    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1995, Book II)]
    [November 4, 1995]
    [Pages 1719-1720]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1719]]

    The President's Radio Address
    November 4, 1995

        Good morning. What I have to say today is clear and simple: Under
    the cover of balancing the budget, the Republican Congress is going
    after the essential environmental protections that have guaranteed the
    health and safety of all Americans for a long time now, and I am
    determined to stop them.
        I'm for balancing the budget; it's part of my vision to keep the
    American dream alive for all Americans in the 21st century. It's a core
    part of our strategy to promote economic growth, commonsense Government,
    and the mainstream values of responsibility, opportunity, work, family,
    and community.
        But protecting our environment is a fundamental community value for
    all Americans, and it can't be sacrificed to balance the budget. Because
    we cherish our children, we want to be sure the water they drink and the
    food they eat won't make them sick. Because we honor our parents, we
    want the air they breathe to be clean so they can live long and healthy
    lives and not be housebound by smog. Because we believe that what God
    created we must not destroy, each of us has a sacred obligation to pass
    on a clean planet to future generations. For nearly three decades, all
    Americans have agreed we must do what we have to to protect our
    environment. And America is cleaner and healthier because of it.
        Since our environmental laws were put in place, toxic emissions by
    factories have been cut in half. Lead levels in children's blood have
    dropped 70 percent. Lake Erie, for example, once declared dead, is now
    teeming with fish. But all this progress is now at risk. In the last few
    months, a small army of lobbyists for polluters has descended on Capitol
    Hill, mounting a full-scale assault on our environmental and public
    health protections. And this Congress has actually allowed these
    lobbyists to sit down and rewrite important environmental laws to weaken
    our safeguards. And now they're trying to use the budget bill to further
    weaken these protections. It's an incredible fact that this Republican
    budget actually singles out the environment and its protections for
    extra cuts.
        This budget will mean dirtier water, more smog, more illness, and a
    diminished quality of life. Here's how. It's plain that there are two
    ways to legalize pollution: You can change the laws or just stop
    enforcing them by firing the enforcers. The pollution lobby knows it
    could never repeal half our environmental protections, so the Republican
    budget cuts the resources for environmental enforcement in half. Quite
    simply, it just pulls the cop from the environmental beat. The budget
    also would cut off money now going to communities to invest to keep
    their drinking water clean. And the cuts mean that toxic waste cleanups
    across America would slow to a crawl.
        The Republican leadership even tried to slip 17 special interest
    provisions into the spending bill, loopholes that would end enforcement
    of the Clean Air and the Clean Water Acts, let more dangerous arsenic
    into our drinking water, allow raw sewage on our beaches. I'm happy to
    report that earlier this week, a bipartisan majority of the House, on
    the third try, rejected the efforts of the Republican leadership. But
    this fight isn't over.
        There's another important issue here, too. There's nothing more
    American than the idea that citizens have the right to know what's
    happening to them. But this budget tries to roll back the law that gives
    people the right to know what toxic chemicals are being released into
    their neighborhoods. So I've acted, issuing a pollution prevention
    Executive order to limit the damage of their efforts to deprive citizens
    of the right to know. But this fight isn't over yet, either.
        This budget also treats our Nation's great and precious store of
    public lands as a platform for destruction. The Republican budget, for
    example, would give oil companies the right to drill in the last
    unspoiled Arctic wilderness in Alaska. And it allows a giveaway of
    mining rights to companies at a fraction of their worth. Just recently,
    a law on the books since 1872 that I am trying hard to change forced the
    Government to sell minerals worth $1 billion to a private company for
    $275. That is taxpayer robbery, and it's going to keep right on
    happening under the Republican budget.
        Just think of it: The Republican budget proposes to raise taxes on
    working families with

    [[Page 1720]]

    incomes of less than $27,000, to increase the cost of college loans and
    cut the number of college scholarships, but they're determined to keep
    giving away $1 billion worth of minerals on Government land for $275.
        Well, I've got bad news for the lobbyists and their allies. We don't
    need more pollution to balance the budget. We don't need dirtier water
    to close the deficit. If Congress sends me a budget that guts
    environmental protection, that protects polluters, not the public, I
    will veto it. As President, it is my duty to protect our environment,
    and on my watch, America will not be for sale.
        On the other hand, we do have to be vigilant to make sure
    environmental protection doesn't become a tangle of redtape and
    bureaucracy, so we're stripping away thousands of pages of unnecessary
    rules and regulations and changing the way we protect the environment.
    Instead of a long list of do's and don'ts, we're telling responsible
    businesses, if you can meet the tough pollution goals, you figure out
    how to do it as cheaply and efficiently as you can. That's the way to
    cut regulation without hurting public health.
        After all, America's families don't care much about the rules and
    regulations. They look at the results, at a son who comes home from a
    playground with a rash from playing near an industrial site or a
    daughter with asthma, simply because she breathed the air.
        My fellow Americans, let's never forget: The decisions we make today
    will live on long after we're gone. I don't think we Americans have lost
    our sense of the past or our dedication to the future. We're balancing
    the budget in a way that will be good for future generations. That means
    that in balancing the budget, we have to preserve the planet--clean air,
    clean water, safe food, a decent environment--for those future
    generations, too.
        Thanks for listening.

    Note: The address was recorded at 12:57 p.m. on November 3 in the
    Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on
    November 4.