    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1997, Book II)]
    [July 26, 1997]
    [Pages 1007-1008]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    [[Page 1007]]

    Remarks to the Lake Tahoe Community in Incline Village
    July 26, 1997

        Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Nakada, for making us so welcome
    today. I must tell you that we have had a wonderful, wonderful day. I
    only wish that the rest of my family could be here. They'll be very
    jealous when I give them a report on what I saw and what I did today.
        The Vice President and I are grateful to all the Members of Congress
    who joined us, including, of course, Senator Bryan and Senator Reid and
    Senator Boxer who are here with us. And a special thanks to Senator Reid
    for coming up with the idea and getting us committed to this months ago.
    It's been a very good thing, I think, this whole summit.
        I want to thank Governor Miller for his leadership on this issue.
    He's my former colleague. I'm going to be back in Nevada just the day
    after tomorrow at the Governors conference, which you are hosting, and
    you should be very proud of the record that he's built and the things
    that he's done here. I certainly am.
        I want to thank all of you for showing up. This is sort of the icing
    on the cake. I didn't realize you would be here until a few minutes ago.
    And I thank all the lacrosse players for letting us land on your field.
    I want to thank the AmeriCorps volunteers for being here, for what you
    do.
        I want to be very brief, but I want you to be serious just for a
    minute and think about the fact that we are only 3 years away from a new
    century and a new millennium, that we are very fortunate in the present
    condition of our economy and in many other ways, but that we have to
    have a strategy for going into the future and going into the future
    together.
        I told the people at that summit today that there were three things
    that I took away from this experience. One is that the United States has
    a responsibility to help people who are trying so hard to help
    themselves to save Lake Tahoe, and we will spend over $50 million in the
    next 2 years to do our part. The second point is that we can grow the
    economy and preserve the environment, and they are two sides of the same
    coin, not inevitably in conflict, and people here have proved that. But
    the third, and in some ways maybe the most important of all, is that by
    getting together across lines that divided people--whether they're
    business people versus environmentalists, Republicans against Democrats,
    you know, whatever the dividing lines are--and saying, ``We've got to
    save this lake and we've got to do this together and we've got to find a
    way to do it together and to agree on how we're going to do it,'' you
    have shown the way to how we have to make a lot of our decisions as we
    move into this new century.
        I very much believe that our best days are ahead of us. I've worked
    hard with the Vice President and our friends and allies to create a
    country in which there is opportunity for everybody responsible enough
    to work for it; a country in which we're coming together as a community,
    not being divided by our diversity; and a nation that's still leading
    the world toward peace and freedom and prosperity.
        And I'm proud of the fact that we now have the strongest economy in
    a generation and the strongest economy in the world; that we've had
    years of declining--[applause]--that we've had years of steadily
    declining crime rates; that the deficit is now 80 percent lower than it
    was the day I took office; that we've had the biggest drop in welfare
    rolls in the history of the Republic. I'm proud of all those things.
        The Secretary of the Interior told me a few months ago that we have
    protected or set aside more acres in public trust than at any time in
    the history of the United States, except under the Presidencies of
    Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt. I'm proud of that. But you and I know
    that we have a lot of challenges ahead, and we cannot--we cannot--allow
    ourselves to be imprisoned by the thought patterns or the way of doing
    things of the past. We cannot believe that our old conflicts have to be
    carried into a new century. We cannot believe that our old false choices
    have to be carried into a new century. We can't be forced to choose
    between the economy and the environment. That's a dumb choice. We have
    to find a way working together across the lines that divide us to
    achieve both prosperity and preservation of our most sacred gift from
    God.

    [[Page 1008]]

        We are becoming by far the most diverse democracy in the history of
    humanity. We cannot be forced to choose between not only respecting but
    celebrating our diversity and still saying, we are one America, after
    all, bound together by shared values and a common future for our
    children. We can't be forced into that division. If you wonder what
    happens when you do that, you have only to look at Bosnia, the Middle
    East, Northern Ireland, and countless other places around the world. We
    don't want to make that choice.
        So I can now go all across America and point to what I have seen in
    Lake Tahoe and how people at the local level came together across lines
    that divided them for years to do something that was good and noble and,
    by the way, in their self-interest, to create a better and a brighter
    future for our children. And that's how we ought to do other things in
    America. That's why I appreciate the citizen service of these young
    AmeriCorps volunteers. And that's why I am determined to stay on this
    path. That's why the people working for the Vice President and me are
    back on this beautiful Saturday laboring away with Members of the
    Congress, trying to reach an accord that will both balance the budget
    and give Americans a tax cut we can afford and invest more in education
    and the health care of our children than we've done since 1965. Because
    I believe if we're willing to really think in new ways and reach out to
    people across the lines that divided us, the best days of this country
    are still ahead. I want you to believe that. I want you to work for
    that.
        I want you to do your part to save Lake Tahoe. It's not enough to
    stop the degradation; we have to reverse some of it. And we can do that
    if we all work together. And I want you to commit yourselves to take the
    model that is working for Tahoe into other areas of your lives, because
    I want to be able to go around this country and say, don't tell me that
    we can't get along and work together and do better; I have seen it in
    Lake Tahoe.
        Thank you, and God bless you all. Thank you.

    Note: The President spoke at 2:55 p.m. at the Village Green Soccer
    Field. In his remarks, he referred to Jim Nakada, board of trustees
    chairman, Incline Village General Improvement District.