    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
    [March 5, 1996]
    [Pages 366-373]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the National Association of Counties
    March 5, 1996

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Doug Bovin. Thank you, Michael
    Hightower. I have enjoyed working with Doug. I know I will enjoy working
    with Michael, and I enjoy working with all of you.
        I want to talk to you today about our partnership. And we were
    joking outside--I know that in some States, the States may be too big
    for the person running for Governor to basically operate from county
    courthouse to county courthouse, but I never found that an obstacle at
    home. And I feel right at home here, and I thank you for your warm
    welcome.
        Before I begin my remarks to you I feel obliged to say, because this
    is my first public appearance of the day, that I'm sure that all of you
    as Americans share my outrage at the campaign of terror which is being
    directed at the people of Israel. These are desperate and fanatic acts
    aimed not just at killing innocent people, including innocent children,
    but at killing the growing prospects for peace in the Middle East. They
    must not succeed.
        Today I'm announcing a series of steps to support the fight against
    future terrorist attacks, to bring killers to justice, and to rally
    support for peace in the Middle East. These steps include immediate
    emergency transfer to Israel of highly sophisticated detection
    equipment; the dispatch of American specialists to work with their
    Israeli counterparts on strengthening antiterrorism measures; the
    development of a comprehensive package of training, technical
    assistance, and equipment to improve antiterrorism cooperation among
    Israel, the Palestinians, and other governments in the region; and
    contact with foreign governments to ask for their help in the fight for
    peace and against terrorism. The United States has always stood with the
    people of Israel through good times and bad, and we stand with them
    today.
        Let me say that in so many ways your work is the polar opposite of
    the extremism which threatens to tear apart the fabric of so many
    societies in the world today. When you walk out of your office, the
    great challenges of our time confront you with human faces. You have no
    choice but to reach out to your fellow citizens and to try to work
    together to meet those challenges. As the great former mayor of New York
    City, Fiorello La Guardia, once said, there is, after all, no Republican
    or Democratic way to clean the streets. You have shown what can be
    accomplished if people put aside their differences and work together.
    And I hope while you're here you'll remind every elected official in
    Washington that we, too, can do our job here if we do it together.
        I came into this community and into my job with a very
    straightforward vision. I wanted to make sure that our country would go
    into the 21st century with the American dream alive and well for every
    single American willing to work for it. I wanted our country to remain
    the strongest force for peace and freedom, for security and prosperity
    in the post-cold-war world. And above all, I wanted to see this country
    come together around our basic values and our mutual respect for one
    another.
        Our strategy started with a commitment to grow the economy to create
    economic opportunity. In the last 3 years, we have worked on getting the
    deficit down, interest rates down, investment in our people up,
    opportunities for Americans to sell their goods and services all across
    the world up, our commitment to technology, to research, to breaking the
    barriers to economic opportunity for all Americans up.

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        In the last 3 years we've made some notable progress. Americans have
    created almost 8 million new jobs. We have the lowest combined rates of
    unemployment and inflation in 27 years. Homeownership is at a 15-year
    high. For the first time in many years, average earnings are going up,
    and for the first time in many years our exports are growing faster than
    our imports. Our auto industry leads the world again, and for 2 years in
    a row, after many years on the back benches, an international economic
    forum has said that America is the world's most productive economy.
        For 3 years in a row, our people have set successive records for
    starting new businesses. We're also beginning to come together around
    our basic values. The crime rate, the welfare and food stamp rolls, the
    poverty rate, the teen pregnancy rate are all coming down in America,
    thanks in no small measure to the labors that many of you carry on in
    communities dealing with these challenges every day.
        But if you take a full accounting of America's picture, you have to
    take the challenges along with the successes. We know still, in spite of
    the fact that our economy has produced 8 million new jobs, almost--and I
    might say, just to give you an idea of the magnitude of that
    achievement, the G-7 economies, the world's big seven economies, in the
    last 3 years have created, net, a total of 7.7 million new jobs. And
    America has created 7.7 million new jobs. The other six have created
    some--some have created some, some have lost. Their net is zero.
        It is not easy for wealthy countries to create new jobs. The United
    States has been doing that, and we can be proud of the people who are
    doing it, almost exclusively in the private sector with the environment
    that has been created and the work that they do. Still we know that an
    awful lot of our people are working as hard or harder than they ever
    have without a raise. For about half of Americans, their real incomes in
    terms of what it will buy have not gone up in more than a decade. Too
    many of our people have gone nearly two decades. And a lot of parents
    are beginning to wonder whether they'll be able to give their children a
    better standard of living than they enjoyed.
