    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
    [July 23, 1996]
    [Pages 1185-1190]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks to the Community in Sacramento, California
    July 23, 1996

        Thank you. Thank you, Gail, for that fine introduction. Thank you,
    ladies and gentlemen, for the warm welcome in more ways than one.
    [Laughter] This is a beautiful Sacramento day, thank you. It's a little
    hot, but it's still awfully pretty. You have so many trees in this
    community; a lot of you at least are under the trees, and that's good.
    The mayor told me Sacramento had 380,000 people and 250,000 trees, and I
    think that's about the right ratio. I wish every community had that
    many.
        Let me say, Mr. Mayor, I'm delighted to be here again and to be here
    with you. I've enjoyed working with you especially on developing a new
    plan for the future of McClellan and for dealing with a lot of your
    other defense and base-closing issues in this community. But you blew my
    cover today; you pointed out that I have been here four times. This
    morning before we got here, I was complaining to my staff that I had not
    come to Sacramento enough. But I still think I haven't been here enough.
    I like coming here, and so I thank you.
        Thank you, Chief Venegas, for your words and for your work and for
    the remarkable work that you and the others in law enforcement are

    [[Page 1186]]

    doing in this community. I want to thank Congressman Fazio and
    Congressman Matsui. I can tell you that they are clearly among the most
    well-respected people in Congress in either party because they put their
    work where their words are. They actually try to deliver; they actually
    try to do something that will make a difference in the lives of people,
    and I admire them so much.
        I also want to thank, Congressman--I want to thank your wife, Doris
    Matsui, who works in the White House and has done a remarkable job for
    us. Thank you, Doris. Your Lieutenant Governor, Gray Davis, is here
    today; I thank him for being here. Thank you, Gray. Thank you, Art
    Torres, for being here.
        I'd also like to thank the law enforcement officials who are here,
    the Central Sierra Chiefs, the Sacramento law enforcement and community
    chaplains, the people involved in the Safe Streets effort. And there are
    more than 40 Sacramento neighborhood associations represented here,
    people who are making this a safer and better place to live.
        Most of all I want to tell you that I'm honored to be here today, to
    thank Gail Jones and the people at WEAVE and all of you who work to
    fight against domestic violence. As a father, as a husband, as someone
    who knows personally something about this issue, I want to join with
    families throughout California and our Nation in pledging to do all that
    I can to stop violence against women and innocent children. No child
    should ever have to grow up in a home where a gun is fired, a knife is
    flashed, a hand is raised in anger. And we have to work to do something
    about this.
        If I might, I'd like to explain to you how this issue of domestic
    violence, which is a very big one for me and for Hillary, plays into my
    larger view of what we should be doing as a country. When I was a
    Governor and when we had more private time, Hillary and I spent a lot of
    time, especially around holidays, in shelters run by friends of ours in
    Little Rock with women and with children, talking to them, encouraging
    them, asking them about their circumstances, getting them to look to the
    future, and trying to support in whatever we could the activities of the
    wonderful people who are engaged in that work in our hometown.
        But this is a very important part of what I think we should be doing
    as a country. When I became President I did so with a simple, clear
    vision of how I wanted our country to look as we move into the next
    century, which is only 4 years away. There are three things I want for
    America. I want the American dream to be alive for every single man and
    woman and boy and girl who is willing to work for it, no matter what
    their race, their background, their income, their gender, their
    condition of disability. I want this country to continue to be the light
    of the world and the leader of the world for peace and freedom and
    security and prosperity in a new era, in which the cold war is fading
    away but we still have to deal with things like terrorism and ethnic,
    religious, and racial hatreds crossing national lines, the proliferation
    of weapons, the proliferation of drug dealing and organized crime. This
    country needs to be fighting that fight around the world to keep it
    better here at home for our people. And finally, as you look around this
    crowd today and you see a picture of America, I want our country to go
    into the next century strengthened by our diversity, not weakened by it.
    I want us to be coming together, not drifting apart.
        To achieve that vision, we all need to do what we can to create more
    opportunity for all of our people, to demand more responsibility from
    all of our people, and to create a real community in America where we
    know we're going forward together, we're going up or down together,
    we're determined to make the most of this together. For me, that means
    giving people the tools to make the most of their own lives and to build
    strong families. It means asking people to assume responsibility not
    just for themselves but for their families, their neighborhoods, their
    communities, and their country. It means reforming Government to make it
    smaller and less bureaucratic and less burdensome but also to make sure
    it is strong enough to fulfill the responsibilities that we have to meet
    together, things like keeping a clean environment, making sure the water
    and food we use are safe, making sure our young people have the
    educational opportunities they need, building a strong economy, and
    making our streets safe.
        Today we're talking about strengthening our families. One of the
    most important things we can do is to reform our welfare system to make
    it possible for people to move to independence so they can support their
    children and so they can raise them well. But I think it's important
    that we ask and answer this question in the midst of this great welfare
    debate. What is it

