    [Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1999, Book I)]
    [June 4, 1999]
    [Pages 886-889]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]

    Remarks on Presenting the President's Award for Furthering Employment of
    People With Disabilities
    June 4, 1999

    Situation in the Balkans

        The President. Thank you very much, Jill.
    Secretary Herman; Chairman Coelho; Mr. Dart; to Janice
    Lachance, head of our Office of Personnel
    Management. Ladies and gentlemen, I have looked forward to this day, and
    I am delighted to see you all here. I'll have more to say about the
    others who are up here with me in a moment.
        This is my only opportunity to appear before the press today, so I
    hope you will also indulge me if I say a few words about the recent
    developments in Kosovo. For 72 days now, we have been engaged with our
    Allies in a difficult but just and necessary military campaign, with
    three simple goals: the return of over 800,000 innocent Kosovar refugees
    to their homes, with safety and self-government; the withdrawal of Serb
    forces; and the deployment of an international security force, with NATO
    at its core, to protect all the people of that shattered land.
        Yesterday the Serbian authorities indicated they would accept those
    conditions. Russian Special Envoy Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Ahtisaari played instrumental and courageous roles in making
    this possible. I am grateful to them, and so should all Americans be.
        Tomorrow military officials from NATO and Serbia will meet to work
    out the details of the withdrawal of Serbian forces from Kosovo. This is
    the next necessary step for implementation of our conditions. I'm
    pleased that it will take place, and I hope the talks will proceed
    professionally and expeditiously.
        As I said yesterday, our diplomatic and military efforts will
    continue until we see Serb forces begin to withdraw in a full-scale
    manner. Our experience in the Balkans teaches us that true peace can
    only come when progress in discussions is followed by progress on the
    ground.
        At the same time, there is an enormous opportunity to be seized
    here, a chance to shift our focus from defeating something evil to
    building something good; a chance to work with our Allies to bring a
    stable and prosperous and democratic southeastern Europe, in which
    people are never again singled out for destruction simply because of
    their religious faith or their ethnic origin. This is a goal that has
    been worth fighting for over the last weeks, a goal which must be
    uppermost in our minds as we make sure our conditions are met, a goal we
    must work for with steadfast determination in the months and in the
    years to come.
        And I believe that the overwhelming majority of Americans share this
    goal. We do not want our children to grow up in a world which is
    dominated by people who believe they can kill innocent civilians because
    of the way they worship God or the way they were born.

    Disability Employment Awards

        Fifty years ago Harry Truman, the very first President to present
    the awards that we present today, set a goal for our Nation. I'd like to

