    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [August 25, 1995]
    [Pages 1264-1265]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on the 79th Anniversary of the National Park Service in
    Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
    August 25, 1995

        Hi, folks. Well, I'm sorry about the rain, but I want to tell you
    that Hillary and Chelsea and I are having a wonderful time here. I want
    to thank the Park Superintendent, Mike Findley, and all the people who
    work at Yellowstone for making our visit so nice, even with the rain.
        I wanted to make a couple of points today: 79 years ago today the
    Congress established the National Park Service to organize and preserve
    our natural heritage and to preserve our common environment. Last year
    at the 369 national parks, 270 million visitors came. That is an
    astonishing number.
        Yellowstone is the symbol of our national parks because it's the
    oldest one and the first one in the history of the world. And I came
    here today basically to make two or three points: First of all, I am
    committed to preserving these parks. There was an effort in Congress--
    [applause]--there was an effort in Congress to cut the budget in a way
    that could have forced the closure of 200 of these parks. That's wrong.

    [[Page 1265]]

    There are some people who say we ought to just sell some of our natural
    treasures off to the highest bidder. And that's wrong.
        But I do think we need some reforms, and let me just mention two or
    three. Number one, I support keeping the fees that you pay when you come
    to the national parks in the parks. That's one of the things that we
    want to do so that the money can be used to preserve the parks.
        Secondly, we want to allow the national parks more flexibility to go
    out and raise money from private citizens to preserve, not to destroy,
    our natural heritage. And that's in the plan that we have given to
    Congress, and we hope that they will adopt it.
        And finally, we want to see the people who do business in our parks
    give a fairer share of that business back to the parks for the
    preservation of the people in the future, like the people who run this
    hotel do. And Mr. Findley's worked hard on that. We want more of that in
    the future.
        The last thing I want to say is this: We have a big stake in what
    you see around you here at Yellowstone. It's a part of what I call our
    common ground. And we should not do anything this year, anything, to
    weaken our ability to protect the quality of our land, our water, our
    food, the diversity of our wildlife, and the sanctity of our natural
    treasures. We can balance the budget without doing any of that, and
    that's the commitment all of us ought to make today on this anniversary
    of the National Park Service.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 1 p.m. at Old Faithful Lodge.