    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book I)]
    [April 7, 1995]
    [Pages 487-491]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Arrival at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento, California
    April 7, 1995

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Congressman Fazio, Congressman
    Matsui, General Yates. General Phillips, thanks for having me back.
    You'll have to start charging me rent if I don't quit coming out here.
    [Laughter] Lieutenant Governor Davis, Mayor Serna, Supervisor Dickinson,
    Mr. Sherman, to all the others who are here: Let me say, I love coming
    here. I've been in this hangar before, but I've never had so many young
    people and students here. I'm delighted to see all of you. Thank you for
    coming. I'm glad to see the college students, the ROTC students, the
    City Year students here, the elementary school students. I'd also like
    to say it is quite wonderful to come to California when there is no
    flood, no fire, no earthquake. I just want to be here. I just wanted to
    come. And when I was here not very long ago, I went out to Roseville,
    and I had a meeting in a home that had been totally destroyed. And the
    people who hosted me are here, and I understand they're rebuilding their
    home. I'd like to ask them to be recognized; they're brave people, Rick
    Merenda and his wife. Stand up there, and let's give them a hand.
    [Applause]
        That was really ungracious of Congressman Fazio to mention the
    basketball game. [Laughter] But since he brought it up, I don't think
    I'm so brave for coming out. If we had won,

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    it would really take courage for me to show up here. [Laughter]

        I am delighted to be here at McClellan. Vic said this is my west
    coast home. We couldn't very well close this Air Force base; I wouldn't
    have anyplace to park when I fly out. I don't know what I would do.

        I'm delighted to be joined here by the wonderful Secretary of
    Education, Richard Riley. I thank him for coming out West with me. And I
    have a lot of Californians on my staff, and a bunch of them came back
    with me: my Chief of Staff, Leon Panetta, who in his former life, or as
    he likes to say, back when he had a life, was a Congressman from
    northern California; and of course, Doris Matsui--Congressman Matsui in
    our White House is known as Doris' husband because she's a valuable
    member of our staff; and many others. We have tried to be closely in
    touch with California.

        For the benefit of the Air Force base, I want to make one
    announcement today. I'm happy to report that Congress has passed my
    requested defense supplemental appropriations bill which will give us
    the funds we need to make sure we are adequately training and preparing
    our personnel in all the armed services. And I know that McClellan and
    its families are happy about the passage of the defense appropriations
    bill.

        With all these young people here, I want to take just a few moments
    to talk about their future and ours and how they are bound up together.
    I ran for President in 1992 because I strongly felt that our National
    Government was not doing enough to invest in our future and to
    strengthen the future prospects of America's working families and our
    children. I believed then--and I still believe it was right--that we
    were exploding our deficit but reducing our investment in our people. I
    believed then and I believe more strongly today that the global economy
    in a technological information age will reward what we know and what we
    are capable of learning and, conversely, will punish us for what we
    refuse to learn and for the people whose skills and abilities we refuse
    to develop.

        Now, there is a great debate going on today about what our mission
    should be as a Nation in the aftermath of the cold war and what the role
    of the National Government should be in that mission. But to me, it is
    crystal clear. Our mission should be to ensure that the American dream
    is alive and well for every child in this country and every child in
    this hangar well into the next century.

        Our mission should be that we maintain our position as the world's
    strongest nation and greatest force for peace and freedom and democracy
    and that we use that to help our own people develop their human
    capacities. And the role of the National Government, it seems to me, is
    clear. We must first strengthen our security around the world and here
    at home. That's why I have worked so hard to reduce the threat of
    nuclear weapons, to be a force for peace from the Middle East to
    Northern Ireland to Southern Africa but also to pass a crime bill here
    that will stiffen sentences, put more police on the street, have more
    prevention funds, and do everything we can to bring down the crime rate
    and make our streets and our neighborhoods and our schools safer places.

        The role of the Government should be to change the Government. It
    should be smaller and less bureaucratic and less cumbersome and
    burdensome and more efficient and more flexible for the information age.
    We have done that. The Congress in the last 2 years has voted for
    budgets that will reduce the size of the Government by 272,000, to its
    smallest size since President Kennedy was in office; to deregulate great
    portions of activity the Federal Government used to do, to give more
    responsibilities back to the States. We are giving the American people a
    Government that is less bureaucratic.

        But the last two things in some ways are the most important of all.
    Government's role is also to create economic opportunity and to help
    people who, through no fault of their own, have sustained economic
    burdens.