        We know that our economy is becoming highly competitive, but that
    too many of our people are being downsized in their most productive
    years, in years when their families are most relying on them, when their
    children are being raised or when they're about to go off to college.
    And a lot to these folks have no real idea about how they're going to
    move in a reasonable time to another job doing as well as they were
    before. And we know that even though unemployment is below 6 percent and
    below the 25-year average unemployment rate of America, there are still
    too many urban neighborhoods and rural communities where there aren't
    enough jobs for young people to believe that they have a bright future.
        If you look at the social front, who would have believed 3 years ago
    that we could bring the crime rate down but that random violence among
    juveniles, children under 18, would be going up? Who would believe that
    the drug usage among people between the age of 18 and 34 would be going
    down but that casual drug use among children under 18, including--and
    illegal--tobacco smoking, even though it's illegal in every State in the
    country, would be going up?
        How did this happen? The truth is, no one knows all the answers, but
    it is clear that a big part of it is that you and I are serving in
    public life at a time of very profound change; I would argue the most
    profound period of change in the last 100 years. You have to go back
    about 100 years to the time when Americans moved from living primarily
    in rural areas to living primarily in cities and towns, in the time when
    Americans moved from working primarily on the farm to working primarily
    in the factory or in businesses supporting factories.
        That's what is happening today. We are moving from a national
    economy to a global economy. The nature of work is changing. Even
    manufacturing, which is still very strong--indeed, growing stronger in
    America--is becoming characterized more by information technology than
    by hard work in terms of muscle power.
        Work now in almost every endeavor requires more mind and less
    muscle. More and more workplaces are less hierarchical, less
    bureaucratic, indeed, on average, less big. The average manufacturing
    facility contains 300 or fewer employees. So the work is changing, the
    workplace is changing, the markets are changing, and information is
    changing.
        Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, in his book ``The Road From
    Here'' says that the digital chip is the biggest change in information
    technology in 500 years, since Gutenberg first printed the Bible in
    Europe. But this is the

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    dimension of the change through which we are all living.
        Now, on the whole, this change has been good for America. There are
    more possibilities open to young people to live out the future of their
    dreams than at any time in our Nation's history. But as with any time of
    change this profound, there is also a great uprooting, a great
    unsettling, where established patterns of life and living and working
    together are disrupted. And when that happens, it is imperative that
    those of us who are charged with the public purpose, with bringing
    people together, with giving everybody a chance, work hard to see that
    we make these changes, that we go through this period of change in a way
    that gives every American the chance to be a full citizen living up to
    his or her full abilities. How we will master this moment of change is,
    therefore, the great question not only before the President and the
    Congress, not only before the business leaders of this country but
    before every community leader in the United States of America.
        In my State of the Union Address I outlined the seven great
    challenges that I think we have to meet as a people if we're going to
    fulfill those objectives that I brought to this office, if we're going
    to guarantee the American dream for all Americans, if we're going to
    maintain our world leadership for peace and freedom, if we're going to
    come back together around our basic values.
        We have to build stronger families and better childhoods for all of
    our children. We have to open educational opportunities so that every
    child and every adult has access to world-class, lifelong learning. We
    have to provide economic security for families who are willing to work
    for it. We must take back our streets, all our streets, from crime and
    gangs and drugs. We must provide a healthy and clean environment for
    today and tomorrow. We must maintain our leadership in the fight for
    freedom and democracy, because if we don't do that no one else will. And
    we must reinvent our Government so that it works better and once again
    inspires real trust in the American people. None of these things can be
    done unless we do them together, unless we understand that the old
    categories by which we thought and the old categories by which we
    classified one another have to have enough flexibility in them to allow
    us to reach out across the lines that divide us to meet these common
    challenges.
        One of the things that we must do here in Washington is to
    understand that while we have an obligation to have a clear vision, to
    set clear national goals, to challenge people from every walk of life to
    meet these goals, we cannot solve America's problems for America. We
    have to instead focus on giving individuals and families and
    neighborhoods and communities the tools they need to make the most of
    their own lives and to meet our common challenges. In other words, we
    need to focus as much as possible on the ``what'' America needs to do,
    and do as much as we can to let you and people like you all over America
    determine the ``how,'' how it will be done.