    [[Page 1187]]

    that we want for poor children and poor families in America? I think
    what we want is what we want for middle class families and for wealthy
    families. We want people to be able to succeed at work and at home, and
    we don't want to have to choose one or the other.
        In the last 4 years, we've given 40 States permission to try
    experiments to move people from welfare to work in a way that was tough
    on work but good for children. There are now 1.3 million fewer people on
    welfare than there were the day I took office. And child support
    collections have gone up 40 percent as we get people to support their
    children.
        Do we need welfare reform legislation? We do. We do because States
    shouldn't have to get approval every time they want to try an
    experiment. We do because we need to do more to strengthen child support
    collection across State lines. If everybody paid the child support they
    owe we would move 800,000 women and children off welfare tomorrow
    morning, if everybody paid that.
        On the other hand, we want a bill that actually is welfare reform.
    You can put wings on a pig, but you don't make it an eagle. [Laughter]
    We want real welfare reform. The Olympics are going on--I like to jog,
    but I couldn't make it in the 100-meter dash. We want real welfare
    reform.
        Today the Senate, I want you to know, took some major steps to
    improve the bill going through Congress. It significantly increases
    support for the nutritional and the health care needs of young children
    who happen to be on welfare. And that's encouraging. If we can keep this
    progress up, if we can make it bipartisan, then we can have a real
    welfare reform bill, that honors work and protects children, coming to
    the White House for my signature. We can reduce the welfare rolls more,
    and we can achieve for poor families what we want for all families,
    having people succeed at home and at work. That is my goal, and that is
    what I want America's goal to be.
        The first thing we have to do if we want families to succeed is to
    create an economy in which there is opportunity, in which people can
    find jobs. We changed the economic strategy of America in 1993. After
    quadrupling the debt for 12 years, we had a lot of debt, a huge annual
    deficit, and the slowest job growth since the Great Depression. We said
    we'd cut the debt in half, expand trade in American products, and do
    more to invest in our people, in technology, in research, in
    environmental protection, in things that will create the jobs of
    tomorrow. And after 4 years we now have a deficit that is 60 percent
    lower than it was when I took office. The deficit's going down. You need
    to know that the Government's deficit is going to go down 4 years in a
    row under one administration for the first time since the 1840's. And
    I'm proud of that.
        And that economy with lower interest rates has produced over 10
    million new jobs, 3.7 million new homeowners, the fastest rate of
    homeownership growth in 30 years, and the lowest rates of unemployment
    and inflation in 27 years. We are moving the economy in the right
    direction. California has its lowest unemployment rate in 5 years. And
    for the first time in a decade, the average wages of working people are
    finally beginning to go up instead of to be stagnant. We are moving it
    in the right direction.
        This is not a record to reverse but not a record to rest on, either.
    We have to do more, and the previous speakers alluded to some things. We
    ought to pass that health care reform bill that says you don't lose your
    health insurance when you change jobs or somebody in your family gets
    sick. We ought to make it easier for people who work in small businesses
    or people who are self-employed to start saving through a pension plan
    that they can keep even when they lose their jobs and they can keep
    throughout a lifetime, that will be secure. We ought to raise the
    minimum wage. It's going to be at a 40-year low if we don't do it, and
    we're working on it.
        And the best tax cut of all we could give is to give people a tax
    deduction for the cost of college tuition for their children or
    themselves. And on top of that, I have asked the Congress to make 2
    years of education after high school as universal as a high school
    education is today by giving people a refundable tax credit worth $1,500
    a year to go to any community college in America for 2 years. That's
    what we ought to do.
        To try to help people succeed at home and work, the first bill I
    signed was the family and medical leave law, which says you don't lose
    your job if you take 12 weeks off when there's a baby born or a sick
    parent in your home, you have a genuine emergency. Twelve--listen to
    this--12 million Americans have used the

