[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[July 23, 1996]
[Pages 1190-1192]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks to the McClellan Air Force Base Local Redevelopment Authority 
and an Exchange With Reporters in Sacramento
July 23, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Please sit down, everybody. Well, thank 
you. I know you've been meeting, and I don't want to take a lot of time 
because I want to spend most of my time just listening to you. But I've 
had a chance to talk to Congressman Fazio and Congressman Matsui, and 
Leon and I were visiting with them earlier. I know that this last year 
has not been easy for you and I have--frankly, it has not been easy for 
me to try to help you because Congress has fiercely opposed my efforts 
to try to privatize more of the maintenance operations more easily, as 
I'm sure you all know.
    But we are still committed to making this work, and I am convinced 
we can make it work. I believe that the potential of this base is very 
great. I feel as strongly about that as I did when we decided to 
undertake this course, and we will do everything we can under the law to 
help you. My main purpose in being here today is to find out if there 
are things that you think we can do that we haven't done, and we're 
anxious to get after it and do more.
    I know that you know all this, but I think that it's worth 
recounting that we have taken some steps in the last few weeks that I 
believe will help: say that the DOD will maintain the microelectronic 
center, keeping the commissary and the base exchange open, providing 
about $4\1/2\ million to retrain 1,500 civilian workers, providing some 
more money for the casting emission reduction program, which I'm very 
interested in because of the idea of developing environmentally friendly 
ways of providing for casting metal parts I think is a very important 
thing. It has enormous potential for a significant sector of our 
economy. And of course, I know that you know that the Department of 
Energy is going to provide $800,000 for your nuclear reactor facility 
for research on treatment for inoperable brain tumors, which is 
something that's acquired a lot more interest in the last couple of 
years because there seemed to be so many of them.
    And there are other things that we can do, I'm sure. I'm committed 
to doing them. I just wanted to come here and kind of get an update from 
you, tell you that I understand some of your frustrations, particularly 
on putting up more business for this privatization in place. We have 
worked very hard for it, and we have been, frankly, frustrated that 
people who say they believe we ought to privatize everything don't seem 
to be interested in helping us on this. But I'm not discouraged, and I'm 
prepared to go on and do everything I can. And as I said, I mostly just 
want to hear from you and get whatever ideas you have. And I thank you 
for giving me the chance to be here.

TWA Flight 800

    Q. Mr. President, can we ask you for just a second to give us an 
update on TWA 800?
    The President. Yes. I got a report already, one report from James 
Lee Witt whom I asked to go up there and try to kind of coordinate 
things and make sure that we were doing everything we could be doing for 
the families as well as make sure that all of our group was working 
together with the State and local people.

[[Page 1191]]

    I think it's important to say that I believe progress is being made 
in the investigation, progress is being made in identification and 
recovery. But again I would say--I read the news reports this morning, 
and the important thing I want to emphasize at this moment is that we 
must not draw a conclusion until we're sure that the conclusion is 
supported by the facts. And I cannot say that I've learned anything 
today which enables me to give you a definite conclusion about the cause 
of the accident.
    But right now I'm very concerned about just getting all the evidence 
we can collected and dealing with these families and making sure that 
they're treated in the most humane way and that they get their answers 
as quickly as possible. So those are our priorities. We're working on 
them. I do not have a definite answer at this moment.
    Q. Mr. President, there seems to be some confusion about whether or 
not chemical residue of some kind was found on remains or on debris 
removed from the aircraft. Can you clear up that confusion, sir?
    The President. Well, I think the confusion would be what the 
evidence supports. There is some--traces of some chemicals have been 
identified, but in the way that they were identified, though, I 
believe--the stories that I read implied, I think, more than the 
evidence supported at the moment. And I'm not criticizing anybody 
because we're all desperate to find an answer to this.
    But based on the reports that I have read, and I'm getting regular 
reports on this both orally and in writing, I cannot tell you that the 
evidence establishes a cause of the accident. So finding various traces 
of things may indicate that something happened, and it may not. But 
right now, the people we have looking at this have not drawn a firm 
conclusion that's been relayed to any of us.
    Q. How long do you think it will take to make an analysis of it?
    The President. Well, I don't know, but they're working very hard on 
it. I mean, believe me, we don't have another priority. So as quick as 
we can find something out, you'll know it.

Welfare Reform

    Q. [Inaudible]--Senate on welfare--[inaudible].
    The President. What did you say?
    Q. [Inaudible]--Senate on welfare--[inaudible].
    The President. Well, I think they adopted two good amendments today. 
But I think the question that you ought to ask yourself in evaluating 
that bill, including the amendments that were adopted, which I favor, is 
does this weaken the protections we give to children in our country? 
That's the major issue to me.
    A lot of the savings in the welfare bill actually have nothing 
whatever to do with welfare. They're just part of the budgetary calculus 
of the overall balanced budget plan. They're necessary to finance the 
tax cuts and the other things in their plan. And so I just don't want to 
do anything that hurts kids.
    They adopted two good amendments. I applaud them for doing it. The 
bill's going to go to conference. I'm going to keep working with them, 
and we'll see if we can all agree on something that is acceptable. The 
actual provisions of the bill that apply to welfare per se are much 
better and basically pretty good, including putting several billion 
dollars more for child care.
    The savings in the bill that I don't agree with, except for the 
voucher--the absence of giving the States the option to provide some 
assistance for people who run out of their time limits are for their 
children. That's the only welfare issue that I'm aware of that's still 
hanging out there. The rest of the issues basically relate to budget 
cuts that will affect poor working people, as much as anything else, and 
their children.
    A lot of these food stamp cuts will affect poor working mothers, 
minimum-wage mothers and their children. Or the cuts to legal immigrants 
are likely to affect people who come to this country and may be middle 
class, may be even upper middle class, but then through no fault of 
their own, after paying taxes here for years, something happens to them 
that affects their children, they get in a car wreck, they get cancer, 
they get mugged. These are things that happen to people who live 
anywhere in the world, and they can happen to people here.
    So I'm concerned about the impact of some of the provisions of this 
on children. But I still believe--since it's getting better, I'm 
optimistic we can make it even better in the conference, and I'll just 
keep working at it and try to get it done.

[[Page 1192]]

Note: The President spoke at 3 p.m. in the Commanders' Air Room at 
McClellan Air Force Base. In his remarks, he referred to Chief of Staff 
Leon E. Panetta.