        For more than 15 years now there has been a raging debate in our
    country about what the role of the Federal Government should be and
    whether the Government was the problem instead of part of the solution.
    Well, we all know that the era of big Government is over. We're moving
    to a time when large bureaucracies are not only not necessary, they're
    not the most effective way of meeting our common challenges. But I
    submit to you that that does not mean that we can, under the guise of
    saying the Government is the problem, return to a time when all of our
    people were left to fend for themselves. That will not meet the
    challenges of today and tomorrow.
        What works in the global economy is teamwork. What works in the
    global economy is getting diverse people together and finding out who
    has got what skills and figuring out how people can work together for
    their mutual benefit. Individuals can be fulfilled in this kind of world
    only when they are prepared to work with each other to help every one of
    them fulfill their God-given capacities. I believe that more strongly
    than anything else. If you ask me, what is the one most important lesson
    you have learned as President, I would say it is that we must go forward
    together. We cannot go back to the time when people were left to fend
    for themselves under the luxury of believing that anything we do
    together is wrong.
        We do not need a big bureaucracy for every problem, but we don't
    want a weak Government. When I traveled to Washington and Oregon and
    Idaho, to Pennsylvania the other day to see the effects of the terrible
    flooding, no one wanted the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be
    weak; they wanted it to be quick.

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        When I see that for 15 years now, 15 years, the Fortune 500
    companies have been reducing employment--this is not a recent
    development, but small businesses in America have been creating more
    jobs every year than big business is laying off. Indeed, in the last 3
    years, businesses owned by women alone have created more jobs than the
    Fortune 500 have laid off. We do not need a weak Small Business
    Administration. It can be smaller, but it should be strong.
        So what I'd like to do today is to talk about what your role is and
    what our role is and what we have to do together. The idea that
    Washington can actually solve all problems rather than empowering people
    and communities to solve their problem is moving rapidly away.
        Just in the last 3 years, the size of your Federal Government has
    been reduced by 205,000 people. It is now the smallest it's been since
    1965. By the end of this year, the Federal Government will be the
    smallest it's been since 1962. We are getting rid of 16,000 pages of
    Federal regulations. And as I'm sure Carol Browner told you before I
    came, we are trying to find more innovative ways to work in partnership
    not only with local government but also with the private sector.
        We have approved a record number of welfare reform waivers, 53
    different projects for 37 States. We do need welfare reform legislation,
    but you should know that 10 million people, or almost three-quarters of
    all the people on welfare in the United States of America, are covered
    by welfare reform projects already approved by this administration in
    just the last 3 years.
        I want to pass the right kind of welfare reform bill because I'd
    like to get out of the waiver business altogether. I don't want States
    or counties to have to come to Washington every time they want to try
    some new, innovative approach to moving people from welfare to work. We
    know essentially we're stuck with a system which was designed for a
    population different from the population now on welfare. We know that
    what welfare people want and need is the same thing that all of us are
    living with, which is they need to work, but they need to be successful
    parents. And one of the great challenges for America is how every family
    can be successful in the home and at work.
        Therefore, welfare reform should be tough on work and supportive of
    children, not weak on work to save money in the short run and tough on
    kids but within those parameters and with the objective of moving
    everybody who can be moved into the workplace who can become
    independent, who can become self-supporting, who can communicate respect
    to their own children and help to raise their own children better. That
    is the kind of welfare reform we ought to have.
        We passed the unfunded mandates law, which I know you all support.
    For years and years and years it was easy for Congress to cut taxes, cut
    spending, and just solve all the public problems by passing a mandate
    along to you. I remember when I was a Governor once I asked a Member of
    Congress in an election season--I said, which one would you rather be, a
    Member of Congress who cut taxes and cut spending, or a Governor who got
    a mandate and had to raise taxes and spending to meet an order from the
    Federal Government so that the responsibility was always different from
    who was actually carrying the burden of public persuasion? That's what
    the unfunded mandate law was all about, and we did the right thing to
    pass it.
        We've also given you new flexibility to build roads, to turn public
    housing projects into safe, affordable, mixed-income communities. The
    empowerment zone and enterprise community initiative has given Federal
    support to community-based reform. And I was in Michigan yesterday with
    the county executive there, Ed McNamara, and the mayor of Detroit,
    Dennis Archer, at one of our most successful endeavors. I want a second
    round of empowerment zones and enterprise communities. We need to keep
    doing this to give incentives to local people to work together to build
    their own futures. And we're just getting started.
