[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book I)]
[February 16, 1996]
[Pages 275-280]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the Community in Wilkes-Barre
February 16, 1996

    The President. Thank you very much.
    Audience member. We love you!
    The President. Thank you.
    Audience member. Hillary, too!
    The President. Thank you very much.

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    I want to begin by saying that Patrick Murphy did not have the 
easiest job in the world today and that all of his fellow students who 
stood up and cheered him may have made it a little harder even. 
[Laughter] But he hung in there, and he did it very well. And he spoke 
powerfully about this community and his people. I think we ought to give 
him another hand. [Applause]
    Father Lackenmier, I want to congratulate you on the 50th 
anniversary of King's College. You know the Vice President was in 
Pennsylvania just a couple of days ago to celebrate the 50th anniversary 
of the first computer, ENIAC, over in Philadelphia. So Pennsylvania now 
has three 50-year-olds: ENIAC, King's College, and me. When your 
president said that King's College was 50 and so was I going to be 50 
this year, I looked out at all the students, and I thought, it looks a 
lot better on you than it does on me. [Laughter]
    I was delighted to be here today to review the flood damage and hear 
a progress report with your two United States Senators, with Governor 
Ridge, with Congressman Holden, who is also here and does a very fine 
job for his district and Congress, and with Congressman Kanjorski who 
spoke today so well. I can tell you there aren't very many people in the 
Congress that are as effective, as persistent, downright nagging--
[laughter]--in advancing the interests of the people of their district 
as Paul Kanjorski. You are very well served. He is always nice, he is 
always dignified, but he is utterly relentless in your behalf, no matter 
what the issue is.
    And I want to congratulate your young mayor, Mayor McGroarty. It's 
been a long time since I met a public official with so much energy and 
enthusiasm. I don't know if he ever sleeps. And if we could bottle 
whatever it is he has and reproduce it, we wouldn't have to build any 
power plants in America for 10 years. [Laughter] I think he's got a 
great future.
    I also want to thank all the Federal officials who are here with me 
and, in particular, the gentleman who is behind me, James Lee Witt, the 
Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who's been spending 
more time with you and more time in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho than 
he has in Washington, DC, in the last several weeks. He is the kind of 
person, I think, that reflects the very best in our National Government: 
the true spirit of public service.
    And all of the Federal officials here, including the local 
representatives of all of these agencies, I want to thank them as well. 
They have enjoyed having the opportunity to work with you in this 
difficult time.
    I'd like to say one more word about Patrick Murphy, because it makes 
the point I want to make. I'm not going to make fun of him anymore. When 
this disaster was imminent, he and his brother, J.J., led fellow 
students to help fill and pile sandbags. A lot of other young people did 
that as well. Some of the young AmeriCorps volunteers who were 
introduced, our national service volunteers, also worked on that 
program. As a lot of you know, the AmeriCorps program is now headed in 
Washington by your former Senator, Harris Wofford, who also helped to 
create the Peace Corps. I want to say that we need to find ways to 
multiply the spirit shown by Patrick Murphy, by the AmeriCorps 
volunteers, by the students of King's College, if we're going to meet 
our country's challenges.
    A couple of days ago, I was out in Washington State and Oregon 
viewing the floods there--you may have seen the films--and I went into 
the home of a 70-year-old man. He and his wife had literally just lost 
everything they had. He was hard of hearing, and he even lost his 
hearing aid in the flood; the water washed it away. And I thought to 
myself, how do you start over when you're 70? I was walking down the 
street toward this man, and I thought, how will he feel when I come 
there? And he said to me, ``I'm so glad to see you. And I've never met a 
President before, but maybe it wasn't time. This is the first time I've 
ever been able to invite a President into a home with an indoor swimming 
pool.'' [Laughter]
    You know, this is a pretty great country. And the man went on and 
introduced me to his wife and his two daughters and his granddaughter. 
And he was raving about how all of his friends and neighbors came to his 
aid. And they were talking about a man I later met who was a retired 
utility company employee, a naturalized immigrant from Norway, who had 
worked 8 hours with a jackhammer--well up in his sixties--with a cracked 
rib. I don't know if any of you have ever tried to hold a jackhammer in 
the proper place before, but it isn't easy if you're young, strapping, 
strong, and you can breathe well.