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    repeat it: to give every American with a disability the chance to play
    their full part in strengthening our Nation and sharing the greatest
    satisfaction of American life, to be independent and self-supporting.
        Today we gather to honor three Americans whose efforts to bring more
    and more people with disabilities into the world of work have moved us
    closer to that great and just goal. Since the founding of our Nation,
    work has been at the heart of the American dream. Because millions of
    Americans have had the opportunity to work and to build better lives for
    themselves and their families, our Nation is enjoying historic strength
    and prosperity. Through work, we reinforce the values that hold us
    together as a society, the values of responsibility, perseverance,
    striving for the future.
        And in so many ways, we define ourselves as Americans not only by
    our families and our hometowns but by our work. Often, the first
    question Americans ask each other is not who are your parents or where
    do you live but what do you do. Today, still, there are too many
    Americans with disabilities who've never had the chance to answer that
    question. Even as we celebrate more than 18 million new jobs and a
    nationwide unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, the lowest in a generation,
    as the Secretary has said, 75 percent of Americans with disabilities
    remain unemployed. And of that number, 72 percent, almost three-
    quarters, say they want to go to work.
        This is not just a missed opportunity for Americans with
    disabilities. It's a missed opportunity for America. This is an era now
    of labor shortages, where companies go begging for employees they need
    to stay competitive in the global economy. And we simply cannot afford
    to ignore the potential of millions of potential workers simply because
    they have a disability.
        One of the things I have spent a great deal of time on in the last
    year, particularly, is trying to work with my economic advisers on
    issues that only peripherally involve the disability community but that
    you are a central part of resolving. And it is this: How can we continue
    to grow this economy and lift the standards of living of our people
    until we embrace everybody who has not participated in the recovery;
    keep the recovery going, which is already the longest peacetime recovery
    in history, and not have an explosion of inflation?
        There are--if you think about it, there are only, I would argue to
    you, three possible answers to that. You either have to get more workers
    who are unemployed, generally, in the society, into the work force so
    that they not only are helping themselves but helping the rest of us by
    becoming consumers and taxpayers and growing the economy; you have to go
    to those discrete areas where whole areas have been left out of our
    economic growth; or you have to find more customers for America's goods
    and services around the world.
        Therefore, I have continued to push the idea of the expansion of
    trade on fair and just terms. I have promoted the empowerment zones that
    the Vice President has so ably led our
    efforts in for the last 6\1/2\ years, and this new markets initiative,
    to reach into the rural areas, the urban communities, the Native
    American reservations where there has been almost no economic growth. We
    have cut the welfare rolls almost in half, trying to move able-bodied
    people from welfare to work.
        The last big chunk of people in this country who could keep the
    economy going for all of us, with low inflation, are the Americans with
    disabilities who want to work, who can work, and who are not in the work
    force. Every American citizen should have a selfish interest in the
    pursuit of this goal in the most aggressive possible way.
        As everybody here knows--and Secretary Herman already mentioned it--
    one of the very largest obstacles to employment for Americans with
    disabilities is the fear that they'll lose their health insurance once
    they take a job--that which is provided by the Federal Government. Not
    so very long ago, I went in February to New Hampshire and had a
    roundtable about this, where people were explicitly discussing this in
    graphic terms, giving through the press to the American people dollars-
    and-cents reports on what the consequences of this would be.
        Under current law, many people with disabilities simply can't work
    and keep Medicare or Medicaid. For many Americans, medical bills
    literally cost thousands of dollars beyond what is typically covered by
    an employer's private insurance. For many Americans, their medical bills
    would be greater than their entire salary.
        Therefore, we keep a lot of people out of the work force. But we
    don't save the Federal Government any money, because they're spending
    the money anyway, on the health care. So

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    we deny opportunities to millions; we prevent the American economy from
    reaching its full potential; we don't save the Federal Treasury one red
    cent, because the health care money is being spent anyway.
        Today, as a country, it is time to say that no American should have
    to choose between going to work and paying the medical bills. Last
    summer, and in the State of the Union, I asked Congress to free our
    fellow Americans from this unfair burden. The ``Work Incentive
    Improvement Act,'' sponsored by Senators Jeffords and Kennedy, Senators
    Roth and Moynihan, and a wide group of sponsors in both Houses, from
    both parties, will do just that. There are, at last count, over 70
    Members of the Senate who have signed on to the bill.
        There has been a lot of commentary lately about how hard it is to
    get legislation through the Congress, with the partisan divide. Well,
    there are a lot of issues on which Republicans and Democrats have honest
    disagreements. Thank goodness, this is not one of them. Because it is
    not one of them, because we already have over 70 people who say they
    will vote for this if they can just get a chance to vote for it on the
    floor of the Senate, I am confident that we can work together to pass
    the work incentives bill by July the 26th of this year, the ninth
    anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
        We can celebrate that great, historic, bipartisan landmark by
    opening the doors of opportunity for millions of people even wider,
    enabling more Americans with disabilities to join the proud ranks of
    working citizens.
        There is more, I would argue, that we should do. In my balanced
    budget presented to the Congress, I proposed a $1,000 tax credit to help
    people with disabilities afford special transportation technology, which
    you've already heard about, or personal assistance needed to make the
    transition to work. And we must double our efforts to make assistive
    technology, such as voice recognition software, mobile telephones,
    braille translators, more widely available. So I ask Congress to move
    forward with both of these proposals in my budget.
        And today I am taking immediate action to give more Americans with
    disabilities the opportunity to become part of the largest work force in
    America. On Monday the First Lady, the Vice President, and Mrs. Gore and
    I will be hosting a White House Conference on Mental Health, an area
    that has been a special concern, as I'm sure many of you know, to Mrs.
    Gore for many years. One of our goals is to help
    more Americans understand that mental illness is not a character flaw.
    It is a disability. That is why today I am using my executive authority
    as President to strip away outdated barriers that keep people with
    psychiatric disabilities from serving America in our Federal Government,
    directing all Federal agencies to provide applicants with mental
    illnesses the same opportunities as other applicants with disabilities
    to work for the United States of America.
        As you know, and as we see here today, not only the Government but
    individual citizens can take action and make an enormous difference. The
    three citizens we honor today are proof of the difference one person can
    make, and I am proud to present these awards to each of them.
        First, to Joyce Bender. Fifteen years ago,
    as Joyce lay in a hospital trauma unit recovering from a near-fatal
    cerebral hemorrhage, she made a vow to give something back to the
    patients who were not so lucky. Through Bender Consulting Services,
    she's used her own expertise as a professional headhunter to place
    people with disabilities in high-wage, high-tech jobs.
        She knows the demand for high-skill workers
    will only continue to grow, and she is determined to make sure people
    with disabilities will be ready to meet it. She's founded a new program
    to train even more people with disabilities in the high-tech skills that
    are the ticket to the world of the 21st century.
        It's an honor to present this award to Joyce Bender. Joyce.

