[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1996, Book II)]
[August 28, 1996]
[Pages 1399-1404]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks in Kalamazoo, Michigan
August 28, 1996

    The President. Thank you. Thank you so much.
    Audience members. Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!

[[Page 1400]]

    The President. Thank you. Thank you all for being here and for your 
wonderful reception. Thank you all way over here in the corner for being 
here in big numbers, and back here. I think we should begin by thanking 
the Western Michigan University Band. They've been wonderful to us 
today, and we thank you. Thank you very much.
    I want to thank Mayor Barbara Larson and the city and county 
officials who welcomed us here. I brought a lot of distinguished 
Michiganders with me: Congressman Bart Stupak and his wife, Laurie, from 
the Upper Peninsula; former Governor Blanchard, also our former 
Ambassador to Canada; Frank Garrison, the president of the AFL-CIO in 
Michigan; your attorney general, Frank Kelley; and many others. I know 
that before I came here there was another program. I thank Beverly Moore 
for emceeing it. I thank Linda Comer for what she said and for being a 
teacher. I thank Tim Eder of the National Wildlife Federation, Michigan 
chapter--that's a very important group and a very important part of our 
commitment to the environment in the future; your congressional 
candidate, Clarence Annen. I'd also like to recognize a Paralympian who 
is here from your community, a medal winner in the national goal ball 
team, Sherry Gordon. Congratulations, Sherry. Where are you? There she 
is. Bless you. Congratulations.
    I know that I'm in Comstock Township, right? So I'd like to thank 
the supervisor, Joe VanBruggen, for welcoming us here. And I'd like to 
thank Kristi Carabula, the county Democratic chair, who helped to get a 
lot of you here. I thank her.
    I'd like to thank the community members who are here behind me. 
First, I want to recognize Representative Ed LaForge. Thank you, Ed, for 
being here with us. I see you've got some signs here.
    I want to thank these young people who are here with me today: the 
Comstock Boy Scout and Cub Scout Troop and Pack 221; Brownie Troop 624; 
the Comstock YWCA; community citizen leaders; prime-time program 
representatives; the Kalamazoo Recycle Rangers--I like that; that sounds 
good--Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center; Vicksburg High School 
Adventure Club and FFA; and the Kazoo School. Thank you all for being 
here.
    I want to thank my good friend Senator Carl Levin for being here 
today and supporting the environment in general and for being America's 
number one fighter for the Great Lakes and uniform quality standards for 
the Great Lakes water. By the way, I'm sure you all know we've still got 
some work to do on that, so we can use 6 more years of Carl Levin to 
finish our work on the Great Lakes.
    I want to thank Katie McGinty, the Chair of our Environmental 
Council in the White House. She's done a wonderful job on this and many 
others things. And most of all, I want to thank Mary Brown and her 
grandson, Dan Cook. Now, to give you some idea in what happens to you 
when you're young, as opposed to when you're old, I asked Dan Cook how 
old he was, and he said, ``I'm 10.'' And I looked at him, and I said, 
``Now, Dan, are you 10?'' He said, ``Well, I'm almost 10.'' [Laughter] 
Well, I'm almost 49, too--[laughter]--in the reverse direction. There 
aren't many young people his age who could have spoken so well and so 
forcefully. Didn't he do a good job? Thank you very, very much, Dan. And 
thank you, Mary Brown, for your lifetime of commitment to the quality of 
the environment in your State and your area.
    Folks, you know, I've been on this train the last couple of days 
going through the heartland of America from West Virginia to Kentucky, 
to Ohio, to Michigan. Leaving you, I'm going on now to Michigan City, 
Indiana, and then I will fly to Chicago. I've been on this train for two 
reasons. First, I wanted to see people like you in the heartland of 
America, the people that really make this country go, the people I've 
been working for and fighting for for 4 years. But I also wanted to make 
the point that our train and our country are both on the right track to 
the 21st century.
    For 4 years, I have pursued a very straightforward strategy based on 
a vision of what our country ought to be like. When all these children 
who are in this audience spend most of their life in a new century, the 
world will be so different from the world people my age grew up in, 
different in how we work and live and relate to each other, very 
different in how we relate to the rest of the world, vastly, vastly 
increased opportunities and significant new challenges. And I want us to 
go into that next century with every child in this country having the 
opportunity to live up to his or her God-given potential and live out 
their dreams. And I believe you want that, too.