    But I was looking at all these people--we were having this talk, and 
when I left this man's

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home, I said, ``I'm really impressed with your sense of humor and the 
way you and your wife are handling this.'' He said, ``As awful as it 
is,'' he said, ``it's wonderful. Look at how we're all behaving.'' He 
said, ``Don't you wish we could be this way all the time?''
    So I say to the people of the Wyoming Valley, to all the communities 
that were hurt so badly, to the people in the rest of Pennsylvania who 
suffered so greatly, all of the members of the families of people who 
lost their lives and those who have suffered heartbreaking losses: Our 
country has been very moved by your spirit and by what you have done. 
Our country has been very moved by individual examples of courage.
    Just a few moments ago, I was meeting in a roundtable with some 
people who worked in this flood and some of your local officials. I met 
young Eric Malone, who is behind me, a 19-year-old world champion jet 
skier who lives just outside Altoona who found out you could run a jet 
ski in a raging flood and saved a lot of lives as a result and risked 
his own life. And I thank him for doing that. I asked him if he would 
give me a ride on his jet ski, but only on a calm lake. [Laughter]
    I want to thank Dr. Christopher Breiseth, the president of Wilkes 
College, who is with us today--[applause]--some of his students are 
there, I guess--for the difficult work he had to do in evacuating his 
school. I want to thank Jean Wilde from Mercy Hospital, who evacuated 
people there. And you know, you always think of a hospital taking people 
in. Can you imagine the psychological pressure of evacuating a hospital, 
the one place every community looks to be a pillar of strength and 
security and hope? I want to thank Jim Siracuse, the Luzerne County 
Emergency Management Director, who coordinated the evacuation of 100,000 
people.
    I'll tell you, folks, when something like this happens, because news 
is instantaneous, I've become just almost like another American. I get 
most of my information off of breaking television news. And all of 
America was watching you and pulling for you, and we never knew, I don't 
think, how serious this was even with all the gushing water we kept 
seeing until we learned that you had to evacuate 100,000 people. That 
got America's attention.
    There are so many others I would mention if I knew them or if we had 
the time. I just want to say that I applaud all of you who looked beyond 
your own needs to help others and to help people get through this 
crisis. You have really shown us, as that elderly gentleman in 
Washington said, that America can rise to its challenges and show its 
best self. And I thank you for that.
    I do want to say something to all the people in Pennsylvania who 
tried to be good friends and good neighbors to those who suffered 
losses. Mr. Witt and I worked together for years in Arkansas, where I 
was the Governor. We saw whole little communities buried in floods. 
We've rescued people off the roofs of their house. We have a State with 
the highest per capita incidents of tornadoes in the country. I have 
seen whole communities decked by tornadoes. I have seen wind blowing so 
hard that literally thin sheets of paper were going so strong they 
pierced the bark of trees. I've seen trucks in the tops of trees and 
houses moved half a block off their foundations with the foundations 
apparently untouched. And of course, I have seen a lot of people who 
lost everything. And I would just say this: For all the wonderful things 
you have done, it's important to remember that the people who really 
sustained great losses were more or less in shock for the first several 
days after it occurred. And a lot of the most difficult times will come 
now and maybe even a week or two or a month from now.
    So I ask you to remember that, because this is something the Federal 
Government can't do, that one-on-one personal commitment it takes to get 
people all the way through a tragedy. I will say this: I know that the 
work of rebuilding and repairing this State is not over when the flood 
waters go down or when the emergencies have passed. And I do want to 
assure you that we will do everything we can to continue to do our part 
until this State and all its communities are completely rebuilt. I know 
that about 32,000 people registered for help through FEMA at the 800 
number or one of our disaster centers, that we've had over 19,000 home 
inspections already, that more than $23 million in payments have been 
applied for and dispensed through the disaster housing program.
