shrunk the deficit and we're going to
    have more cuts, we have increased our investment in education, medical
    research, and particularly, we have emphasized research and treatment
    for AIDS. And I'm not sure we would have been able to fight off all of
    those budget cuts if I hadn't actually met a lot of you and gotten to
    know you. Because of some of you here, when we passed the crime bill we
    were able to say, ``Okay, you put more police on the street and have
    more punishment, but put some money into giving these kids something to
    say yes to.'' There were two former gang members here from L.A. who
    spend their lives trying to keep peace on the streets of Los Angeles;
    better we should support them, also cheaper for you.
        These are the kinds of things that we have tried to do. Because of
    you, we fought for the family leave law, and we've tried to fight for
    programs that would not only protect the environment but would also help
    to provide for economic transition where people are dislocated. When we
    had to cut back on defense, we provided for economic transition so we
    wouldn't forget about the people who lost their jobs because we won the
    cold war and we had to cut back on defense--because of you and people
    like you. And that's very, very important.
        We're having two big debates here in Washington today, and you put
    the lie to both of them. And so I want to talk about it. You'll hear it
    when we talk about what we're going to do to the budget. Debate number
    one is whether all of our problems are primarily personal and cultural,
    that is, if we'd all just behave and do the right thing there wouldn't
    be any problems--which is, at one level, plainly true, right--or whether
    our problems are political and economic, that is, we have an obligation
    to help each other make the most of our own lives and overcome our
    problems.
        You put the lie to that debate. That is a bogus debate. Nothing I
    can do here in Washington will really solve your problems if you're not
    doing your part. On the other hand, if we don't do our part here, a lot
    of you still won't be able to do what you can do to make the most of
    your lives and the people you're trying to help. So I hope that when
    people look at you and think about people like you, they will say, the
    answer to that is both. I'll do my part, but you guys do yours.
        The second big debate is whether, even though we have to do things
    together, the Government is so clumsy, inefficient, and inept, we ought
    to throw it away and just tell everybody to behave right in their
    private charities: ``Do good. Go forth and do good.''
        My answer to that is, that is also a bogus debate. It's interesting
    to me that all of the people who work in charitable work say they'd like
    the Government to be a partner, that we need more charitable
    contributions, we want people to give more, but we need to have a
    partnership.
        We have other debates like that. Is it more important to balance the
    budget or to invest money in the education of our people so they raise
    their incomes and generate more tax revenues because we've got more
    people in higher efforts? My answer is, we have to find a way to do
    both. And what you do in your private lives is you balance--a lot of you
    balance all these conflicts all the time, these kinds of conflicts, and
    you go on and live your life. That's what we have to do here. And that's
    what you inspire me to do.
        You know, I was so moved, for example, after the horrible tragedy in
    Oklahoma City, by how much work the private charities were also doing
    there and how they did things that we could not have done, but we did
    things that they needed us to do.
        A lot of you, I have seen you in your literacy centers or your work
    to help kids, older kids. And you get funds from the private sector, but
    you also need us to do our part.
        And you know, when we showed up here, we really tried to shrink the
    size of Government, to reduce bureaucracy, to bring the deficit down,
    and we've done that. But we also tried to invest more in helping people
    make the most of their own lives. And it seems to me, that is the
    fundamental responsibility we have, and that is what we're trying to do
    here.
        There are 90 million Americans who volunteer. And some of you are
    some of them, and God bless them. We need more of it. But the main thing
    we need to do is to make practical decisions here that work right, not
    have a lot

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    of theoretical debates that drive a stake through the heart of America's
    citizenry.
        And you know, a lot of things are going on here I don't really
    understand. But I'm doing my best to remember you and every time I come
    up to one of these decisions to say, what is best for the American
    people? What is best for the American people?
        And it's sometimes very hard and very frustrating, because we just
    came from an event where the Vice President had a John Deere dealer from
    West Texas talking about what we were going to do to reduce reporting
    requirements on the income tax system and how we'd reinvented
    Government. And the John Deere dealer whispered to me, he said, ``You
    know, Mr. President, this all sounds real good, but you need to reinvent
    what you're saying to the people because it ain't getting out out
    there.'' It was funny.
        The reason is, the way we talk up here doesn't really often square
    with the way you live out there. But let me just give you an example of
    what's going on. We have people here in Washington in important
    positions who say that we should drastically cut the amount of money
    we're investing in poor folks because we're just corrupting them and
    making them dependent. I haven't noticed anybody who really likes
    poverty very much, but that's what they're saying.
        My belief is we have had some programs that made people dependent,
    and I want to change them. I want to change the welfare system and
    support people who are putting people to work. I don't think anybody
    wants to be on welfare, and if they do, they shouldn't. So I have no
    problem with tough requirements to get people into training programs,
    require them to work. I think that's good. But to say you can do it for
    free, I think, is wrong.
        Then we have people, some of the same people who say we should cut
    back on the Government's investment in these kind of public endeavor,
    they say, ``Well, the charities should do more. We should just give more
    money to charitable contributions.'' But now I wonder whether they
    really mean that.
        I just want you to understand the difference between where you live
    and what's going on here. For example, last week I heard about this
    letter--listen to this--a letter that was sent to the chief executive
    officers of 82 of the biggest companies in this country. And it warned
    these chief executive officers that they were in serious danger of
    giving money--the letter implied that they were sure these poor men were
    ignorant, maybe there were some women on the list, I haven't seen the
    whole list--maybe they were ignorant, but they were in serious danger of
    giving money to private organizations that were promoting the welfare
    state, undermining the free enterprise system, eroding the fabric of our
    country. I quote--the letter said, you are giving charitable
    contributions which, quote, ``support the expansion of the welfare
    state.''
        Now, these are people that want the Government to give less, right?
    So I was surprised to find out this letter was not for some fringe
    group. Now, this was a letter signed by the majority leader of the House
    of Representatives on very official-looking stationery. So I couldn't
    wait to get my hands on a list of these subversive groups that were
    getting money from big American companies. Here are some of the groups
    that were on the list: The American Cancer Society, the American Heart
    Association, the American Lung Association--what do they have in
    common--the League of Women Voters, a dangerous outfit--[laughter]--the
    B'nai B'rith, the NAACP, the Nature Conservancy--they help States buy
    lands so people will be able to enjoy it forever, with enormous business
    support.
        Now, I asked myself when I read about this, and I saw this letter,
    how can we have the Government give less money and then have a major
    leader of the Congress tell people that they ought to give less--big
    corporations ought to give less to groups dedicated to reducing disease,
    fighting racism, protecting the environment, and promoting jobs and
    encouraging Americans to vote? Why? Because there's probably some
    segment of the political base there that really likes that stuff and
    pumps a bunch of money into it, and because maybe these people are
    advocating things that some of the big organized power groups here don't
    like.
        But don't you see, what I'm trying to say is, this doesn't have
    anything to do with the way you live. And we have got to get Washington,
    DC, back on the solution side of America's challenges to help people
    make the most of their own lives, to help people who through no fault of
    their own cannot care for themselves, to really support work and family
    and community instead of talking about it and then just keep trying to
    drive stake after stake after stake through the American people to
    divide us and

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    disillusion us and convince each other that we're enemies.
        At the end of the Civil War, just shortly before he was
    assassinated, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in which he said--and we had
    had a pretty good fight then; we really were divided--he said, ``We
    cannot be enemies. We must be friends.'' Now, that's the way you live,
    and you are entitled to a political system that reflects the hope that
    you gave to the four of us. That's what we're trying to give you.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:15 p.m. on the State Floor at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to the upcoming wedding of Faces of
    Hope participant Leslie Williams.