[[Page 1401]]

    In order to do that, our country has to create more opportunity and 
receive more responsibility from all of our citizens. That's the basic 
bargain of America. Our country has to remain the world's strongest 
force for peace and freedom and prosperity. And I appreciate what Mary 
said about our role in the world. It's important for America to lead the 
world. It's important for Americans that we do. And most of all, our 
country has to come together as one community.
    All over the world--this morning, as I do every morning, I started 
my work day with a review of the situation in the rest of the world. And 
I thought to myself, how much time have I spent as President dealing 
with problems created because other people could not get along and 
because they insisted on looking down on people that lived on the same 
piece of land they did because they had a different race, a different 
ethnic group, a different religion, they were of a different tribe? It 
happens in Africa and Rwanda and Burundi. It has consumed the Middle 
East for decades. It has consumed Northern Ireland for longer than that. 
It has rooted and caused butchery and slaughter in Bosnia we have worked 
so hard to end.
    Why do people do this? What is special about America? We say, this 
is not a country about race. This is not a country about religion. This 
is a country where, if you believe in the Constitution, the Bill of 
Rights, the Declaration of Independence, if you are willing to show up 
tomorrow and be a good citizen, it doesn't matter whatever else is 
special or unique or different about you; we're stronger for your 
difference; we're going forward together. And we have to have that 
commitment.
    Now, we manifest that commitment in many different ways. I was so 
moved at our convention in Chicago when Christopher Reeve talked about 
his tragic accident and his determination to overcome it. And he 
reminded us that we not only have to continue to invest in research to 
try to find answers to the problems that beset us, we also need to deal 
humanely and decently with people who have difficulties.
    Christopher Reeve came to see me in the White House, and he said, 
``Mr. President, I am so glad you fought to stop Congress from 
destroying the Medicaid program and ending its guarantee to the elderly 
in nursing homes, to poor children, and to people who have disabilities, 
because not everybody who gets a disability is a wealthy person. And 
even wealthy people can be driven into poverty. And if it weren't for 
Medicaid, middle class families wouldn't be able to maintain their 
lifestyles.'' That's a part of our community.
    I have to tell you, when Tipper Gore was talking last night, I was 
proud of the fact that my friend and the Vice President's wife has 
spoken up for 20 years to try to protect our children from unhealthful, 
indeed, affirmatively harmful cultural influences that will make it more 
difficult for them to be successful people. That's a part of our 
community, trying to make it more possible for parents to transmit their 
own values, not somebody else's commercially driven values, to the 
children of our country. I was proud of that.
    And I was proud when my wife spoke last night at the convention and 
pointed out that we have been very fortunate in our lives. We've always 
had jobs where we could take time off when Chelsea needed us, but other 
working families need that same time off.
    We've always had the best sort of health insurance. And I was there 
when Chelsea was born in the delivery room and when we took her home, 
but Hillary had the need to stay in the hospital a little extra time. 
And it's wrong for women and their newborn babies to be thrown out of 
the hospital after a day if they're not ready to go home. They ought to 
be able to stay longer. That's a part of our community.
    We've had a good week in Washington right before we left for this 
convention. A lot of things were done that will create more opportunity, 
give us a chance to have more responsibility, and bring us together in a 
community. The minimum wage went up for 10 million people. Ninety 
percent of the small businesses in this country got a tax cut. We made 
it possible for people in small businesses to save for their retirement 
and for employees in small businesses to keep their retirement when they 
move from job to job. That's all important.
    We gave people a tax credit of $5,000--and more if there is a 
disability involved--if they will adopt children. There are hundreds of 
thousands of children out there in this country that need good homes. We 
did that. That was good.
    We made 25 million Americans safer in their health care because we 
said you can't be denied health insurance anymore just because somebody 
in your family has been sick or because

[[Page 1402]]

you changed jobs. That was a good thing for America.
    We also passed the Safe Drinking Water Act and the pesticide 
protection act to help improve the public health and the environment. 
And that was a great thing for America.
    That's what I've come here to talk to you about today. We cannot go 
forward together as a country, a country where it works for all of us, 
unless we have a shared commitment to protect the environment. And 
unless we want to protect everybody's environment, in the end, no matter 
how wealthy and powerful we are, the quality of our lives will be 
undermined.