    I want to compliment Denise Ginger, who is also up on the stage with 
me. She was at our roundtable, and she got her check within 2 days of 
her home inspection. And there it was, and she wasn't sure what it was 
for, because there it was 2 days later. And she was such an honorable 
person she would not cash that Government check until she made abso-


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lutely sure what it was for. I told her if we had a million more 
Americans like her, we wouldn't have any problems in this country. And I 
thank her. Stand up there. Thank you. [Applause]
    We have approved more than 600 small business loans worth about 
$10\1/2\ million to help small businesses and individual homeowners and 
renters and nonprofit organizations and some not-so-small businesses as 
well. The Department of Transportation has now committed over $20 
million. I told the mayor today that we were going to give him $400,000 
to fix that canal along Parkin Street where I was to make sure that it 
doesn't break again and that it is still protection against the floods.
    We are going to keep working with you until this job is finished. 
That's what we did in working with Florida and California and the States 
along the Mississippi River. And we want to do what Congressman 
Kanjorski says; we want to prevent these problems from coming again.
    In 1993, in the wake of those horrible floods, those 500-year floods 
in the Middle West, the Congress passed legislation that I strongly 
supported to enable us to take up to 15 percent of the value of the 
disaster payments to the State when something like this happens, to be 
spent on mitigation to try to protect people against it recurring. I 
said today I was very encouraged by my conversations with the Governor. 
When we get a Pennsylvania State plan, we will look forward to putting 
that money in here, and we want to see people protected from having to 
go through this again. So far as we can, we will work with you until 
that job is done as well.
    I'd like to close with a few words that refer to some of the things 
the president of this college talked about in his opening remarks. If 
you look at what happens in this flood, you know that when our country 
works together, we never lose. If you ask me what is the lesson that you 
have learned most clearly in the last 3 years and a few weeks as 
President, I would have to tell you that that is the lesson I have 
learned. The era of big Government is fading. We now have the smallest 
Federal Government we've had in 30 years.
    All big organizations are going through changes. We see that 
everywhere. It's part of the information and technology revolution 
that's going on. We don't need large, big, centralized bureaucracies to 
solve grassroots problems or to perform big, national functions; we know 
that. But that does not mean that we can go back to a time in America 
where people were simply left to fend for themselves.
    One of the great and enduring contributions of the Catholic Church 
to this country are the Catholic charities and the mission you see in 
every Catholic college and university in this country of service, of 
understanding that we are all stronger when we help each other to live 
up to our God-given capacities. And that is something every American 
must remember as we move into this new age.
    We are working to balance the budget in Washington. We should do 
that. We never ran a permanent deficit in this country just all the time 
until about the early eighties. We've cut the deficit in half in the 
last 3 years, and we ought to finish the job. But we ought to do it 
consistent with our values, which include our responsibilities to each 
other, to our parents, to our children, to families who have disabled 
children. That's what we ought to do.
    If you look at the challenges that I tried to set before our Nation 
for the future in the State of the Union Address, in every single 
instance, there is something for everyone to do, including your 
Government; it should be smaller, but it should not be weak. When the 
floods come, you don't want FEMA and the Small Business Administration 
and the Department of Transportation to be weak. When we argue to open 
markets so our people can get a fair deal in selling their goods and 
services abroad, you don't want a trade program that is weak.
    And when people tell you that Government is inherently no good, just 
remember this: In the last 30 years, we have spent one-half of your 
money, one-half of the taxes that you've paid to the Federal Government 
on three things: national defense, Social Security, and Medicare. What 
did you get for that? We won the cold war; the poverty rate among 
elderly people was cut in half; and if you live to be 65 and you start 
drawing Medicare in America, elderly people have the longest life 
expectancy of any group of elderly people in the entire world. I think 
we got our money's worth.
    Part of my college education was paid for by a national defense 
education loan. I was proud to pay it back on time with interest, but I 
was proud to get it, too. I think America was better off because people 
in my generation were able to get help to go to college. And

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these young people today live in a time when the percentage of a 
family's income, a middle-class family's income, required to finance a 
college education is far greater than it was when my generation went to 
college.
    So I say to you, we should invest in scholarships for children who 
need it. We should invest in the college loan program. We should do 
that. I have sent a budget to the Congress consistent with the balanced 
budget plan that will let a million young people engage in work-study 
programs so they can help to work themselves through college and that 
would give our families a tax deduction for the cost of college tuition 
up to $10,000 a year. I think that's the kind of thing we ought to have.