    [[Page 1188]]

    family leave law in the last 3 years, and every study shows there has
    been no significant damage to American business. We are creating jobs at
    a rapid rate, not losing them. It is good for the business community to
    take care of the families of working people. It is the right thing to
    do, and it is good.
        We tried to help families raise their children by challenging the
    entertainment community to come up with a ratings program for children's
    television and a V-chip on new televisions so people can control the
    access of their young children to programs with excessive violence or
    other inappropriate material. And we're doing our best and I hope we win
    to stop the advertising of tobacco products to children and the sales
    and distribution to them. That is wrong and not right.
        But as the chief said a moment ago, all the economic opportunity in
    the world doesn't amount to much if people aren't safe in their homes,
    on their streets, if our children aren't safe in their schools. We have
    worked very hard to help communities fight crime. We did pass a bill in
    1994 to create 100,000 more police officers on the street. Forty-four
    thousand of those police officers have already been funded. We are ahead
    of schedule and under budget on that. California has gotten over 6,000
    of those new officers. We have awarded Sacramento County $12\1/2\
    million to hire or redeploy 191 new officers; 56 of them are already
    patrolling the streets of Sacramento. That is a good thing for the
    United States. And in California and in Sacramento, the serious crime
    rate is coming down, not going up, for a change. We need to keep doing
    that.
        Mr. Matsui mentioned the Brady law. When that passed, a lot of
    people said we were going to take their guns away. There's not a single
    hunter in California or my home State or any place else who's lost a
    hunting rifle because of the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. But
    I'll tell you who has lost out: 60,000 felons, fugitives, and stalkers
    have not been able to get handguns because of the Brady bill. It was the
    right thing to do.
        We have more to do, more to do in our schools. In the last few weeks
    I've been in Long Beach, California; yesterday I was in Monrovia,
    California, to celebrate California communities that are using things
    like school uniforms, tougher enforcement of truancy laws, curfews,
    things designed to reduce school dropout, to reduce juvenile violence.
    There is a lot more to do, but we can move in the right direction if we
    do this as a community. The most important thing the chief might have
    said is that you've got people in your community working with the police
    officers to try to prevent crime before it happens and catch criminals
    when it does. That is the most important thing. I want to encourage you
    to stay with it.
        We will never be fully successful until we deal with this issue of
    domestic violence and treat it as a public, not just a private, issue.
    It is a terrible, terrible problem. There's no such thing as a perfect
    family, we all know that. But there's a lot of difference in a family
    with a few problems and a family that is terrorized by violence. This is
    not a women's issue; this is an American issue. And every man in America
    ought to be just as concerned about it.
        We passed the Violence Against Women Act. We set up a program to
    provide funds to help communities train police officers who would be
    specially equipped to do this. One of the most impressive Americans I
    have met since I have been President is a young police officer in
    Nashville, Tennessee, who grew up in a family of five or six children
    that was ripped apart by domestic violence. He is devoting his entire
    life to strengthening the ability of his police department and police
    departments around the country to deal with domestic violence. And the
    murder rate from domestic violence in his community has dropped by 50
    percent since he started doing his work. That is what we need every
    place in America, people like that who care about that issue.
        The WEAVE Center here gets help under this program, and soon
    California will receive $11\1/2\ million in grants to community groups
    to help fight domestic violence. Our program on police and community
    policing has recently awarded $300,000 to the city police department and
    the county sheriff's department to help train police officers here to do
    more to fight domestic violence.
        We've also launched a 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week toll-free hotline
    so people in trouble could find out how to get emergency help, find
    shelter, or report abuse to authorities. Listen to this: In just 5
    months this hotline has become a lifeline to thousands of women who had
    nowhere else to turn. It has answered more than 35,000 calls--a national
    hotline on domestic abuse. And I never miss an opportunity to give

