    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [May 23, 1996]
    [Pages 812-815]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Milwaukee
    May 23, 1996

        Whoa! Thank you, Jasmine, and thank you, J.P. Weren't they great?
    [Applause] Those kids were great. Thank you. Governor Thompson, County
    Executive Ament, Mayor Norquist, Attorney General Doyle, ladies and
    gentlemen. Chancellor Kohl and I are delighted to be here. We thank the
    city of Milwaukee and the State of Wisconsin for a wonderful, wonderful
    welcome.
        I want to also say a special word of thanks to the Rufus King High
    School Marching Band that played our national anthem and those who
    performed before us, the Alta Kameraden Band, the choir Mosbach, from
    Mosbach, Germany, and the Milwaukee High School for the Arts Jazz
    Ensemble. Thank you all.
        I was asked to say that Senator Feingold and Senator Kohl wanted to
    be here, but they had to stay in Washington to vote on the budget.
    Chancellor Kohl is trying to find some way of being related to Senator
    Kohl; he thinks he will inherit half of the basketball team if he does.
    [Laughter] We are researching the records even as I speak. [Laughter]
    Congressman Barrett and Representative Kleczka also had to stay behind
    because they wanted a chance to vote on an increase in the minimum wage
    for the people of Milwaukee.

    [[Page 813]]

        I want to say also a special word of thanks to the people who run
    the German immersion school. It's the only public elementary school in
    our country where the entire curriculum is taught in German. They won a
    blue ribbon award from the Department of Education and, as you can see,
    my German is a little rustier than theirs is, but I thought the children
    were wirklich wunderbar. They were terrific, and I believe we should
    congratulate them.
        Just 2 years ago, when Hillary and I were in Germany, Helmut and
    Hannelore Kohl opened their home to us. World leaders don't often get to
    visit in each other's homes, and I thought that there ought to be
    something I could do to kind of repay his extraordinary hospitality. So
    I thought he ought to have a chance, after 23 trips to Washington, DC,
    to come to a place where he could get some really great bratwurst, where
    everywhere he turns around there's a sign with a German name on it, and
    where he could feel at home in America's most German-American city. So
    thank you, Milwaukee, for making him feel so welcome.
        My fellow Americans, we stand on the verge of the greatest age of
    possibility in all human history. Because of the advances in technology,
    the arrival of the information age, the end of the cold war, the
    emergence of a global society, there are enormous opportunities for
    people to live in peace and prosperity, for Americans, for Germans, for
    people all around the world.
        But if we want to seize those opportunities, we must decide that we
    are going to be united with our friends all around the world, with
    friends like Germany--and America has no better friend than Germany--and
    we have to decide that amidst all of our diversities in the United
    States we're going to be united here, too, one Nation under God,
    reaching across the lines of race and region and income to grow and go
    forward together as one American family.
        As I look out on this vast crowd today, I see a picture of America,
    all different kinds of people, different races, different religions,
    bound together by the American creed. And I thank you for that. I want
    my fellow Americans to know that the United States has no better friend
    anywhere in the world than Germany and especially the Chancellor of
    Germany, Helmut Kohl. I am grateful to him, and all of us should be.
        And I want the German Chancellor to know that America has no better
    example of a State committed to reach out to the rest of the world than
    the State of Wisconsin, a State which is making the new global economy
    work for its citizens. You know, J.P. Tucker and Jasmine, they reminded
    me, with their German, that a century ago--listen to this--a century ago
    half a million American children learned German in their elementary
    schools. New York, which had the second largest population of any city
    in the world, and Chicago had the eighth largest, and Milwaukee was,
    even then, the most German city in our Nation. There, every third
    citizen here was born on the other side of the ocean.
        So when you hear Jasmine Brantley and J.P. Tucker, remember that
    they are recapturing a sense of our being involved with other countries,
    which we once took for granted. A hundred years ago we knew we were a
    nation of immigrants. And a hundred years later, we dare not forget it.
        The German immigrants who helped to build cities across our land,
    founded our Nation's businesses, including some that made Milwaukee
    famous: Pabst and Blatz and Schlitz. More importantly, they made our
    communities successful with their strong families and their hard work.
    But it's important to remember that when the Germans and the other
    immigrants came here a hundred years ago, they faced new, enormous
    challenges. They arrived at a time of dramatic change, when our country
    was just moving from an age of agriculture to an age of industry; when
    more people, finally, were living in cities than were living in the
    rural areas; when instead of rising to the sun, they woke to a factory
    whistle. That was a very different time, the time that our grandparents
    and our great-grandparents brought to America. But it led to the
    enormous prosperity that the American people enjoyed in the 20th
    century.
        I ask you to think about this time, at the dawn of another new
    century, just as we now know a century ago Americans thought about it.
    Yes, we have a lot of challenges. Yes, we have economic challenges. Yes,
    we have social challenges. Yes, we have challenges around the world. But
    this country is stronger economically. It is facing its social problems.
    It is trying to come together around the basic ideas of work and family
    and community. And this is a safer world than it was just a few years
    ago.
        And one reason is, we have enjoyed a remarkable alliance with
    Germany for 50 long years, achieving unparalleled security and
    prosperity.