    So I ask you to think about these challenges that we face. How are 
we going to build stronger families and give every child a childhood? 
How are we going to guarantee quality education to all Americans? How 
are we going to declare or develop a system for economic security for 
working families?
    You know, this is an amazing economy we have. We have more new 
businesses started every year than ever before. The last 3 years, every 
year broke a record. We have more new self-made millionaires than ever 
before; not people who gave them anything, people who used the 
opportunities of this age. But we also have more than half of our wage 
earners working harder without ever getting a raise. And we have in a 
lot of big companies people who got downsized in these corporations who 
now don't know what they're supposed to do, and we have to find things 
for them to do.
    So what we have to do is to find a way consistent with our values to 
keep the economy going, to keep creating more jobs, but to do it in a 
way that enables every American working family to benefit from that, 
consistent with our values. And we know if we grow together that we'll 
all be better off.
    If everybody has a chance, we're all better off. That's the kind of 
thing I want you to think about. Every single challenge, you have to ask 
yourself: What should I be doing about that; what should my community be 
doing about that; can my church, can my synagogue do something about 
that; should my State do something about that; should my Nation do 
something about that, whether it's a challenge for more jobs or safer 
streets or a cleaner environment or working to keep the world more 
peaceful and secure for our children and their future? We have to do 
everything we can to work together. And I'm doing what I can to see that 
this Government continues on its course of reform and does more every 
day to earn your trust and respect.
    But I just want to say this: Did you ever notice how there are no 
cynics in a flood, there are no cynics in a tornado, there are never any 
cynics in a natural disaster? Why? Cynicism is a luxury you cannot 
afford when you have work to do. One of the things I want to say to you 
is that these young people and their enthusiasm today, and those four 
young people doing their service through AmeriCorps, that's what makes 
this country great, the spirit of people like this young man. He could 
have said, ``I'm 19 years old. I've got 60, 70 years to live. I like 
riding my jet ski and winning prizes. Why should I risk my neck putting 
that jet ski in a raging river?'' He could have stayed home, and no one 
would have ever known the difference--no one.
    That is the way we ought to live every day. It really bothers me 
when I hear people say, well, they don't believe in our country, and we 
can't make progress, and everything's not going to get better, and none 
of these people we put in office are any good. That's a bunch of bull. 
And it's a lousy excuse for inaction. It's a lousy excuse for inaction.
    Just remember something. I have one opportunity that none of you can 
ever have unless you get to be President, and it has nothing to do with 
me. Whenever I leave the borders of the United States of America and I 
go to other countries and I see people cheering, they are not cheering 
for Bill Clinton, they are not even cheering for the President, they are 
cheering for America.
    I cannot possibly convey--I don't have the words to tell you what it 
feels like to represent all of you and to be the country in the eyes of 
people from other lands. But I can tell you this: They know we're a 
pretty great place. John Kennedy said once, in the middle of the cold 
war, that freedom has many difficulties and our country was far from 
perfect, but we never had to put up a wall to keep our people in. And I 
want all of you to remember that.
    I believe that the young people at this college are facing the 
greatest future, the greatest age of possibility our country has ever 
known. But every one of us knows that we have enormous challenges. There 
are a lot of people fulfilling their dreams, but we have to make the 
Amer-


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ican dream available to everybody willing to work for it. There are a 
lot of people who are doing well, but there are still things that are 
dividing our people when we ought to be pulling together and being 
united.
    And when you are tempted to give up on your country or to give up on 
yourself or to give up on your community or to give up on some problem 
you're facing in your family, remember this flood. And remember how 
people just showed up and did what they were supposed to do. Remember 
how courage seemed ordinary and how cynicism was a luxury nobody could 
afford. And if you can recapture that, then your community, your State, 
and your Nation will have a future that is better than anything that has 
happened so far.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 1:30 p.m. in the gymnasium at King's 
College. In his remarks, he referred to Patrick Murphy, student 
government president, and Rev. James Lackenmier, president, King's 
College.