        We know that if we're going to continue doing what we've been doing
    and continue making progress, we have got to give more responsibility,
    not just in the State capitals but also in the county seats and the city
    halls of America where the rubber meets the road and the decisions must
    be made.
        Let me talk just a minute about what I think we should be doing and
    then a little bit about what you and I have to do together for the
    future. First of all, we have to meet the continuing challenges of this
    economy. If I had told anybody 3 years ago that we'd have a 27-year low
    in the combined rates of unemployment and inflation and almost 8 million
    new jobs and

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    a record number of new businesses and a 15-year high in homeownership,
    but half the American people would not have a raise and a lot of people
    would feel very uncertain in the downsizing, and some communities would
    be left out still of the new jobs, you would have found that hard to
    believe. It is because of the nature of the changes that are going on.
        The answer is not to try to put a wall around America or turn around
    and run back into a past that we can never achieve again. The answer is
    to keep pushing until we get all the way through this period of change
    in a way that permits all Americans to win. That's exactly what we did
    the last time we went through a period of change like this. It took us
    decades before. I believe we can do it in less time now because the pace
    of change is so great.
        But let's look at what we have to do. We have to have more growth to
    produce more good jobs and to spread that opportunity to more people,
    and to help people who lose their jobs move through the transition more
    quickly so that they can once again become productive and support their
    families and have the kind of self-respect every American deserves who
    is willing to work for it.
        What should we do? Yesterday, I called on Congress to pass a growth
    agenda within 60 days to build on the work of the last 3 years. I won't
    go through it all now, but let me just mention two or three points.
    First of all, we ought to pass the right kind of balanced budget, and we
    ought to do it now.
        The economic plan of 1993, though it was controversial, cut our
    deficit in half in 3 years, drove interest rates way down. What happened
    with low interest rates? That helped to bring about the homebuilding
    boom and the 15-year high in homeownership. That helped to increase
    incomes by cutting the costs Americans have for their car payments,
    their credit card payments, their home mortgage payments. That helped to
    sustain a long period of growth.
        If we can pass a balanced budget plan, we'll get interest rates down
    again, so that we'll not only be lifting the burden of debt off of
    future generations, we'll be giving the present economy the best
    stimulus it can have to grow and grow and grow. And that means people at
    your level will be able to pay tax revenues they get from earning more
    money to fund the county services that you all desperately need to
    provide.
        But there is another issue in the budget that I know has already
    been discussed here. We're not only still negotiating over how to
    balance the budget for the next 7 years, we're still talking about
    finishing the budget work for this year, and that is very hard on you.
    You have to plan, after all, for daycare services, 911 lines, for jail
    cells. You have a road budget to meet. You have all of these things you
    have to do.
        Without a national budget, you can't plan; you can't answer basic
    questions: What kind of resources can I count on to implement this
    initiative or that one? How much flexibility am I going to have to make
    this happen? It is unacceptable for America's counties, for America's
    cities, for America's States not to know what's coming at them. And the
    effects of this uncertainty are not good. I read the survey you released
    on Friday. A good many of you have had to postpone construction
    projects, reduce services, stop hiring. You're looking at higher costs
    across the board for health care, for welfare, for summer jobs programs.
        Enough is enough. We cannot afford to have our counties stuck in
    suspended animation. You deserve to know what to expect. So I ask you to
    join with me in saying to the Congress, ``You're back in town. We've got
    to stop governing by continuing resolution. It's time to come together
    and pass a budget for this year, but also time to come together and pass
    a budget that will be in balance in 7 years.''
        We can do this. I want to make it clear to you that as a result of
    all the negotiations that went on in the previous months between the
    congressional leaders and the White House, we have now identified
    savings that are common to both the Republican plan and my plan
    amounting to $700 billion. That is more than enough to balance the
    budget and, done right, to protect Medicare and Medicaid, to protect our
    investments in the environment, to protect our investments in education,
    to avoid doing away with the summer jobs program, which I think would be
    a terrible mistake. It is also enough to provide a modest tax cut to
    families who have been struggling to stay ahead over the last several
    years and to give what I think would be the best tax cut of all, a tax
    deduction for the cost of college education and all education expenses
    after high school.
        But also remember it's important to balance the budget, which means
    that all of us, including the President, have to deal with cuts that we

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    may not otherwise like to deal with, because if we balance the budget we
    get the interest rates down again, we keep the economy going, we keep
    creating jobs, we give incomes a chance to continue to rise. That is
    very, very important.