[At this point, an audience member required medical attention.]

    The President. Do you need a doctor over there? Are you okay? Over 
here? Where's my medical team? We've got to have somebody.
    Now, you think about that. It doesn't matter--I don't care if you 
have got a billion dollars, if you live in America, in the end, the 
quality of your life will be undermined unless we save the environment 
for everybody. We all have an interest in clean air and safe water and 
safe food and in preserving our national treasures.
    I can tell you this, compared to 4 years ago, there are tens of 
millions of people in America breathing cleaner air. We've cleaned up 
more toxic waste sites in 3 years than the previous administrations did 
in 12.
    We have revamped the meat and poultry inspection standards of this 
country for the first time in literally decades. We are moving in the 
right direction. We saved our national parks from an ill-advised 
congressional attempt to sell off some of them and underfund them. And 
that was a good thing.
    We saved Yellowstone, our Nation's first and great national treasure 
as a park, from the ravages of mining. And we are determined to do the 
same thing and save the Everglades in Florida. That's important to all 
of us.
    We have kicked dozens and dozens of dangerous chemicals out of the 
marketplace and quickly replaced them with safer substitutes. We have 
increased community's right to know about what is in their community and 
what kinds of chemicals they are exposed to.
    All these things are important, and they matter. And we're better 
off because of them. We've also changed the way we do a lot of our 
environmental work. We've streamlined rules and regulations, challenged 
businesses and communities to come together and stop fighting. We've 
emphasized results, not punishments and regulations. We are proving that 
you don't have to choose between a healthy environment and a healthy 
economy.
    In Michigan, we have worked very closely with the autoworkers in the 
Big Three to develop a clean car that will get 3 times the mileage of 
the average car today for the 21st century in a way that will put money 
in the pockets of American consumers, increase the quality of our 
environment, and maintain the dominance of our auto industry in the 
world for decades to come. If we can succeed in the clean car, it will 
be a major step forward for the cleanness of our environment and for the 
security of the work right here in Michigan.
    But we have more to do. You all know we have more to do. You heard 
Mary's story of the work that is represented by this beautiful water 
behind us. And you know that a lot of these battles are won block by 
block, day by day. Carl Levin has been working on the Great Lakes for a 
very long time, block by block, day by day, not just lake by lake, 
section by section. This is hard work. And we have more to do.
    I want an America, in the year 2000, where no child should have to 
live near a toxic waste dump, where no parent should have to worry about 
the safety of a child's glass of water, and no neighborhood should be 
put in harm's way by pollution from a nearby factory.
    Today I am calling for a new national commitment to help protect all 
communities from toxics by the year 2000. First, I am determined that 
finally we clean up the toxic waste sites that scar our landscape and 
threaten our neighborhoods.
    When I came into office, I vowed to strengthen and improve the 
Superfund's cleanups. In the last 3 years--in the last 3 years, not 
counting this year--we have cleaned up 197 toxic waste sites, more than 
in the previous 12 years. We're doing 3 times more a year than were done 
before.
    And we have done it while reducing the costs of these cleanups. The 
Kalamazoo River here is going to be cleaned up by polluters under your 
State's Superfund law. And some of the cleanup has not begun. But we 
have to keep working on this. We cannot slow down. We need to speed up 
the pace. These Superfund sites have been out there too long. And the

[[Page 1403]]

longer they're there, the more danger there is that damage will be done. 
We must speed up the pace.
    I am here in Michigan because 10 million American children under the 
age of 12 live within 4 miles of a toxic waste dump. And an exceptional 
percentage of the children who live there are children from the State of 
Michigan. Michigan has more at stake in this initiative than any other 
State, but every State's children are affected by our success. We must 
press ahead.
    Today we must commit our Nation's willpower and resources to meet a 
clear goal. In the next 4 years, we will clean up another 500 toxic 
waste sites, nearly double the pace of the Superfund cleanups. And by 
the year 2000, we will clean up two-thirds--the two-thirds worst toxic 
waste dumps in the country. We will get them out of the neighborhoods 
where the children live. We will do it.