    [[Page 1189]]

    you the number. It's 1-800-799-S-A-F-E, SAFE. I want more people to call
    that hotline. It's saving lives, and I'm proud of it.
        To give you an idea of what a big problem this is, listen to this:
    The National Legal Services Corporation, present in most communities in
    our country, says that one in every three cases they handle is a family
    law case--one in three. In 1995, 59,000 of them were attempts by poor
    women to get legal protection from abusive husbands; 9,300 of them
    involved neglected and abused children. If we want to protect people
    against domestic violence, we must not destroy the Legal Services
    Corporation; we ought to let them do their jobs so they can help the
    rest of us protect people.
        We have to do more to hear the cries for help as well. And Gail
    mentioned this. We cannot do what we need to do on the issue of domestic
    violence unless we do something about the stunning fact that the 911
    emergency number system today is completely overburdened. Today, it is
    groaning under the weights of hundreds of thousands of calls a year.
    Victims of domestic abuse, victims of all violent crime are having a
    harder and harder time getting through. Sometimes they have to wait up
    to 30 minutes for the phone to be answered. That can be way too long.
    Sometimes they never get through at all. Last year in Los Angeles,
    325,000 calls were abandoned before the operator could answer. Who knows
    how many of them involved life-threatening emergencies.
        The reason for the problem is simple and straightforward. Today,
    most calls to 911 are important and serious, but they're not
    emergencies. They should be handled elsewhere. In some areas, 90 percent
    of all the calls to 911 are not emergencies. Callers may have a
    legitimate reason to reach the police, but their calls don't involve
    crimes in progress or life-threatening situations that need immediate
    action through 911. It just is the only number they know, and so they
    call it.
        So I have asked the Attorney General to work with the Federal
    Communications Commission, our Nation's law enforcement leaders, and the
    telecommunications industry to relieve the burden on 911 by establishing
    a new number like 911 for nonemergency telephone calls to the police. I
    asked the telephone companies to help us meet this challenge, to make it
    happen. People ought to be able to get in touch with law enforcement
    easily in any situation, but we have to make sure that emergency
    situations get the special attention they need.
        Citizens will also have to do their part. They'll have to learn this
    new number, and they'll have to be responsible--they'll have to use 911
    when there is an emergency--so they don't keep other emergencies from
    being addressed. We need a new national community policing number that's
    just as simple and easy to remember as 911, so that if you have a tip
    for the police, if you see a suspicious activity, if a car alarm is
    going off, you will still be able to call a community policing number.
    But if you have a real emergency, like domestic violence, you can call
    911 and this time your call will go through.
        Let me say finally that none of these measures will substitute for
    people like you supporting programs like WEAVE. And if you're lucky
    enough not to have ever faced this sort of problem, then you'll just
    have to do it out of the goodness of your heart. But that's what in the
    end will save our country and enable us to go into the next century as
    the strongest and best country in the world, the goodness of our
    collective heart.
        When Hillary and Chelsea and I went down to open the Olympics, I had
    the opportunity to speak to the American team. And I looked at them and
    I realized just looking at them--great looking people--that if they were
    not in that room with me, identified as the American team, if they were
    just out there in the Olympic Village wandering around, you could look
    at them and you wouldn't have any earthly idea where they're from. They
    could look like they're representing a Latin American country, a
    Caribbean country, a Middle Eastern country, an Asian country, an
    African country, a Nordic country. Why? Because this is not a country
    defined by our race, this is a country defined by our values, by the
    Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the
    belief in the dignity of all people.
        And what we in Government should be doing is empowering you to make
    the most of your own lives, to meet your challenges, to protect your
    values. I see some hats out here of some of our young people who are
    involved in the AmeriCorps program. And I just want to say to you that,
    to me, more than any other single thing our administration has done,
    that symbolizes what kind of America we're trying to build. All kinds of
    folks can be in AmeriCorps. They may come from poor families; they may
    come

    [[Page 1190]]

    from wealthy families. They're mostly someplace in between. They get
    some credit, some money to pay for their college education by devoting a
    year or two of their lives to helping other people meet the challenges
    of their lives, meeting our common responsibilities. That's what WEAVE
    does. That's what Sacramento is doing. And if America does it, nothing
    can keep our best days from lying in the future.
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 11:45 a.m. outside the Women Escaping A
    Violent Environment (WEAVE) Counseling Center. In his remarks, he
    referred to Gail Jones, WEAVE executive director; Mayor Joseph Serna,
    Jr., and Chief of Police Arturo Venegas of Sacramento; and Art Torres,
    California Democratic Party chair.