        If you have any doubt about whether this can be done by Republicans
    and Democrats in this environment in an election year, I ask you just to
    look at what's happening today on Capitol Hill. Members of both parties,
    led by Senator Kassebaum of Kansas and Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts,
    are announcing a bipartisan commitment to pass historic legislation that
    will stop insurance companies from cutting off customers just because
    someone in the family gets sick or they change jobs. It is high time.
    This is something that we can do to increase access to all people to
    health care, a critical component of family security in the modern
    world. I applaud Congress for their commitment here, Republicans and
    Democrats alike. I look forward to signing the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill,
    and I hope they will continue.
        We've got 3 weeks until Congress takes a break for Easter. That's
    more than enough time to move ahead on health care reform and to pass
    the balanced budget. There are other things that I think should be done,
    including raising the minimum wage and other aspects of the economic
    growth issue. But just think what would happen if we could do this by
    Easter, just these two things, to pass that health care reform bill and
    to pass the balanced budget plan. Think of the confidence, the spirit,
    the energy it would send throughout America. Think how people would feel
    differently about the ability of the Government to solve problems and
    the ability of the country to move forward and the ability of people in
    Washington to behave in a bipartisan, even a nonpartisan way, in the way
    that so many of you have to do, day-in and day-out.
        We have to do this. But it is not enough. We also have to work with
    you in a partnership to meet the challenges that I outlined in the State
    of the Union. We're working together to strengthen America's families by
    fighting to end the tragedy of domestic violence. Last month, as a part
    of our continuing effort, we set up a national domestic violence
    hotline. This will help, but it won't work alone.
        Counties have a special role to play in this endeavor. Your police
    officers are the ones who respond to the desperate 911 call. Your judges
    are the ones who have to bring domestic abusers to justice. You have to
    make sure that members of your community and your officers of the law
    understand that this is a serious, serious problem in the United States.
    It can't be solved by simply taking repeated abusers out for a walk
    around the block to cool down. This is a crime where training and
    education that you can provide can truly make a difference, a huge
    difference in the quality of childhood and the quality of life in
    America. So I ask you to stand with hundreds of thousands of women who
    are battered each year, with the thousands and thousands of children
    that are abused, and say, ``No more.'' I salute you for what you're
    doing, and I ask you for more.
        We must bring the same spirit of partnership to our efforts to
    provide all Americans with the educational opportunities they need for
    this new era. Let's take the Goals 2000 education reform, for example.
    It says that we should have nationally competitive standards, standards
    that will stand us in good stead in the world, and that those standards
    are needed in a global economy, in the smallest rural community in my
    home State, and in the biggest cities of America. But it says that
    States and counties and school districts should agree to meet them but
    should then have the ability to decide on how to meet them.
        Our administration is taking the lead in setting higher national
    standards and calling for measurable means for determining whether
    they're being met or not, but in giving more flexibility to local
    schools and local entities than ever before in determining how to
    achieve educational excellence. That is a partnership we must embrace
    with great fervor and with enough dedication that we will keep at it
    until the job is done.
        Let me just give you one example. We're going to have to work
    together with the private sector to meet the important national goal of
    connecting every school and every library, every classroom and every
    library in America to the information superhighway by the year 2000. We
    have to do that. We at the national level can provide some seed money
    and some real influence in terms of reaching out to people everywhere to
    try to help them contribute. But you have to do that as well. People in
    the private sector in every State and county and community in America
    are eager to help.

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        Just later this week, I am going out to California where, on one
    day, we will connect 20 percent of the classrooms in the State to the
    Internet in 58 separate counties. That's the downpayment on something
    that must sweep America in the next couple of years. We have to work
    together to clean the environment. And I won't repeat anything that
    Carol Browner said, but you and I know we have to be partners, whether
    it's in dealing with the Superfund issue or other challenges facing us.
        I want to thank this group for the work you did in our development
    of a sustainable development plan for the future of America. You were
    consulted, you were involved, and I appreciate it. I was so glad to see
    one of the officers holding the report when I came in the door today. We
    have to do this together. We have to disabuse our people of the notion
    that you have to grow the economy by weakening the environment and that
    we have to choose a good job over clean air, clean water, and a safe
    future.