    [The President presented the award and congratulated Ms. Bender, the
    recipient for 1999.]

        The President. Next, to James Click, Jr. Over more than 30 years as a car dealer in California and
    Arizona, Jim Click has become an undisputed leader in his field. But
    he's also unrivaled in his commitment to extending opportunity to people
    with disabilities.
        A few years ago, he discovered he could
    encourage more businesses to follow his lead by making it easier for
    them to find workers with the right skills. So he founded LINKAGES,
    which brings Tucson businesses and rehabilitation programs together to
    match qualified workers with disabilities to jobs in the private sector.

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        In a little over a year, more than 170 people have found work
    through LINKAGES. It's an honor to present this award to Jim
    Click and hope others will follow his lead
    in every community in the country.

    [The President presented the award and congratulated Mr. Click, co-recipient for 1998.]

        The President. Finally, to Laura Hershey.
    Laura has said, and I quote, ``Disability is not a tragedy. It is
    powerful.''
        By speaking her mind and using her gifts
    as a writer to point out the shortcomings and the possibilities of our
    society, Laura has found the power to make the world a better place for
    people with disabilities. As head of a variety of disability
    organizations and as a private citizen, she has fought to reform our
    Social Security, housing, and transportation systems to better serve
    Americans living with disabilities.
        Economic freedom and self-sufficiency for Americans with
    disabilities is her goal. I am confident she
    will not rest until she achieves it. And I am proud to present this
    third and final award to Laura Hershey.

    [The President presented the award and congratulated Ms. Hershey, co-recipient for 1998.]

        The President. So there you have them: a high-tech headhunter from
    Pittsburgh, a car dealer from Tucson, an activist from Denver. Now, if
    you didn't see them you might think, just by those descriptions, that
    these people have little in common. But they are bound together by their
    remarkable passion for empowering Americans with disabilities and
    helping all Americans to live closer to the ideal of equal opportunity
    for all. Each is, therefore, a true patriot.
        President Truman once said, ``We love our country because it offers
    us the chance to lead useful lives and to do what we can for those
    around us.''
        I thank each of you for reminding us that, really, those two things
    are two sides of the same coin. We cannot truly lead useful lives unless
    we also do what we can for those around us. This is a good day for
    America.
        Thank you. God bless you.

    Note: The President spoke at 3:05 p.m. in the East Room at the White
    House. In his remarks, he referred to Jill Rickgauer, participant in the
    LINKAGES program, which links employers with disabled job seekers; Tony
    Coelho, Chairman, President's Committee on Employment of People with
    Disabilities; Justin Dart, Jr., chairman and founder, Justice For All;
    President Martti Ahtisaari of Finland; and Special Envoy and former
    Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin of Russia. The Executive order on
    Federal employees with psychiatric disabilities is listed in Appendix D
    at the end of this volume.