        The recommendation from the Secretary of Defense for McClellan is
    that the airbase should stay open because of the important mission you
    are pursuing. But you know that California has been very hard-hit by
    base closings in the aftermath of the cold war's end. I took the
    position, which I here reaffirm today, that when the United States asked
    the people of California and the people of the United States all across
    this country to host our bases, to host our military families, to play a
    role in winning the cold war--if we have to downsize the military, we
    have an affirmative obligation to help the communities and the people
    rebuild their lives and

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    to have prosperity and strength in the future. That is a part of
    building economic opportunity.
        That's why I fought so hard to have conversion funds, to help people
    move from a defense-based to a civilian-based economy, and why I have
    supported bases like McClellan which have used their military technology
    for civilian purposes to help to strengthen us in the years ahead.
    That's what the general was talking about when he mentioned the
    intelligent tutor program--military technology being made available to
    school districts all across America to teach children as people in the
    military are taught to develop their skills more rapidly and more deeply
    than ever before. That is part of our obligation, to give people a
    chance to make the most of their God-given abilities by creating
    economic opportunity.
        If you look--you have an example right here in Sacramento. Look at
    what happened with the Army depot and Packard Bell. The world's third
    largest computer manufacturer has moved onto large portions of the
    closed base and plans to employ more than 3,000 Californians.
        There are many other things we have worked to do, to sell more of
    your high-tech products abroad, to sell your agriculture products
    abroad, to open up the California economy in a positive way. And the
    unemployment rate has dropped almost 2 percent in the last 2 years. We
    have a long way to go, but we are moving in the right direction. It is
    the affirmative responsibility of the United States Government to do
    everything we can in partnership with people to create those kinds of
    economic opportunities. If everybody has a good job and a bright future,
    this country's future as a whole will be more secure.
        Now, the last thing that I want to say is perhaps the most important
    of all. I believe it is our responsibility to do everything we can
    through education to give the people of this country, and especially the
    young people of this country, the knowledge and the skills they need to
    compete and win in a tough global economy. We cannot guarantee people a
    job for life, but we can guarantee them access to education for life.
    And we ought to do it. Nothing is more important.
        When I ran for President, I thought there were too many people in
    Washington who had rhetorical debates and didn't work on the real
    people's problems. I thought to myself, if I were living out in
    Sacramento, for example, and I listened to what I see on television at
    night, I might wonder if those folks were really talking about me and my
    family and my children.
        You know, we had trickle-down economics and tax-and-spend economics,
    and what we really needed was invest-and-grow economics. We once had
    people who thought the answer to our public's problems was to spend more
    money on everything. Now we have people who think the answer is to spend
    less money on everything. The answer is to spend less money on the wrong
    things and more money on the right things. And the most important right
    thing is education for our young people and for our adults.
        You know, I am very proud of the fact that these Members of Congress
    behind me have been part of a group of people who supported my
    initiatives to expand educational opportunities, from Head Start for
    preschoolers to more investment so our schools could meet national
    standards of excellence, to apprenticeship programs for young people who
    don't go on to college, more affordable college loans for young people
    on better repayment terms, to lifetime training for adult workers. That
    must be our mission. We must make it clear that in the United States we
    will tolerate nothing less than the most excellent educational
    opportunities and the highest standards for all of our people for a
    lifetime.
        You know, I see these young AmeriCorps people behind me who are
    cheering when I called their name. There are some people who believe we
    ought to get rid of AmeriCorps. They say it costs a lot of money, and
    besides that, why pay people to volunteer? Let me tell you what these
    young people do if you don't know. They can earn minimum wage and work
    for 1 or 2 years, and for each year they work they can earn money for
    their college education. They don't work in big national bureaucracies.
    They work in community service projects. They work side by side with
    other people. They help in floods and fires. They help to rebuild homes.
    They help to immunize children. They work with police on the beat. They
    do a lot of different things all across the country, not based on what
    someone in Washington tells them to do but based on what community
    leaders say they should do. And in so doing, they earn money and help
    build up their communities.
        I just came from Dallas, Texas, where I met with an AmeriCorps
    volunteer who was 52 years old, who was going back working in the commu-