    [[Page 814]]

    And let me say that Helmut Kohl, as the first Chancellor of a free and
    unified Germany, is a symbol of that success.
        With Germany and our other allies in NATO, we are working to let
    peace take hold in the former Yugoslavia; to give the Muslims, the
    Croats, and the Serbs the chance to try to come together in the way we
    Americans are trying to come together; to say to each other, ``You
    cannot define your life by who you hate; you must be willing to lay down
    your hatreds and work together for a better, brighter future.'' That is
    the future we have fought for at home. That is the future Germany and
    the United States are fighting for in Bosnia.
        Thanks to the support of Germany and the United States for freedom
    and for free economic systems in Russia, we have taken a giant step back
    from the nuclear precipice. We are destroying two-thirds of all the
    nuclear weapons that existed at the height of the cold war. And today,
    for the first time since the drawn of the nuclear age, there are no
    Russian nuclear weapons pointed at the people of the United States or
    American weapons pointed at the people of Russia.
        Thanks to the efforts of the United States and Germany, as much as
    any other two nations in the world, we are creating a system of global
    trading opportunities where trade will be not only free but fair. And I
    congratulate and thank the Chancellor today for signing an open skies
    agreement with the United States. We will be the first two great nations
    to have completely open freedom in the air routes between Germany and
    the United States. Anybody that wants to come up with a route can do so,
    and the American people can go back and forth more cheaply. And the
    German people can do so as well. So, Governor Thompson, maybe a year
    from now, we can have 100,000 Germans here in Milwaukee instead of just
    one or two.
        And again I want to say to Chancellor Kohl, the people of Wisconsin
    deserve a lot of credit for taking advantage of these changes. Exports
    from Wisconsin have grown 39 percent over the last 3 years, faster than
    the rest of our country and the greatest export surge in our history.
    That is creating a 110,000 jobs in Wisconsin, including 18,000 brand new
    ones. Unemployment in this State is only 3.7 percent. And most
    important, we know that when we can tie jobs to exports, they tend to
    pay better and to provide a better living for the families of the people
    who are working there.
        I want to say, too, that we thank Germany for buying Wisconsin
    products. Wisconsin companies with names like Harnischfeger and Miller
    are bringing their products to Germany, the country their founders left
    more than a century ago. People moved here, sending the stuff back home;
    the marks come back to America in the form of dollars. Sounds like a
    pretty good deal to me.
        We also want to thank the German investors who have invested their
    money here and put the people of Wisconsin to work. We thank them again
    for building a global economy of prosperity and freedom. And finally, we
    thank Wisconsin for its willingness to experiment in many areas of our
    national life that need improvement, to find ways to put people from
    welfare to work, to lower the crime rate, to deal with the problem of
    growing the economy while preserving the incredible, beautiful natural
    environment that the people of Wisconsin enjoy. These are the challenges
    that all of us have to face in the years ahead.
        Let me say again in closing my remarks that it is important that
    every American know that if you look ahead at the opportunities the
    world will bring us, we cannot seize those opportunities alone. If we
    want to trade with other nations, it takes two to tango. Germany and the
    United States are the greatest trading nations in the world, and we have
    to lead the fight for fair and free trade. If we want to deal with the
    challenges of terrorism and drug running and weapons smuggling and the
    proliferation of chemical and biological weapons and global
    environmental threats where Helmut Kohl has been very outspoken, we
    cannot do this alone. If you want your children to have a system in
    which everybody who will work can have an opportunity and a system in
    which we can solve the new security problems of the 21st century, we
    cannot do it alone. The United States has to have friends and allies,
    and we have no better friend and ally anywhere in the world than Helmut
    Kohl of Germany, my friend, and I thank him for being here today.
        And thank you all. God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 1 p.m. in the Pere Marquette Park. In his
    remarks, he referred to German Immersion School students, Jasmine
    Brantley, who introduced the President, and John

    [[Page 815]]

    (J.P.) Tucker, who introduced Chancellor Helmut Kohl; Gov. Tommy
    Thompson of Wisconsin; Thomas Ament, Milwaukee County executive; Mayor
    John O. Norquist of Milwaukee; Attorney General James Doyle of
    Wisconsin.