[An audience member required medical attention.]

    The President. We need another medical team over here. We need some 
water and my medical team over here, wherever they are. Here we go.
    Let me also say that our cities are full of what we call 
brownfields, urban toxic waste sites. We have proved that they can be 
cleaned up and turned into homes for safe businesses that create jobs in 
areas that thought that they would never get any new jobs again. The 
most important thing that I am working on with the mayors of America 
today is cleaning up these brownfields so we can create jobs in the 
city. Again I tell you, good environmental policy is good for the 
economy. It creates jobs. It creates a future for America, and we have 
to be prepared to do it.
    We must bring the full force of law to bear on polluters who are 
willfully jeopardizing the safety of our people. I am going to send to 
Congress an environmental crimes bill to make it a crime to attempt to 
pollute, that will give us the power to catch polluters before they 
poison the land. The bill will increase penalties for those who 
intentionally pump toxics into our neighborhoods where our children will 
be exposed. And it will enable us to hit polluters where it hurts. It 
will give prosecutors the power to freeze polluters' assets and require 
them to clean up their messes. That is perhaps the most important thing 
of all.
    We're also going to expand our community right-to-know law to make 
more information, practical information, available to families easier 
and faster. Right-to-know will protect you here in communities like 
Kalamazoo because you can find out what's dangerous to your families. 
Once there is a right-to-know law, companies think twice about what they 
do. In the decades since we've passed the first one, businesses have 
reported reducing toxic emission by 43 percent. Right-to-know works. 
Don't be fooled about it; it makes a big difference.
    I have ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to give local 
environmental information to communities--including putting it on-line 
where it will be handy to computers--in one place by the year 2000, so 
that a parent could go to the local library or go to a school or just 
turn on a computer and immediately find out the chemicals in your 
community to which your children are exposed. That is a powerful early 
warning system, and it will help grassroots environmental activism clean 
the environment even more.
    Finally, let me say, we have to take further steps to stop toxics 
from getting into our drinking water. I signed an Executive order that 
directs every Federal agency that's appropriate to join in our effort to 
crack down on those who would poison the waters and make them pay to 
clean it up. I want to see to it that Congress fully funds the Safe 
Drinking Water Act we just signed into law last month.
    And in particular, I've made a commitment in my balanced budget plan 
to work with Carl Levin and others to continue to improve the quality of 
the Great Lakes. We've worked hard to carry out the Great Lakes water 
quality initiative, which Senator Levin did so much to bring about, and 
we'll keep right on doing it.
    We are blessed with magnificent natural resources. Every time our 
family goes on vacation in a National Park, I thank God again for the 
good fortune of being an American and for all the blessings we've been 
given just by the grace of God. But I'll tell you, we've been given it; 
it's up to us to do the right things with it.
    We have learned some fundamental things. Not only do you not have to 
hurt the economy to protect the environment--what difference does it 
make if you have money if you don't have clean water, clean air, a good 
natural environment, safe food, and a good public health system?

[[Page 1404]]

    And finally, we now know that this is not a negative thing. We now 
know that one of the most effective ways to create good, high-wage jobs 
in the 21st century is to invest in research, in technology, and in 
protecting the environment. That is the direction we're going to take, 
and that will keep us right on track for the 21st century.
    Thank you, and God bless you. Thank you.

Note: The President spoke at 2:30 p.m. at Merrill Park. In his remarks, 
he referred to Beverly Moore, former mayor of Kalamazoo; Linda Comer, 
principal, Lincoln Magnet School; Ed LaForge, Michigan State 
representative; and Mary Brown, former Michigan State representative.