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    nity to earn money to go to her local community college to get a degree
    in college. I met a young woman who got off welfare because they gave
    her a chance to work in AmeriCorps. And she got her GED, and now she's
    going to use the money to go to college. I met a young woman who was a
    graduate of one of our finest State universities. But she was born to a
    mother on welfare, and she thought she owed it to her country, since she
    had moved from welfare to a university degree, to give up a couple years
    of her life working in the community to help lift the prospects of other
    people. That is what AmeriCorps is all about. It is working to educate
    America.
        The other day I was in Florida talking to people about college
    education. Many of you who have sent or are preparing to send a child to
    college know that it can be a pretty expensive proposition and that it's
    gone up quite a lot. There are some in Congress who believe that the way
    to reduce the deficit is to increase the cost of the student loans. I
    disagree with that. I don't think we ought to increase the cost of
    student loans at a time when we want more people to go to college.
        Our proposal is different. Our proposal is to let more people borrow
    money on better repayment terms but to have tougher requirements to
    repay the loans. If everybody who borrowed money repaid it, we wouldn't
    have a budgetary problem with the student loan program. So what have we
    done? We've loaned money to more people at lower interest rates, but
    we're making more people repay the loans. That's the way to save money
    in the student loan program, not to cut the program, get the loans
    repaid.
        And finally, to all of you let me say this: There is a lot of talk
    in Washington about cutting taxes. Now, nothing is more popular. But I
    would remind you of this: number one, we still have a sizable deficit,
    even though I have cut it by $600 billion, and we now have a Government
    that, except for the interest on the debt that was piled up in previous
    years, your Government has an operating surplus for the first time in 30
    years. We do that.
        But our interest payments on our debt are so great we have to keep
    bringing this deficit down. That limits the size of any tax cut. We have
    to continue to finance a strong national defense. That limits the size
    of any tax cut. We have to continue to invest in education. That will
    limit the size of a tax cut. So we have to ask ourselves, what kind of
    tax cut do we need, and who ought to get it?
        My view is we shouldn't give a tax cut to people like me, in upper
    income groups, who did just fine in the eighties and the nineties. We
    ought to give it to middle class people whose incomes stagnated in the
    eighties and nineties who need the money. That's who ought to get it.
    And we ought to give it to people and not just give them a check that
    they can spend and then the money's gone; the money should be devoted to
    helping strengthen our families and to support education so that we
    raise people's income in the short run with a tax cut and in the long
    run by improving their earning skills. That's why I think the best tax
    cut would be giving the American people a tax deduction for the cost of
    themselves and their children for all education after high school. That
    is the best investment in our future.
        Now, I also believe that we ought to have the individual retirement
    accounts, the IRA's, available to more Americans, and people ought to be
    able to withdraw from them tax-free to use money for education or for
    health care emergencies or for a first home or for the care of an
    elderly parent. That's the sort of tax cut we ought to have.
        Now, believe me, my fellow Americans, we can afford that and still
    reduce the deficit, still increase our investment in education, and
    still have a strong defense. That is a responsible approach.
        So I say to you without regard to your political party, this is a
    time of great change in our country. I want to work with this new
    Congress. I agree with them about a lot of things they want to do. But
    we can't go too far. We can't say that there's no difference in
    Government spending. Education is different. National defense is
    different. Things are different. Some things matter more than others. We
    can't say that everything the Government does is bad and everything that
    happens in the private sector is good. We need a partnership. And we
    know if California's economy is going to come back we ought to invest in
    defense conversion. We ought to do what we can to help the people in
    this State who have great talents and great resources, who can no longer
    use them in the defense plants but can use them in the economy of
    tomorrow.
        And most importantly of all, we ought to look around at all these
    young people and say they

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    deserve to believe in the American dream, in the promise of tomorrow.
    They deserve to be able to do whatever their God-given capacities and
    their willingness to work will let them do. Nothing, nothing, nothing is
    more important than that.
        So, to all of you who have been at this base, who have worn the
    uniform of our country, who have stood up for the security of the United
    States, what did you do it for? So that freedom and opportunity might be
    passed on forever in this country. This is a very great country. There
    is nothing we cannot do if we do the best we can to do right by the
    young people who are here and all over America. That must be our
    mission. It is mine, and I believe it is yours.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 5:50 p.m. In his remarks, he referred to
    Gen. Ronald W. Yates, Commander, Air Force Materiel Command; Gen. John
    F. Phillips, Commander, Sacramento Air Logistics Center; Lt. Gov. Gray
    Davis of California; Mayor Joseph Serna, Jr., of Sacramento, CA;
    Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson; and Brad Sherman,
    chairman, California State Board of Equalization.