        The truth is, over the long run we cannot grow the economy unless we
    preserve the environment. And you and I have to take the lead in doing
    that. We have to help working Americans become winners in this time of
    economic change. I suppose I've spent more time in community colleges
    than any President in history. I've done it because I believe that they
    symbolize the kind of institutions that America needs more of if we're
    going to solve our problems: community placed, driven by the needs of
    the moment, susceptible and flexible to the personal needs and desires
    of the individual students; not political in a negative sense but
    political in a positive sense, in the sense that most of them are highly
    influential in terms of getting the resources and the support they need
    from the public and private sector to drive on into a better future.
    That's what we need more of.
        And that's why I've challenged Congress to collapse 70 separate
    overlapping training programs into a single voucher worth $2,600 a year
    that we can just mail to anyone as soon as they lose their job, and say,
    ``Here, take this to your local educational institution and get back to
    work by learning and moving to a better future, not a darker one.'' That
    is the sort of support that we all need to give.
        And finally, let me say that we have had a remarkable partnership
    through the crime bill, a crime bill that was written after 6 years of
    haggling and passed in 1994, largely through the influence of local law
    enforcement officials; a bill that provides funds for police, for
    punishment, and for prevention; a bill that is helping to move 100,000
    police officers on the street. We are ahead of schedule and under budget
    in that endeavor because local law enforcement officials know how badly
    we need more police officers in community policing settings.
        I am proud to say that this approach is working all over the
    country. I see rates of crime coming down, violent crime, property
    crimes, all kinds of crimes. But we have not succeeded, and we cannot
    believe we have succeeded just because the crime rate is going down,
    first, because the crime rate among juveniles is going up and, secondly,
    because we all know this country still has too many streets, too many
    neighborhoods, too many schools that are too dangerous and too violent.
    And we have to keep at it.
        We cannot tolerate any attempt to repeal the crime bill and to move
    away from strategies that we know are working to lower the crime rate. I
    ask for your support to put more police officers on the street, to keep
    those prevention programs, and to stand up for giving America a future
    when we will once again be surprised when we turn on the television and
    see that a terrible crime has been committed. You want to know when
    we'll win the battle against crime? When you're surprised when you turn
    on the evening news and you read about some violent, outrageous,
    unforgivable act.
        Sustained growth, a balanced budget, stronger families, safer
    streets, a cleaner environment, better education, welfare reform, health
    care for those who need it most: we can do all these things if we will
    do them together. You know, I know that a lot of people are so
    bewildered by the things that are going on in the world today, and I
    know that it is easy to get disheartened. And I read from time to time
    about how people have gone from being skeptical to being cynical. But I
    say to you, my fellow Americans, that is a luxury we cannot afford. If
    you went to work cynical every day, it would be an excuse for you to do
    nothing, and soon you would be out of a job.
        The only people in this country who can't be fired in their roles
    are citizens. The Constitution gives our citizens the right to vote or
    the right not to vote, the right to say what they believe or the right
    to keep silent. And therefore, they ultimately have the right, if they

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    choose, to be cynical. But I want to tell you something: This is a very
    great country. Most people in the world would still give anything to
    have the opportunities Americans have. Most wealthy countries in the
    world would give anything to be able to see a private sector vital
    enough to create the kind of jobs that have been created in this
    economy. And all the problems we have are simply because we are
    fortunate enough to be living at the time of most profound change this
    country has endured in 100 years.
        Now, there are problems associated with that change. There is no
    change that is painless, ever. There never has been, and there never
    will be. There is no such thing as a painless, consequence-free period
    of change. But we should rejoice that we have been given the opportunity
    to serve the public at this moment in our history. And one of the things
    that you can do, because you are so close to the people, is to go back
    home and say, ``Look, there is nothing facing this country we can't
    handle if we'll work together, and cynicism is a poor excuse for
    inaction and is the only thing that will determine our failure.''
        All my life I have believed it was wrong, fundamentally wrong, for
    any human being to be denied the opportunity to make the most of his or
    her own life. That is fundamentally what public life is all about. That
    is what your work is all about. That is what my work is all about. And a
    big part of that is involving our citizens in the process of getting
    through this period of change and transformation.
        I believe if we do that the years ahead of us will be America's best
    years. And if we do it, you can take a full measure of pride and credit
    in that magnificent endeavor.
        Thank you, and God bless you all.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:05 a.m. at the Washington Hilton and
    Towers. In his remarks, he referred to Douglas Bovin, president, and
    Michael Hightower, president-elect, National Association of Counties;
    and Carol M. Browner, Administrator, Environmental Protection Agency.